XENOPHANES. (His opinion of unity, incomprehensibility, &c.)

Xenophanes was the first who taught that all things were but one sole being; and that this sole being continued always the same, and could not be subject to any change; but a more exact account of the principles of Xenophanes in their natural connexion, runs thus: first of all, he affirmed that nothing was made out of nothing, that is, to remove all ambiguity, that a thing which had not always existed, never could exist; whence he concluded, that whatever is, always existed. “But,” added he, “what always existed is eternal, what is eternal is infinite, what is infinite is but one; for if it contained several beings, one would terminate the other, and it could not then be infinite. Besides,” said he, “what is but one, is throughout like itself; for if it comprehended any difference, it would not be one, but several beings. In short, this sole, eternal, and infinite being ought to be immovable and immutable; for if it could change its place, there would be something beyond it, and then it  would not be infinite; and if it could suffer any alteration, without changing of place, something that did not always exist would begin to be produced, and something which had always existed would cease to be: but that is impossible; for every thing which not having eternally existed should begin to exist, must be produced out of nothing, and every thing which never had a beginning hath a necessary existence, and therefore cannot ever cease to be. These were his principles, if we believe Aristotle. I do not doubt but they appeared very evident to him, and that he was persuaded he had a gradation of consequences necessarily drawn from an incontestible principle. The orthodox divines will deny him that nothing can have a beginning; but would grant him that the being

which never had a beginning, is one only, infinite, immovable, and immutable; and that every being whose existence is necessary, is not obnoxious to destruction. They teach with reason, that God is not subject to any alteration; for if any change should happen in him, he would get and lose something. What he should acquire would be either distinct from his substance, or a mode identical with his substance. If it were a distinct being, God could not be a simple being, and what is worse, would be composed of an increated and created nature. If it were a mode identical with his substance, God could not produce it without producing himself; but as he exists independent of his own will, and did not give himself his being at the beginning, it follows that he can never do it. Besides, nothing that necessarily exists can ever cease to be; whence it must of necessity follow, that God can never lose what he once had. But what is called a modification, or ens inærens in alio, is of such a nature that it cannot be produced but by the ruin of another modality, perfectly in the same manner that a new figure is necessarily the destruction of the old one: wherefore if God acquire something new, he must necessarily lose some other thing; for this new acquisition will not be a substance, but an accident, or an cns inhærens in alio. Seeing therefore, nothing which necessarily exists can cease to exist, it follows that God can never acquire any thing new: thus the immutability of God is supported by evident notions.

Xenophanes added to his maxims the following one, that nothing is made out of nothing; but every accident produced anew, and distinct from the divine substance, would be produced out of nothing; wherefore he was obliged to deny that the eternal being can acquire any new mode distinct from its own substance. But he found himself very much perplexed when the continual generations in nature were objected to him.

They prove both that the universe is not one sole being, and that it contains something mutable, since it actually changes. In order to clear himself of this objection, he excepted against the evidence of the senses; he urged that they deceive us, that it is not true that there happen any generations in nature, and that they are but false appearances: but he was doubtless answered, that the appearance of the senses would not change at all, if our mind continued always the same, and if the beings without us did not change; and therefore, at least, what in us is the passive subject of perceptions, which you call the fallacies of the senses, must needs be mutable and variable: wherefore what you assert that there is no change in the universe, is not true. I cannot see that he could make any other reply than that our reason is as fallacious as our senses, and that every thing is incomprehensible to it; for if when it is founded on evidence, which is its ne plus ultra, it does not hit on truth, it is a sign that truth is a thing incomprehensible and impenetrable: now building upon evident notions, I asserted that nothing is made out of nothing; whence it necessarily follows that nothing can begin, and that every thing that once exists, exists always; which evidently proves the immovableness and immutability of all things; I had, I say, clearly comprehended this, and yet the experience of my sensations and passions convinces me that I am mutable: I have not therefore comprehended any thing with certainty, I have not therefore a faculty adequately proportioned to truth. Thus we may suppose him arguing; and thence we may conclude that the sect of the Acataleptics, and that of the Pyrrhonists owed their birth solely to the principle of the immutable unity of all things asserted by Xenophanes; but I do not affirm that he was in the right in the consequences just mentioned.

