d, is the cause of
all motion and generation in the mixed region between. The motive and
procreative power, sometimes called Love, is at other times called by
Parmenides Necessity, Bearer of the Keys, Justice, Ruler, etc.

But while in so far as there was union in the production of man or any
other creature, the [102] presiding genius might be symbolised as
_Love_; on the other hand, since this union was a union of opposites
(Light and Dark), _Discord_ or _Strife_ also had her say in the union.
Thus the nature and character in every creature was the resultant of
two antagonistic forces, and depended for its particular excellence or
defect on the proportions in which these two elements--the {39} light
and the dark, the fiery and the earthy--had been commingled.

No character in Greek antiquity, at least in the succession of
philosophic teachers, held a more honoured position than Parmenides.
He was looked on with almost superstitious reverence by his
fellow-countrymen. Plato speaks of him as his "Father Parmenides,"
whom he "revered and honoured more than all the other philosophers
together." To quote Professor Jowett in his introduction to Plato's
dialogue _Parmenides_, he was "the founder of idealism and also of
dialectic, or in modern phraseology, of metaphysics and of logic." Of
the logical aspect of his teaching we shall see a fuller
exemplification in his pupil and successor Zeno; of his metaphysics, by
way of summing up what has been already said, it may be remarked that
its substantial excellence consists in the perfect clearness and
precision with which Parmenides enunciated as fundamental in any theory
of the knowable universe the priority of Existence itself, not in time
merely or chiefly, but as a condition of having any problem to inquire
into. He practically admits that he does not see how to bridge over
the partition between Existence in itself and the changeful, temporary,
existing things which the senses give us notions of. But whatever the
connection may be, if there is a connection, he is convinced that
nothing would be more absurd than {40} to make the data of sense in any
way or degree the measure of the reality of existence, or the source
from which existence itself comes into being.

On this serenely impersonal position he took his stand; we find little
or nothing of the querulous personal note so characteristic of much
modern philosophy. We never find him asking, "What is to become of
_m