2 This fragment of the theory of knowledge which was expounded in the second part of the poem of Parmenides must be taken in connexion with what we are told by Theophrastos in the ‘‘ Fragment on Sensation” (Dox. p- 499; cf. p. 222). It appears from this that he said the character of men’s thought depended upon the preponderance of the light or the dark element in their bodies. They are wise when the light element predominates, and foolish when the dark gets the upper hand.
Parmenides of Elea 203
On the right boys; on the left girls.?
Thus, according to men’s opinions, did things come into
being, and thus they are now. In time they will grow up
and pass away. ‘To each of these things men have assigned
a fixed name. R. P. 129 b.
86. In the First Part of his poem, we find
Parmenides chiefly interested to prove that 22 zs; but
it is not quite obvious at first sight what it is precisely
that zs. He says simply, What zs, zs. Tous this does
not seem very clear, and that for two reasons. In the
first place, we should never think of doubting it, and
we cannot, therefore, understand why it should be
asserted with such iteration and vigour. In the second
place, we are accustomed to all sorts of distinctions
between different kinds and degrees of reality, and we
do not see which of these is meant. Such distinctions,
however, were quite unknown in those days. “That
which is,’ with Parmenides, is primarily what, in
popular language, we call matter or body; only it is
not matter as distinguished from anything else. It is |
certainly regarded as spatially extended ; for it is quite
seriously spoken of as a sphere (fr. 8, 40). Moreover,
Aristotle tells us that Parmenides believed in none but
a sensible reality, which does not necessarily mean with
him a reality that is actually perceived by the senses,
but includes any which might be so perceived if the
senses were more perfect than they are.” Parmenides
1 This is a fragment of Parmenides’s embryology. Diels’s fr. 18 is a retranslation of the Latin hexameters of Caelius Aurelianus quoted ΕΣ ares
2 Arist. de Caelo,T, 1. 298 Ὁ 21, ἐκεῖνοι δὲ (of περὶ Μέλισσόν τε καὶ Παρμενίδην) διὰ τὸ μηθὲν μὲν ἄλλο παρὰ τὴν τῶν αἰσθητῶν οὐσίαν
204 Early Greek Philosophy
does not say a word about “ Being” anywhere.’ The
assertion that 22 zs j to this, that the
/universe is a plenum; and that there is no such thing
as empty space, either inside or outside the world.
From this it follows that there can be no such thing as
motion. Instead of endowing the One with an impulse
to change, as Herakleitos had done, and thus making
it capable of explaining the world, Parmenides dis-
missed change as an illusion. He showed once for all
that if you take the One seriously you are bound _ to
deny everything else. All previous solutions of the
question, therefore, had missed the point. Anaximenes,
who thought to save the unity of the primary substance
by his theory of rarefaction and condensation, did not
observe that, by assuming there was less of what is in’ one place than another, he virtually affirmed the exist- ence of what is not (fr. 8, 42). The Pythagorean explanation implied that empty space or air existed outside the world, and that it entered into it to separate the units (§ 53). It, too, assumes the existence of what is not. Nor is the theory of Herakleitos any more satisfactory ; for it is based upon the contradiction that fire both is and is not (fr. 6).
The allusion to Herakleitos in the verses last referred
ὑπολαμβάνειν εἷναι x.r.X. So too Eudemos, in the first book of his Physics (ap. Simpl. Phys. p. 133, 25), said of Parmenides: τὸ μὲν οὖν κοινὸν οὐκ ἂν λέγοι. οὔτε yap ἐζητεῖτό πω τὰ τοιαῦτα, ἀλλ᾽ ὕστερον ἐκ τῶν λόγων προῆλθεν, οὔτε ἐπιδέχοιτο ἂν ἃ τῷ ὄντι ἐπιλέγει. - πῶς γὰρ ἔσται τοῦτο ““μέσσοθεν ἰσοπαλὲς᾿ καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ; τῷ δὲ οὐρανῷ (the world) σχεδὸν πάντες ἐφαρμόσουσιν οἱ τοιοῦτοι λόγοι. The Neoplatonists, of course, saw in the One the νοητὸς κόσμος, and Simplicius calls the sphere a ‘* mythical figment.” See especially Baiimker, ‘‘Die Einheit des Parmenideischen Seiendes” (Jahrb. f. kl. Phil. 1886, pp. 541 sqq.), and Das Problem der Materie, pp. 50 sqq.
