Passing now from Parmenides, we come to the third of the great Elean triumvirate, for Melissus possesses neither the originality nor the suitability for our purpose that would entitle him to a separate notice. Zenon of Elea, as he is generally denominated to distinguish him from his namesake the Stoic, was the son of Teleutagoras, of whom nothing further is known. He was the favourite disciple, ⚫ and probably the adopted son, of Parmenides, whom he succeeded as the principal magistrate of his native city and the chief of its philosophic school. The precise year of Zenon's birth is uncertain: we have already noticed the tradition which represents him accompanying Parmenides to Athens about the year 460 B.C.' He was, therefore, probably born about 500 B.C. The main events of his life, so far as they can be determined from the doubtful and contradictory traditions of later writers, are narrated in histories of philosophy and classical dictionaries. Among these traditions there are, perhaps, two especially deserving of notice as being connected with our subject. (1) That he met his death in a brave, but according to some unavailing, attempt to preserve the civic and philosophic liberties of Elea from the oppression of some foreign tyrant—a tradition to which the well-known dangers of prosperous Greek colonies from external interference, as well as the intense love of freedom which was the common characteristic of the Eleatic teachers, gives some slight measure of à priori probability. (2) Zenon is regarded by the best authorities on Greek philosophy as the founder of dialectic,2 and is also said to have been the first who wrote in dialogues. On both accounts he is a connecting link between the earliest phases of Hellenic thought and that aspect of it which will by-and-by come before us as the teaching of the Sophists and Sokrates.3 But, in treating of Zenon's views, we labour under some disadvantages as compared with his predecessors. In the cases of Xenophanes and Parmenides we were able to appeal to the writings of the men themselves; but in Zenon's case all that we possess consists of but a few fragments for which we are indebted to the unwearied activity of Simplikios. He is especially recorded as the Comp. also Cicero, Acad. ii. xxiii. 74; Plutarch, Adv. Colotem, § 78, Reiske, v. x. p. 612; Galen, Hist. Phil. c. iii. (Kuhn, T. ix. 234); Seneca, Ep. 88. Clinton's Fasti give the date as 464 B.C. 2 evρetǹv diaλektikĥs.' Diog. Laert. ix. 25; so also Aristotle. first Greek philosopher who wrote in prose. I cannot help thinking that this fact has something to do with the disappearance of his writings. In an age when writing was almost unknown, and when both history and philosophy glided over the artificial roadway of hexameters like a modern railway carriage on steel rails, poetry was an indispensable vehicle for all oral teachings which were intended to achieve some degree of permanence. Circumstances seem to have changed after Zenon's time; at least, we possess a considerable number of fragments in prose pertaining to his successor Melissos, who, perhaps, lived at the transition period, when the memory, as the sole depository of human teaching, gave way to papyrus rolls. But the fragments of Zenon, though few, bear upon them undoubted marks of genuineness, for they harmonise thoroughly with the general characteristics of Eleatic thought as we find it in the fuller records of his fellow-teachers, as well as with the traditional estimate of himself which we have in such unquestionable authorities as Plato and Aristotle. It will, perhaps, serve to clear the ground for my exposition of Zenon's arguments, if we glance briefly at the progress which the Eleatic thinkers have already made. Our investigation of Parmenides left us with the abstraction Ens the highest point to which Eleatic speculation has as yet arrived. But before proceeding further, it will be as well to note the process by which that metaphysical entity has been attained; and this is the more necessary because the arguments of Zenon come before us with more detail than those of his predecessors, as well as with a somewhat different bearing upon our subject. For if Xenophanes represents Skepticism in its relation to ordinary convictions, and Parmenides in its relation to ideal notions, Zenon, as explicitly setting forth the dialectic by which the ideal is attained, may be said to represent it in relation to language and logic. Indeed, language being the instrument and expression of thought, it is clear that Skepticism as a form of thought is closely connected with its history. The natural and orderly sequence of Greek thought, from its commencement with the Ionic philosophy, is manifested, as I have already remarked, by the fact of its similarity to the normal growth of the human intellect. In both cases the external world is necessarily regarded as a confused chaotic mass of diverse and multitudinous objects, intruding themselves on the human consciousness by mere chance or the accident of surrounding circumstances, while the principles of order and connexion are but dimly discerned. This is the state so admirably described by Prometheus before his gift of reason to mankind, when men, 'like infants, or the confused images of dreams, were wont to huddle up all things promiscuously.' The first effort of humanity-and the effort is distinctly marked in Greek philosophy by the physical theories of the Ionic philosophers-was to ascertain the connexion or similarity among these numerous and different objects. This effort is in reality both contemporaneous and identical with the birth of reason, which fact, as you are aware, is beautifully expressed in the Greek language by the twofold meaning of logos, as signifying both 'reason' and 'discourse.' In other words, the human mind makes its first essays to knowledge by classification and verbal arrangement a method which, even in its most rudimentary stages, involves and necessitates some not inconsiderable amount of logical division and abstraction. Language was therefore-if the paradox be allowed-moulded by reason, and may be said to have philosophy interwoven into the very texture of its grammar and its syntax. The processes employed in the origination and definition of ordinary parts of speech— as common nouns, adjectives, verbal