Parmenides
(fragments from The Way of Truth)
Never will this prevail, that what is not is:
restrain your thought from this road of inquiry.
And do not let custom, based on much experience, force you along this road,
directing unobservant eye and echoing ear
and tongue; but judge by reason the battle-hardened proof
which I have spoken. Only one story, one road, now is left:
That it is. And on this there are signs
in plenty that, being, it is ungenerated and indestructible,
whole, of one kind and unwavering, and complete.
Nor was it, nor will it be, since now it is, all together,
one, continuous. For what generation will you seek for it?
How, whence, did it grow? That it came from what is not I shall not allow
you to say or think - for it is not sayable or thinkable
that it is not. And what need would have impelled it,
later or earlier, to grow - if it began from nothing?
Thus it must either altogether be or not be.
Nor from what is will the strength of trust permit it
to come to be anything apart from itself. For that reason
Justice has not relaxed her fetters and let it come into being or perish,
but she holds it. Decision in these matters lies in this:
it is or it is not. But it has been decided, as is necessary,
to leave the one road unthought and unnamed (for it is not a true
road), and to take the other as being and being genuine.
How might what is then perish? How might it come into being?
For if it came into being it is not, nor is it if it is ever going to be.
Thus generation is quenched and perishing unheard of.
Nor is it divided, since it all alike is -
neither more here (which would prevent it from cohering)
nor less; but it is all full of what is.
Hence it is all continuous; for what is approaches what is.
And unmoving in the limits of great chains it is beginningless
and ceaseless, since generation and destruction
have wandered far away, and true trsut has thrust them off.
The same and remaining in the same state, it lies by itself,
and thus remains fixed there. For pwerful necessity
holds it enchained in a limit which mens it around,
because it is right that what is should be not incomplete.
For it is not lacking - if it were it would lack everything.
The same thing are thinking and a thought that it is.
For without what is, in which it has been expressed,
you will not find thinking. For nothing either is or will be
other that what is, since fate has fettered it
to be whole and unmoving. Hence all things are a name
which mortals lay down and trust to be true -
coming into being and perishing, being and not being,
and changing place and altering bright colour.
And since there is a last limit, it is completed
on all sides, like the bulk of a well-rounded ball,
equal in every way from the middle. For it must not be at all greater
or smaller here or there.
For neither is there anythign which is not, which might stop it from reaching
its like, nor anything which is in such a way that it might be
more here or less there than what is, since it all is, inviolate.
Therefore, equal to itself on all sides, it lies uniformly in its limits.
Here I cease for you my trustworthy argument and thought
about the truth. Henceforward learn mortal opinions,
listening to the deceitful arrangement of my words.
(Compiled from texts by Plato, Sextus Empiricus, and Simplicius)
Heraclitus | main | Zeno