To Melissus therefore, as to his predecessors, the world of sense was a
world of illusion; the very first principles or assumptions of which, as of
the truthfulness of the senses and the reality of the various objects which
we see, are unthinkable and absurd.
The weakness as well as the strength of the Eleatic position consisted in
its purely negative and critical attitude. The assumptions of ordinary life
and experience could not stand for a moment when assailed in detail by their
subtle analysis. So-called facts were like a world of ghosts, which the
sword of truth passed through without resistance. But somehow the sword
might pierce them through and through, and show by all manner of arguments
their unsubstantiality, but there they were still thronging about the
philosopher and refusing to be gone. The world of sense might be only
illusion, but there the illusion was. You could not lay it or exorcise it by
calling it illusion or opinion. What was this opinion? What was the nature
of its subject matter? How did it operate? And if its results were not true
or real, what was their nature? These were questions which still remained
when the analysis of the idea of absolute existence had been pushed to its
completion. These were the questions which the next school of philosophy
attempted to answer. After the Idealists, the Realists; after the philosophy
of mind, the philosophy of matter.
A History of Greek Philosophy /
THE ELEATICS /
MELISSUS
