Par Men Ides and the Beliefs of Mortals - W.R. Chalmers

8/2/2019 Par Men Ides and the Beliefs of Mortals - W.R. Chalmers

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Parmenides and the Beliefs of Mortals

Author(s): W. R. ChalmersSource: Phronesis, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1960), pp. 5-22Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4181660 .

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ParmenidesndtheBeliefsof Mortals'W. R. CHALMERS

T HE THREE main parts of Parmenides'poem are apt to receive ratherunequal treatment at the hands of many historians of AncientPhilosophy. From early times there has been a tendency to con-

centrate attention upon the Way of Truth and rather to neglect thePrologue and the Beliefs of Mortals. The Prologue is frequently explain-ed as an interesting example of archaic imagination intruding into aphilosophical work, while the last part has been interpreted in a varietyof ways. Some scholars have suggested that in it Parmenides is merelyrepresenting the views of other thinkers, while others believe that itdoes in some way describe Parmenides' own thought. There is as yetno general agreement about what the relationship is between theBeliefs of Mortals and the Way of Truth. Both are however parts of thesame poem, and it is reasonable to infer that a solution of this problemof their inter-relationship will throw light on the correct interpretationof the whole work. It is the purpose of this paper to consider in par-ticular the last part of the poem and to try to establish what its status isin the context of the whole work.

It is useful, at the beginning of any discussion of Parmenides, to re-member that he wrote in verse by his own choice. He may indeed havefollowed Xenophanes in writing in hexameters, but his poem with itsHesiodic flavour, clearly owes very little else to Xenophanes. It is mostprobable that he chose the medium of verse for two reasons; firstly,because he looked on philosophy as almost a religious activity,' and theattainment of truth as a kind of revelation which had to be described inappropriate language, and secondly, as Cornford once suggested,3 be-cause he desired that his work should be more easily committed tomemory. In this way its meaning could become more clear when thestudent was able to reflect upon it and to compare various parts of it.I believe that this suggestion is a very useful one, and it is almost estab-lished by the number of occasions on which Parmenides seems to repeatphraseology and images in a significant fashion.I This paper is substantially he same as one deliveredbefore the ClassicalAssociationof EnglandandWalesin Nottingham n April I 958. I amvery gratefulto ProfessorJ. B.Skemp for some valuablesuggestions.'2Cf. C. M. Bowra, The Proem of Parmenides,ClassicalPhilology,XXXII, 2 (1937),pp. 97-1I2, p. II2.a F. M. Cornford,FromReligion to Philosophy, (London, 191 2), p. 22C.

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It maybe usefulto beginby consideringbrieflythe outlineof the work,and noting the ways in which reference is made to its final part. In thePrologue, Par-menides ives a graphic allegorical description of hisintellectualjourney. Like Phaethon,he is takenin a chariot, guidedbyDaughters f theSun;andthis conveys him, presumably rom darkiiess,to the gates of Night and Day. Here his immortalcompanionsprevailupon LMx77rwo?vtotvoqAvengingJustice to open the gates and allowthem to enter the realmsof light, where theyare givena kindlywelcomeby a goddesswho then addressesParmenides.We maynote that Bowrahasshown 1 that the imageryadoptedhas close parallels n the work ofPindarand other contemporarypoets, and he suggestsmost reasonablythat Parmenides ntendsby this Prologue to show that he speakswiththe specialauthorityof one who has consortedwith a goddess.The words used by the goddessare important,particularlyn the lineswhich close this fragment:

72&?v'A?nOl-4q eUxux?'oq arpeq jtopO)Le u[7~ ue L,e PpoTCov86Eocq, rocZ io'x gvt 7rat;r cB0


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Burnet, who translated the two lines: "Yet none the less shalt thoulearn these things also, - how passing right through all things one shouldjudge the things that seem to be." We must note the following points.(a) The elision of the -cL of an Aorist Infinitive, as Diels himself ad-mitted, is only found in Greek in one or two passages in Comedy. (b)aox[.tcqtLappearselsewhere only in two fragmentsof Sappho,and aoxL[uo.,another possibility, occurs only in Theocritus (once) and in an imitationof a letter of Pherekydes in Diogenes Laertius. (c) To make sense onehas to disregard the past tense of xpnv and translate it virtually as apresent tense - 'You must' or 'one must.' (d) Even Burnet 1 could notdecide whether avoat was to be taken with 8oxt,LuCaoctr 'roc oxoi3v'xfrom which it is rather harshly separated, and his translation does notmake it clear whether he takes ntp&vtx with tocoxo&vTa or with acunderstood. Surely on grounds of Greek alone, an alteration whichintroduces so many improbabilities and ambiguities is to be rejected.It has rightly been attacked by many scholars including Wilamowitz,Reinhardt and Verdenius, and Kranz in the latest edition of Diels'Fragmente der Vorsokratikerrestored the old reading.2 Verdenius translates&AOXL,ts 'in an acceptable fashion,' and this is, I think, quite likely.It is hard to establish the exact sense of &c v'cxm6q6Cv'txirptvroc,but itimplies that the things that seem had to pass through or permeate eitherAll or Everything; I rather favour the former.This passage is of crucial importance. The adverbial reading impliesthat the goddess herself is promising to give an account of the origin ofBeliefs. On the other hand Diels' apostrophe lays the poem open totheorising of many kinds. In any case, we may note that the goddessrefers quite objectively to the 'things that seem.'These lines end the fragment that contains the Prologue, and it seemsthat thereafter the goddess began to discuss the premisses which arefundamental to the Way of Truth. First she makes a statement about theways of research that can be thought of; "the one that it is, and it isimpossible for it not to be, is the way of Persuasion for it attends uponTruth, and the other that it is not, and it is bound not to be, that is away that cannot be learned, for you could not recoguise what is-not(it is not possible) nor express it" (28B2, 3-8). Later (28B6) she givesanother warning against the pursuit of the way of Not-being, and alsoagainst another Way, along which wander mortals dW86'g o'uaV,1 J. Burnet, Early GreekPhilosophy', (London, 1930), p. 172, n. 3.'2Wilamowitz, Hermes, XXXIV (I899), P. 204. Reinhardt, Parmenides, (Bonn 19I6),pp. 5-io. Verdenius, Parmenides,Some Commentson his Poem, (Groningen 1942), pp.49-50. Kranz, op. cit. p. 230.

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'knowing nothing', but possibly, as Bowra suggests,' the phrase bearsthe religious connotation of 'uninitiated.' These mortals are "two-headed, for perplexity guides the wandering thought in their breasts;they are carried along, deaf and blind at once, altogether dazed - hordesdevoid of judgement, by whom it has been thought that To-be and Not-to-be are the same thing and not the same, and that of all things there isa backward-turning path."

These are difficult lines. I think that we may say to begin with that theWay of Not-being is introduced to provide a logical balance to the Wayof Being, in a fashion that is rather typical of Parmenides' style. Such is,I think, the opinion of most scholars, although Reich has argued 2 thatParmenides is here attacking Anaximander on the grounds that to Par-menides -ro&TeLpOV is the equivalentof Not-being. This is ingenious,but I think that it goes too far. The second false way was for long gener-ally taken to refer to the school of Heraclitus, and certainly the sentenceabout Being and Not-being does remind us of Heraclitus' nQtoriousstyle, while the 7t:(v'Tpo7rto x?XeuOoqmight reasonably be taken as areference to the Upward and Downward Paths. Reinhardt arguedagainst this view 3 and maintained that Parmenides could hardly havebeen familiar with the work of Heraclitus. Reich 4 believes that it is areference to the Pythagoreans, and that it is particularly directedagainst the theory of 7atoLyyeveaot.One could produce an even strongercase than that propounded by Reich if one could be sure that thePythagoreans at this time held the view that the One grew by inhalingthe Void - or Not-being. The passage could of course refer to philo-sophers like the Milesians who, as Cornford remarks,5 confused theinitial state of things with the permanent ground of Being. Lastly itcould apply to ordinary human beings who believe in Change as a realthing. In the face of so many possibilities, it is wisest to be cautious.Parmenides may here be attacking a particular school, but if so, the wayin which the passage is introduced does not compel one to hold thatthe members of that school are necessarily identical with the P3poro(fthe last part of the poem.1 op. cit. pp. I09-II0.2 K. Reich, Anaximanderund Parmenides,Marburger-Winckelmannrogramm1950/51,pp. 13-i6, p. I5.a op. cit., especiallypp. 64 and i55.' K. Reich, Parmenidesund die Pythagoreer,HermesLXXXII (19S4), pp. 287-94.s F. M. Cornford,Parmenides'Two Ways, ClassicalQuarterlyXXVII 1933), pp. 97-1 l I,p. 103.8


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In the next fragment which we possess (28B7), the goddess cautionsParmenides against the way of reliance upon sense-perception, and urgeshim to judge by reason the proof which she sets forth. Then in the longfragment 8, she describes the essential nature of What-is. This partmight be summarised as follows. (a) What-is neither came into being,nor will it pass away. (b) It is continuous and indivisible. (c) It is amotionless whole. Then comes a rather difficult passage which tells usat least that there is a necessary connexion between Thought and Beingand which contains the statement; "therefore all things which mortalshave established, believing them to be true, will be but a name -Becoming and Perishing, Being and Not-being and change of positionand alteration of bright colour" (28B8, 38-41). Lastly,What-is is limited,like the mass of a well-rounded acpoc-poc,nd it is fully and uniformly real.In this part, the important point for our discussion is that rational thoughtcan only be directed towards What-is, and in comparison with it, the ob-jects of sense-perception are merely a name, not capable of being thought.

It is fortunate that at the end of this fragment we have preserved forus the passage which marks the transition from the Way of Truth to theWay of Opinion. "Herein I end my trustworthy speech and thoughtabout Truth. Learn now the Beliefs of Mortals, listening to the deceptiveorderingof my words" (28B8, So-g2). On this passageSimpliciushas avery useful comment (28A34). He says that the goddess's account isdeceptive, not because it is false purely and simply, but because it hashere passed from intelligible truth to the sensible which appears to beand is the object of opinion.

