hings. They stripped off the
qualitative aspect from things, and were accordingly left with only
quantity as ultimate reality. Quantity is the same as number. Hence
the Pythagorean position that the world is made of numbers. The
Eleatic philosophy, proceeding one step further in the same direction,
abstracted from quantity as well as quality. Whereas the Pythagoreans
had denied the qualitative aspect of things, leaving themselves only
with the quantitative, the Eleatics denied both quantity and quality,
for in denying multiplicity they denied quantity. Therefore they are
left with the total abstraction of mere Being which has in it neither
dividedness (quantity), nor positive character (quality). The rise
from the Ionic to the Eleatic philosophy is therefore essentially a
rise from sensuous to pure thinking. The Eleatic Being is a pure
abstract thought. The position of the Pythagoreans on the other hand
is that of semi-sensuous thought. They form the stepping-stone from
the Ionics to the Eleatics.

Now let us consider what of worth there is in this Eleatic principle,
and what its defects are. In the first place, it is necessary for us
to understand that the Eleatic philosophy is the first monism. A
monistic philosophy {63} is a philosophy which attempts to explain the
entire universe from one single principle. The opposite of monism is
therefore pluralism, which is that kind of philosophy which seeks to
explain the universe from many ultimate and equally underived
principles. But more particularly and more frequently we speak of the
opposite of monism as being dualism, that is to say, the position that
there are two ultimate principles of explanation. If, for example, we
say that all the good in the universe arises from one source which is
good, and that all the evil arises from another source which is evil,
and that these sources of good and evil cannot be subordinated one to
the other, and that one does not arise out of the other, but both are
co-ordinate and equally primeval and independent, that position would
be a dualism. All philosophy, which is worthy of the name, seeks, in
some sense, a monistic explanation of the universe, and when we find
that a system of philosophy breaks down and fails, then we may nearly
always be sure its defect will reveal itself as an unreconciled
dualism. Such a philosophy will begin with a monistic principle, and
will attempt to derive or deduce the entire universe from it, but
somew