Plato in interpreting him idealistically reading his own
thought into Parmenides? Are not we, if we interpret him
as an idealist, reading into him later ideas? In one sense this
is perfectly true. It is clear from what Parmenides himself
said that he regarded the ultimate reality of things as ma-
terial. It would be a complete mistake to attribute to him
a fully developed and consistent system of idealism. If you
had told Parmenides that he was an idealist, he would not
have understood you. The distinction between materialism
and idealism was not then developed. If you had told him,
moreover, that Being is a concept, he would not have un-
derstood {51} you, because the theory of concepts was not
developed until the time of Socrates and Plato. Now it is
the function of historical criticism to insist upon this, to see
that later thought is not attributed to Parmenides. But if
this is the function of historical scholarship, it is equally the
function of philosophic insight to seize upon the germs of a
higher thought amid the confused thinking of Parmenides,
to see what he was groping for, to see clearly what he saw
only vaguely and dimly, to make explicit what in him was
merely implicit, to exhibit the true inwardness of his teach-
ing, to separate what is valuable and essential in it from
what is worthless and accidental. And I say that in this
sense the true and essential meaning of Parmenides is his
idealism. I said in the first chapter that philosophy is the
movement from sensuous to non-sensuous thought. I said
that it is only with the utmost difficulty that this movement
occurs. And I said that even the greatest philosophers have
sometimes failed herein. In Parmenides we have the first
example of this. He began by propounding the truth that
Being is the essential reality, and Being, as we saw, is a
concept. But Parmenides was a pioneer. He trod upon
unbroken ground. He had not behind him, as we have, a
long line of idealistic thinkers to guide him. So he could
not maintain this first non-sensuous thought. He could not
resist the temptation to frame for himself a mental image,
a picture, of Being. Now all mental images and pictures
are framed out of materials supplied to us by the senses.
Hence it comes about that Parmenides pictured Being as a
globe-shaped something occupying space. But this is not
the truth of Parmenides. This is simply his failure to re-
alise {52} and understand his own principle, and to think
his own thought. It is true that his immediate successors,
Empedocles and Democritus, seized upon this, and built
their philosophies upon it. But in doing so they were build-
ing upon the darkness of Parmenides, upon his dimness of
vision, upon his inability to grapple with his own idea. It
was Plato who built upon the light of Parmenides.