Parmenion

“ He beckoned to Parpon to come over, and the dwarf trotted with a sidelong motion to the chancel steps. Every face in the congregation was eager, and some were mystified, even anxious. They all knew the singular power of the little man—his knowledge, his deep wit, his judgment, his occasional fierceness, his infrequent malice; but he was kind to children and the sick, and the Cure and the Avocat and their little coterie respected him. ”

“ Now, Parmeno,
Now you may show what kind of man you are.
You know you’ve often told me; “Chærea,
Find something out to set your heart upon,
And mark how I will serve you!” yes, you know
You’ve often said so, when I scrap’d together
All the provisions for you at my father’s.
Par. Away, you trifler!
Chær. Nay, in faith, it’s true:
Now make your promise good! and in a cause
Worthy the utmost reachings of your soul:
A girl! my Parmeno, not like our misses;
Whose mothers try to keep their shoulders down,
And bind their bosoms, that their shapes may seem
Genteel and slim. Is a girl rather plump? ”

“ As he was speaking, the king himself, who was making a nightly round among the men’s quarters, came up. Parmenio told him the story, and was not a little surprised at the way in which he took it.
“Ah,” said the king, “perhaps they are right. After all, we must be audacious, if we are to succeed. Life is short, and the world is large; and if we are to conquer it, we cannot afford to wait. ”

“ That is the world of reason and of truth according to Parmenides; and it is fairly, indeed inevitably, reached upon his principles, which are, that the world of Being and of not-Being stand towards each other in a relation of irreconcilable antagonism, and that opposite determinations cannot belong to, and may not be predicated of, the same subject
31. Let us now consider shortly the position of Zeno. In the world of change there is no Being. ”

“ PHILOTAS. Approach, Parmenio! Well? Why so shy--so full of shame? Of whom are you ashamed? Of yourself or of me?
PARMENIO. Of both of us, prince!
PHILOTAS. Speak always as you think! Truly, Parmenio, neither of us can be good for much, since we are here. Have you already heard my story?
PARMENIO. Alas!
PHILOTAS. And when you heard it?
PARMENIO. I pitied you, I admired you, I cursed you; I do not know myself what I did.
PHILOTAS. Yes, yes! But now that you have also learned, as I suppose, that the misfortune is not so great since Polytimet immediately afterwards was----
PARMENIO. Yes, now ”

“ The Eleatic Philosophers.—About 500 B.C., and nearly contemporary with the Pythagoreans, flourished the Eleatic philosophers, among whom Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus were the principal leaders. They speculated about the nature of the mind, or soul, and departed from the speculations respecting the origin of the earth. The nature of the infinite and the philosophy of being suggested by the Ionian philosophers were themes that occupied the attention of this new school. Parmenides believed in the knowledge of an absolute being, and affirmed the unity of thought and being. ”

“ According to Parmenides of the school of Elea the all is one, unmoving and unchanging. The permanent amid the transient—that foothold for thought, that solid ground for feeling on the discovery of which depends all our life—is no phantom; it is the image amidst deception of true being, the eternal, the unmoved, the one. ”

“ Nothing in print places my theory in so distinct, clear, and pleasing a point of view as Parnell’s Hermit,—a strong, moral, and impressive tale,—beautiful in poetry, and abounding in instruction. There the Omniscience of God is exemplified by human incidents, and the mysterious causes of his actions brought home to the commonest capacity. ”

“ To do the Parmenides justice, we should imagine similar aporiai raised on themes as sacred to us, as the notions of One or Being were to an ancient Eleatic. 'If God is, what follows? If God is not, what follows?' Or again: If God is or is not the world; or if God is or is not many, or has or has not parts, or is or is not in the world, or in time ”

“ As the difficulties inherent in such a materialistic Monism became more apparent, the felt necessity of ascribing unity of some kind to existence led Parmenides and his Eleatic successors to the extreme view that change, being impossible in a permanent homogeneous bodily reality, must be a mere illusion of our deceptive senses. ”

“ The visitor laid a hand for a moment on Parmelee’s shoulder, then darted a quick look of surprise at the place his fingers had touched. Parmelee saw it, and a wave of color dyed his face. But the other continued after a pause that was almost imperceptible. “Don’t think that, my boy. Life wouldn’t be half what it is without dreams. ”

“ Parmanand used to be so absorbed in the love and contemplation of God that tears, it is said, flowed continually from his eyes, and times without number he experienced an alteration and stoppage of his voice during his paroxysms of ecstasy. He used to make seven hundred protestations to God daily, often on the muddy road. ”

“ There was a time when inanimate objects never failed at reflecting the ennui by which she gazed at them, causing profound ideas to be projected onto her consciousness like a great beacon of light shown onto a screen in dark movie theatre —a filmed documentary of the entity and its discoverer, Parmenides. ”

“ I may illustrate my meaning in this way, said Parmenides:—A master has a slave; now there is nothing absolute in the relation between them, which is simply a relation of one man to another. But there is also an idea of mastership in the abstract, which is relative to the idea of slavery in the abstract. These natures have nothing to do with us, nor we with them; they are concerned with themselves only, and we with ourselves. ”

“ But even as I cast about in my mind for the suitable subterfuge to commit to the pre-paid form, I bethought me of how seldom my dear bishop got a chance of taking refuge with me for one quiet bachelor evening, of the disappointment it would be to both of us to lose this one. Besides, I reflected, Parminter is a man of the world, much more so than I am, and he has a catholic taste in mankind. Captain Welfare will interest him, whatever he is, and he has always wanted to meet Edmund. ”

“ Such is the negative supplement by means of which Zeno reinforced the positive argument of Parmenides. In the sphere of Being, or the one, the universal, says Parmenides, there can be no not-Being (and consequently no change) , because to introduce not-Being here would be to assign opposite determinations to the same subject. And in the sphere of not-Being, the many, the particular, says Zeno, there can be no Being (and consequently nothing but change) , because to introduce Being here would, in like manner, be to assign opposite determinations to the same subject. ”

“ All the same I like Parsons; they think nobly of the Universe, and believe in Souls and Eternal Happiness. And some of them, I am told, believe in Angels—that there are Angels who guide our footsteps, and flit to and fro unseen on errands in the air about us. ”

“ Phenomena!—by the force of such arguments as Zeno's, the instructed would make a clean sweep of them, for the establishment, in the resultant void, of the "One," with which it is impossible (para panta legomena) + in spite of common language, and of what seems common sense, for the "Many"—the hills and cities of Greece, you and me, Parmenides himself, really to co-exist at all. "Parmenides," says one, "had stumbled upon [38] the modern thesis that thought and being are the same." ”

“ The truth is, that these writings of mine were meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who make fun of him and seek to show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they suppose to follow from the affirmation of the one. My answer is addressed to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return with interest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being of many, if carried out, appears to be still more ridiculous than the hypothesis of the being of one. ”

“ ACT THE THIRD. Scene I. Enter Pamphilus and Parmeno.
Pam. No individual, I do believe, ever met with more crosses in love than I. Alas! unhappy me! that I have thus been sparing of life! Was it for this I was so very impatient to return home? O, how much more preferable had it been for me to pass my life any where in the world than to return here and be sensible that I am thus wretched! For all of us know who have met with trouble from any cause, that all the time that passes before we come to the knowledge of it, is so much gain. ”

“ Parmenides in the second part of his doctrinal poem, developed, “in deceptive adornment of words,” not an authoritative statement of the true nature of being, but “human opinions” of becoming and creation in the world of multiplicity. This, too, must be the standpoint of the physiological doctrines put forward by Zeno of Elea, the boldest dialectician who upheld the doctrine of the motionless All-One. In the course of such a physiology, and with the same implied reservations, the Eleatic philosophers dealt also with the nature and origin of the soul. ”

