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Parmenides thought that it was fire that moved the earth. Leucippus believed it to be "plenum et inane." What "full and empty" may mean I cannot tell; but Democritus could, for he believed in it though in other matters he went a little farther! Empedocles sticks to the old four elements. Heraclitus is all for fire.
For in the Sophista being itself is investigated, in the Banquet love itself, and in the Phaedrus beauty itself; all which are intelligible forms, and are consequently contained in the Parmenides, in which the whole extent of the intelligible is unfolded.
Opaque questions seemed interlinked and mysteriously solved: of motion versus contemplation; Parmenides versus Heraclitus; being the warm, soft, cuddly mother depicted in Harlow's monkey experiments so as to not have a traumatized monkey on her hands versus finding more purpose to life than reering one's young; attachment versus independence; and the containment of her son versus the release of him.
There is no reason whatever to doubt the statement, which Plato makes more than once, that he had met Parmenides and Zeno at a still earlier date. At any rate, the influence of Zeno on the dialectic of Socrates is unmistakable. We may also take it that he was familiar with all sorts of Orphic and Pythagorean sectaries.
Till the second question was raised its answer, of course, could not be attempted. But all those who in modern times have said with Tennyson Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And Thou hast made him: Thou art just, may recognise in Parmenides a pioneer for them.
If the common mistake in empiricism is not to see the omnipresence of reason in thought, the mistake of rationalism is not to admit its variability and dependence, not to understand its natural life. Parmenides was the Adam of that race, and first tasted the deceptive kind of knowledge which, promising to make man God, banishes him from the paradise of experience.
Sometimes, indeed, it happens that a philosopher's fame outlives even his works themselves; as has happened with Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Democritus, Parmenides, Epicurus and many others. My remarks are, as I have said, confined to achievements that are not of any material use.
Let them summon at once the shades of Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Plato, who are as much wearied there in Cimmerian regions as a finch in a cage. I wished to talk with her and with Plautius about something else. By the holy stomach of the Egyptian Isis!
Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born B.C. 500, brought nothing new to the system, but invented Dialectics, that logic which afterwards became so powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle, and so generally admired among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error by the reductio ad absurdum.
Parmenides and Democritus, that there is nothing in the world but what is necessary, and that this same necessity is otherwise called fate, justice, providence, and the architect of the world. But Plato distinguisheth and refers some things to Providence, others to necessity. Empedocles makes the nature of necessity to be that cause which employs principles and elements.
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