ELEATIC SCHOOL, a sect of Grecian philosophers during the century preceding the Peloponnesian war, 530-430 B.C.:, deriving its name from Elea (or Velea), a city on the western coast of southern Italy, founded 540 B.C., by the Phocwans. The general characteristic of the school was the maintenance of a distinction between the apparent and the intellectual universe, between transient phenomena and everlasting truth.. It includes the pantheistic idealism of Xenophanes and Parmenides, and the skeptical materialism of Leucippus and Epicurus. Consequently there are two divisions of the school: I. The Eleatic proper; II. The Epicurean. The former asserted the divine unity to be the origin and essence of all things; the latter confined its attention to the earthly and material side of the problem, not denying the immaterial and spiritual, but renounc ing it as unattainable: the former disregarded the sensible elements, the latter the divine. But neither denied what it renounced. This article is concerned only with the former, or the Eleatic school proper. The shadowy character of its philosophy makes it difficult of determination, and only a few fragments of its writings remain. Its principal expounders must be taken as representatives of its different phases: 1. XE-NO PHANES, 618-522 n.c., of Colophon, in Asia Minor, emigrated to Sicily and perhaps to Elea. His philosophical views were given in his poem " On Nature," fragments of which remain, but not sufficient to afford a clear exhibition of the whole. He seems to have held an idealism obscure, imperfect, and conflicting. He adopted the conception of Pythagoras, that there must be an ultimate term of being which is not the visible universe but the divine intelligence. He denied that anything could have a beginning, or could become what it had not always been. But if nothing begins or becomes, then all things are an eternal unit. The unity of the Godhead is asserted against polytheism, and the individuality of the Deity against the dualism of conflicting forces. The sub stantial reality of the visible world is denied; God and the universe are made one. The divine essence is unchanging, eternal, infinite. The actuality of sensible facts is admit ted; the reality of them is denied. They are shadows of the eternal. All things are incomprehensible, certain knowledge is impossible; the eternal and the divine are unin• telligible and truth unattainable. Xenophanes • anticipated geology, contributing to science the beginning of the modern investigations. He held to the periodical destruc tion of the world by water, as Parmenides, who followed him, did to its destruction by fire. With all the contradictions and errors of his system he is to be honored as among the first to introduce into Greek philosophy elevated conceptions of the grandeur, glory, and sovereignty of a divine intelligence. 2. PARMENIDES, born, probably at Elea, about 536 B.C., was a disciple of Xenophanes, to whose views he gave a more logical develop
ment. Fragments only of his own statements remain, which have to be supplemented chiefly from the attacks of his adversaries. Aristotle commends him for his clearness of thought, and asserts concerning him that, looking up to the whole heavens, he declared the one only being to be God." Yet, in improving the forms of his system he perhaps injured its substance; for his starting-point seems to have been not the infinite intelligence, but the abstract conception of being. He shows clearly the conflict between the judgments of the senses and the conclusions of the reason. The essence of his scheme is the contradiction of entity and nonentity. What is cannot be non-existent; but everything that is exists. And, as nothing can proceed from non-existence to existence, all existence is eternal and unchangeable All changes and motions are appearances only. Being is indestructible. In these speculations one cause of confusion and extravagance was the use of ambiguous and vague language. This defect showed the necessity of precise terms and of valid arguments. It thus prepared the way for logic. 3. ZENO, unquestionably a native, of Elea, was the pupil, friend, and defender of Parmenides. IIis method of setting forth his views led to great changes in philosophy, among which were the questions of Socrates, the dialectics of Plato, and the organon of Aristotle. He is the inventor of regular logical methods, though Aristotle claims for himself that while his predecessors had provided only the forms of reasoning, he had created the art. But while Zeno gave greater clearness to the views of Parmenides by his logical precision, he also made their errors and dangers more manifest. He arrayed. reason against experience, and led the way for the sophists. 4. MELissus, of Samos, though not directly connected with the Eleatic philosophers, is numbered among them, because of the similarity of many of his views. He confined his attention chiefly to the negative aspects of the system, denied the reality of visible things, and thought it inconsistent to ascribe time, change, or limitation to the solitary existence. He seems to have thought that knowledge of God is impossible; and in his conception of him, as Aristotle said, inclined towards materialism. The Eleatic school proper was thus verging towards the second or Epicurean branch, Imperfect and erroneous as it was, it nevertheless awak ened men in that early age to consider the vanity of merely temporal things; exposed the fallacies of polytheism; affirmed the existence of a supreme Intelligence, omnipo tent, omnipresent, infinite, and eternal; and called human reason to hold communion with the sovereign power in which all creatures "live and move and have their being."