Читать книгу A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy онлайн

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Being, the cosmic substance, is one, eternal, imperishable, homogeneous, unchangeable, and material. When men see the world as it really is, when they see its cosmic substance, they see it to be one continuous material block. The world is not made up of parts with intervals of nothing between them, but it is a solid, homogeneous whole. The cosmic Being is a timeless, spaceless Being with no distinctions. The form of Being is spherical. It is cosmic-body and cosmic-thought. This is the assumption of Parmenides, which is so self-evident and so cogent to him that he does not attempt to prove but only to explain it.

Other Things than the Cosmic Substance (Being) have no Real Existence.

This logical drawing out of one of the aspects of the Milesian conception of the cosmic matter has a curious result. The Milesians and Xenophanes sought to explain by the cosmic substance the many nature changes. But when in the hands of Parmenides the cosmic substance is all of reality, then there is no reality to the changes. Consequently the concept formed for the explanation of change has so developed as to deny the existence of change. The cosmic substance excludes all origination and decay, all space and time differences, all divisibility, diversity, and movement. There is only one real, all else is illusion.