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all that is conformed to justice and reason." And a profound view of the double operation of the understanding. "What can decompound all particulars contained in a general principle, can arrive at truth and wisdom; can, in these notions, in a sort of mirror, behold God and the series of dependent beings."

Eudoxus said "Pleasure is the supreme good," but was a good man.

Third School; Eleatic.

The Eleatics asked Why things are? and sought the answer in the soul only, and wished to find the essence of things. Other philosophers demanded, "What is the generation of things?"

Xenophanes demanded, “Is there really any generation?" Ex nihilo nil fit, said Thales, and Xenophanes said therefore, "One thing can never come from another thing." Like must produce like. Then all is eternal. "Thought," said Xenophanes, "is the only real substance." He gave to the universe only a phenomenal value.

"God is one; there cannot be but one God. He is always like himself. He cannot be conceived under the human form; He is perfect. We can't apply to him either motion or limit. But he is not immoveable nor infinite," i. e.,

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motion and limit as they belong to matter have no relation to God's attributes.

Said Zenny, then, not wisely distributed things into four elements, etc., and entitled himself to the name of a Neptunian Geologist. "Xenophanes [said], "None perceives by the senses things as they are. We must not then begin from these opinions, got we know not how, but from what is stable, from what reason discovers." In the last part of his life he said, " he could not be so happy as to know anything certainly. Whichever side he looked all ran to Unitythere was but one substance."

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And Sextus Empiricus has preserved these words from his poem on nature which are as skeptical as one could desire. "No man knows anything certain touching the Gods, nor upon what I say upon the universal whole. None can. For if one should chance upon the truth be could not know that he had obtained it; but opinion spreads her veil over all things." But it was of the external world, and never of metaphysical truths, that he was skeptical, saith De Gérando. It was Idealism which he maintained.

Parmenides, poem on nature.

"Thought and the object of thought are but

one." These philosophers had confounded the abstract notion of being with its objective reality and thought they could conclude from one to the other. This great mistake has misled a number of metaphysicians down to Descartes himself, says De Gérando. He was the Idealist of antiquity.

There began from this Eleatic School the first philosophical dispute, this concerning the senses and the existence of matter. Zeno was charged with the defence of the Eleatics against the dogmatists, who relied of course on common sense and conscience.

Heraclitus said this good thing: that "a great variety of knowledge did not make wisdom, but it consisted in discovering the law which governs all things."

"All nature is governed by constant laws. The phenomena themselves, which appear discordant, concur in the harmony of the whole. It is an accord which results from discords. Meantime all change. Attraction, Repulsion.” “The same cannot be conceived except by the same." "Conception cannot be except by a similitude between the object and the subject"; therefore reject the testimony of the senses, and hear reason.

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Still, he said that the senses were open canals through which we inhale the divine reason.

Hence also from this admission to the divine he founded the authority of Common sense. "The judgments in which all men agree are a certain testimony of truth. That common light which enlightens all at once is only the divine reason spread through all thinking beings by an immediate effusion." "The understanding represents the march of the universe, such, as it has been preserved by memory; we arrive then, at truth, when we borrow from memory the faithful tablet of which the deposit is trusted to it. Wisdom is then accessible to all men." Virtue consists in governing the passions; wisdom in fidelity to what is true. The end of man is his own satisfaction. The body is to be used as an instrument only. Human laws receive their force from this divine law which rules all at its touch, which triumphs over all.

Hippocrates, the physician, [was] his disciple, an exact experimental philosopher. Hippocrates is called the result, the pride of the Eleatic School, Pythagoras of the Italian, Thales of the Ionian.

Always utility gives the medal, even though philosophers are the school-committee.

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And hither come the pensive train,
Of rich and poor, of young and old,
Of ardent youths untouched by pain,
Of thoughtful maids and manhood bold.

They seek a friend to speak the word
Already trembling on their tongue,

I This hymn was probably the first trial for that beginning

"We love the venerable house

Our fathers built to God,"

which was sung at the ordination of the Rev. Chandler Robbins, Mr. Emerson's successor in the Second Church. Both hymns are printed in the Centenary Edition of the Poems. In this hymn, in the 5th stanza the original wording humble Sorrow's door" is given, as better than that found in a later verse-book, "meek Contrition's door," the form in the volume referred to. E. W. E.

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