Note (return) — Chapter IX

Lewes asserts that "Parmenides did not, with Xenophanes, call 'the One' God; he called it Being. 452 In support of this statement he, however, cites no ancient authorities. We are therefore justified in rejecting his opinion, and receiving the testimony of Simplicius, "the only authority for the fragments of the Eleatics," 453 and who had a copy of the philosophic poems of Parmenides. He assures us that Parmenides and Xenophanes "affirmed that 'the One,' or unity, was the first Principle of all,....they meaning by this One that highest or supreme God, as being the cause of unity to all things.... It remaineth, therefore, that that Intelligence which is the cause of all things, and therefore of mind and understanding also, in which all things are comprehended in unity, was Parmenides' one Ens or Being. 454 Parmenides was, therefore, a spiritualistic or idealistic Pantheist.