It is still not quite clear, however, why he should have thought it worth while to put into hexameters a view which he believed to be false. Here it becomes important to remember that he had been a Pythagorean himself, and that the poem is a renunciation of his former beliefs. In such cases men commonly feel the necessity of showing where their old views were wrong. The goddess tells him that he must learn of those beliefs also “how men ought to have judged that the things which seem to them really are.”[459] That is clear so far; but it does not explain the matter fully. We get a further hint in another place. He is to learn these beliefs “in order that no opinion of mortals may ever get the better of him” (fr. 8, 61). If we remember that the Pythagorean system at this time was handed down by oral tradition alone, we shall perhaps see what this means. Parmenides was founding a dissident school, and it was quite necessary for him to instruct his disciples in the system they might be called upon to oppose. In any case, they could not reject it intelligently without a knowledge of it, and this Parmenides had to supply himself.[460] Footnote 459: I read χρῆν δοκιμῶσ’ εἶναι in fr. 1, 32 with Diels, but I do not feel able to accept his rendering _wie man bei gründlicher Durchforschung annehmen müsste, dass sich jenes Scheinwesen verhalte_. We must, I think, take χρῆν δοκιμῶσαι (_i.e._ δοκιμάσαι) quite strictly, and χρῆν with the infinitive means “ought to have.” The most natural subject for the infinitive in that case is βροτούς, while εἶναι will be dependent on δοκιμῶσαι, and have τὰ δοκοῦντα for its subject. This way of taking the words is confirmed by fr. 8, 54, τῶν μίαν οὐ χρεών ἐστιν, if taken as I have taken it with Zeller. See above, p. 201, _n._ 445. Footnote 460: