INFINITY AND ETERNITY OF ONE

 Melissus of Samos is of a far lesser stature than the other members of the Eleatic school, and even by the kindest regard he does not measure up to his teacher Parmenides. Nietzsche’s works have no mention of his name, and our History of Philosophy of choice, by Bertrand Russell, is equally silent about him. However, this man did exist, and he was a bona fide pre-Socratic, which qualifies him for at least one short entry in this section.

The usually unreliable yet absolutely indispensable Diogenes Laertius writes of him as both a considerable thinker and a prominent citizen of his native Samos, who commanded a fleet which surprisingly defeated the Athenians in 442 BC. Whether Diogenes’ account can be trusted in this case is a minor matter, as we are interested in Melissus the philosopher, and not for his military or political prowess. As for whose pupil Melissus was, Diogenes names both Parmenides and Heraclitus as his teachers. Whereas the Parmenidean connection is generally established as a fact, Melissus’ connection to Heraclitus is certainly spurious, as the biographical dates for both do not seem to add up, even by Diogenes’s own arithmetic.

Among his extant Fragments, quoted by Simplicius, here are a few interesting samples:

1. What was, always was, and always shall be. For, if it came into being, necessarily, before its generation, there was nothing; so if there were nothing, nothing at all would come from nothing. (This offhand denial of even the least possibility of creatio ex nihilo clashes with the Christian doctrine, and thus, without making a judgment as to who is right and who is wrong, one thing at least is clear that creatio ex nihilo ought not to be dismissed so lightly as something impossible and self-evidently false. Thus with the basic premise of the Melissian doctrine formulated on such rationalistic ground, we can hardly expect from Melissus any mystical solutions to the problem of the Genesis, which is of course a deficiency. As for his general usefulness, see my closing comment. Having said that, Melissus’ deficiencies may make him less interesting than the greatest pre-Socratics, yet this is not a good reason to deny him his pre-Socratic value. A collection of ancient coins may contain items of sharply unequal value, but none of them ought to be discarded merely on that comparative basis. His extant fragments, even if somewhat deficient, allow us to follow Melissus’ line of thinking, which is in itself a treasure trove for modern thinkers.)

8i. If there were many things, they would have to be such as I say the one is. For if there is earth, and water, and air, and fire, and iron, and gold, and one living and another dead, and again black and white, and all the other things which people say are real, if indeed there are these and we see and hear correctly, each must be such as we first decided, and they cannot change or become different, but each is always as it is. (We may easily challenge Melissus’ logic in these fragments, perhaps too easily, but before we dismiss it altogether, let us remember that the outward silliness of Zeno’s famous Paradoxes has never prevented them from being studied in all seriousness for well over two thousand years, admittedly putting philosophers at a considerable loss to prove that the proposition that an athletic man can never overtake a tortoise in a race, if that tortoise has been given even the slightest of handicaps over him…)

8ii. But, as we say that we see and hear and perceive correctly, and yet it appears to us that the hot becomes cold, and the cold hot, and the hard soft, and the soft hard, and the living dies and there is birth from what is not living, and all these things change around and what a thing was and what it is now are not the same, but iron, which is hard, is rubbed away by contact with the finger, and also gold and stone, and whatever seems to us to be strong, and from water come earth and stone, so it happens that we do not understand what there is.

9. So if it exists it must be one; and being one, it could not have body. If it had any thickness, it would have parts, and would no longer be one.

10. If what exists is divided, it moves: and if it moves, it would not exist.

His arguments are generally derivative from Parmenides, and, where they are original, they do not add any substance to the Parmenidean doctrine, except to assert that the One is both infinite and eternal, which has a good point, but the demonstration is faulty, thus making it demonstrably unhelpful in unraveling some of the finer mysteries within the Parmenidean puzzle.