fect." It seemed to him hopeless that man could ever ascertain the
truth, since he has no other aid than truthless appearances.

[Sidenote: Some of his thoughts reappear in Newton.]

I cannot dismiss this imperfect account of Xenophanes, who was,
undoubtedly, one of the greatest of the Greek philosophers, without an
allusion to his denunciation of Homer, and other poets of his country,
because they had aided in degrading the idea of the Divinity; and also
to his faith in human nature, his rejection of the principle of
concealing truth from the multitude, and his self-devotion in diffusing
it among all at a risk of liberty and life. He wandered from country to
country, withstanding polytheism to its face, and imparting wisdom in
rhapsodies and hymns, the form, above all others, calculated most
quickly in those times to spread knowledge abroad. To those who are
disposed to depreciate his philosophical conclusions, it may be remarked
that in some of their most striking features they have been reproduced
in modern times, and I would offer to them a quotation from the General
Scholium at the end of the third book of the Principia of Newton: "The
Supreme God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity he exists
_always_ and _everywhere_. Whence, also, he is all similar, all eye, all
ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to
act, but in a manner not at all human, not at all corporeal; in a manner
utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colours, so have we
no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and
understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily
figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched, nor
ought to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing.
We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of anything
is we know not."

[Sidenote: Parmenides on reason and opinion.]

[Sidenote: Philosophy becoming Pantheism.]

To the Eleatic system thus originating with Xenophanes is to be
attributed the dialectic phase henceforward so prominently exhibited by
Greek philosophy. It abandoned, for the most part, the pursuits which
had occupied the Ionians--the investigation of visible nature, the
phenomena of material things, and the laws presiding over them;
conceiving such to be merely deceptive, and attaching itself to what
seemed to be the only true knowledge--an investigation of Being and of
God. By the