There follow the opening lines of the Beliefs part which state thatmortals have decided to name two forms, the ethereal flame of Fireand its opposite Dark Night, and the fragment ends;

'rov ao eyx tcxoasJov eOtXTOT7COVroxT Es, ov um 7M're aTE e 3poTCOv s(', napeX&raa. (28B8, 6o-6X). Herethe word eoLx6to is difficult. It is often translated as 'apparent' or'probable', but Verdenius points out I that the goddess could hardly say,"I impart to you something unreal or probable, that you may surpassall"; and so, citing parallels from Homer,2 he suggests the translation'as is proper.' We might therefore render the passage: "I tell you thewhole system as is proper, that so no thought of mortal man shall everoutstrip you. "

The last part of the poem has been transmitted to us in only a fewrather sketchy fragments, but enough survives to show that it propound-Iop. cit. p. SI. 2 e.g. Od. III, I 24-5.

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ed a systemin which the phenomenaof heavenandearth were deducedfrom the mixture of two primaryelements, Fire and Night. It is clearthat this partof the poem containedviews on cosmology anda kind ofTheogony, and we must note that the descriptionis given by the god-dess in the indicativemood, as a matter of fact, and that she uses suchphrasesas "Youwill know." Although t must be admittedthatthe state-ments madeabout the Way of Truth seem at firstsight to precludethepossibilityof attachingmuch importanceto the Beliefsof Mortals, thefact that the third partof the poem is put by Parmenidesnto the mouthof the goddess, and that she says that it is necessary for him to learnabout it, indicatethat it cannot be ignored.We are given someassistance n our enquiryby the factthat in additionto the internalevidence suppliedby the poem, we can also make use ofthe testimony of writers in antiquitywho had the advantageof beingable to studythe whole work. The most importantof these is Ar-istotle,who says in the Metaphysicsthat Parmenides,"beingobliged to followphenomena,and believing that while only the one exists according toreason, but more than one according to our sensations, posited twofirstprinciples, the Hot and the Cold, that is, Fire andEarth."Aristotle'sconfusion about the two first principles throws some doubts on hisreliability on this point, but it is at least clear that he assumed hat theBeliefs represented Parmenides' own ideas and that in a sense theycomplemented the Way of Truth. Similar views are expressed byTheophrastus ndPlutarch,2and Plotinusobserves in the FifthEnneadthat "withall his affirmationsof Unity, Parmenides'own writings layhim open to the reproachthat his unity turnsout to be a multiplicity".We have alreadyhad occasion to refer to the remarksof Simpliciusonthis topic.

In moderntimes theproblem has been widely discussed,and a bewil-dering varietyof solutions propounded.Manyscholarshave adoptedtheapostropheof Diels and virtuallydisregarded he ancientcommentators.Diels himself suggested that the Beliefs of Mortals constitute a sum-maryof the ideas of other people, and that they are includedby Par-menides in order to arm his disciples againstpossible attacks. Burnetbelieved more specifically that it wvas n expose of the theories of the1 A 5, 986b27-34. (DK 28A24).2 DK. 28A7 and 28A34.I Enn. V, I, 8. I have made use of MacKenna's translation.4 op. cit. p. 63.5 op. Cit, pp. i82-18S.10


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Pythagorean school, the school from which Parmnenideshad himselflearned much, and which was likely to provide the most formidablecritics of his own system. It is very difficult to establish the chronologyof Pythagorean ideas, but it seems fairly clear that although they didspeak in terms of a dualism of the Limit and the Unlimited, and didconstruct tables of pairs of opposites, the particular pair Fire and Nightdoes not feature in any Pythagorean work. Moreover some of the astro-nomical details given in the last part of the poem were looked on inantiquity as being Parmenides' own ideas, - and this is a point whichhelps to refute Diels' theory as well as Burnet's. More cogent is the factthat, as we shall see, the phraseology and imagery of the Way of Truthare sometimes echoed in the Beliefs of Mortals. This would be point-lessly confusing if this last part were merely a summary of the views ofother people. There seem moreover to be links between the Prologueand the Beliefs. Lastly one might ask why Parmenides should have foundit desirable to put the views of other people into the mouth of the samegoddess who initiated him into the Way of Truth, and why she shouldconsider it necessary for him to learn from her what he might reason-ably have been expected to know already.

I think that we may disregard any theories which claim that the viewsput forward in this part of the poem are not those of Parmenides himself.There is no real evidence either to support the notion that Parmenidesis putting forward a hypothetical picture of how the Universe could beaccounted for if there were two first principles instead of one. Nor isthere any shred of evidence for the theory of Nietzsche 1 that we havehere views which Parmenides had held in his youth and subsequentlydiscarded.

