ble, void, and incorporeal; so that by this means, even
with you also, all comes to be one; unless you desire, in speaking of
voidness, to use words void of sense, and to combat the ancients, as if
you were fighting against a shadow.

But these atomical bodies, you will say, are, according to the opinion
of Epicurus, infinite in number, and everything which appears to us is
composed of them. See now, therefore, what principles of generation
you suppose, infinity and voidness; one of which, to wit, voidness, is
inactive, impassible, and incorporeal; the other, to wit, infinity, is
disorderly, unreasonable, and unintelligible, dissolving and confounding
itself, because it cannot for its multitude be contained, circumscribed,
or limited. But Parmenides has neither taken away fire, nor water, nor
precipices, nor yet cities (as Colotes says) which are inhabited as
well in Europe as in Asia; since he has both constructed an order of the
world, and mixing the elements, to wit, light and dark, does of them and
by them arrange and finish all things that appear in the world. For he
has written very largely of the earth, heaven, sun, moon, and stars, and
has spoken of the generation of man; and being, as he was, an ancient
author in physiology, and one who in writing sought to save his own
and not to destroy another's doctrine, he has overlooked none of the
essential things in Nature. Moreover, Plato, and before him Socrates
himself, understood that in Nature there is one part subject to opinion,
and another subject to intelligence. As for that which is subject to
opinion, it is always unconstant, wandering, and carried away with
several passions and changes, liable to diminution and increase, and to
be variously disposed to various men, and not always appearing after one
manner even to the same individual. But as to the intelligible part, it
is quite of another kind,

Constant, entire, and still engenerable,

as himself says, always like to itself, and perdurable in its being.

Here Colotes, sycophant-like, catching at his expressions and drawing
the discourse from things to words, flatly affirms that Parmenides in
one word destroys the existence of all things by supposing ENS (or that
which is) to be one. But, on the contrary, he takes away neither the one
nor the other part of Nature; but rendering to each of them what belongs
to it and is convenient for it, he places the intelligible in the idea
of one and of "that whi