“… Just one story of a route
is still left: that it is. On this there are signs
very many, that what-is and is ungenerated and imperishable,
a whole of a single kind, unshaken, and complete.
Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since it is now, all together one,
holding together: For what birth will you seek out for it?
How and from what did it grow? From what-is-not I will allow
you neither to say nor to think: For it is not to be said or
thought
that it is not. What need would have roused it,
later or earlier, having begun from nothing, to grow?
In this way it is right either fully to be or not.
Nor will the force of true conviction ever permit anything
to come to be
beside it from what-is-not. For this reason neither coming
to be
nor perishing did Justice allow, loosening her shackles,
but she holds it fast. And the decision about these
things is in this:
is or is not; and it has been decided, as is necessary,
to leave the one unthought of an unnamed for it is
not a true
route, so that the other is and is genuine.
But how can what-is be hereafter? How can it come to be?
For if it came to be, it is not, not even if it is sometime going
to be.
Thus coming-to-be has been extinguished and perishing
cannot be investigated.
Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike,
and not at all more in any way, which would keep it from
holding together,
or at all less, but it is all full of what-is.
Therefore it is all holding together; for what-is draws near
to what-is.
But unchangingin the limits of great bonds
it is without starting or ceasing, since coming-to-be and
perishing
have wandered very far away; and true trust drove them away.
Remaining the same and in the same by itself it lies
and so remains there fixed; for mighty Necessity
holds it in bonds of a limit which holds it in on all sides.
For this reason it is right for what-is to be not incomplete;
for it is not lacking; otherwise, what-is would be in want of
everything.
What is for thinking is the same as that on account of which
there is thought.
For not without what-is, on which it depends, having been
solemnly pronounced,
will you find thinking; for nothing else either is or will be
except what-is, since precisely this is what Fate shackled
to be whole and changeless. Therefore it has been named all
things
that mortals, persuaded that they are true, have posited
both to come and to be and to perish, to be and not,
and to change place and alter bright color.
But since the limit is ultimate, it is
complete
from all directions like the bulk of a ball well-rounded from
all sides
equally matched in every way from the middle; for it is
right
for it to be not in any way greater or lesser than in another.
For neither is there what-is-not–which would stop it from
reaching
the same–nor is there any way in which what-is would be
more than what-is in one way
and in another way less, since it is all inviolable;
for qual to itself from all directions, it meets uniformly
with its limits.
At this point, I end for you my reliable account and thought
about truth. From here on, learn mortal opinions,
listening to the deceitful order of my words.
For they established two forms to name in their judgements,
of which it is not right to name one–in this they have gone
astray–
and they distinguished things opposite in body, and
established signs
apart from one another–for one, the aetherial fire of flame,
mild, very light, the same as itself in every direction,
but not the same as the other; but that other one, in itself
is opposite–dark night, a dense and heavy body.
I declare to you all the ordering as it appears,
so that no mortal judgement may ever overtake you.”
Tag: PARMENIDES OF ELEA
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Parmenides of Elea
ENTRY LEVEL 