able, but only the slowest of
all moving bodies; while the soul of man, though dwelling in the lowest of
all regions, namely, in the earth, he considered a migrated portion of
fire in its pure state; which, in spite of its descent, had lost none of
its original purity. The _summum bonum_ he considered to be a contented
acquiescence in the decrees of the Deity. None of his writings are extant;
and he does not appear to have had many followers.

_Diogenes_ of Apollonia, (who must not be confounded with his Stoic or
Cynic namesake,) was a pupil of Anaximenes, and wrote a treatise on
Nature, of which Diogenes Laertius gives the following account: "He
maintained that air was the primary element of all things; that there was
an infinite number of worlds and an infinite vacuum; that air condensed
and rarefied produced the different members of the universe; that nothing
was generated from nothing, or resolved into nothing; that the earth was
round, supported in the centre, having received its shape from the
whirling round it of warm vapours, and its concrete nature and hardness
from cold." He also imputed to air an intellectual energy, though he did
not recognise any difference between mind and matter.

_Parmenides_ was a native of Elea or Velia, and flourished about 460 B.C.,
soon after which time he came to Athens, and became acquainted with
Socrates, who was then very young. Theophrastus and Aristotle speak
doubtfully of his having been a pupil of Xenophanes. Some authors,
however, reckon him as one of the Pythagorean school; Plato and Aristotle
speak of him as the greatest of the Eleatics; and it is said that his
fellow-countrymen bound their magistrates every year to abide by the laws
which he had laid down. He, like Xenophanes, explained his philosophical
tenets in a didactic poem, in which he speaks of two primary forms, one
the fine uniform etherial fire of flame ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}), the other the cold
body of night, out of the intermingling of which everything in the world
is formed by the Deity who reigns in the midst. His cosmogony was carried
into minute detail, of which we possess only a few obscure fragments; he
somewhat resembled the Pythagoreans in beli