ivided. Hence it is indivisible. It is unmoved and undisturbed,
for motion and disturbance are forms of becoming, and all becoming is
excluded from Being. It is absolutely self-identical. It does not
arise from anything other than itself. It does not pass into anything
other than itself. It has its whole being in itself. It does not
depend upon anything else for its being and reality. It does not pass
over into otherness; it remains, steadfast, and abiding in itself. Of
positive character Being has nothing. Its sole character is simply its
being. It cannot be said that it is this or that; it cannot be said
that it has this or that quality, that it is here or there, then or
now. It simply _is_. Its only quality is, so to speak, "isness."

But in Parmenides there emerges for the first time a distinction of
fundamental importance in philosophy, the distinction between Sense
and Reason. The world of falsity and appearance, of becoming, of
not-being, this is, says Parmenides, the world which is presented to
us by the senses. True and veritable Being is known to us only by
reason, by thought. The senses therefore, are, for Parmenides, the
sources of all illusion and error. Truth lies only in reason. This is
exceedingly important, because this, _that truth lies in reason and not
in the world of sense_, is the fundamental position of idealism.

The doctrine of Being, just described, occupies the first part of the
poem of Parmenides. The second part is the way of false opinion. But
whether Parmenides is here simply giving an account of the false
philosophies {46} of his day, (and in doing this there does not seem
much point,) or whether he was, with total inconsistency, attempting,
in a cosmological theory of his own, to explain the origin of that
world of appearance and illusion, whose very being he has, in the
first part of the poem, denied--this does not seem to be clear. The
theory here propounded, at any rate, is that the sense-world is
composed of the two opposites, the hot and the cold, or light and
darkness. The more hot there is, the more life, the more reality; the
more cold, the more unreality and death.

What position, now, are we to assign to Parmenides in philosophy? How
are we to characterize his system? Such writers as Hegel, Erdmann, and
Schwegler, have always interpreted his philosophy in an idealistic
sense. Professor Burnet, however, takes the opposite view. To quote
his own words: "Parmenides is not, as so