86. In the First Part of his poem, we find Parmenides chiefly interested to prove that it is; but it is not quite obvious at first sight what it is precisely that is. He says simply, What is, is. To us this does not seem very clear, and that for two reasons. In the first place, we should never think of doubting it, and we cannot, therefore, understand why it should be asserted with such iteration and vigour. In the second place, we are accustomed to all sorts of distinctions between different kinds and degrees of reality, and we do not see which of these is meant. Such distinctions, however, were quite unknown in those days. “That which is,” with Parmenides, is primarily what, in popular language, we call matter or body; only it is not matter as distinguished from anything else. It is certainly regarded as spatially extended; for it is quite seriously spoken of as a sphere (fr. [8], 40). Moreover, Aristotle tells us that Parmenides believed in none but a sensible reality, which does not necessarily mean with him a reality that is actually perceived by the senses, but includes any which might be so perceived if the senses were more perfect than they are.[[449]] Parmenides does not say a word about “Being” anywhere.[[450]] The assertion that it is amounts just to this, that the universe is a plenum; and that there is no such thing as empty space, either inside or outside the world. From this it follows that there can be no such thing as motion. Instead of endowing the One with an impulse to change, as Herakleitos had done, and thus making it capable of explaining the world, Parmenides dismissed change as an illusion. He showed once for all that if you take the One seriously you are bound to deny everything else. All previous solutions of the question, therefore, had missed the point. Anaximenes, who thought to save the unity of the primary substance by his theory of rarefaction and condensation, did not observe that, by assuming there was less of what is in one place than another, he virtually affirmed the existence of what is not (fr. [8], 42). The Pythagorean explanation implied that empty space or air existed outside the world, and that it entered into it to separate the units ([§ 53]). It, too, assumes the existence of what is not. Nor is the theory of Herakleitos any more satisfactory; for it is based upon the contradiction that fire both is and is not (fr. [6]).
The allusion to Herakleitos in the verses last referred to has been doubted, though upon insufficient grounds. Zeller points out quite rightly that Herakleitos never says Being and not-Being are the same (the common translation of fr. [6], [8]); and, were there nothing more than this, the reference might well seem doubtful. The statement, however, that, according to the view in question, “all things travel in opposite directions,” can hardly be understood of anything but the “upward and downward path” of Herakleitos ([§ 71]). And, as we have seen, Parmenides does not attribute the view that Being and not-Being are the same to the philosopher whom he is attacking; he only says that it is and is not, the same and not the same.[[451]] That is the natural meaning of the words; and it furnishes a very accurate description of the theory of Herakleitos.
The method of Parmenides.
87. The great novelty in the poem of Parmenides is the method of argument. He first asks what is the common presupposition of all the views with which he has to deal, and he finds that this is the existence of what is not. The next question is whether this can be thought, and the answer is that it cannot. If you think at all, you must think of something. Therefore there is no nothing. Philosophy had not yet learned to make the admission that a thing might be unthinkable and nevertheless exist. Only that can be which can be thought (fr. [5]); for thought exists for the sake of what is (fr. [8], 34).
This method Parmenides carries out with the utmost rigour. He will not have us pretend that we think what we must admit to be unthinkable. It is true that if we resolve to allow nothing but what we can understand, we come into direct conflict with the evidence of our senses, which present us with a world of change and decay. So much the worse for the senses, says Parmenides. To many this will doubtless seem a mistake on his part, but let us see what history has to say on the point. The theory of Parmenides is the inevitable outcome of a corporeal monism, and his bold declaration of it ought to have destroyed that theory for ever. If he had lacked courage to work out the prevailing views of his time to their logical conclusion, and to accept that conclusion, however paradoxical it might seem to be, men might have gone on in the endless circle of opposition, rarefaction and condensation, one and many, for ever. It was the thorough-going dialectic of Parmenides that made progress possible. Philosophy must now cease to be monistic or cease to be corporealist. It could not cease to be corporealist; for the incorporeal was still unknown. It therefore ceased to be monistic, and arrived at the atomic theory, which, so far as we know, is the last word of the view that the world is matter in motion. Having worked out its problems on those conditions, philosophy next attacked them on the other side. It ceased to be corporealist, and found it possible to be monistic once more, at least for a time. This progress would have been impossible but for that faith in reason which gave Parmenides the courage to reject as untrue what was to him unthinkable, however strange the result might be.
The results.
88. He goes on to develop all the consequences of the admission that it is. It must be uncreated and indestructible. It cannot have arisen out of nothing; for there is no such thing as nothing. Nor can it have arisen from something; for there is no room for anything but itself. What is cannot have beside it any empty space in which something else might arise; for empty space is nothing, nothing cannot be thought, and therefore cannot exist. What is, never came into being, nor is anything going to come into being in the future. “Is it or is it not?” If it is, then it is now, all at once.
That Parmenides was really denying the existence of empty space was quite well known to Plato. He says that Parmenides held “all things were one, and that the one remains at rest in itself, having no place in which to move.”[[452]] Aristotle is no less clear. In the de Caelo he lays it down that Parmenides was driven to take up the position that the One was immovable just because no one had yet imagined that there was any reality other than sensible reality.[[453]]
That which is, is; and it cannot be more or less. There is, therefore, as much of it in one place as in another, and the world is a continuous, indivisible plenum. From this it follows at once that it must be immovable. If it moved, it must move into an empty space, and there is no empty space. It is hemmed in by what is, by the real, on every side. For the same reason, it must be finite, and can have nothing beyond it. It is complete in itself, and has no need to stretch out indefinitely into an empty space that does not exist. Hence, too, it is spherical. It is equally real in every direction, and the sphere is the only form which meets this condition. Any other would be in one direction more than in another. And this sphere cannot even move round its own axis; for there is nothing outside of it with reference to which it could be said to move.
Parmenides the father of materialism.