oolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error
through the _reductio ad absurdum_. While Parmenides sought to establish
the doctrine of the _One_, Zeno proved the non-existence of the _Many_.
He did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real
existences. It was the mission of Zeno to establish the doctrines of his
master. But in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a
new method of argument. So he carried on his argumentation by question
and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he
called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication.

Empedocles, born 444 B.C., like others of the Eleatics, complained of
the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. He
regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force,
the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which
or whom the world was formed. Thus "God is love" is a sublime doctrine
which philosophy revealed to the Greeks, and the emphatic and continuous
and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation
made by Jesus, the Christ, who resolved all the Law and the Gospel into
the element of Love,--fatherly on the part of God, filial and fraternal
on the part of men.

Thus did the Eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously
with the Ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge,
taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations
of sense by the notions of reason. But both schools, although they did
not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened
freedom of thought and inquiry. They raised up workmen for more
enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the Middle Ages
prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles.
They were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as
genius. They hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of
their day. They handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness,
and hence were often persecuted by the people. They did not establish
moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty
disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with
holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to
God and Nature. Thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to
studies. Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in Egypt to learn it