There are however several scholars who accept the view that the ideasof the Beliefs of Mortals are Parmenides' own, but who neverthelessdeny that they have any positive connexion with the Way of Truth.Reinhardt 2 suggested that the goddess is here "bringing truth aboutopinion, showing the origin of all errors of the imagination. "This seenmsto give this part of the poem too restricted an aim, and as Schwabl haspointed out,3 it is difficult on this hypothesis to see why the goddessshould say as she does in Fragment i o, "You will know the nature ofAether etc.". This criticism applies also to Riezler,4 who in some ways1 Quoted by Verdenius, op. cit. p. 4S.2 op. cit. p. 2 6.3 H. Schwabl, Sein und Doxa bei Parmenides, Wiener Studien LXV1 (' 953) ,pp. 50-7 S, p. 58." K. Riezler, Parmenides,(Frankfurt 1934), pp. ',4ff., 43ff., and 6i. Cf. the review byGadamer, GnomonXII (1936), pp. 77-86.

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follows Reinhardt, particularlywhen he talks of the 7rp(cTOV +68oq in86Ec. Ingeneral his interpretation of What-is as "das Sein des Seienden",seems rather too Platonic.

Cornford states ;1 "The two parts are consecutive chapters in a singlescheme. Neither part, by itself, contains a complete system of thewhole world. The first chapter starts from the universally acceptedpremiss of cosmology - a One Being or Existent Unity - and proceeds asfar as its rational deduction will go, but no further. The second intro-duces additional factors unwarranted by reason - the two 'Forms' Fireand Night and all that follows in their train. Once these Forms are re-cognised as real and admitted to the scheme, the cosmology can be andis continued in the traditional manner; though all that follows is vitiatedby this illegitimate step." Raven 2 on this point mainly follows Cornford,but goes rather further when he says: "We should not waste time in thehopeless attempt to reconcile the two parts".

Coxon believes 3 that Cornford is wrong in thinking that the transitionfrom the World of Truth to that of Opinion is effected by leaping acrossan unbridged and unbridgeable gap. Rather we should say that Parme-nides begins all over again. Logic ends with the world of Truth and"outside it nothing rational, even by way of transition, is possible.Where logic ends, poetry or myth begins, and the break is absolute."Later in his article,4 he says; "The only connexion which Parmenidescould admit between Being and Becoming was thus the supposition thatout of the latter, under certain conditions, there can arise an apprehen-sion of the former."

A more extreme view is put forward by Guthrie, who in a workintended for non-specialists 5 maintains that "Parmenides believed thatall that men imagine about the Universe, all that they think they see andhear and feel is pure illusion." If we examine this view, we must notethat it implies that not only what men think they sense is pure illusion,but that they themselves are pure illusion. The existence of Man is notaccounted for in the Way of Truth. The only discussion of Man and hisplace in the Universe occurs in the Beliefs part, and so presumably, ifthe Way of Truth describes the sum total of reality, and all else is1 op. cit. P. 98.2 Kirkand Raven, The PresocraticPhilosophers,(Cambridge1957), p. 281.8 A. H. Coxon, The Philosophyof Parmenides,Classical QuarterlyXXVIII ( 934), PP.134--I44, especially p. 139.4p. I43.6 W. K. C. Guthrie, The GreekPhilosophersfrom Thales o Aristotle,(London19So), p. 49.1 2


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much too far, as it seems completely to mis-represent the Way ofTruth. It was rightly attacked by Herrnann Fraenkel,l and can, I think,be disregarded.

Verdenius 2 has suggested that while the Way of Truth deals withabsolute reality, the Beliefs are concerned with appearances which arereality of an inferior order. "The philosopher," he says, "knows thatchange should be judged not on its own merits, but by a higher standard.If he always keeps the real being in mind and uses it as a perpetualstandard of reference, he will be able to delimit the true nature of change.He will deal with empirical reality and try to explain it, but this in thebelief that his interpretation of this e1xG'v, this shadow of Truth, is notultinmateknowledge, but only its shadow, an exz X6oyoq,nd that nmanshould be content with this."

This notion of the relative truth of the world of mortals is also presentin the interpretation put forward by Schwabl.3 He believes that the speechof the goddess contains (a) the true way, and (b) a cosmology based onthe true way. In the Way of Truth and the first part of the cosmnology,we have elenments of criticism of other philosophers. These are inparticular the lonians who explain Coming-to-be and Passing-away asan exchange of Being and Not-being, which is 'quite irrational and un-intelligent,' and secondly it is directed against the Pythagoreans whoexplain Coming-to-be and Passing-awayas the result of a nmixtureof irre-concilable opposites. Parmenides, according to Schwabl, accepts thisto some extent but proves that the opposites Fire and Night are notBeing and Not-being in an absolute sense, but both in some degree are.This last point Schwabl bases on the fact that the phrase 7r!v 4?iXeo0rv

aNtLV e6orog in the Way of Truth (28B8, 24), is balanced in the Beliefsof Mortals by the statement

7rtV 7tXov 'axdv 4o,uo ypko; xax VUXTO &Y&v'vrouia&V UpOTrp@V, s7sL OU8CTEp( ?LE L78rV. (28Bg, 3-4). "All s fullequally of Light and dark Night, both equal, since neither has a sharein Not-being."

I find these theories of Verdenius and Schwabl attractive, although forreasons which are in some respects rather different from those whichthey put forward.

It is important to remember that in the Way of Truth, What-is islooked on as being corporeal, in the sense that it extends in space. It is,1 H. Fraenkel,Parmenidesstudien,G8tt.Nachr. 1930. pp. I53-I92, p. I8S.2 op. cit. pp. 59-60.3 op. cit.14


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I think, also clear that it is spherical. We are told that it is 'like themnassof a well-rounded ayZo&poa'28B8, 43). This sinmile has howevercaused trouble. Several scholars, including Coxon, Kranz and Gigon,lhave translated it as 'like the mass of a well-rounded sphere' and feelthat it is specially significant that it is not simply described as spherical.Coxon makes the point that FragnmentS - "It is all one where I begin,for I shall come back thither again" - shows that tlle sphere is not to betaken as a literal description of the character of Reality, but as a simileillustrating the possibility of rational thinking. I think that it is highlyprobable that the simile fulfils this function also, but I believe that weare justified in taking it as meaning 'spherical.' ayo.Zpa after all, wouldmost probably suggest a ball to Parmenides' contemporaries.2 We mustremenmber hat stereometry scarcely existed in his time, and if we alsorecall Phaedo i I oB, where Plato describes the manufacture of balls fromtwelve pieces of leather, we may feel that the epithet 'well-rounded' isfar from otiose. What is, then, is spherical, extending in space, and wemay infer from the two passages quoted together above,3 that the Worldof Belief occupies the same space.

Now if two things occupy the same space simultaneously, it suggeststhat they are, at least in one respect, the same thing, although perhapsviewed from different aspects. For example it might be said that abottle contains a pint of water, while a scientist might say that the samebottle contains x atoms of Oxygen and 2x atonms of Hydrogen. Hisdescription would have the advantage that it would continue to be trueeven if the contents of the bottle were converted into ice or steam. Butfundamentally both statements would be describing the same thing,although the description, 'a pint of water,' might hold good for a lesserperiod of time than that of the scientist.

I would suggest that Parmenides' reasoning was not dissimilar, andthat in his poem he shows us what is fundamentally the same Universe asviewed by a goddess in the Way of Truth and by mortals in the Way ofOpinion. We must establish what the essential difference is betweentheir two points of view. The distinction between the two parts couldbe variously described. The Way of Truth, it could be said, deals withthe world of reality, rationality and intelligibility, while the World ofBelief on the other hand is not-real, irrational (or as Coxon suggests 4I Coxon, op. cit. p. i4o; Kranz, DK. p. 238, and Gigon, Der Ursprungder GriechischenPhilosophie,Basel 194.5), p. 268.2 This point is also made by Jameson, op. cit. p. IS, n. 3.ap. X6.4Op. cit. P. 14.3.

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a-rational), and knowable only by means of the senses. All thesedistinctions are, I think, implied by the poem; although the use of theword vosZv n these two parts of the work suggests that the distinctionbetween intellect and sensation may not have occupied the foremostplace in Parmenides' thought.

I wish to put forward the suggestion that the basic distinction betweenthe two Worlds is the distinction between Eternity and Time. At thevery beginning of the Way of Truth we are told that What-is is ayevMyovXXOt &wAeOpov 'uncreated and indestructible' (28B8,3), and a linefurther on we are told that oua' iToT' VOv8'W g 7roit5, Vev V 4OfOU7t&v,Mv,auveye', 'It was not, nor will it be, for it is now, all at once, one,continuous' (8, g-6). The phrase oA8' nor'0 jvo'u' C'aroL, bret vUv a-rLvis one of the first clear statements of the concept of Eternity in Greekphilosophy, and it is one on which Plato in the Timaeuscannot improve.'It is therefore the eternity of What-is to which Parmnenidesirst drawsour attention. On the other hand, when the goddess speaks of thethings which mortals wrongly assume to be true, the first things shementions are yLtyveacxtO xmcx6?)XuaOaLbecoming and perishing'(2 8B8, 40), which contrast neatly with the forrmery v-qrov xawcoxeOpovand are clearly the attributes of things in Time.The goddess is herself eternal. This is, I think, proved by the fact thatthe eternal What-is is held in place by the divine powers A&x, MoZpa nd'AvayxX71,which shows that what one might call the 'basic' divine powersof the poem are themselves eternal, and Parmenides' anonymous divineinformant clearly belongs to this category. The Olympian gods wereimmortal, but they had been born. It may have been Xenophanes whofirst described the gods as eternal rather than immortal, but unfortuna-tely we cannot be entirely certain about the relative dating of Parme-nides' poem and the later work of Xenophanes.2 In contrast to the eter-nal goddess, Ppo'rotare simply mortals who come-to-be and pass-awayin Time.

Such a contrast between human beings and divine powers is almost1 Much is sometimes made of the fact that Plato's formula (Tim. 37e) omits the v5v, andthis is interpreted e.g. by Cherniss (Journal of Hellenic Studies LXXVII, (1957), Part I,p. 22, n. 46) as an implied criticism of Parmenides' formula. I do not think that this isthe case. The la-t of Parmenides is in the eternal present, and the vi5v too is surelytimeless. Parmenides' phrase, incidentally, sounds very like a criticism of Heraclitus'statement (22B30) &aXv &d xcxt ga'tv xxl 9aS'L niJp &C(?dOv..2 For a recent discussion of this problem see H. Thesleff, On dating Xenophanes,CommentationesHumanarumLitterarumXXIII, 3 (Helsingfors 1957) pp. 1-22. Cf. Gigon,op. cit. p. 194.i 6


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foreshadowed by the Homeric distinction between 'what the gods call'and 'what men call,' and Bowra has shown 1 that it is not without paral-lel in the literature of Parmenides' own time. It would therefore pro-bably be quite comprehensible to Parmenides' contemporaries. More-over such a contrast would be quite a natural one for Parmenides tomake. He may well have felt that many of his philosophical predecessorshad failed to distinguish between what is constant in change and what isthe original stuff out of which things have developed.

In the central part of the poem, then, Parmenides' eternal goddess istelling us in propria persona about what is eternally. It is clear that shebelieves that only statements about What-is can be described as true.The Way of Truth is a description of eternal Being. Any statement whichdoes not relate to what-is must therefore fall short of truth, althoughthis does not exclude the possibility of it being, shall we say, 'valid' inTime. Truth alone has the quality of 'Persuasion,' which attends uponTruth (28B2, 4), but in the statements of mortal men about temporalthings, there is no 7r(atL &?XO6c 28B1,3o).

It is, I think also correct to say that only What-is can rightly be named.We may infer this from the fact that the Way of Not-being is described(28B8, 17-1 8) as being a6v6ono Mv'U,o4oi0 yop a ra'Lv oo)'unthinkable and nameless for it is no true way.' As in the context ofthe Way of Truth, only What-is is thinkable, it is probable that onlyWhat-is can properly be named as well. This would explain why, alittle later in the Way of Truth, we are told that 'all those will be amere name which mortals laid down believing them to be true, cominginto being and perishing, being and not being, change of place andvariation of bright colour.' (2 8B8, 3 8-4 I) A name which does not relateto What-is renmains nly a name from the point of view of Truth.

Naming also features in the first few lines of the Beliefs part of thepoem. "For mortals made up their minds to name two forms xxv [.toxv

?xpew alrV- eV 16 7re-nCV-VOVL eL5LV" (28B8, 53-4). These last fewwords have been variously translated. Burnet 2 and others who believethat the last part of the poem is a statement of the beliefs of other people,and those who believe that Fire and Night can be equated with Being andNot-being, have translated them as meaning 'one of which they shouldnot name' - for which one would of course have expected zTrEpV.Cornford 3 iS, I think, right in taking them as meaning 'of which theyshould not name one' - in the sense of 'even one,' because of courseneither form fully is. Other explanations have been put forward, for

op. cit. PIo. 2 p. cit. p. I76. a op. cit. pp. 108-iog.2 '7


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example by Verdenius,' but Cornford's is the simplest and at the sametime the most satisfactory. It is in naming the two forms, and in thustreating them as though they possessed absolute reality that mortals havegone astray.

One might feel that this last passage provides evidence against theview that Fire and Night have even relative reality. They appear to beintroduced as the result of an arbitrary act of mortals, and so to haveonly a subjective kind of existence in the minds of men. This is, I admit,rather a difficulty, but I think that an explanation can be given. Theeternal goddess is quite at home talking about real eternal Being, butshe must exercise particular caution when talking of temporal things inorder to make sure that her hearers will not fall into the error of assign-ing to these things in Time a value which is appropriate only to What-is.She therefore introduces her account in this way, but later changes toa more straightforward method. Luckily the passage in which the transi-tion is made has been preserved for us: "Since all things have been namedLight and Night, and things corresponding to their powers have beenassigned to each, All is full of Light and dark Night, both equal, sinceneither has any share of nothingness." (2 8Bg, I-4).

This last passage is the one used by Schwabl to establish a link betweenthe two didactic parts of the poem. The phrase -tiv 7t?ov 'a't{v isusually translated as "Everything is full of Light and Night," but this, Iam convinced, is impossible. We are told in Fragment I 2 of the exist-ence of bands of 'unmixed fire' and so, as fire is used as a synonynm orlight, it is clear that these bands at least are not full both of light andnight. Possibl) the safest translation is "It is all full of light and night,"with the ir&v n a predicative position, but I rather wonder, from thefrequency with which this phrase wn&va'rtvoccurs, whether niv nmaynot be used to mean All, as an equivalent of What-is. The definite articlenmighthave been omitted by Parmenides because mention of 'the all'almost implies the possibility of the existence of 'the half' and so on,and one cannot have a piece of what is indivisible. This is only a sugges-tion for which I can find no real evidence, but if it were correct itwould help us with the translation of 8tL 7Tovrk 7rcvxz 7cpwvrcx inFragment 1,32 2 It would suggest that the things that seemn, like tra-vellers, pass through What-is.

