tion." This is manifestly an allusion to the doctrine of Anaximenes that the soul was air. The intelligence of God, being utterly unlike that of man, is said to be independent of respiration.* It is necessary to caution the reader against the supposition that by the One God Xenophanes meant a Personal God, distinct from the universe. He was a monotheist in contradistinction to his polytheistical contemporaries; but his monotheism was pantheism. Indeed this point would never have been doubted, notwithstanding the ambiguity of language, if moderns had steadily kept before their minds the conceptions held by the Greeks of their Gods as personifications of the Powers of Nature. When Xenophanes argued against the polytheism of his contemporaries, he argued against their personifying as distinct deities the various aspects of The One; he was wroth with their degradation of the divine nature by assimilating it to human nature, by making these powers persons, and independent existences,-conceptions irreconcilable with that of the unity of God. He was a monotheist therefore, but his monotheism was panthe ism; he could not separate God from the world, which was merely the manifestation of God; he could not conceive God as the One Existent, and admit the existence of a world not God. There could be but One Existence with many modes; that one was God. There is another tenet of almost equal importance in his system, and one which marks the origin of that skeptical philosophy which we shall see henceforward running through all the evolutions of this history, always determining a crisis in speculation. Up to the time of Xenophanes philosophy was unsuspectingly dogmatical: it never afterwards recovered that simple. position. He it was who began to doubt, and to confess the in Only by thus connecting one doctrine with another can we hope to understand ancient philosophy. It is in vain that we puzzle ourselves with the attempt to penetrate the meaning of these antique fragments of thought unless we view them in relation to the opinions of their epoch. competence of Reason to solve doubts and compass the exalted aims of philosophy. Yet the doubt was moral rather than psychological. It was no systematic skepticism: an earnest spirit struggling after Truth, whenever he obtained, or thought he obtained, a glimpse of her celestial countenance, he proclaimed his discovery, however it might contradict what he had before announced. Long travel, various experience, examination of different systems, new and contradictory glimpses of the problem he was desirous of solving,-these working together produced in his mind a skepticism of a noble, somewhat touching sort, wholly unlike that of his successors. It was the combat of contradictory opinions in his mind, rather than disdain of knowledge. His faith was steady, his opinions vacillating. He had a profound conviction of the existence of an eternal, all-wise, infinite Being; but this belief he was unable to reduce to a consistent formula. There is deep sadness in these verses: "Surely never hath been, nor ever shall be a mortal Knowing both well the Gods and the All, whose nature we treat of; In vain M. Cousin attempts to prove that these verses are not skeptical; many of the recorded opinions of Xenophanes are of the same tendency. The man who had lived to find his most cherished convictions turn out errors, might well be skeptical of the truth of any of his opinions. But this skepticism was vague; it did not prevent his proclaiming what he held to be the truth; it did not prevent his search after truth. For although Truth could never be compassed in its totality by man, glimpses could be caught. 'Aλà xpóvw InTouvres ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον : we cannot indeed be certain that our knowledge is absolute; we can only strive our utmost, and believe our opinions to be probable. This is not scientific skepticism; it does not ground itself on an investigation of the nature of Intelligence and the sources of our knowledge: it grounds itself solely on the perplexities into which philosophy is thrown. Thus reason (i. e. the logic of his day) taught him that God the Infinite could not be infinite, neither could he be finite. Not infinite, because non-being alone, as having neither beginning, middle, nor end, is unlimited (infinite). Not finite, because one thing can only be limited by another, and God is one, not many. In like manner did logic teach him that God was neither moved nor unmoved. Not moved, because one thing can only be moved by another, and God is one, not many; not unmoved, because non-being alone is unmoved, inasmuch as it neither to another, nor does another come to it. goes With such verbal quibbles as these did this great thinker darken his conception of the Deity. They were not quibbles to him; they were the real conclusions involved in the premises from which he reasoned. To have doubted their validity would have been to doubt the possibility of philosophy. He was not quite prepared for that; and Aristotle in consequence calls him " somewhat clownish," aypoxórspos (Met. i. 5); meaning that his conceptions were rude and undigested, instead of being systematized. Although in the indecision of Xenophanes we see the germs of later skepticism, we are disposed to agree with M. Cousin in discrediting his absolute skepticism-resting on the incomprehensibility of all thingsἀκαταληψία πάντων. Nevertheless some of M. Cousin's grounds appear to us questionable.