“ Of the logical aspect of his teaching we shall see a fuller exemplification in his pupil and successor Zeno; of his metaphysics, by way of summing up what has been already said, it may be remarked that its substantial excellence consists in the perfect clearness and precision with which Parmenides enunciated as fundamental in any theory of the knowable universe the priority of Existence itself, not in time merely or chiefly, but as a condition of having any problem to inquire into. ”

“ But, Parmeno, something of consequence, I know not what it is, must have happened for this misunderstanding to have arisen between them, that has lasted so long.
Par. Or else something frivolous, i’faith, if you would only give words their proper value; those which are sometimes the greatest enmities, do not argue the greatest injuries; for it often happens that in certain circumstances, in which another would not even be out of temper, for the very same reason a passionate man becomes your greatest enemy. What enmities do children entertain among themselves for trifling injuries! ”

“ His clothes were of the strictest cleric cut, a parson’s waistcoat, a great high collar that was ever threatening to cut his ears off, but refused to do the deed out of sheer pity.
I cannot but think, heathen as I am, that a parson, of all men, should always be a well favored, as well favored in body as well as mind, a manly man, of whom God or nature need not be ashamed and to whom the people would listen without disgust or pity. ”

“ Will you not, pray, plot against them in return?
Phil. And yet, upon my faith, it is unfair to be the same to all.
Syr. What! unfair to take revenge on your enemies? or, for them to be caught in the very way they try to catch you? Alas! wretched me! why do not your age and beauty belong to me, or else these sentiments of mine to you?
Scene II. Enter Parmeno from the house of Laches.
Par. (at the door, speaking to Scirtus within.) If the old man should be asking for me, do you say that I have just gone to the harbor to inquire about the arrival of Pamphilus. ”

“ Empedocles affirms, that heat and cold give the difference in the generation of males and females. Hence is it, as histories acquaint us, that the first men originated from the earth in the eastern and southern parts, and the first females in the northern parts. Parmenides is of opinion perfectly contrariant. ”

“ The inhabitants are called Parmenenses and Parmani. Livy, bk. 39, ch. 55.—Strabo, bk. 5.—Horace, bk. 1, ltr. 4, li. 3.—Cicero, Philippics, bk. 14, li. 3.—Varro, de Lingua Latina, bk. 7, ch. 31.—Martial, bk. 2, ltr. 43, li. 4; bk. 3, ltr. 13, li. 8 & ltr. 14, li. 155.
Parmenĭdes, a Greek philosopher of Elis, who flourished about 505 years before Christ. He was son of Pyres of Elis, and the pupil of Xenophanes, or of Anaximander, according to some. He maintained that there were only two elements, fire and the earth; and he taught that the first generation of men was produced from the sun. ”

“ Parmenides maintains that nothing exists of all this which seems to exist, except the universe alone. [36] Zeno of Elea removed all the difficulties by removing one; for he declares that nothing exists. The Pyrrhonean, Megarian, Eretrian, and Academic schools are all engaged in practically the same task; they have introduced a new knowledge, non-knowledge. 45. You may sweep all these theories in with the superfluous troops of "liberal" studies; the one class of men give me a knowledge that will be of no use to me, the other class do away with any hope of attaining knowledge. ”

“ About Parmenides.
p. 26.For truly Parmenides also supposed the universe to be eternal and ungenerated and spherical in form. [84] Nor did [48] he avoid the common opinion making fire and earth the principles of the universe, the earth as matter, but the fire as cause and creator. [He said that the ordered world would be destroyed, but in what way, he did not say.] [85] But he said that the universe was eternal and ungenerated and spherical in form and all over alike, bearing no impress and immoveable and with definite limits.
10. About Leucippus. ”

“ Saturday afternoon, October 10, 1891.
DEAR MRS. PARNELL,—I am very glad you have written me, if the doing so, or if the reply I may be able to send you, can in any way help to mitigate any one of the numerous and infinitely painful circumstances, or their influence, rather, on your mind just now.
Such inquiries as those which suggest themselves to you are so natural that it is impossible to repress them.
One never knows exactly what might have happened in any incident of life had some other course been taken. ”