Chapter 14

CHAPTER IV

THE ELEATICS

The Eleatics are so called because the seat of their school
was at Elea, a town in South Italy, and Parmenides and
Zeno, the two chief representatives of the school, were both
citizens of Elea. So far we have been dealing with crude
systems of thought in which only the germs of philosophic
thinking can be dimly discerned. Now, however, with the
Eleatics we step out definitely for the first time upon the
platform of philosophy. Eleaticism is the first true phi-
losophy. In it there emerges the first factor of the truth,
however poor, meagre, and inadequate. For philosophy is
not, as many persons suppose, simply a collection of freak
speculations, which we may study in historical order, but at
the end of which, God alone knows which we ought to be-
lieve. On the contrary, the history of philosophy presents a
definite line of evolution. The truth unfolds itself gradually
in time.