rubbed away by contact with the finger;[1] and so with gold and stone and everything which we fancy to be strong, and that earth and stone are made out of water; so that it turns out that we neither see nor know realities. Now these things do not agree with one another. We said that there were many things that were eternal and had forms and strength of their own, and yet we fancy that they all suffer alteration, and that they change from what we see each time. It is clear, then, that we did not see aright after all, nor are we right in believing that all these things are many. They would not change if they were real, but each thing would be just what we believed it to be; for nothing is stronger than true reality. But if it has changed, what was has passed away, and what was not is come into being. So then, if there were many things, they would have to be just of the same nature as the one. R. P. 147.
(9) Now, if it were to exist, it must needs be one; but if it is one, it cannot have body; for, if it had body it would have parts, and would no longer be one. R. P. 146.[2]
(10) If what is real is divided, it moves; but if it moves, it cannot be. R. P. 144 a.[3]
166.Theory of reality. It has been pointed out that Melissos was not perhaps originally a member of the Eleatic school; but he certainly adopted all the views of Parmenides as to the true nature of reality with one remarkable exception. He appears to have opened his treatise with a reassertion of the Parmenidean "Nothing is not" (fr. 1a), and the arguments by which he supported this view are those with which we are already familiar (fr. 1). Reality, as with Parmenides, is eternal, a point which Melissos expressed in a way of his own. He argued that since everything that has come into being has a beginning and an end, everything that has not come into being has no beginning or end. Aristotle is very hard on him for this simple conversion of a universal affirmative
- ↑ Reading ὁμουρέων with Bergk. Diels keeps the MS. ὁμοῦ ῥεων; Zeller (p. 613, n. 1) conjectures ὑπ' ἰοῦ ῥέων.
- ↑ I read εἰ μὲν οὖν εἴη with E F for the εἰ μὲν ὂν εἴη. The ἐὸν which still stands in R. P. is a piece of local colour due to the editors. Diels also now reads οὖν.
- ↑ Diels now reads ἀλλὰ with E for the ἅμα of F, and attaches the word to the next sentence.
