anticipate the celebrated doctrine of innate ideas. These ideas were concerning necessary truths; they were true knowledge: all other ideas were uncertain.

The Eleatics, as Ritter remarks, believed that they recognized and could demonstrate that the truth of all things is one and unchangeable; perceiving, however, that the human faculty of thought is constrained to follow the appearance of things, and to apprehend the changeable and the many, they were forced to confess that we are unable fully to comprehend the divine truth in its reality, although we may rightly apprehend a few general principles. Nevertheless, to suppose, in conformity with human thought, that there is actually both a plurality and a change, would be but a delusion of the senses. While, on the other hand, we must acknowledge, that in all that appears to us as manifold and changeable, including all particular thought as evolved in the mind, the Godlike is present, unperceived indeed by human blindness, and become, as it were beneath a veil, indistinguishable.

We may make this conception more intelligible if we recall the mathematical tendency of the whole of this school. Their knowledge of Physics was regarded as contingent-delusive. Their knowledge of Mathematics eternal-self-evident. Parmenides was thus led by Xenophanes on the one hand, and Diochotes on the other, to the conviction of the duality of human thought. His Reason, i. e. the Pythagorean logic, taught him that there is naught existing but The One (which he did not, with Xenophanes, call God; he called it Being). His Sense, on the other hand, taught him that there were Many Things, because of his manifold sensuous impressions. Hence he maintained two Causes and two Principles: the one to satisfy the Reason; the other to accord with the explanations of Sense. His work on "Nature" was therefore divided into two parts: in the first is expounded the absolute Truth, as Reason proclaims it; in the second, human Opinion, accustomed to

"Follow the rash eye, and ears with singing sounds confused, and tongue," which is but a mere seeming (doğa, appearance); nevertheless

there is a cause of this seeming; there is also a principle, consequently there is a doctrine appropriate to it.

It must not be imagined, that Parmenides had a mere vague and general notion of the uncertainty of human knowledge. He maintained that thought was delusive because dependent upon organization. He had as distinct a conception of this celebrated theory as any of his successors, as may be seen in the passage preserved by Aristotle in the 5th chapter of the 4th book of his Metaphysics, where, speaking of the materialism of Democritus, in whose system sensation was thought, he adds, that others have shared this opinion, and proceeds thus: "Empedocles affirms, that a change in our condition (v) causes a change in our thought:

"Thought grows in men according to the impression of the moment;'* and, in another passage, he says:

"It is always according to the changes which take place in men That there is change in their thoughts.""

Parmenides expresses himself in the same style:

"Such as to each man is the nature of his many-jointed limbs,
Such also is the intelligence of each man; for it is

The nature of limbs (organization) which thinketh in men,
Both in one and in all; for the highest degree of organization
gives the highest degree of thought."+

Now, as thought was dependent on organization, and as each

Πρὸς παρεὸν γὰρ μὴτις ἀέξεται ἀνθρώποισι.

The last sentence, "for the highest degree of organization gives the highest degree of thought," is a translation which, differing from that of every other we have seen, and being, as we believe, of some importance in the interpretation of Parmenides' system, it is necessary to state at full our reasons. Here is the original of the verses in the text:

'Ως γὰρ ἕκαστος ἔχει κρᾶσιν μελέων πολυκάμπτων,

Τῶς νέος ἀνθρώποισι παρέστηκεν. Τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ

*Εστιν ὅπερ φρονέει μελέων φύσις ἀνθρώποισι,
Καὶ πᾶσιν, καὶ παντί· τὸ γὰρ πλέον ἐστὶ νόημα.

The last sentence Ritter translates

"For thought is the fulness."

Objecting to Hegel's version of rò λéov, "the most," and to that of Brandis,

organization differed in degree from every other, so would the opinions of men differ. If thought be sensation, it requires but little reflection to show, that, as sensations from the same object differ according to the senses of different persons, and indeed differ at different times with the same person, therefore one opinion is not more true than another, and all are equally false. But Reason is the same in all men: that alone is the fountain of certain knowledge. All thought derived from sense is but a

"the mightier," Ritter says the meaning is "the full." But we shall then want an interpretation of "the full." What is it? He elsewhere slightly alters the phrase thus:

"The fulness of all being is thought."

We speak with submission, but it appears to us that Ritter's assertion respecting rd éov meaning "the full," or "the fulness," is unwarrantable. The ordinary meaning is certainly "the more" or "the most," and hence used occasionally to signify perfection, as in Theocritus:

Καὶ τᾶς βωκολικᾶς ἐπὶ τὸ πλέον εκεο μώσας.-Idy. i. 20.

