ll
see that it broke down in a hopeless dualism. How did they {68}
explain the existence of the world? They propounded the principle of
Being, as the ultimate reality. How then did they derive the actual
world from that principle? The answer is that they neither derived it
nor made any attempt to derive it. Instead of deducing the world from
their first principle, they simply denied the reality of the world
altogether. They attempted to solve the problem by denying the
existence of the problem. The world, they said, is simply not-being.
It is an illusion. Now certainly it is a great thing to know which is
the true world, and which the false, but after all this is not an
explanation. To call the world an illusion is not to explain it. If
the world is reality, then the problem of philosophy is, how does that
reality arise? If the world is illusion, then the problem is, how does
that illusion arise? Call it illusion, if you like. But this is not
explaining it. It is simply calling it names. This is the defect, too,
of Indian philosophy in which the world is said to be Maya--delusion.
Hence in the Eleatic philosophy there are two worlds brought face to
face, lying side by side of each other, unreconciled--the world of
Being, which is the true world, and the world of facts, which is
illusion. Although the Eleatics deny the sense-world, and call it
illusion, yet of this illusion they cannot rid themselves. In some
sense or other, this world is here, is present. It comes back upon our
senses, and demands explanation. Call it illusion, but it still stands
beside the true world, and demands that it be deduced from that. So
that the Eleatics have two principles, the false world and the true
world, simply lying side by side, without any connecting link between
them, without anything to {69} show how the one arises from the other.
It is an utterly irreconcilable dualism.

It is easy to see why the Eleatic philosophy broke down in this
dualism. It is due to the barrenness of their first principle itself.
Being, they say, has in it no becoming. All principle of motion is
expressly excluded from it. Likewise they deny to it any multiplicity.
It is simply one, without any many in it. If you expressly exclude
multiplicity and becoming from your first principle, then you can
never get multiplicity and becoming out of it. You cannot get out of
it anything that is not in it. If you say absolutely there is no
multiplicity in the Absolute,