1 We must not render τὸ ἐόν by ““ Being,” das Sein or Pétre. It is ‘‘what is,” das Secende, ce gui est. As to (τὸ) εἶναι it does not, and could not, occur. Cf. p. 198, n. 1, above.
Parmenides of Elea 205
to has been doubted, though upon insufficient grounds. Zeller points out quite rightly that Herakleitos never says Being and not-Being are the sdme (the common translation of fr. 6, 8); and, were there nothing more than this, the reference might well seem doubtful. The statement, however, that, according to the view in question, “all things travel in opposite directions,” can hardly be understood of anything but the “ upward and downward path” of Herakleitos (§ 71). And, as we have seen, Parmenides does not attribute the view that Being and not-Being are the same to the philosopher whom he is attacking ; he only says that z¢ is and is not, the same and not the same.’ That is the natural meaning of the words ; and it furnishes a very accurate description of the theory of Herakleitos.
87. The great novelty in the poem of Parmenides The method is the method of argument. He first asks what is the ae common presupposition of all the views with which he has to deal, and he finds that this is the existence of what is not. The next question is whether this can be thought, and the answer is that it cannot. If you think at all, you must think of something. Therefore there is no nothin Philosophy had not yet learned to} make the admission that a thing might be unthinkable} . and nevertheless exist. Only that can be which can | ie ‘be thought (fr. 5); for thought exists for the sake of what is (fr. 8, 34).
\ This method Parmenides carries out with the utmost
rigour. He will not have us pretend that we think
what we must admit to be unthinkable. It is true that
if we resolve to allow nothing but what we can under-
stand, we come into direct conflict with the evidence
1 See above, p. 198, n. 3.
206 Early Greek Philosophy
of our senses, which present us with ἃ world of change
and decay. So much the worse for the senses, says
Parmenides. To many this will doubtless seem a
mistake on his part, but let us see what history has to
say on the point. The theory of Parmenides is the
inevitable outcome of a corporeal monism, and his bold
declaration of it ought to have destroyed that theory
for ever. If he had lacked courage to work out the
prevailing views of his time to their logical conclusion,
and to accept that conclusion, however paradoxical it
might seem to be, men might have gone on in the
endless circle of opposition, rarefaction and condensa-
tion, one and many, for ever. It was the thorough-
going dialectic of Parmenides that made _ progress
possible. Philosophy must now cease to be monistic
or cease to be corporealist. It could not cease to be
_ corporealist ; for the incorporeal was still unknown. It
‘The results.
therefore ceased to be monistic, and arrived at the
atomic theory, which, so far as we know, is the last
word of the view that the world is matter in motion.
Having worked out its problems on thosé conditions,
philosophy next attacked them on the other side. It
ceased to be corporealist, and found it possible to be
monistic once more, at least for a time. This progress
would have been impossible but for that faith in reason
which gave Parmenides the courage to reject as untrue
what was to him unthinkable, however strange the
result might be.
88. He goes on to develop all the consequences of
the admission that z¢ zs. It must be uncreated and
indestructible. It cannot have arisen out of nothing ; ΒΟΘΘΙΕΒΟΣΙΘΣΕ :
for there is no such thing as nothing. Nor can it have arisen from something ; for there is no room for any-
Parmenides Qf Elea 207
thing ‘but itself, AWh&t is cannot have beside it any
empty space in which something else might arise ; ‘for
empty space is nothing, nothing cannot’ be thought, and
therefore cannot exist. What is, never eame into being,
nor is anything going’to come into being in the future.
“Is it or is it not?” If it is, then it is now, all at
once, , |
That Parmenides was really denying the existence
of empty space was quite well known to Plato. He
says that Parmenides held “all things were one, and
that the one remains at rest in itself, having no place in
»1 Aristotle is’ no less clear. In the
which to move.
de Caelo he lays it down that Parmenides was driven
to take up the position that the One was immovable
just because no one had yet imagined that there was
any reality other than sensible reality.”
