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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. VI.————
fact of nature, but as a necessary truth of reason. Intelligence must be incompetent to think it otherwise than it is. Its negation must be a contradiction, an absurdity. Such a principle, therefore, cannot be found in the material world,—cannot be apprehended by the senses; for these might have been different from what they are, and all their intimations might have been different. So far Parmenides got. He removed the inquiry from the region of contingency into the region of necessity. But he did not shift it from the field of Being to that of Knowing.
It still related to Being—not to Knowing.7. This change was important. A great step is gained so soon as necessary, and not contingent, truth is felt to be the right object of speculative interest, and to have a paramount claim on our regard. But the revolution being incomplete—the question still being, What is?—not, What is known? the research continued to turn in a circle without making any advance. Parmenides and his school kept swimming in a fatal eddy. There is, said they, one Being in all Being, or rather in all Becoming,—a universal essence which changes not with the vicissitudes of mundane things. And this one Being, this essence of all existence, is the only true Being. But what is it, this one Being,—this universal essence? The only answer is, that it is the one being, the never-changing essence, the immutable amid the mutable, the necessary amid the