Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/142

Rh Xenophanes, was God. His tenets on this point may be illustrated as follows: Suppose that the sun is shining on the sea, and that his light is broken by the waves into a multitude of lesser lights, of all colours and of all forms; and suppose that the sea is conscious, conscious of this multitude of lights, this diversity of shifting colours, this plurality of dancing forms; would this consciousness contain or represent the truth, the real? Certainly it would not. The objectively true, the real in itself, is in this case the sun in the heavens, the one permanent, the persistent in colour and in form. Its diversified appearance in the sea, the dispersion of its light in a myriad colours, and in a myriad forms, is nothing, and represents nothing which substantially exists, but is only something which exists phenomenally, that is, unsubstantially and unreally, in the sea. Take away the sea, and these various reflections no longer are. This dancing play of lights is a truth only for the sea, not a truth for the land; there the light falls differently; therefore it is not a universal truth, and nothing in strict philosophy being admitted as true which is not universally true, it is not, strictly speaking, a truth at all. Such is the way in which we may suppose Xenophanes to illustrate his position in regard to sensible existence. This form of existence has no existence in and for itself, no existence irrespective of the mind and the senses of man, no existence at all resembling that which must be conceded to the one, the permanent and the real; but an