, the ratios of musical tones,
astronomy, and medicine. He directed his disciples, in their orgies or
secret worship, to practise gymnastics, dancing, music. In
correspondence with his principle of imparting to men only such
knowledge as they were fitted to receive, he communicated to those who
were less perfectly prepared exoteric doctrines, reserving the esoteric
for the privileged few who had passed five years in silence, had endured
humiliation, and been purged by self-denial and sacrifice.

[Sidenote: The Eleatic philosophy.]

We have now reached the consideration of the Eleatic philosophy. It
differs from the preceding in its neglect of material things, and its
devotion to the supra-sensible. It derives its name from Elea, a Greek
colonial city of Italy, its chief authors being Xenophanes, Parmenides,
and Zeno.

[Sidenote: Xenophanes represents a great philosophical advance.]

Xenophanes was a native of Ionia, from which having been exiled, he
appears to have settled at last in Elea, after leading for many years
the life of a wandering rhapsodist. He gave his doctrines a poetical
form for the purpose of more easily diffusing them. To the multitude he
became conspicuous from his opposition to Homer, Hesiod, and other
popular poets, whom he denounced for promoting the base polytheism of
the times, and degrading the idea of the divine by the immoralities they
attributed to the gods. He proclaimed God as an all-powerful Being,
existing from eternity, and without any likeness to man. A strict
monotheist, he denounced the plurality of gods as an inconceivable
error, asserting that of the all-powerful and all-perfect there could
not, in the nature of things, be more than one; for, if there were only
so many as two, those attributes could not apply to one of them, much
less, then, if there were many. This one principle or power was to him
the same as the universe, the substance of which, having existed from
all eternity, must necessarily be identical with God; for, since it is
impossible that there should be two Omnipresents, so also it is
impossible that there should be two Eternals. It therefore may be said
that there is a tincture of Orientalism in his ideas, since it would
scarcely be possible to offer a more succinct and luminous exposition of
the pantheism of India.

[Sidenote: He approaches the Indian ideas.]

The reader who has been wearied with the frivolities of the Ionian
philosophy, and lost in the myst