ed fragments, that "the world is
immovable, limited, and spheroidal in form."(8)

Nevertheless, some modern interpreters have found an opposite meaning in
Parmenides. Thus Ritter interprets him as supposing "that the earth
is in the centre spherical, and maintained in rotary motion by its
equiponderance; around it lie certain rings, the highest composed of the
rare element fire, the next lower a compound of light and darkness, and
lowest of all one wholly of night, which probably indicated to his
mind the surface of the earth, the centre of which again he probably
considered to be fire."(9) But this, like too many interpretations of
ancient thought, appears to read into the fragments ideas which the
words themselves do not warrant. There seems no reason to doubt,
however, that Parmenides actually held the doctrine of the earth's
sphericity. Another glimpse of his astronomical doctrines is furnished
us by a fragment which tells us that he conceived the morning and the
evening stars to be the same, a doctrine which, as we have seen, was
ascribed also to Pythagoras. Indeed, we may repeat that it is quite
impossible to distinguish between the astronomical doctrines of these
two philosophers.

The poem of Parmenides in which the cosmogonic speculations occur
treats also of the origin of man. The author seems to have had a clear
conception that intelligence depends on bodily organism, and that the
more elaborately developed the organism the higher the intelligence.
But in the interpretation of this thought we are hampered by the
characteristic vagueness of expression, which may best be evidenced by
putting before the reader two English translations of the same stanza.
Here is Ritter's rendering, as made into English by his translator,
Morrison:

"For exactly as each has the state of his limbs many-jointed,
So invariably stands it with men in their mind and their reason; For the
system of limbs is that which thinketh in mankind Alike in all and in
each: for thought is the fulness."(10)

The same stanza is given thus by George Henry Lewes:

"Such as to each man is the nature of his many-jointed limbs,
Such also is the intelligence of each man; for it is The nature of limbs
(organization) which thinketh in men, Both in one and in all; for the
highest degree of organization gives the highest degree of thought."(11)

Here it will be observed that there is virtual agreement between the
translators except as to the last c