peculiarly austere moral beauty, at once self-reliant and submissive,
the aesthetic expression of which has a peculiar, an irresistible
charm, would in due time correspond.

It was in difficult hexameter verse, in a poem which from himself or
from others had received the title--Peri physeos+ (De Natura Rerum) that
Parmenides set forth his ideas. From the writings of Clement of
Alexandria, and other later writers large in quotation, diligent modern
scholarship has collected fragments of it, which afford sufficient
independent evidence of his manner of thought, and supplement
conveniently Plato's, of course highly subjective, presentment in his
Parmenides of what had so deeply influenced him.-- [39] "Now come!"
(this fragment of Parmenides is in Proclus, who happened to quote it in
commenting on the Timaeus of Plato) "Come! do you listen, and take
home what I shall tell you: what are the two paths of search after
right understanding. The one,

he men hopos estin te kai hos ouk esti me einai?+

"that what is, is; and that what is not, is not"; or, in the Latin of
scholasticism, here inaugurated by Parmenides, esse ens: non esse non
ens--

peithous esti keleuthos; aletheie gar opedei?+

"this is the path to persuasion, for truth goes along with it. The
other--that what is, is not; and by consequence that what is not, is:--
I tell you that is the way which goes counter to persuasion:

ten de toi phrazo panapeithea emmen atarpon? oute gar an gnoies