The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian city of Asia Minor, from which, being expelled, he wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest truths; and at last came to Elea, about the year 536, where he settled. The great subject of his inquiries was God himself--the first great cause--the supreme intelligence of the universe. "From the principle _ex nihilo nihil fit_, he concluded that nothing could pass from non-existence to existence. All things that exist are eternal and immutable. God, as the most perfect essence, is eternally One, unalterable, neither finite nor infinite, neither movable nor immovable, and not to be represented under any human semblance." [Footnote: Tennemann, _Hist. of Phil._, p. 1, Section 98.] What a great stride was this! Whence did he derive his opinions? He starts with the proposition that God is an all-powerful being, and denies all beginning of being, and hence infers that God must be from eternity. From this truth he advances to deny all multiplicity. A plurality of gods is impossible. With these sublime views--the unity and eternity and omnipotence of God--he boldly attacked the popular errors of his day. He denounced the transference to the deity of the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the doctrine of migration of souls. Thus he sings,-- "Such things of the gods are related by Homer and Hesiod, As would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,-- Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other." [Footnote: See Ritter, on Xenophanes. See note 20, in Archer Butler, series i. lect vi.] And, again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the Deity,-- "But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are, And have, too, a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure But there's but one God alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals, Neither in body, to mankind resembling, neither in ideas." God seen in all the manifestations of nature. [Sidenote: God seen in all manifestations of nature.] [Sidenote: He sought to create a knowledge of God.]