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EARLY PHILOSOPHERS I55 had an enormous public, and stood in the central fortress of the poetic religion. From this vantage-ground Xeno- phanes denounced the 'lies' of Homer and Hesiod, and preached an uncompromising metaphysical monotheism. There was One God, not man-shaped, not having parts, infinite, unchanging, omnipresent, and all of him con- scious. He is One and the Whole. He is really, perhaps, Anaximander's Infinite robbed of its mobility ; he is so like the One of Parmenides that tradition makes Xenophanes that philosopher's teacher, and the founder of the Eleatic School. At Ephesus near Miletus, in the next generation to Anaximenes, the problem of the Milesians receives an entirely new answer, announced with strange pomp and pride, and at the same time bearing the stamp of genius. *M// things move and nothing stays," says HERACLtxus ; "rt// things flow." And it is this Flow that is the real secret of the world, the ' Arche ' : not a sub- stance arbitrarily chosen, but the process of change itself, which Heraclitus describes as 'Burning' {irvp). Heraclitus writes in a vivid oracular prose ; he is obscure, partly from the absence of a philosophic lan- guage to express his thoughts, but more because of the prophet-like fervour of expression that is natural to him. It must also be remembered that in an age before the circulation of books a teacher had to appeal to the memory. He wrote in verses like Xenophanes and Parmenides, or in apothegms like Heraclitus and Demo- critus. The process of change is twofold — a Way Up and a Way Down — but it is itself eternal and unchanging. There is Law in it ; Fate, determining the effect of every cause ; Justice, bringing retribution on every offence.