Parmenides, D7
“We must say and acknowledge that existence is. For existence exists.
Nothing does not exist. I implore you to think about these things.
For I may keep you from the inquiry of that first path,
But then there is the next one, about which double-headed people
Who know nothing make up stories. The inability in their chests
Drives their wandering mind. They are carried about deaf
And similarly blind, thunderstruck, those clans without judgment
Who believe that existing and not existing are the same thing
And not the same thing! The path of all things turns back on itself.”
χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ’ ἐὸν ἔμμεναι· ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι·
μηδὲν δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν· τά γ᾽ ἐγὼ φράζεσθαι ἄνωγα.
πρώτης γάρ σ’ ἀφ’ ὁδοῦ ταύτης διζήσιος <εἴργω>,
αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ’ ἀπὸ τῆς, ἣν δὴ βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδέν
πλάττονται, δίκρανοι· ἀμηχανίη γὰρ ἐν αὐτῶν
στήθεσιν ἰθύνει πλαγκτὸν νόον· οἱ δὲ φοροῦνται
κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, τεθηπότες, ἄκριτα φῦλα,
οἷς τὸ πέλειν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶναι ταὐτὸν νενόμισται
κοὐ ταὐτόν, πάντων δὲ παλίντροπός ἐστι κέλευθος.
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