participles-could only have proceeded on a logical basis, and in conformity with logical laws. Hence, the man who first employed a common name, or marked by a single term the presence of a similar attribute in two or more different cases, was in reality the first metaphysician; while the man who, by dint of further linguistic and metaphysical progress, could abstract from any simple phenomenon its most prominent characteristic--as e.g. motion, as an idea or notion, from any moving body, could separate such characteristic from its merely relative or temporary surroundings, could elevate it into an unrelated unconditional entity, could, i.e. conceive and reason on absolute motionwas in reality a philosophical idealist of a high order. We perceive, then, that this distinction of abstract and concrete, idea and sensation, is found in the very rudiments of human On the intimate relation of reason and speech, compare Prof. Max Müller's admirable remarks, Science of Language, ii. p. 63. language, and imparts to it a distinctly philosophical character. It matters not that the real originating influence was the imperative need of mankind, nor that the philosophy involved was unconscious, nor that language is in its primary construction what it is generally termed a natural product. The fact remains that a process akin to philosophical abstraction of the severest kind is involved in its necessary and only conceivable development. This will enable us, I think, to understand the position of the Eleatic philosophers. They represent Hellenic thought in its retrospective attitude. The task they set themselves was the unravelling the unconscious linguistic syntheses of preceding generations. Differing from their brethren of the Ionic school, they sought after truth not in large generalisations from natural phenomena, but by analysing the conceptions of the human mind as revealed by language. The presumption on which they based their method was either that language was itself a divine gift, and the source of all truth; or that its origin and development took place by means of precisely the same processes which the human faculties now employ in order to ascertain the truth. The conceptions and verbal abstractions of the past possessed the same interest for them as the fossilised skeleton of a primeval type would have for an anatomist who was investigating the most recent development of the species. The Greek verb 'to be,' for instance, with its various moods and tenses, is of course centuries older than Parmenides; yet, when he wanted an abstraction which would include the whole sum of existence, he could find nothing better than the present participle Ens.' Similarly, the unit must have existed. from the earliest period of human thought; indeed, it is difficult to imagine a stage of human development so primitive as to be devoid of such a term; yet, when Xenophanes required a word which would serve to typify and express the whole indivisible sum total of existence, he could find nothing better than the One.' 6 6 No doubt to a modern English thinker, trained in the nominalistic and empirical philosophy of the present and last centuries, this stress upon pure metaphysical abstractions will appear grotesque and absurd. We are, I think, nationally impatient of a process which transfers the reality from the res, or sensible object, to the idea or subjective impression of it; and by means of which attributes, instead of being conceived as abstractions, become independent entities, and are thought and spoken of as having an existence prior to any special manifestation in a given sensation. We are almost unable to conceive a cultivated people gravely arguing on the theory that such attributes as whiteness, greatness, likeness, otherness, were real entities by virtue of possessing which, things became white, great, like, or other. Yet this was precisely the state of Greek thought at the period on which we are now entering. Nor was this all. These shadowy abstractions were not content with separating, like discontented offshoots or colonists, from the mother-State, but they further constitute themselves into an independent self-existing autonomy of their own; in other words, they assume the title and dignity of the absolute, together with the unlimited powers and jurisdiction implied in the term. Having thus achieved independence, their conduct is like that of other upstart races and individuals-they are eager to disown their humble origin. So far from owing their being to sensation or any other kind of physical parentage, they have, and have always had, an independent existence from all eternity. They, in fact, are the true mother-State-underived, continuous, indivisible. Physical relations, human experience, allied as they are to the actual phenomenal world, are indebted to the absolute for whatsoever they possess more permanent than their own fluctuating, short-lived existence. You will not, I think, need to be reminded that there is nothing peculiar or eccentric in this evolution of abstract from concrete; nothing that you will not find in the speculations and language of every cultivated people. The process is, indeed, not only natural, but absolutely indispensable for even the smallest advance either in thought or language. Hence, these old Eleatics, with their refined abstractions and subtle dialectics, only traversed a road by which metaphysicians in all ages and countries have been compelled to travel; and, if they built castles in the air, we may remember that there are few profound thinkers, past or present, but have been compelled, occasionally, to find lodgings in them. Probably the main difference between an English thinker of our own time and a philosopher of the school of Zenon would consist not in any divergency as to the necessity of abstract thought, or its utility for linguistic and other purposes, but simply in their opinion of its ultimate reality. The English thinker would remember, in the most ætherial transformation through which he might watch a given abstraction, its undoubtedly physical origin; the Eleatic, whether consciously or unconsciously, would lose sight of that fact. Like two persons engaged in witnessing the performance of a conjuror, one would believe the tricks to be real, the other would know them to be illusory and deceptive. |