Thus have we, in Pythagoras, the dawn of an Idealist school; for mathematics are founded upon abstractions, and there is consequently an intimate connection between mathematics and idealism. The relations of space, and number, and determinate form, are, like the relations of cause and effect, of phenomena and substance, perceptible only in thought; and the mind which has been disciplined to abstract thought by the study of mathematics, is prepared and disposed for purely metaphysical studies. "The looking into mathematical learning is a kind of prelude to the contemplation of real being." [444] Therefore Plato inscribed over the door of his academy, "Let none but Geometricians enter here." To the mind thus disciplined in abstract thinking, the conceptions and ideas of reason have equal authority, sometimes even superior authority, to the perceptions of sense.
[Footnote 444: ][ (return) ] Alcinous, "Introduction to the Doctrines of Plato," ch. vii.
Now if the testimony of both reason and sense, as given in consciousness, is accepted as of equal authority, and each faculty is regarded as, within its own sphere, a source of real, valid knowledge, then a consistent and harmonious system of Natural Realism or Natural Dualism will be the result. If the testimony of sense is questioned and distrusted, and the mind is denied any immediate knowledge of the sensible world, and yet the existence of an external world is maintained by various hypotheses and reasonings, the consequence will be a species of Hypothetical Dualism or Cosmothetic Idealism. But if the affirmations of reason, as to the unity of the cosmos, are alone accepted, and the evidence of the senses, as to the variety and multiplicity of the world, is entirely disregarded, then we have a system of Absolute Idealism. Pythagoras regarded the harmony which pervades the diversified phenomena of the outer world as a manifestation of the unity of its eternal principle, or as the perpetual evolution of that unity, and the consequent tendency of his system was to depreciate the sensible. Following out this tendency, the Eleatics first neglected, and finally denied the variety of the universe--denied the real existence of the external world, and asserted an absolute metaphysical unity.
Xenophanes of Colophon, in Ionia (B.C. 616-516), was the founder of this celebrated school of Elea. He left Ionia, and arrived in Italy about the same time as Pythagoras, bringing with him to Italy his Ionian tendencies; he there amalgamated them with Pythagorean speculations.
Pythagoras had succeeded in fixing the attention of his countrymen on the harmony which pervades the material world, and had taught them to regard that harmony as the manifestation of the intelligence, and unity, and perfection of its eternal principle. Struck with this idea of harmony and of unity, Xenophanes, who was a poet, a rhapsodist, and therefore by native tendency, rather than by intellectual discipline, an Idealist, begins already to attach more importance to unity than multiplicity in his philosophy of nature. He regards the testimony of reason as of more authority than the testimony of sense; "and he holds badly enough the balance between the unity of the Pythagoreans and the variety which Heraclitus and the Ionians had alone considered." [445]
We are not, however, to suppose that Xenophanes denied entirely the existence of plurality. "The great Rhapsodist of Truth" was guided by the spontaneous intuitions of his mind (which seemed to partake of the character of an inspiration), to a clearer vision of the truth than were his successors of the same school by their discursive reasonings. "The One" of Xenophanes was clearly distinguished from the outward universe (τὰ πολλά) on the one hand, and from the "non-ens" on the other. It was his disciple, Parmenides, who imagined the logical necessity of identifying plurality with the "non-ens" and thus denying all immediate cognition of the phenomenal world. The compactness and logical coherence of the system of Parmenides seems to have had a peculiar charm for the Grecian mind, and to have diverted the eyes of antiquity from the views of the more earnest and devout Xenophanes, whose opinions were too often confounded with those of his successors of the Eleatic school. "Accordingly we find that Xenophanes has obtained credit for much that is, exclusively, the property of Parmenides and Zeno, in particular for denying plurality, and for identifying God with the universe." [446]
[Footnote 445: ][ (return) ] Cousin, "History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 440.
[Footnote 446: ][ (return) ] See note by editor, W.H. Thompson, M.A., on pages 331, 332 of Butler's "Lectures," vol. i. His authorities are "Fragments of Xenophanes" and the treatise "De Melisso, Xenophane, et Gorgia," by Aristotle.
In theology, Xenophanes was unquestionably a Theist. He had a profound and earnest conviction of the existence of a God, and he ridiculed with sarcastic force, the anthropomorphic absurdities of the popular religion. This one God, he taught, was self-existent, eternal, and infinite; supreme in power, in goodness, and intelligence. [447] These characteristics are ascribed to the Deity in the sublime words with which he opens his philosophic poem--
"There is one God, of all beings, divine and human, the greatest: