The observation of Marbach is just and important, that the line of research which Parmenides treated as illegitimate and deceitful, but which he nevertheless entered upon, is the analogon of modern Physics. Parmenides (he says) indicated most truly the contrast and divergence between Ontology and Physics; but he ought to have gone farther, and shown how they could be reconciled and brought into harmony. This (Marbach affirms) was not even attempted, much less achieved, by Parmenides: but it was afterwards attempted by Plato, and achieved by Aristotle. Marbach is right in saying that the reconciliation was attempted by Plato; but he is not right (I think) in saying that it was achieved by Aristotle--nor by any one since Aristotle. It is the merit of Parmenides to have brought out the two points of view as radically distinct, and to have seen that the phenomenal world, if explained at all, must be explained upon general principles of its own, raised out of its own data of facts--not by means of an illusory Absolute and Real. The subsequent philosophers, in so far as they hid and slurred over this distinction, appear to me to have receded rather than advanced.] [Side-note: Parmenides recognises no truth, but more or less probability, in phenomenal explanations.--His physical and astronomical conjectures.] Yet though thus passing from Truth to Opinions, from full certainty to comparative and irremediable uncertainty,[70] Parmenides does not consider all opinions as equally true or equally untrue. He announces an opinion of his own--what he thinks most probable or least improbable--respecting the structure and constitution of the Kosmos, and he announces it without the least reference to his own doctrines about Ens. He promises information respecting Earth, Water, Air, and the heavenly bodies, and how they work, and how they came to be what they are.[71] He recognises two elementary principles or beginnings, one contrary to the other, but both of them positive--Light, comprehending the Hot, the Light, and the Rare--Darkness, comprehending the Cold, the Heavy, and the Dense.[72] These two elements, each endued with active and vital properties, were brought into junction and commixture by the influence of a Dea Genitalis analogous to Aphroditê,[73] with her first-born son Eros, a personage borrowed from the Hesiodic Theogony. From hence sprang the other active forces of nature, personified under various names, and the various concentric circles or spheres of the Kosmos. Of those spheres, the outer-most was a solid wall of fire--"flammantia moenia mundi"--next under this the Æther, distributed into several circles of fire unequally bright and pure--then the circle called the Milky Way, which he regarded as composed of light or fire combined with denser materials--then the Sun and Moon, which were condensations of fire from the Milky Way--lastly, the Earth, which he placed in the centre