Colonel Kennepy on the Védanta System. 4.25 
PARMENIDEs was likewise a better pantheist than Spinoza, or the main- 
tainers of the system of emanation, since these declare that the divine 
nature is susceptible of mutable and varying modifications, so that it can 
appear a man, an animal, or a stone, and assume all the forms of finite 
beings, or rather can change itself into a man, an animal, or a stone.”* 
Mosueim, also, in his remarks upon the twenty-first section of the fourth 
chapter of ‘Cupwortu’s Intellectual System,” has observed, “I would, 
however, wish that no one should persuade himself that ParmENIDES was so 
insane and devoid of reason, as to suppose that all sensible objects were mere 
dreams and fallacies of the senses, and that he was of opinion that there was 
no motion, nothing produced or destroyed, but that it only seemed to 
us that such changes took place. If any man so thought, he must have also 
thought that he was not a man, but the shadow of a man. I am not igno- 
rant that most of the ancients, ArisrorLe, Sextus, and others, have thus 
explained the opinion of ParmentpEs. Cotores also, in Piurarcu, 
accuses Parmenipes of having taken away fire and water, the precipice and 
the cities, that is, that he had reduced all things in nature to the delirious 
and spectral phantasies of the sick.” ‘ ParmenipeEs not only discoursed 
with respect to such things, but also with regard to their causes and origins, 
thus reducing them to their first elements. This however he never would 
have done, had he been of opinion that we were merely dreaming and 
deceived by our senses, and that nothing of what we thought we saw had 
real existence. For what man in his senses would investigate the causes 
and reasons of a thing which he believed to have never existed.’’t 
To this objection Trzpmann thus replies, and his remarks are so appli- 
cable to the Védanticas that I am induced to quote them: ‘ What the great 
man here imputes as a fault to the philosopher of Elea, has the mis- 
fortune that it is also imputable to all idealists; and the ascribing insanity 
to them all, without exception, may readily be deemed an inconsiderate 
degree of harshness. Let it be once admitted that all which lies within the 
circuit of our experience is mere appearance, and then it is both natural to, 
and compatible with reason, to search after the grounds and principles of 
this appearance, in order to know why this appearance displays itself to us 
* TiepeMann’s “ Geist der Spekulativen Philosophie,” vol. I. p. 178. 
+ Mosnerm’s Latin translation of ««Cupwoarrn’s Intellectual System,” vol. I. p. 600, note, 
second column. 