The reasons which led Xenophanes to the unity of all things, are probably the same with those of Melissus

and Parmenides, according to Aristotle’s account. They seem very subtle, though according to the manner of men of great genius, Aristotle hath described them a little obscurely, because he affected brevity. Those arguments are doubtless sophisms, as well as those which may be read above, nevertheless they might have imposed upon the readers, and I do not know whether Aristotle has always well refuted those two ancient philosophers. Consult the Jesuits of Coimbra, who have represented one of the reasons of Melissus, and Aristotle’s answer in their full force, and you will find that nothing can be weaker than this answer, and that Melissus is not guilty of false argumentation in this proposition, “if every thing that was made hath a principle, that which never was made hath no principle.” This Aristotle assures us is a manifest paralogism. “But,” added Melissus, “nothing has been made, for if any thing had been made, it would have been produced, either out of nothing or from something else; if out of another thing, it must necessarily have pre-existed, which ruins your supposition; if out of nothing, then something might be made out of nothing, which is false.” This is a demonstrative argument against Aristotle, who denied creation, properly so called; and as for his distinction betwixt a principle of substance and a principle of forms and qualities, it is insignificant in the hypothesis of the impossibility of the creation; for every substance which never began, and necessarily exists, must be immutable. It would therefore be in vain for you to seek after the principles of generations and corruptions; for there would be none if all things were uncreated, as they are according to Aristotle, who never opposed the axiom, “ex nihilo nihil fit—nothing is made out of nothing.” But after owning that this objection of Melissus, which it is impossible to solve any other way than by the orthodox Christian hypothesis concerning the creation, surpassed all Aristotle’s strength, it must be acknowledged that the other subtilties of Melissus and Parmenides were less puzzling to him, and when applied to experience, that is, to the variety of things which the universe exposes to our view, they could not appear any thing better than puerilities.

I observe by the way, that the Jesuit who commented on Cicero, de Natura Deorum, takes Xenophanes’ part against Aristotle somewhat rashly. Lescalopier in Cicer. de Nat. Deorum, lib. i. num. 28, pag. 44. ¹³ “Certainly Velleius dropped that reproach which Aristotle threw upon Xenophanes in his book of Metaphysics, where he takes notice of his being a man of a low genius or of mean elocution, and shows a great neglect and contempt of him, as being a rustic who deserved to be banished the company of philosophers. But he ascribes to Xenophanes an opinion concerning God, which does not at all savour of a low and rustic genius, viz. that what is one is God; or as Theophrastus has it, that unity, the universe, and all things, are God.” This father is very much to blame for ascribing to Xenophanes a reasonable opinion concerning the nature of God; the sentiments of that philosopher on this head are abominably impious, and amount to a more dangerous Spinozism than that which I have refuted in the article of Spinoza; for Spinoza’s hypothesis carries its antidote along with it, by the mutability or continual corruptibility which he attributes to the divine nature with respect to modalities. This corruptibility is contrary to common sense, and at once shocks those of mean parts and those of the greatest capacities; but the immutability in all respects attributed to the infinite and eternal Being by Xenophanes, is a principle of the purest theology, wherefore it is more liable to seduce us in favour of the rest of his hypothesis. On the other side, the pernicious fall of this philosopher may

prove more contagious, than Spinozism; for not being able to maintain the post to which his reason had led him, he fell into a precipice, and found fault with his reason which had perplexed him, and thrown him into nets which he could not break; he accused it of being incapable of comprehending any thing. Several others would be reduced to the like extremities, if they had not recourse to an assistant superior to reason; but the Jesuit whom I refute is not wholly to blame: he had just reason to censure Aritotle’s contempt of Xenophanes’ genius; for though a true greatness of mind and a solid force of argumentation, would not suffer a man to sink at this rate, yet it is true that a mean capacity can never fly so high as Xenophanes, nor fall like him. He argued more consequentially than Aristotle, who denying a creation, admitted an eternal matter successively susceptible of an infinity of forms. If the elephants need not fear these cobwebs, much less need the flies. It is not a meanness of capacity which makes men doubt that they are not arrived at a just certainty; it rather fills with confidence than inspires them with diffidence. Pyrrhone, lib. ix, num. 72. ¹⁴ People fall into the doctrine of incomprehensibility not by an utter ignorance of things, but by knowing them much better than the greatest part of the world, though they do not know them according to the just representation of them. Besides, there are some who direct their hypothesis to the glory of God, as if from a sense of our own weakness and of the infinity of God, we ought not to aspire to that knowledge which is a portion of the divine nature. We have spoken before of a poet who said that the gods reserved glory for themselves and pleasures for us; but these tell us that God keeps knowledge to himself and bestows opinions on us. Diogenes Laertius reckons Plato among the Sceptics for saying “that he left truth to the Gods and to their offspring, and only inquired after what is probable.” Thucydid. lib. ii, pag. m. 126, A. ¹⁵ This puts me in mind of a thought of Plutarch, which seems to me very excellent. “Wise men ought to pray to the gods for all good things: but what we ought chiefly to desire of them, is the knowledge of them in as great a degree as is proper for us, because there is no gift either greater for man to receive or more magnificent and worthy of the gods to bestow, than the knowledge of the truth. For God gives to men all other things which they want, but hath reserved this for himself, and makes use of it: he is not at all happy in the possession of vast quantities of gold, nor powerful by holding the thunder and lightning in his hand, but rather by his wisdom and knowledge; and this is one of the best and wisest things which Homer said, speaking of Jupiter and Neptune:

Ἣ μὰν ὰμφότέροισιν ὀμὸν γένος ἠδ' ἴα πάτρη,
Άλλὰ Ζεὺς πρότερος γεγόνει καὶ πλείονα ἢδη.

Both of one line, both of one country boast;
But royal Jove’s the eldest, and knows most.

“He affirms that the preference and the precedence of Jupiter was more venerable and worthy, because he was more wise and intelligent; and as for me, I am of opinion that the beatitude and felicity of eternal life which Jupiter enjoys, consists in that he is ignorant of nothing; and that of all things which ever were, none escape him. I believe that an immortality deprived of the knowledge of all things which exist and have existed, would not be a life, but a space of time only; so that we may say that the desire of understanding truth is a desire of the Deity, especially the truth of the nature of the gods; the study and acquisition of which science is, as it were, the entering or being initiated into a religion and a more holy work than a vow of chastity, or cloistering one’s-self

within a temple.” Plutarch, at the beginning of his treatise concerning Isis and Osiris. ¹⁶ Add to this, that the Christians with respect to whatever constitutes the character of speculative Christianity, make public profession of the incomprehensibility of things, and look upon those as owls and Turks who refuse to believe what surpasses the extent of their understanding. Such is the mystery of the trinity, which as Mr Nicolle owns, Nicolle, Perpétuité de la Foi, pag. 118; 119, Edit. 1666. ¹⁷ “confounds reason and prompts it to revolt. If there be any visible difficulties, they are those which are contained in that mystery that three persons really distinct have only one and the same essence, and this essence being the same thing in each person with the relations that distinguish them, may be communicated without the communication of the relations which dis-  tinguish the persons. If human reason consult herself she will revolt against all those inconceivable truths. If she pretend to make use of her own light to penetrate into them, it will only furnish her with arms against them; wherefore in order to believe them, she ought to blind herself, to stifle all her ratiocinations and perceptions, and to depress and sink herself under the weight of divine authority.” The Socinians themselves in some respects are Acataleptics; they cannot say with any sincerity, that it is an incomprehensible thing, that a self-existent nature, should be mutable. Wherefore in some respects, their rashness surpasses that of Xenophanes. The latter at last thought fit to. say, that he did not comprehend either that an eternal nature is mutable, or that it is immutable, but as to the former, they decide that it is mutable; whence it follows that a being which necessarily and from all eternity exists, is liable to destruction, which is the most contrary opinion in the world to our clear and distinct ideas.

I cannot conclude without observing that the evidence

of Xenophanes’s principles with respect to the immutability of what is eternal, is as conspicuous as the clearest ideas of our mind; so that it being incontestible on the other hand by what passes within us, that there are alterations and changes, the best course that our reason can take is, to assert that all thingshad a beginning, God alone excepted. This is the doctrine of the creation; for to pretend to explain the generations of nature, by supposing several eternal principles, the action and re-action of which diversifies what would remain uniform, if nothing external intervened, is to avoid one inconvenience and to fall into a much greater.—Art. Xenophanes.