in which nothing could be discerned and which have nevertheless exercised a
life-giving and illumining power. For the higher intelligence of man seems
to require, not only something above sense, but above knowledge, which can
only be described as Mind or Being or Truth or God or the unchangeable and
eternal element, in the expression of which all predicates fail and fall
short. Eternity or the eternal is not merely the unlimited in time but the
truest of all Being, the most real of all realities, the most certain of
all knowledge, which we nevertheless only see through a glass darkly. The
passionate earnestness of Parmenides contrasts with the vacuity of the
thought which he is revolving in his mind.

Space is said by Plato to be the 'containing vessel or nurse of
generation.' Reflecting on the simplest kinds of external objects, which
to the ancients were the four elements, he was led to a more general notion
of a substance, more or less like themselves, out of which they were
fashioned. He would not have them too precisely distinguished. Thus seems
to have arisen the first dim perception of (Greek) or matter, which has
played so great a part in the metaphysical philosophy of Aristotle and his
followers. But besides the material out of which the elements are made,
there is also a space in which they are contained. There arises thus a
second nature which the senses are incapable of discerning and which can
hardly be referred to the intelligible class. For it is and it is not, it
is nowhere when filled, it is nothing when empty. Hence it is said to be
discerned by a kind of spurious or analogous reason, partaking so feebly of
existence as to be hardly perceivable, yet always reappearing as the
containing mother or nurse of all things. It had not that sort of
consistency to Plato which has been given to it in modern times by geometry
and metaphysics. Neither of the Greek words by which it is described are
so purely abstract as the English word 'space' or the Latin 'spatium.'
Neither Plato nor any other Greek would have spoken of (Greek) or (Greek)