In that passage the word Xpi;voccurs and the whole passage seems tomean that the goddess was telling Parmenides "how it was necessary1 op. cit. p. 62.2 This is discussedby Diels, Lehrgedicht,p. 6o-6 i. It is interestingto note that Heracli-i 8


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for the things that seem to be in an acceptable fashion." This passagehelps us to answer another question that must occur to us. "What isthe 'efficient cause' of the World of Belief?" -Pv makes us think auto-matically of Ananke, and it is interesting to find that Ananke appearsboth in the Way of Truth and the Beliefs of Mortals. In the former it issaid that "Strong Necessity holds What-is in the bonds of the limit thatkeeps it back on every side", (28B8, 30-3 I), while in the latter we aretold, "You will know also the surrounding heaven, whence it sprangand how Necessity brought and constrained it to hold the limits of thestars" (28 Bi o, 5-7). Surely this echo is intentional.

The same metaphor of holding in bonds or shackles is also applied toMoira and Dike in the Way of Truth (28B8, 4-5 and 37-38), and thismay well be an indication that these are all manifestations of a singledivine power and that Parmenides' attitude is basically monotheistic.In any case we may note that divine power links the Beliefs not only withthe Way of Truth, but also with the Prologue. The daemon who "inthe middle steers all things" (28B1 2, 3) seems very close to Much-Avenging Dike who in the Prologue holds the keys of gates of Day andNight (28B i,I4). It is presumably this same daemon who in the tantali-singly brief reference in Plato's Symposium (28B1 3) "firstof all the godscontrived Love." This presumably indicates that there was a secondcategory of deities who were not eternal. It is certainly she who isresponsible for birth and the union of male and female (2 8B 2, 3-4).Of course there are at least two ways of taking this evidence. Ravensays,1 "We learn from the fact that Justice or Necessity is now (in theBeliefs) described as the cause of movement and becoming, how totallyirreconcilable are the two parts of Parmenides' poem." This may be so,but I prefer, and I think that here I am following the ancient commen-tators, to take these references at their face value, and I would suggestthat the divine power functions in a way that is in some respects reminis-cent of Plato's Demiourgos, and that it forms the unifying link in thewhole poem. There are draw-backs to this interpretation, because thepresence of divine power is assumed rather than proved, and we are notgiven any real explanation of how or why it begins to operate in Time.There is thus some justification for the theory that there is a gap betweenthe two parts, but I should prefer to say that the birth of the World oftus (22 B4I) uses the phrase6*i &xuppv-qaet&v'rcatk 7svurcavwhich would be morenatural.Zafiropoulo L'tcole tle'ate, ParisI950, p. I33) retains the 7r?p 6&a of someof Simplicius'manuscripts.This is, I think, impossibleas Parmenidesnvariablyuses theepsilon form of the presentparticipleof ctlv=..1 op. cit. pp. 284-5.

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Belief has not been registered quite in due form, but that is not the sameas saying that it is illegitimate.

One might ask how it is possible for coming-to-be and passing-away,movement and variation of bright colour, and all the other characteristicfeatures of the sensible world, to have even a relative kind of existencewithin the sanmeimits as the World of Being from which all these havebeen so rigorously excluded. This problem can, I think, be solved fairlyeasily. From the point of view of eternity, all things in the sensible worldhave a Highest Common Factor of Being, which is the sanme or all,irrespective of whether they are as light and fine in texture as Fire at theone end of the scale, or as heavy and dense as Night at the other enid. Ifone starts with the assumption that What-is is all that nmatters,all theobjects in this World of Belief lose their identity. It is not true in theParmenidean sense to say that a man is, or that a table is, because manand table are not eternal beings. Moreover there is no Not-being orVoid, and so Being, if we may call it that, extends throughout the wholesphere. iov yap 6vtL 7=rea'eL (28B8, 2k), "What-is is close to what-is'"-a rather curious statement unless one adopts this explanation. Moreoverif an object moves in space, we must remember that it is only thetemporal characteristics which nmove, and the all-pervading What-isrenmainsunaffected. It would be true to say that "The One remains, theMany change and pass. . ."

It will be clear from what has been said so far that I cannot accept theview that Fire is to be equated with Being and Night with Not-being,although it has the support of Aristotle. He states with reference to Fireand Night: "Of these he classes the Hot with what-is and its oppositewith what is-not." (28A24). The reason may well be that as Fire seemsto play the active part in the mixture of the two, while Night is passive,Aristotle may have felt that Fire was Actuality, while Night was Poten-tiality, and then transposed these terms into What-is and What-is-not.On this point, Aristotle has had many followers in modern times, Gigonbeing one of the most faithful,' but his theory is, I think, disprovedimnediately by the statement 'iTreol8t'jkrpy ?MV (28B9, 4.), themost natural translation of which is that given by Raven,2 "since neitherhas a share of nothingness."

