ture of reality, which will need to be taken account of in every future attempt at philosophizing.

Is there, then, no unity at all to the world? If so, how can we account for even the appearance of permanence? Heracleitus does not deny that there is a unity, and here also he anticipates the conception of modern science. For the unity is not one of unchanging substance, but of law. The process of change does not take place in an unregulated and lawless way, but it is rhythmical change, kept within the bounds of definite proportions, and ruled by an immutable law of necessity. As the heavenly fires are transmuted successively into vapor, water, earth, so a corresponding series of transformations ascends upward to fire again, only to start once more on the same ceaseless round. The universe is, therefore, a closed circuit, in which an ascending and a descending current counterbalance each other. It is this opposition of motions, and the measured balance between them, which produces the delusive appearance of rest and fixity.

Nothing in the world, then, is self-contained and selfcomplete. Everything is forever passing into something else, and has an existence only in relation to this process. "Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, earth that of water." We have, accordingly, in Heracleitus, the first philosophic statement of the famous doctrine of relativity, which, in one form or another, has played an important part in subsequent thought down to the present day. Heracleitus' conception of the two contrary currents of change, enables him to formulate his doctrine more precisely; not only is everything passing into something else, but it is forever passing into its opposite. All reality is born of the clash of opposing principles, the tension of conflicting forces. "Homer was wrong in saying: Would that strife might perish from among gods and men! He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away."

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Strife is "father of all, and king of all." This relativity, and union of contrasts, Heracleitus is never weary of tracing out. Organic life is produced by the male and the female; musical harmony by sharp and flat notes. "The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive." "God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, hunger and satiety; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with different incenses, is named according to the savor of each."

The same thought enabled Heracleitus to round out his philosophy by a suggestive treatment of the ethical life. Just as the light and the heavy, the warm and the cold, plenty and want, are relative terms, so likewise are good and evil. "Physicians who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick, then complain that they do not get any adequate recompense for it." "Men would not have known the name of justice if there were no injustice." "It is not good for men to get all they wish. It is disease that makes health pleasant and good; hunger, plenty; and weariness, rest." Good implies evil to be overcome, conquests to be made, a life of unremitting endeavor. It is no gift that we may sit and wait for with folded hands, but an achievement. So also the bad has no existence, except in relation to a possible better. Were either of the related terms wanting, the moral life would cease to exist.

One other problem begins faintly to emerge in Heracleitus-the problem of knowledge. Since the vulgar notion is that the things which the senses reveal to us are more or less solid and permanent, a distinction has to be drawn between sense knowledge, and the higher thought knowledge which is open to the philosopher. True knowledge is no easy transcript of popular opinion, but the scanty gleanings of hard intellectual labor: "Those who seek for gold dig up much earth, and find a little." Sense experience is fallacious, and the source of all sorts of illusion; it is only by thought that we can rise above the realm of

changing appearance, and attain to true reality - the governing Law. But it is not at all apparent how we are to account for this difference of value. Knowledge is due to the response between the inner Fire which constitutes our rational nature, or soul, and the outer Fire which is the reality of the world. But since the two can only commingle by the pathway of the senses, there is no means as yet of drawing a psychological distinction between sensation and thought. The objectivity and necessity of knowledge is given, however, a certain explanation. Man can know objective truth, because in essence he is identical with that truth; he is no mere separate individual, but a part of the all-comprehending Fire which constitutes the universe.

The answer which Heracleitus gave to the problem of philosophy, is one which is likely to grow in force the more one thinks of it. But can we ever be really satisfied with it? Can the fact of law furnish all the unity and permanence that we require? Will not the conception of law, in connection with the material world, only raise new questions? What is a law, over and above the multitude of particular facts and changes, each distinct and unrelated? If it is only an ideal fact in our minds, it has no relation to the material world without; and if it is a material fact, does it not furnish simply another element to be brought into unity, and not a unifying bond at all? At any rate, it hardly satisfies our first feeling of what the situation demands. We instinctively require a solid and permanent background for this universal flow of events, an unchanging subject of change, which shall bind the multiplicity into a real whole, and give us a definite something to grasp and rest upon, that shall not be forever slipping from us. This factor of permanence, of static Being, which Heracleitus denied, is brought into an equally one-sided prominence by an opposing group of thinkers, whose connection with the city of Elea, in Southern Italy, has given them the name of the Eleatic School.

§ 5. The Eleatic School. Xenophanes. Parmenides. Zeno

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I. The reputed founder of the Eleatic school was Xenophanes (570-480 B.C.), a native of Colophon, whence he fled in consequence of the Persian conquest of Ionia. maintained himself as a wandering poet, or rhapsodist, and finally settled down in Elea, where he died at an advanced age. In spite of his place among philosophers, Xenophanes seems to have been not so much a metaphysician, as a poet turned satirist and reformer. As a satirist, he sets himself against the somewhat florid culture of Magna Græcia, with its luxuries, its purple garments, its fops "proud of their comely locks, anointed with unguents of rich perfume," in favor of an ideal of plain living and high thinking, of Greek simplicity, moderation, and artistic good taste. He ridicules the exaggerated athleticism of the day, the preference of muscle to brains, "strength to wisdom," the immaturity and affectation of the intellectual interests. "There is nothing praiseworthy in discussing battles of Titans, or of giants and centaurs, fictions of former ages, nor in plotting violent revolutions." In opposition to this, he strives to exalt the true intellectual life; and the very modern tone which pervades his conception of what such a life is, shows clearly how far Greek thought has already advanced. It is modern in its sceptical caution, and its feeling for the necessity of sober truth-seeking and investigation. "There never was nor will be a man who has clear certainty as to what I say about the gods and about all things; for even if he does chance to say what is right, yet he himself does not know that it is so. But all are free to guess." "The gods have not shown forth all things to men from the beginning, but by seeking they gradually find out what is better." It is especially modern in its thorough naturalism. And here Xenophanes comes in contact with religious beliefs, in connection with which his influence was to tell most directly on the future.

At the start, philosophy had grown directly out of reli

gious speculations. It was not the independent work of single men, but rather of schools, or guilds, which had, and continued to have for some time, a religious or semi-religious organization. There will be occasion to notice again the close connection of religion and philosophy in the Pythagorean school. But when the change to the scientific attitude was once effected, the tendency was necessarily away from the religious dogmas. The whole philosophical movement was, from the religious standpoint, a sceptical one. Within the schools, belief in the old polytheistic mythology was quietly dropped, as suited only for the masses; and in its place were set up more or less purely naturalistic explanations. Xenophanes was not content to leave this as a mere esoteric doctrine. His impatience of the intellectual futility, and low moral grade, of many of the old beliefs and stories about the gods, leads him to a fierce polemic against the popular theology. "Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among men, thefts and adulteries and deceptions of one another." "But mortals think that the gods are born as they are, and have perception like theirs, and voice and form." "Yes, and if oxen and lions had hands, and could paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen. Each would represent them with bodies according to the form of each." "So the Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians give theirs red hair and blue eyes." Let us rid ourselves, then, of the paltry notion of a multitude of gods made after the likeness of man, and subject to the same ignoble passions: "There is One God, the greatest among gods and men, comparable to mortals neither in form nor thought." This is evidently not a statement of monotheism, in the ordinary religious sense, for the One God of Xenophanes is expressly said to exclude all anthropomorphic elements. Besides, he is declared to be 'greatest among gods,' so that other gods seem also to have a