When Parmenides, therefore, uses the phrase rò nλéov lorì vónua, he seems to us to have the ordinary meaning in view; he speaks of rà ¤λéov as a necessary consequence of the moλváμrros. Man has many-jointed limbs, ergo many sensations; if he had more limbs he would have more sensations; the highest degree of organization gives the highest degree of thought. This explanation is in conformity with what Aristotle says on introducing the passage; is in conformity with the line inmediately preceding:

*Εστιν ὅπερ φρονέει μελέων φύσις ἀνθρώποισι ;

is in conformity with the explanation of the scholiast Asclepias, rò nλéov ¿œrì νόημα, προσγίγνεται ἐκ τῆς πλέονος αἰσθήσεως καὶ ἀκριβεστέρας; and, finally, is in conformity with the opinion attributed to Parmenides by Plutarch, that "sentir et penser ne lui paraissaient choses distinctes, ni entre elles ni de l'organisation." i

It is on this account we reject the reading of noλundáуκтwv, “far-wandering," in place of πodukáμπтwv, “many-jointed," suggested by Karsten. The change is arbitrary and for the worse; maλundáуkт having reference only to the feet, whereas the simile in Parmenides is meant to apply to the whole

man.

The meaning of the verses is, therefore, that the intelligence of man is formed according to his many-jointed frame, i. e. dependent on his organization.

1 Ch. Renouvier, Manuel de la Philosophie Ancienne, i. 152, who cites Plutarch, Opin. des Philos. iv. 5.

seeming (dóza); but thought derived from Reason is absolutely true. Hence his antithesis to doğa is always idris, faith.

This is the central point in his system. He was thereby enabled to avert absolute skepticism, and at the same time to admit the uncertainty of ordinary knowledge. He had therefore two distinct doctrines, each proportioned to the faculty adapted to it. One doctrine, of Absolute Knowledge (Metaphysics, μerà và quamá), with which the faculty of pure Reason was concerned, a doctrine called in the language of that day, the "science of Being." The other doctrine, of Relative Knowledge, or Opinion (Physics, à quoixá), with which the faculty of Intelligence, or Thought, derived from Sense, was concerned, and which may be called the Science of Appearance.

On the science of Being, Parmenides did not differ much from his predecessors, Xenophanes and Pythagoras. He taught that there was but one Being; non-Being was impossible. The latterassertion amounts to saying that non-existence cannot exist; a position which may appear extremely trivial to the reader not versed in metaphysical speculations; but which we would not have him despise, inasmuch as it is a valuable piece of evidence respecting the march of human opinion. It is only one of the many illustrations of the tendency to attribute positive qualities to words, as if they were things, and not simply marks of things; a tendency admirably exposed by James Mill, and subsequently by his son.* It was this tendency which so greatly puzzled the early thinkers, who, when they said that "a thing is not," believed that they nevertheless predicated existence, viz. the existence of non-existence. A thing is, and a thing is not; these

* "Many volumes might be filled with the frivolous speculations concerning the nature of Being (rð 3v, obola, Ens, Entitas, Essentia, and the like), which have arisen from overlooking this double meaning of the words to be; from supposing that when it signifies to exist, and when it signifies to be some specified thing, as to be a man, to be Socrates, to be seen, to be a phantom, or even to be a nonentity, it must still at the bottom answer to the same idea; and that a meaning must be found for it which shall suit all these cases."— John Mill, System of Logic, i. 4, first ed.

two assertions seemed to be affirmations of two different states of existence; an error from which, under some shape or other, later thinkers have not always been free.

Parmenides, however, though affirming that Being alone existed and that non-Being was impossible, did not see the real ground of the sophism. He argued that Non-Being could not be, because Nothing can come out of Nothing (as Xenophanes taught him); if therefore Being existed, it must embrace all existence.

Hence he concluded that The One was all Existence, identical, unique, neither born nor dying, neither moving nor changing. It was a bold step to postulate the finity of the One, Xenophanes having declared it to be necessarily infinite. But there is abundant evidence to prove that Parmenides regarded The One as finite. Aristotle speaks of it as the distinction between Parmenides and Melissus: "The unity of Parmenides was a rational unity (rou κατὰ λόγον ἑνός); that of Melissus was a material unity (τοῦ κατὰ λny). Hence the former said that The One was finite (πεπερασμένον), but the latter said it was infinite (ἄπειρον).” From which it appears that the ancients conceived the Rational unity as limited by itself; a conception it is difficult for us to understand. Probably it was because they held The One to be spherical: all the parts being equal: having neither beginning, middle, nor end: and yet self-limited.

The conception of the identity of thought and existence is expressed in some remarkable verses by Parmenides, of which, as a very different interpretation has been drawn from them, we shall give a literal translation:

"Thought is the same thing as the cause of thought:

For without the thing in which it is announced

You cannot find the thought; for there is nothing, nor shall be-
Except the existing."

Now, as the only Existence was The One, it follows that The One and Thought are identical; a conclusion which by no means contradicts the opinion before noticed of the identity of human thought and sensation, both of these being merely transitory modes of Existence.