“For as in each man there still is in his dispersive limbs an intermingling, So is the understanding of man; for that Which is thought by men, is the nature of the limbs, Both in one and all; for thought is indeed the most.”[56] He thus takes sensation and thought to be the same, and makes remembrance and oblivion to arise from these through mingling them, but whether in the intermingling they take an equal place, whether this is thought or not, and what condition this is, he leaves quite undetermined. But that he ascribes sensation to the opposites in and for themselves is clear, because he says: “The dead do not feel light or warmth or hear voices, because the fire is out of them; they feel cold, stillness and the opposite, however, and, speaking generally, each existence has a certain knowledge.” In fact, this view of Parmenides is really the opposite of materialism, for materialism consists in putting together the soul from parts, or independent forces (the wooden horse of the senses). 3. MELISSUS. There is little to tell about the life of Melissus. Diogenes Laertius (IX. 24) calls him a disciple of Parmenides, but the discipleship is uncertain; it is also said of him that he associated with Heraclitus. He was born in Samos, like Pythagoras, and was besides a distinguished statesman amongst his people. It is said by Plutarch (in Pericle, 26) that, as admiral of the Samians, he gained in battle a victory over the Athenians. He flourished about the 84th Olympiad (444 B.C.). In regard to his philosophy, too, there is little to say. Aristotle, where he mentions him, places him always with Parmenides, as resembling him in mode of thought. Simplicius, writing on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 7 sqq.), has preserved several fragments of his prose writings on Nature, which show the same kind of thoughts and arguments as we find in Parmenides, but, in part, somewhat more developed. It was a question whether the reasoning in which it is shown that change does not exist, or contradicts itself, which, by Aristotle in his incomplete, and, in some parts, most corrupt work on Xenophanes, Zeno, and Gorgias (c. 2.), was ascribed to Xenophanes, did not really belong to Melissus.[57]