Aristotle nmay ave been nmisledby Parmenides' discussion of how it ispossible to think in the temporal world. We are told that man's thought(Voo) depends on "the mixture of his much-wandering limbs" (orperhaps we should translate it 'organs') and that "thought is that of which1 op. Cit. pp. 2 7 I f. 2 Op. Cit. p. 282.20


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there is more" (28BI 6). Theophrastus, who quotes this fragment(28A46), makes it clear that it is a preponderance of Light or Nightwhich causes thought in Man, and he says that better and purer thoughtcomes on account of the Hot. It is not merely that a preponderance oflight in a man makes him able to perceive light; in other words it isnot simply a theory of sense-perception similar to that propounded laterby Empedocles. Apparently Light produces mental illumination as well,for Theophrastus tells us that Parmenides looked on thought and per-ception as the same thing. Theophrastus also tells us that a prepond-erance of Light brings memory, and an excess of Night forgetfulness.Vlastos has argued I that if Light predominated over Night on a ratio ofI: O, a man would have knowledge of What-is. If this were the case, itwould of course be evidence in favour of taking Fire as being somehowor other the equivalent of What-is, but I think that it can be disprovedfrom the Prologue. There the entry into the realm of Day or Lightsymbolises that Parmenides has achieved a complete state of mentalillumination. But he does not yet have knowledge. That only comeswhen the goddess bestows it upon him, but we may note that she creditshim with the possession of Xo6yo4 r Reason which will enable him tojudge the proof which she will give (28B7,s). Parmenides' mind hastherefore been prepared in the sensible world to be able to receive theTruth. It is interesting to note that this state of mind may have beentaken by Parmenides to be the result of divine favour. That at least ishow Wolf 2 interprets the lines (28BI,26-28):

e7reL UrL Gc MoZpa xocx' CpoU,rtutsIvecaOclrIv8' 686V (%yap CasT'&vOpW'it&vxrt6 7r(&aou Trdv),&XOkH)4tLq EA[X-nTE."Itis no evil Moira, but Right and Justice that sent you forth to travel

on this way. Far indeed does it lie from the beaten track of men. " Inany case, it is the goddess who bestows knowledge on Parmenides, andso in the sphere of epistemology too the gap between the two worlds isbridged by divine agency.

It is not perhaps necessary to say much about the details of the cosmo-logy offered in the last part of the poem. The main elements in it pro-bably owe much to Hesiod and Anaxinander. We may notice that,although the atc(pavat in it resemble the 'rings' of Anaximander, theword may have been chosen to recall Homer's reference (11.XVIII, 48k)to the stars -ok t' oupxvo,ev ?ap?&V(O1CL "with which the heaven is1 G.Vlastos, Parmenides' Theory of Knowledge, T.A.P.A. LXXVII (1946), pp. 66-77, p. 72.2 E. Wolf, Dike bei Anaximander und Parmenides, Lexis II, I (1949), pp. I6-24.

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crowned."It was probablya rather conservativepicture, but at the sametime antiquity did credit him with sonme nnovations, such as therecognition of the identity of the Morningand Evening Stars. Enoughremains to show that, for all its unoriginalfeatures, the system wvasParmenides'own.One final objection remainsto be met. If the poem was integratedalong the lines I have suggested, how does it happenthat the Eleaticschool seems to haveconcentratedexclusivelyon the Wayof Truth,andto havehad no regardfor the sensibleworld? I do not think that thereis a tidy answerto this, but one can easily understandwhy the epoch-making Way of Truth would monopolise attention, and it is highlyprobable that Parmenides,as a teacher, concentratedon it. AbsoluteTruth, after all, could never be found in the temporalworld, and thephilosophermust tryto transcend helimitsof theworld n which he lives.On the other hand the interpretationwhich I haveoffered might helpto explainwhy Theophrastus alled Empedoclesa C xxirxo t-of Parmenides.' Empedocles not only follows Parmenides in writingin verse, but quite often echoes his language. His theories of sense-perception are similar, and his Sphere is surely modelled on that ofParmenides. But much more important is the fact that Empedocles deniesNot-being and endows his four 'elements' with as many as possible of theattributes of the Parmenidean What-is, and frequently stresses theireternal nature. He is virtually accepting Parmenides' conception oftruth and trying to establish it in the world of physics from whichParmenides had excluded it. He also tries to account for the divinepowers whose existence Parmenides seems merely to have assumed. Itis quite possible that Empedocles was influenced by the poenmas a wholeand was endeavouring to remove the difficulties which he felt wereinherent in the philosophy it propounded.If I may try to sum up, I think that there is evidence to show that theWay of Truth and the Beliefs of Mortals discuss the same world asviewed from the point of view of Eternity on the one hand, and of Timeon the other. Truth can only relate to what is eternally, and only it canbe known. The fundamental mistake made by men is that they assumethat they can have knowledge about the world in which they live. Theymust be content with something less than knowledge in connexion withall that falls short of eternal Being. Nevertheless their world is not aworld of illusion, but is governed by the same divine forces as controlthe world of What-is. University of Nottingham.I DK. 28A9.22

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Par Men Ides and the Beliefs of Mortals - W.R. Chalmers