Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/407

 XENOPHANES.-THE ELEATIC SCHOOL. 389 men took for such, was the change in their own feelings and ideas. He thus recognized the permanent without the variable, 1 the one without the many. And his treatment of the received religious creed was in harmony with such physical or metaphys- ical hypothesis ; for while he held the whole of Nature to be God, without parts or change, he at the same time pronounced the popular gods to be entities of subjective fancy, imagined by men after their own model : if oxen or lions were to become re- ligious, he added, they would in like mariner provide for them- selves gods after their respective shapes and characters. 2 This hypothesis, which seemed to set aside altogether the study of the sensible world as a source of knowledge, was expounded briefly, and as it should seem, obscurely and rudely, by Xenophanes ; at least we may infer thus much from the slighting epithet applied to him by Aristotle. 3 But his successors, Parmenides and Zen^ in the succeeding century, expanded it considerably, supported it with extraordinary acuteness of dialectics, and even superadded a second part, in which the phenomena of sense though con- sidered only as appearances, not partaking in the reality of the one Ens were yet explained by a new physical hypothesis ; so that they will be found to exercise great influence over the spec- ulations both of Plato and Aristotle. We discover in Xenoph- anes, moreover, a vein of skepticism, and a mournful despair &a 1 Aristot. Metaphys. i, 5, p. 98G, Bek. Zsvcxpuvrj; <5e rrpurof TOVTUV iviaae, OV-&EV 6iEaa7jviaev, ovde TTJ<; vaEU TOVTUV (TOV Kara TOV %6yov evbf Kai TOV KOTO. TIJV oTiTjv) ovdeTcpaf tome $,< eiv, uM elf TOV oAov ovpavbv tarofS'heijiaf TO EV tivai tyijai TOV -&EOV. Plutarch, ap. Eusebium Praeparat. Evangel, i, 8. Eevo^dv^f de 6 Ko/lo- Quvios Idiav fisv Tiva 66bv TreTropeu/zevof Kal napTj^Aa^vlav Trdvrcj- roz)f irpofi- pijfivov, OVTE yivEaiv ovTE dopuv UTTohetTTti, uTiV elvai Atyei TO -KU.V del Compare Timon ap. Sext. Empiric. Pyrrh. Hypotyp. i, 224, 225 6s 6 ^-EVO^UVTJ^ Trapa, raf TUV ti.7d.uv avSpuTtuv Trpo^tpsii;, v tivai TO nuv, KOI TOV -&EOV avpvij TOI Traffiv elvai 6e aQaipostdq Kal Tjoiv (o Eevo<pavr] dvai, el Ti EOTIV, yeviadat, etc. One may reasonably doubt whether all tht, arguments ascribed to Xerv )phanes, in the short but obscure treatise last quoted, really belong to him Chmens Alexand. Stromat. v, p. 601, vii, p. 711.
 * Aiistot. Metaphysic. i, 5, p. 986, Bek. f