We are not, however, to suppose that Xenophanes denied entirely the existence of _plurality_. "The great Rhapsodist of Truth" was guided by the spontaneous intuitions of his mind (which seemed to partake of the character of an inspiration), to a clearer vision of the truth than were his successors of the same school by their discursive reasonings. "The One" of Xenophanes was clearly distinguished from the outward universe (τὰ πολλά) on the one hand, and from the "_non-ens_" on the other. It was his disciple, Parmenides, who imagined the logical necessity of identifying plurality with the "_non-ens_" and thus denying all immediate cognition of the phenomenal world. The compactness and logical coherence of the system of Parmenides seems to have had a peculiar charm for the Grecian mind, and to have diverted the eyes of antiquity from the views of the more earnest and devout Xenophanes, whose opinions were too often confounded with those of his successors of the Eleatic school. "Accordingly we find that Xenophanes has obtained credit for much that is, exclusively, the property of Parmenides and Zeno, in particular for denying plurality, and for identifying God with the universe."[446] [Footnote 445: Cousin, "History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 440.] [Footnote 446: See note by editor, W.H. Thompson, M.A., on pages 331, 332 of Butler's "Lectures," vol. i. His authorities are "Fragments of Xenophanes" and the treatise "De Melisso, Xenophane, et Gorgia," by Aristotle.] In theology, Xenophanes was unquestionably a _Theist_. He had a profound and earnest conviction of the existence of a God, and he ridiculed with sarcastic force, the anthropomorphic absurdities of the popular religion. This one God, he taught, was self-existent, eternal, and infinite; supreme in power, in goodness, and intelligence.[447] These characteristics are ascribed to the Deity in the sublime words with which he opens his philosophic poem-- "There is one God, of all beings, divine and human, the greatest: Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in mind." He has no parts, no organs, as men have, being "All sight, all ear, all intelligence; Wholly exempt from toil, he sways all things by _thought_ and _will_."[448] Xenophanes also taught that God is "uncreated" or "uncaused," and that he is "excellent" as well as "all-powerful."[449] And yet, regardless of these explicit utterances, Lewes cautions his readers against supposing that, by the "one God," Xenophanes meant a Personal God; and he asserts that his Monotheism was Pantheism. A doctrine, however, which ascribes to the Divine Being moral as well as intellectual supremacy, which acknowledges an outward world distinct from Him, and which represents Him as causing the changes in that universe by the acts of an intelligent volition, can only by a strange perversion of language be called pantheism.