Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/137

82 the universal and the particular, in Greek, the  and the . This antithesis is merely a variety of expression for the antithesis between reason and sense. Or, if we may distinguish between the two forms of the opposition, we may say that the one expression, the permanent and the changeable, or the  and the , denotes the antithesis in its objective form; the other expression, reason and sense, denotes the antithesis in its subjective form.

6. To adjust rightly the terms of this fundamental antithesis, to determine the nature of the relation which subsists between its two extremes, is the main problem of the Eleatic philosophy. We have to consider, then, how Xenophanes its founder went to work. Xenophanes seems to have dwelt more steadily than any other philosopher, whether Ionic or Pythagorean, on the conception of the one or of unity as the essence of all things. His conception of unity as the principle of the universe and as a primary necessity of thought seems to have been more determinate than that of any of his predecessors or contemporaries. He held that the one was everywhere; and Aristotle adds, that Xenophanes, looking forth over the whole heavens, that is, the universe, declared that the one was God. The first position of Xenophanes, accordingly, is that there is a unity in all things, and that this unity is God. It is in and through God that the universe is a universe, that is, has unity.