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Updated: May 8, 2025
Xenophanes tells us that it is impossible for us to be certain even when we utter the truth. Parmenides declares that the very constitution of man prevents him from ascertaining absolute truth. Empedocles affirms that all philosophical and religious systems must be unreliable, because we have no criterion by which to test them.
That Xenophanes was not considered an atheist by the ancients may possibly be explained by the fact that they objected to fasten this designation on a man whose reasoning took the deity as a starting-point and whose sole aim was to define its nature. Perhaps they also had an inkling that he in reality stood on the ground of popular belief, even if he went beyond it.
Xenophanes, that there are many suns and many moons, according as the earth is distinguished by climates, circles, and zones. At some certain times the orb of the sun, falling upon some part of the world which is untenanted, wanders in a vacuum and becomes eclipsed.
And lastly, Xenophanes of Colophon laughs at the many and divers gods of Homer and sets one single deity on high the ceaselessly creative might of nature, whose essence consists of thought, reason and eternity. He flourished at the time of our history and lived to a great age, far on into the fifth century. We have quoted some fragments of his writings above.
CLEOSTRATUS. A small ring-plain, N. of Xenophanes, surrounded by a number of similar objects, all too near the limb for observation. PYTHAGORAS. A noble walled-plain, 95 miles in diameter, which no one who observes it fails to lament is not nearer the centre of the disc, as it would then undoubtedly rank among the most imposing objects of its class.
It was not disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that oppressed him. He could not solve the questions pertaining to God. What uninstructed reason can? "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou know the Almighty unto perfection?" What was impossible to Job was not possible to Xenophanes.
The sensible is an impenetrable empire, but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm, a great poetical rhapsodist like Xenophanes, severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty and goodness.
theology was an attack on the veracity of the old poets, especially Homer, who was considered the highest authority on mythology. Xenophanes criticized him severely for ascribing to the gods acts which, committed by men, would be considered highly disgraceful. We do not hear that any attempt was made to restrain him from thus assailing traditional beliefs and branding Homer as immoral.
+1000+. Similar motives appear in the speculations of the Greek philosophers: Greek philosophy in seeking to discover the essential nature of the world moved definitely toward the conception of its unity so, for example, as early as the sixth century, in Xenophanes and Parmenides.
Empedocles of Agrigentum, living about the middle of the fifth century B.C., and thus, perhaps, in the second generation after Xenophanes, was, in many respects, a much more imposing figure clothed in purple, wielding political power, possessing medical skill, and even working miraculous cures, such as are apparently easy to men of personal impressiveness, sympathy, and "magnetism."
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