is, and
alone is, behind the observed facts. They fail to see that the more
blind, the more accidental, so to speak, the process of differentiation
may be; the more it is shown that the struggle for existence drives the
wheels of progress along the {37} lines of least resistance by the most
commonplace of mechanical necessities, in the same proportion must a
law be posited behind all this process, a reason in nature which
gathers up the beginning and the ending. The protoplasmic cell which
the imagination of evolutionists places at the beginning of time as the
starting-point of this mighty process is not merely this or that, has
not merely this or that quality or possibility, it _is_; and in the
power of that little word is enclosed a whole world of thought, which
is there at the first, remains there all through the evolutions of the
protoplasm, will be there when these are done, is in fact independent
of time and space, has nothing to do with such distinctions, expresses
rather their ultimate unreality. So far then as Parmenides and his
school kept a firm grip on this other-world aspect of nature as implied
even in the simple word _is_, or _be_, so far they did good service in
the process of the world's thought. On the other hand, he and they
were naturally enough disinclined, as we all are disinclined, to remain
in the merely or mainly negative or defensive. He would not lose his
grip of heaven and eternity, but he would fain know the secrets of
earth and time as well. And hence was fashioned the second part of his
poem, in which he expounds his theory of the world of opinion, or
guess-work, or observation.

[99]

In this world he found two originative principles {38} at work, one
pertaining to light and heat, the other to darkness and cold. From the
union of these two principles all observable things in creation come,
and over this union a God-given power presides, whose name is Love. Of
these two principles, the bright one being analogous to _Fire_, the
dark one to _Earth_, he considered the former to be the male or
formative element, the latter the female or passive element; the former
therefore had analogies to Being as such, the latter to Non-being. The
heavenly existences, the sun, the moon, the stars, are of pure Fire,
have therefore an eternal and unchangeable being; they are on the
extremest verge of the universe, and corresponding to them at the
centre is another fiery sphere, which, itself unmove