other, which is the reality. Of course the Eleatics did not
speak of appearance and reality in these terms. But this is
what they were groping for, and dimly saw.
If we now look back upon the road on which we have trav-
elled from the beginning of Greek philosophy, we shall be
able to characterize the direction in which we have been
moving. The earliest Greek philosophers, the Ionics, pro-
pounded the question, “what is the ultimate principle of
things?” and answered it by declaring that the first prin-
ciple of things is matter. The second Greek School, the
Pythagoreans, answered the same question by declaring
numbers to be the first principle. The third school, the
Eleatics, answered the question by asserting that the first
principle of things is Being. {62} Now the universe, as
we know it, is both quantitative and qualitative. Quantity
and quality are characteristics of every sense-object. These
are not, indeed, the only characteristics of the world, but
they are the only characteristics which have so far come
to light. Now the position of the Ionics was that the ulti-
mate reality is both quantitative and qualitative, that is to
say, it is matter, for matter is just what has both quantity
and quality. The Pythagoreans abstracted from the qual-
ity of things. They stripped off the qualitative aspect from
things, and were accordingly left with only quantity as ul-
timate reality. Quantity is the same as number. Hence the
Pythagorean position that the world is made of numbers.
The Eleatic philosophy, proceeding one step further in the
same direction, abstracted from quantity as well as qual-
ity. Whereas the Pythagoreans had denied the qualitative
aspect of things, leaving themselves only with the quanti-
tative, the Eleatics denied both quantity and quality, for in
denying multiplicity they denied quantity. Therefore they
are left with the total abstraction of mere Being which has
in it neither dividedness (quantity), nor positive character
(quality). The rise from the Ionic to the Eleatic philosophy
is therefore essentially a rise from sensuous to pure think-
ing. The Eleatic Being is a pure abstract thought. The
position of the Pythagoreans on the other hand is that of
semi-sensuous thought. They form the stepping-stone from
the Ionics to the Eleatics.Now let us consider what of worth there is in this Eleatic
principle, and what its defects are. In the first place, it is
necessary for us to understand that the Eleatic philosophy
is the first monism. A monistic philosophy {63} is a phi-
losophy which attempts to explain the entire universe from
one single principle. The opposite of monism is therefore
pluralism, which is that kind of philosophy which seeks to
explain the universe from many ultimate and equally under-
ived principles. But more particularly and more frequently
we speak of the opposite of monism as being dualism, that
is to say, the position that there are two ultimate principles
of explanation. If, for example, we say that all the good in
the universe arises from one source which is good, and that
all the evil arises from another source which is evil, and
that these sources of good and evil cannot be subordinated
one to the other, and that one does not arise out of the
other, but both are co-ordinate and equally primeval and
independent, that position would be a dualism. All philos-
ophy, which is worthy of the name, seeks, in some sense,
a monistic explanation of the universe, and when we find