Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/137

Rh (Arist. and Theophr. l. cc.). Although the latter expressions are not found in Parmenides, he mani- festly regarded the former, the primordial principle of fire, as the active and real, the other as the pas- sive, in itself unreal, only attaining to reality when animated by the former (1. 113, 129). The whole universe is filled with light and darkness (1. 123), and out of their intermingling every thing in the world is formed by the Deity, who reigns in their midst (1. 127. év dè μéoç ToÚTwv daíµwv ń Távтa Kubepva), the primary source of the fateful pro- creation and intermingling (oTuyYepoło Tókov Kal uitos apx, 1. 127, &c.). As the first of the gods, this deity devised Eros, the principle of union be- tween the mutually opposed primordial principles (Arist. Metaph. i. 4; Sext. Empir. adv. Math. ix. 1, 6; Plut. de Primo Frigido, p. 946, e.); and after him other gods, doubtless to represent powers and gradations of nature (Plato, Symp. p. 195, c.; Menand. de Encom. i. c. 5), amongst which Desire, War, and Strife may very well have been found (Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 11; S. Karsten's Conjecture, l. c. p. 239, does not seem requisite). But the ultimate explanatory principle of the world of originated ex- istence must, in his view, have been necessity, or destiny, and as such he may very well have desig- nated at one time that deity that holds sway be- tween the opposites (Stobaeus, Eclog. i. 23, p. 482 ; comp Plato, Symp. p. 195, c.), at other times the opposed principles themselves (Plut. de Anim. Pro- creat. c. Timueo, p. 1026, b.). Of the cosmogony of Parmenides, which was carried out very much in detail, we possess only a few fragments and notices, which are difficult to understand (1. 132, &c. ; Stob. Ecl. Phys. i. 23, p. 482, &c. ; Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 11, &c.; comp. S. Karsten, l. c. p. 240, &c.), according to which, with an approach to the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, he conceived the spherical mundane system, surrounded by a circle of the pure light (Olympus, Uranus); in the centre of this mundane system the solid earth, and between the two the circle of the milky-way, of the morning or evening star, of the sun, the planets, and the moon; which circle he regarded as a mixture of the two primordial elements. As here, so in his an- thropological attempts, he deduced the differences in point of perfection of organisation, from the different proportions in which the primordial prin- ciples were intermingled (S. Karsten, p. 257, &c.), and again deduced the differences in the mental capacities from the more or less perfect inter- mixture of the members (ws ydp ékáσTY EXEL Koãσis μeλéwv ToluTλáykTwv, Tus vóos avopá- TOLOI, 1. 145, &c.; comp. S. Karsten, p. 266, &c.); laying down in the first instance that the primordial principles are animated, and that all things, even those that have died, partake of feel- ing, not indeed for the warm, for light, for sound, but for the cold, for darkness, and for silence (Theophrastus, de Sensu Princ.). Accordingly, consciousness and thought also, in so far as, while conceived in a state of change, it is an object of appearance, is to be deduced from the primordial principles of the world of phaenomena, but must be abstracted from that Thought which is coin- cident with the absolutely existent. But, however marked the manner in which Parmenides separated the true, only, changeless Existence from the world of phaenomena, which passes off in the change of forms, and however little he may have endeavoured to trace back the latter to the former, the possibility of its being so traced back he could not give up, and appears for that very reason to have desig- nated the primordial form of the Warm as that which was real in the world of phaenomena, pro- bably not without reference to Heracleitus' doctrine of perpetual coming into existence, while he placed along with it the opposite primordial form of the Rigid, because it was only in this way that he could imagine it possible to arrive at coming into existence, and change. Thus, however, we find in him the germs of that dualism, by the more complete carrying out of which the later Ionians, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and others, imagined that they could meet the Eleatic doctrine of the absolute. Empe- docles seems more immediately, and to a greater extent than the rest, to have further developed these germs; and he also, just like Parmenides, set down necessity or predestination as the ultimate ground of originated existence and change, and in like manner agreed with his Eleatic predecessor in this, that like is recognised by like; a presup- position in which, as it occurs in Parmenides, we can scarcely fail to recognise a reference to his con- viction that Thought and Existence coincide. But, little as he could deny that the really existent must in some way or other lie at the basis of change and the multiformity of phaenomena, he could not attempt to deduce the latter from the former so long as he maintained the idea of the existent as single, indivisible, and unchangeable ; and this idea, again, he could not but maintain, so long as he conceived it in a purely abstract manner as pure Position. But, however insufficient this idea is, it was necessary to develope it with sharp- ness and precision before it would be possible to make any successful attempts to find the absolutely existent in place of the originated, and therefore as something multiform. The first endeavours to define the idea of the existent are found in Xeno- phanes, and with them begins that course of deve- lopment peculiar to the Eleatics. But Parmenides was the first who succeeded in developing the idea of the existent purely by itself and out of itself, without carrying it back and making it rest upon a support, like the Deity in Xenophanes. It is only from inaccurate or indistinct statements that it has been concluded that Parmenides represented the absolutely existent as a deity (Ammonius, in Arist. de Interpret. f. 58; Arist. de Xenoph. Gorg. et Melisso, c. 4). So that he was the only philo- sopher who with distinctness and precision recog- nised that the existent, as such, is unconnected with all separation or juxtaposition, as well as wich all succession, all relation to space or time, all coming into existence, and all change; from which arose the problem of all subsequent metaphysics, to reconcile the mutually opposed ideas of Existence and Coming into Existence. After the scanty collection in H. Stephens' Poesis Philosophica, 1573, the fragments of Parmenides were collected and explained more fully by G. G. Fülleborn (Beiträge zur Gesch. der Philos. vi.; comp. C. Fr. Heinrich, Spicilegium Observationum, ib. viii.). A more complete collection was then made who is unaccustomed to the terminology of meta- physics, that in connection with this word Position he must dismiss all notion of locality, and look upon it as a noun whose meaning answers to that of the adjective positive.-TRANSLATOR.
 * It may be necessary to suggest to the reader