But how these principles can be brought together under the causes we
have named has not been clearly and articulately stated by them;
they seem, however, to range the elements under the head of matter;
for out of these as immanent parts they say substance is composed
and moulded.
From these facts we may sufficiently perceive the meaning of the
ancients who said the elements of nature were more than one; but there
are some who spoke of the universe as if it were one entity, though
they were not all alike either in the excellence of their statement or
in its conformity to the facts of nature. The discussion of them is in
no way appropriate to our present investigation of causes, for. they
do not, like some of the natural philosophers, assume being to be
one and yet generate it out of the one as out of matter, but they
speak in another way; those others add change, since they generate the
universe, but these thinkers say the universe is unchangeable. Yet
this much is germane to the present inquiry: Parmenides seems to
fasten on that which is one in definition, Melissus on that which is
one in matter, for which reason the former says that it is limited,
the latter that it is unlimited; while Xenophanes, the first of
these partisans of the One (for Parmenides is said to have been his
pupil), gave no clear statement, nor does he seem to have grasped
the nature of either of these causes, but with reference to the
whole material universe he says the One is God. Now these thinkers, as
we said, must be neglected for the purposes of the present inquiry-two
of them entirely, as being a little too naive, viz.
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