be one. There can only be one best. Therefore, God is to
be conceived as one. And this God is comparable to mor-
tals neither in bodily form nor understanding. He is “all
eye, all ear, all thought.” It is he “who, without trouble, by
his thought governs all things.” But it would be a mistake
to suppose that Xenophanes thought of this God as a being
external to the world, governing it from the outside, as a
general governs his soldiers. On the contrary, Xenophanes
identified God with the world. The world is God, a sentient
being, though without organs of sense. Looking out into the
wide heavens, he said, “The One is God.” [Footnote 4] The
thought of Xenophanes is therefore more properly described
as pantheism than as monotheism. God is unchangeable,
immutable, undivided, unmoved, passionless, undisturbed.
Xenophanes appears, thus, rather as a religious reformer
than as a philosopher. Nevertheless, inasmuch as he was
the first to enunciate the proposition “All is one,” he takes
his place in philosophy. It was upon this thought that Par-
menides built the foundations of the Eleatic philosophy.
[Footnote 4: Aristotle,Metaphysics, Book I. chapter v.]
Certain other opinions of Xenophanes have been preserved.
He observed fossils, and found shells inland, and the forms
of fish and sea-weed embedded in the rocks in the quar-
ries of Syracuse and elsewhere. From these he concluded
that the earth had risen out of the sea and would again
partially sink into it. Then the human race would be de-
stroyed. But the earth would again rise from the sea and
the human race would again [43] be renewed. He believed
that the sun and stars were burning masses of vapour. The
sun, he thought, does not revolve round the earth. It goes
on in a straight line, and disappears in the remote dis-
tance in the evening. It is not the same sun which rises the
next morning. Every day a new sun is formed out of the
vapours of the sea. This idea is connected with his gen-
eral attitude towards the popular religion. His motive was
to show that the sun and stars are not divine beings, but
like other beings, ephemeral. Xenophanes also ridiculed the
Pythagoreans, especially their doctrine of re-incarnation.