them, without anything to {69} show how the one arises from the other. It is an utterly irreconcilable dualism. It is easy to see why the Eleatic philosophy broke down in this dualism. It is due to the barrenness of their first principle itself. Being, they say, has in it no becoming. All principle of motion is expressly excluded from it. Likewise they deny to it any multiplicity. It is simply one, without any many in it. If you expressly exclude multiplicity and becoming from your first principle, then you can never get multiplicity and becoming out of it. You cannot get out of it anything that is not in it. If you say absolutely there is no multiplicity in the Absolute, then it is impossible to explain how multiplicity comes into this world. It is exactly the same in regard to the question of quality. Pure Being is without quality. It is mere "isness." It is an utterly featureless, characterless Being, perfectly empty and abstract. How then can the quality of things issue from it? How can all the riches and variety of the world come out of this emptiness? The Eleatics are like jugglers who try to make you believe that they get rabbits, guinea-pigs, pieces of string, paper, and ribbon, out of an entirely empty top-hat. One can see how utterly barren and empty this principle is, if one translates it into figurative language, that is to say, into the language of religion. The Eleatic principle would correspond to a religion in which we said that "God is," but beyond the fact that He "is," He has absolutely no character. But surely this is a wholly barren and meagre conception of the Deity. In the Christian religion we are accustomed to hear such expressions as, not only that "God is," but that "God is Love," "God is Power," {70} "God is Goodness," "God is Wisdom." Now objection may certainly be taken to these predicates and epithets on the ground that they are merely figurative and anthropomorphic. In fact, they exhibit the tendency to think non-sensuous objects sensuously. These predicates are merely picked up from the finite world and applied haphazard to God, for whom they are entirely inadequate. But at least these expressions teach us, that out of mere emptiness nothing can come; that the world cannot arise out of something which is lower and poorer than itself. Here in the world we find in a certain measure, love, wisdom, excellence, power. These things cannot spring from a source which is so poor that it contains nothing but "isness." The less can arise out of the greater, but not the greater out of the less. We may contrast Eleaticism not only with Christianity, but even with popular modern agnosticism. According to this, the Absolute is unknowable. But what the agnostic means is that human reason is inadequate to grasp the greatness of the ultimate being. But the Eleatic principle is, not that in saying "God is Love, Power, Wisdom," we are saying too little about God, and that our ideas are inadequate