This prejudice is apparent all through Gomperz’s _Greek Thinkers_, and seriously impairs the value of that fascinating, though somewhat imaginative work. It is amusing to notice that Brieger, from the same point of view, regards the custom of making Anaxagoras the last of the Presocratics as due to theological prepossessions (_Hermes_, xxxvi. p. 185). I am sorry that I cannot agree with either side; but the bitterness of the disputants bears witness to the fundamental importance of the questions raised by the early Greek philosophers. Footnote 937: Arist. _de Gen. Corr._ Α, 8. 324 b 35 (R. P. 193). It is true that in this passage Zeno and Melissos are not named, but the reference to them is unmistakable. The argument of Zeno against the Pythagoreans is clearly given; and Melissos was the only Eleatic who made reality infinite, a point which is distinctly mentioned. We are therefore justified by Aristotle’s words in explaining the genesis of Atomism and its relation to Eleaticism as follows. Zeno had shown that all pluralist systems yet known, and especially Pythagoreanism, were unable to stand before the arguments from infinite divisibility which he adduced. Melissos had used the same argument against Anaxagoras, and had added, by way of _reductio ad absurdum_, that, if there were many things, each one of them must be such as the Eleatics held the One to be. To this Leukippos answers, “Why not?” He admitted the force of Zeno’s arguments by setting a limit to divisibility, and to each of the atoms which he thus arrived at he ascribed all the predicates of the Eleatic One; for Parmenides had shown that if _it is_, it must have these predicates somehow. The same view is implied in a passage of Aristotle’s _Physics_.[938] “Some,” we are there told, “surrendered to both arguments, to the first, the argument that all things are one, if the word _is_ is used in one sense only (_Parmenides_), by affirming the reality of what is not; to the second, that based on dichotomy (_Zeno_), by introducing indivisible magnitudes.” Finally, it is only by regarding the matter in this way that we can attach any meaning to another statement of Aristotle’s to the effect that Leukippos and Demokritos, as well as the Pythagoreans, virtually make all things out of numbers.[939] Leukippos, in fact, gave the Pythagorean monads the character of the Parmenidean One. Footnote 938: Arist. _Phys._ Α, 3. 187 a 1 (R. P. 134 b). Footnote 939: Arist. _de Caelo_, Γ, 4. 303 a 8, τρόπον γάρ τινα καὶ οὕτοι (Λεύκιππος καὶ Δημόκριτος) πάντα τὰ ὄντα ποιοῦσιν ἀριθμοὺς καὶ ἐξ ἀριθμῶν. This also serves to explain what Herakleides may have meant by attributing the theory of corporeal ὄγκοι to the Pythagorean Ekphantos of Syracuse (above, p. 338, _n._ 794). [Sidenote: Atoms.]