persons suppose, simply a
collection of freak speculations, which we may study in historical
order, but at the end of which, God alone knows which we ought to
believe. On the contrary, the history of philosophy presents a
definite line of evolution. The truth unfolds itself gradually in
time.

Xenophanes

The reputed founder of the Eleatic School was Xenophanes. It is,
however, doubtful whether Xenophanes ever went to Elea. Moreover, he
belongs more properly {41} to the history of religion than to the
history of philosophy. The real creator of the Eleatic School was
Parmenides. But Parmenides seized upon certain germs of thought latent
in Xenophanes and transmuted them into philosophic principles. We
have, therefore, in the first instance, to say something of
Xenophanes. He was born about the year 576 B.C., at Colophon in Ionia.
His long life was spent in wandering up and down the cities of Hellas,
as a poet and minstrel, singing songs at banquets and festivals.
Whether, as sometimes stated; he finally settled at Elea is a matter
of doubt, but we know definitely that at the advanced age of
ninety-two he was still wandering about Greece. His philosophy, such
as it is, is expressed in poems. He did not, however, write
philosophical poems, but rather elegies and satires upon various
subjects, only incidentally expressing his religious views therein.
Fragments of these poems have come down to us.

Xenophanes is the originator of the quarrel between philosophy and
religion. He attacked the popular religious notions of the Greeks with
a view to founding a purer and nobler conception of Deity. Popular
Greek religion consisted of a belief in a number of gods who were
conceived very much as in the form of human beings. Xenophanes attacks
this conception of God as possessing human form. It is absurd, he
says, to suppose that the gods wander about from place to place, as
represented in the Greek legends. It is absurd to suppose that the
gods had a beginning. It is disgraceful to impute to them stories of
fraud, adultery, theft and deceit. And Xenophanes inveighs against
Homer and Hesiod for disseminating these degrading conceptions {42} of
the Deity. He argues, too, against the polytheistic notion of a
plurality of gods. That which is divine can only be one. There can
only be one best. Therefore, God is to be conceived as one. And this
God is comparable to mortals neither in bodily form nor understanding.
He is "all eye,