Colonel Kennepy on the Védinta System. 1423 
decided, and rests not on the arguments resorted to for that purpose by the 
academics and sceptics. Some resemblance, however, might on a cursory 
view seem to exist between the Védinta and Eleatic schools; for Brucker 
appears to have correctly stated that the following were the metaphysical 
opinions of ParMENIDES :— 
I. Ez nihilo nil fit. 
Il. The cause of all things is one, immoveable and immutable. 
IIL. That one, therefore, is the all. 
IV. That the one is unproduced, eternal, and of a spherical form. 
V. That this one ens is alone real, and all other things are nonentities, 
and consequently non-existent. 
VI. Nothing, therefore, is generated or destroyed, but such changes are 
merely appearances which deceive us. 
Hence, several writers have maintained that the one and all of the Eleatic 
sect, was intended to apply to one sole and incorporeal deity; and M. 
Cousty, in his life of Xenopuanes, has remarked: “ Let us, therefore, not 
ascribe to XeNopHANES the work of Parmentwes; but at the same time let 
us admit that the germ of the opinions of ParMEN1pEs is contained in those 
of XenopHaNes, not in the Ionian, but in the Pythagorean part of the 
latter’s philosophy. And this is so true, that the unity, which in his succes- 
sor’s system might have been either material or spiritual, according to 
the prevalence of the Ionian or Pythagorean element, was spiritual, and 
exclusively spiritual, in the system of ParmenrpeEs; that, liable to become 
in his hands either that of the world or that of God, it has become a 
divine unity, an unity solitary and retired into itself, before which the 
world, that is to say the universe, is so little the unity and the God 
of Parmenies, that, according to Parmenipes, in proceeding from unity 
one cannot acquire the conception of the world and the universe. Far, 
therefore, from being a Pantheist, Parmenrpes distinguished the al/ from 
unity, the zo za from the zo «, that he denies the all, and plunges into 
the abyss of an absolute unity, which alone exists, an unity without 
number, existence without substance or reality, which is nothing more 
than a sublime abstraction that resembles the annihilation of existence.”* 
But M. Cousin himself makes these admissions: ‘ Let one now judge of 
the folly of those who, repeating without any historical or philosophical 
* Nouveaux Fragmens Philosophiques, p. 86. 
