ruling things at will ; and, in fact, Aristotle also remarked of the old physiologists, that they had not distinguished the moving cause from matter."^ Of Heraclitus, Dollinger, in his able work " The Gentile and the Jew in the Courts of the Temple of Christ," savs he " meant by his ' fire,' an ethereal substance as primal matter, the all-pervading and animating soul of the universe ; a matter which he conceived to be not merely actual fire, but caloric, and this being at the same time the only power at work in the world, all- creative and destructive in turns, was, to speak generally, the one real and veritable existence among all things. For everything had its origin only in the constant modification of this eternal and pri- mal fire : the entire world was a fire dying out and rekindling itself in a fixed succession, Avhile the other elements are but fire con- verted by condensation or rarefaction into a variety of forms. Thus the idea of a permanent being is a delusion ; everything is in a state of perpetual flux, an eternal-going to be (Werden), and in this stream spirit is hurried along as well as body, swallowed up
and born afresh Heraclitus, as any thorough-going
Pantheist would, called the common soul of the world, the all-com- prehending primal fire, Zeus ; and the flux of perpetual change and tendency to be, into which it enters, he termed poetically Zeus playing by himself." ^
Cousin says, "For the Ionic school in both its stages, there was no other God than nature. Pantheism is inherent in its system. What is Pantheism ? It is the conception of the universe, to ttSv, as alone existing, as self-sufficient, and having its explanation in itself. All nascent philosophy is a philosophy of nature, and thus is inclined to Pantheism. The sensationalism of the lonians of necessity took that form ; and, to speak honestly, Pantheism is nothing but atheism." ^
Cousin frames the definition of Pantheism so as to exclude his own system. With him the material universe alone is not God. He believes in " God, nature, and humanity." But these three are one. " If God," he says, "be not everything. He is nothing." This, however, is as truly Pantheism (although in a more philo- sophical form), as the Materialism of the lonians.
The Eleatic School. The Eleatic or Italian school, of which Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno, are the principal representatives, was inclined to the
1 Dollinger, The Gentile and the Jew, translated by Darnell, London, 1862, vol. i. p. 250. a Ibid. vol. i. p. 262. s Histoire Generate de la Philosqphie, Paris, 1863, vol. i. p. 107.
320 TAUT L — THEOLOGY. [Ch. HI. — Anti-Theism.
other extreme of denying the very existence of matter. Of these philosophers, Cousin says, " They reduced everything to an ex- istence absolute, which approached nearly to Nihilism, or the denial of all existence."^ Of Xenophanes, born in Colophon 617 B. c, Dollinger'"^ says, " With all his assertions of monotheistic sound, he was still a Pantheist, and, indeed, a material Pantheist, and is uni- versally undei'stood to bo such by the ancients. Certainly there was present to his mind the idea of a being, one and spiritual, em- bracing the whole complement of existence and thought within himself; yet this being was in his view but the general nature- power ; the unity of God was to him identical with the unity of the world, and this again but the manifestation of the invisible being, called God, and therefore also he explained it to be uncreate, everlasting, and imperishable." It is hard to see how this differs from the modern pantheistic doctrine, that God is the substance of which the world is the phenomenon ; or why Xenophanes should be regarded as a materialist more than Schelling or Cousin.
Parmenides of Elea about 500 B. c. was more of an idealist. He attained to the idea of a pure and simple being in opposition to the material principle of the Ionic school. This " being," how- ever, was not a " pure metaphysical idea, for," says DiJllinger, *' he so expressed himself as to seem to represent it at one time as corporeal, and extended in space, at another as thinking. ' To think, and the object of which the thought is, are one and the
same,' was a saying of his There was no bridge for
Parmenides that had led from this pure simple 'being ' to the world of phenomena, of the manifold, and of motion ; and therefore he denied the reality of all we see ; the whole world of sense owed its existence only to the illusions of sense and the empty notions of mortal men built thereon."^ Thus Parmenides anticipated Schell- ing in teaching the identity of subject and object.
The Stoics. The Stoics take their origin from Zeno of Cittium, in Cyprus (340-260 B. c). Their doctrine has already been noticed under the head of Hylozoism. Dollinger, indeed, says, " The Stoic sys- tem is utter Materialism, built upon Heraclitic doctrine. It adopted corporeal causes only, and is only acquainted with two principles — matter, and an activity resident in matter, from eternity, as power, and giving it form. Everything real is body ; there are no incor-
1 Bistoire Generale de la PhUosopMe, Paris, 1867, vol. i. p. 116 ; edit. 1863, p. 111.
2 The Gentile and the Jew, vol. i. p. 260. 8 JUd. vol. i. p. 261