ABSTRACT
The Greeks were not addicted to moderation, either in their theories or in their practice. Heraclitus maintained that everything changes: Parmenides retorted that nothing changes. Parmenides was a native of Elea, in the south of Italy, and flourished in the first half of the fifth century B.C. The doctrine of Parmenides was set forth in a poem On Nature. He considered the senses deceptive, and condemned the multitude of sensible things as mere illusion. Parmenides divides his teaching into two parts, called respectively 'the way of truth' and 'the way of opinion'. Parmenides assumes that words have a constant meaning; this is really the basis of his argument, which he supposes unquestionable. But although the dictionary or the encyclopaedia gives what may be called the official and socially sanctioned meaning of a word, no two people who use the same word have just the same thought in their minds.
