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Updated: May 8, 2025
Precisely whither this spirit led him we do not know, but the writers of a later time have preserved a tradition regarding a belief of Xenophanes that perhaps entitles him to be considered the father of geology. Thus Hippolytus records that Xenophanes studied the fossils to be found in quarries, and drew from their observation remarkable conclusions.
Judging from the material in hand one can hardly arrive at any other conclusion than that the standpoint of Xenophanes comes under our definition of atheism. But we must not forget that only fragments of his writings have been preserved, and that the more extensive of them do not assist us greatly to the understanding of his religious standpoint.
Epicurus, that the world had a beginning, and so shall have an end, as plants and animals have. Xenophanes, that the world never had a beginning, is eternal and incorruptible. Aristotle, that the part of the world which is sublunary is subject to change, and there terrestrial beings find a decay.
"Mortals," he says, "think that the gods are born as they are, and have perception like theirs, and voice and form." But this naïve opinion Xenophanes corrects because it is not consistent with the new enlightenment concerning the archê, or first principle of nature.
This doctrine was revived by Anaxag'oras, an Ionian, a century later, who combined it with the philosophy of Diogenes, and taught the existence of one supreme mind. Two widely different schools of philosophy now arose in the western Greek colonies of lower Italy. Xenophanes, a native of Ionia, who had fled to E'lea, was the founder of one, and Pythagoras, of Samos, of the other.
I have great admiration of this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money, comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of God. This was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. Parmenides of Elea, born about the year B.C. 536, followed out the system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of God.
It was Xenagoras, the son of Eumelus, who discovered its height. King Apollo, hail to thee; be thou propitious to us." However, Xenophanes did not take its altitude conjecturally, but by a proper method with instruments. XVI. Here then Nasica halted.
He says: "Parmenides seems to hold by a Unity in thought, Melissus by a Material unity. Hence the first defined the One as limited, the second declared it to be unlimited. Xenophanes made no clear statement on this question; he simply, gazing up to the arch of heaven, declared, The One is God."
He walked cheerfully forward, and his mind recurred to the centurion's speech that he could if he list, "tread him down like a worm," and he laughed again softly, for he was quite aware that he was ten times as strong as Phoebicius, and formerly he had overthrown the braggart Arkesilaos of Kyrene and his cousin, the tall Xenophanes, both at once in the sand of the Palaestra.
Italy, off to the west, is the home of Pythagoras and Xenophanes in their later years, and of Parmenides and Empedocles, Zeno, and Archimedes. Northern Africa can claim, by birth or by adoption, such names as Euclid, Apollonius of Perga, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Aristippus, Eratosthenes, Ctesibius, Hero, Strabo, and Ptolemy.
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