1 66 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



really is. Reality, she says, is uncreated, indestructible, 

 unchanging, indivisible ; it is " immovable in the bonds 

 of mighty chains, without beginning and without end ; 

 since coming into being and passing away have been driven 

 afar, and true belief has cast them away." The funda- 

 mental principle of his inquiry is stated in a sentence 

 which would not be out of place in Hegel : 1 " Thou 

 canst not know what is not that is impossible nor 

 utter it ; for it is the same thing that can be thought and 

 that can be." And again : " It needs must be that what 

 can be thought and spoken of is ; for it is possible for it 

 to be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be." 

 The impossibility of change follows from this principle ; 

 for what is past can be spoken of, and therefore, by the 

 principle, still is. 



The great conception of a reality behind the passing 

 illusions of sense, a reality one, indivisible, and unchang- 

 ing, was thus introduced into Western philosophy by 

 Parmenides, not, it would seem, for mystical or religious 

 reasons, but on the basis of a logical argument as to the 

 impossibility of not-being. All the great metaphysical 

 systems notably those of Plato, Spinoza, and Hegel 

 are the outcome of this fundamental idea. It is difficult 

 to disentangle the truth and the error in this view. The 

 contention that time is unreal and that the world of sense 

 is illusory must, I think, be regarded as based upon 

 fallacious reasoning. Nevertheless, there is some sense 

 easier to feel than to state in which time is an unim- 

 portant and superficial characteristic of reality. Past and 

 future must be acknowledged to be as real as the present, 

 and a certain emancipation from slavery to time is 

 essential to philosophic thought. The importance of 



1 "With Parmenides," Hegel says, "philosophising proper began." 

 Werke (edition of 1840), vol. xiii. p. 274. 



