divided into two parts. The first part expounds his own
philosophy and is called "the way of truth." The second part describes
the false opinions current in his day and is called "the way of
opinion."

The reflection of Parmenides takes its rise from observation of the
transitoriness and changeableness of things. The world, as we know it,
is a world of change and mutation. All things arise and pass away.
Nothing is permanent, nothing stands. One moment it is, another moment
it is not. It is as true to say of {44} anything, that it is not, as
that it is. The truth of things cannot lie here, for no knowledge of
that which is constantly changing is possible. Hence the thought of
Parmenides becomes the effort to find the eternal amid the shifting,
the abiding and everlasting amid the change and mutation of things.
And there arises in this way the antithesis between Being and
not-being. The absolutely real is Being. Not-being is the unreal.
Not-being is not at all. And this not-being he identifies with
becoming, with the world of shifting and changing things, the world
which is known to us by the senses. The world of sense is unreal,
illusory, a mere appearance. It is not-being. Only Being truly is. As
Thales designated water the one reality, as the Pythagoreans named
number, so now for Parmenides the sole reality, the first principle of
things, is Being, wholly unmixed with not-being, wholly excludent of
all becoming. The character of Being he describes, for the most part,
in a series of negatives. There is in it no change, it is absolutely
unbecome and imperishable. It has neither beginning nor end, neither
arising nor passing away. If Being began, it must have arisen either
from Being or from not-being. But for Being to arise out of Being,
that is not a beginning, and for Being to arise out of not-being is
impossible, since there is then no reason why it should arise later
rather than sooner. Being cannot come out of not-being, nor something
out of nothing. _Ex nihilo nihil fit_. This is the fundamental thought
of Parmenides. Moreover, we cannot say of Being that it was, that it
is, that it will be. There is for it no past, no present, and no
future. It is rather eternally and timelessly present. It is undivided
and indivisible. For anything to be divided {45} it must be divided by
something other than itself. But there is nothing other than Being;
there is no not-being. Therefore there is nothing by which Being can
be d