A more subtle explanation of the difficulty commended itself to the late Peripatetic who wrote an account of the Eleatic school, part of which is still extant in the Aristotelian corpus, and is generally known now as the treatise on _Melissos, Xenophanes, and Gorgias_.[305] He said that Xenophanes declared the world to be neither finite nor infinite, and he composed a series of arguments in support of this thesis, to which he added another like it, namely, that the world is neither in motion nor at rest. This has introduced endless confusion into our sources. Alexander used this treatise as well as the great work of Theophrastos, and Simplicius supposed the quotations from it to be from Theophrastos too. Having no copy of the poems he was completely baffled, and until recently all accounts of Xenophanes were vitiated by the same confusion. It may even be suggested that, but for this, we should have heard very little of the “philosophy of Xenophanes,” a way of speaking which is in the main a survival from the days before this scholastic exercise was recognised as having no authority. Footnote 305: In Bekker’s edition this treatise bears the title Περὶ Ξενοφάνους, περὶ Ζήνωνος, περὶ Γοργίου, but the best MS. gives as the titles of its three sections: (1) Περὶ Ζήνωνος, (2) Περὶ Ξενοφάνους, (3) Περὶ Γοργίου. The first section, however, plainly refers to Melissos, so the whole treatise is now entitled _De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia_ (_M.X.G._). It has been edited by Apelt in the Teubner Series, and more recently by Diels (_Abh. der k. Preuss. Akad._ 1900), who has also given the section dealing with Xenophanes in _P. Ph. Fr._ pp. 24-29 (_Vors._ pp. 36 sqq.). He has now withdrawn the view maintained in _Dox._ p. 108 that the work belongs to the third century B.C., and holds that it was _a Peripatetico eclectico (i.e. sceptica, platonica, stoica admiscente) circa Christi natalem conscriptum_. If that is so, there is no reason to doubt, as I formerly did, that the second section is really meant to deal with Xenophanes. The writer would have no first-hand knowledge of his poems, and the order in which the philosophers are discussed is that of the passage in the _Metaphysics_ which suggested the whole thing. It is possible that a section on Parmenides preceded what we now have. [Sidenote: God and the world.]