That which is, is; and it cannot be more or less.
There is, therefore, as much of it in one place as in
another, and the world is a continuous, indivisible
plenum. From _this it follows at once that it must be
immovable. If it moved, it must move into an empty
space, and there is no empty space. It is hemmed in
by what zs, by the real, on every side. For the same
reason, it must be finite, and can have nothing beyond
it. It is complete in itself, and has no need to stretch
out indefinitely into an empty space that does not exist.
Hence, too, it is spherical. It is equally real in every
direction, and the sphere is the only form which meets
this condition. Any other would de in one direction
more than in another. And this sphere cannot even
1 Plato, Zht. 180 e 3, ds ἕν τε πάντα ἐστὶ καὶ ἕστηκεν αὐτὸ ἐν αὑτῷ οὐκ ἔχον χώραν ἐν ἣ κινεῖται.
2 Arist. de Caelo, T, 1. 298 Ὁ 21, quoted above, p. 203, ἢ. 2.
Parmenides
the father of
materialism.
The beliefs of Ἢ ** mortals.”
208 Early Greek Philosophy
move round its own axis; for there is nothing outside of it with reference to which it could be said to move. | 89. To sum up. What zs, is a finite, spherical, | motionless corporeal p/enum, and there is nothing beyond | it. The appearances of multiplicity and motion, empty
space and time, are illusions. We see from this that
the primary substance of which the early cosmologists
were in search has now become a sort of “ thing in
itself” It never quite lost this character again. What
‘appears later as the elements of Empedokles, the so-
called “homoeomeries” of Anaxagoras and the atoms
of Leukippos and Demokritos, is just the Parmenidean
“being.” Parmenides is not, as some have said, the
“father of idealism”; on the contrary, all materialism
depends on his view of reality.
90. It is commonly said that, in the Second Part of
his poem, Parmenides offered a dualistic theory of the
origin of things as his own conjectural explanation of
the sensible world, or that, as Gomperz says, “ What
he offered were the Opinions of Mortals; and this
description did not merely cover other people’s opinions.
It included his own as well, as far as they were not
confined to the unassailable ground of an apparent
philosophical necessity. Now it is true that in one
place Aristotle appears to countenance a view of this sort, but nevertheless it is an anachronism.” Nor is it
really Aristotle’s view. He was perfectly well aware
1 Greek Thinkers, pp. 180 sqq.
2 Met. A, 5.986b 31(R. P. 121a). Aristotle’s way of putting the matter is due to his interpretation of fr. 8, 54, which he took to mean that one of the two ‘‘ forms” was to be identified with τὸ ὅν and the other with τὸ μὴ ὄν. Cf. Gen. Corr. A, 3. 318 Ὁ 6, ὥσπερ ἸΠαρμενίδης λέγει δύο, τὸ ὃν Kal τὸ μὴ ὃν εἶναι φάσκων. This last sentence shows clearly that when Aristotle says Παρμενίδης, he means what we should call ““ Parmenides.” He cannot have supposed that Parmenides admitted the being of τὸ μὴ ὄν in any sense whatever (cf, Plato, Soph. 241 ἃ 5).
Parmenides of Elea 209
that Parmenides did not admit the existence of “ not-
being” in any degree whatever; but it was a natural
way of speaking to call the cosmology of the Second
Part of the poem that of Parmenides. His Hearers
would understand at once in what sense this was
meant. At any rate, the Peripatetic tradition was that
Parmenides, in the Second Part of the poem, meant
to give the belief of “the many.” This is how
Theophrastos put the matter, and Alexander seems to
have spoken of the cosmology as something which
Parmenides himself regarded as wholly false. The
other view comes from the Neoplatonists, and especially
Simplicius, who very naturally regarded the Way of
Truth as an account of the intelligible world, and the-
Way of Opinion as a description of the sensible. It
need hardly be said that this is almost as great an
anachronism as the Kantian parallelism suggested by
Gomperz.? Parmenides himself tells us in the most
unequivocal language that there is no truth at all in
the theory which he expounds, and he gives it merely
as the belief of “mortals.” It was this that led
Theophrastos to speak of it as the opinion of “the
many.”