 Many of Theophrastus’s points here can be traced back to Aristotle, including the identification of Parmenides’ elemental light and night as, respectively, fire functioning as an efficient principle and earth functioning as a material principle (cf. Arist. Ph. 1.5.188a20–2, GC 1.3.318b6–7, 2.3.330b13–14, Metaph. 1.5.986b28–987a2). The passage on the whole suggests that, like Plato and Aristotle, Theophrastus understood Parmenides as furnishing dual accounts of the universe, first in its intelligible and then in its phenomenal aspects.