* The reader will, perhaps, have gathered from the foregoing, that Xenophanes was too much in earnest to believe in the incomprehensibility of all things, however the contradictions of his logic might cause him to suspect his and other people's conclusions. Of course, if carried out to their legitimate consequences, his principles lead to absolute skepticism; but he did not so * E. g. He says: "It appears that Sotion, according to Diogenes, attributed to Xenophanes the opinion, all things are incomprehensible; but Diogenes adds that Sotion was wrong on that point." (Fragmens, p. 89.) Now this is altogether a misstatement. Diogenes says: "Sotion pretends that no one before Xenophanes maintained the incomprehensibility of all things; but he is wrong." Diogenes here does not deny that Xenophanes held the opinion, but that any one held it before him. carry them out, and we have no right to charge him with consequences which he himself did not draw. Indeed, it is one of the greatest and commonest of critical errors, to charge the originator or supporter of a doctrine with consequences which he did not see, or would not have accepted had he seen them. Because they may be contained in his principles, it by no means follows that he saw them. A man would be ridiculed if he attributed to the discoverer of any law of nature the various discoveries which the application of that law might have produced; nevertheless these applications were all potentially existing in the law; but as the discoverer of the law was not aware of them, he does not get the credit. Why, then, should a man have the dis-credit of conseqences contained, indeed, in his principles, but which he himself could not see? On the whole, although Xenophanes was not a clear and systematic thinker, it cannot be denied that he exercised a very remarkable influence on the progress of speculation; as we shall see in his successors. § III. PARMENIDES. The readers of Plato will not forget the remarkable dialogue in which he pays a tribute to the dialectical subtlety of Parmenides; but we must at the outset caution them against any belief in the genuineness of the opinions attributed to him by Plato. If Plato could reconcile to himself the propriety of altering the sentiments of his beloved master, Socrates, and of attributing to him such as he had never entertained; with far greater reason could he put into the mouth of one long dead, sentiments which were the invention of his own dramatic genius. Let us read the Parmenides, therefore, with extreme caution; let us prefer the authority of Aristotle and the verses of Parmenides which have been preserved. Parmenides was born at Elea, somewhere about the 61st Olympiad (B. c. 536). This date does not contradict the rumor which, according to Aristotle, asserted him to have been a disciple of Xenophanes, whom he might have listened to when that great rhapsodist was far advanced in years. The most positive statement, however, is that by Sotion, of his having been taught by Ameinias and Diochotes the Pythagorean. But both may be true. Born to wealth and splendor, enjoying the esteem and envy which always follow splendor and talents, it is conjectured that his early career was that of a dissipated voluptuary; but Diochotes taught him the nothingness of wealth (at times, perhaps, when satiety had taught him the nothingness of enjoyment), and led him from the dull monotony of noisy revelry to the endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought. He forsook the feverish pursuit of enjoyment, to contemplate "the bright countenance of Truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.” * But this devotion to study was no egoistical seclusion. It did not prevent his taking an active share in the political affairs of his native city. On the contrary, the fruits of his study were shown in a code of laws which he drew up, and which were deemed so wise and salutary, that the citizens at first yearly renewed their oath to abide by the laws of Parmenides. "And something greater did his worth obtain, The first characteristic of his philosophy, is the decided distinction between Truth and Opinion: in other words, between the ideas obtained through the Reason and those obtained through Sense. In Xenophanes we noticed a vague glimmering of this notion; in Parmenides it attained to something like clearness. In Xenophanes it contrived to throw an uncertainty over all things; which, in a logical thinker, would become absolute skepticism. But he was saved from skepticism by his faith. Parmenides was saved from it by his philosophy. He was perfectly aware of the deceitful nature of opinion; but he was also aware that within him there was certain ineradicable convictions, in which, like Xenophanes, he had perfect faith, but which he wished to explain by reason. Thus was he led in some sort to * Milton. |