“These are the gates of the pathways of night and of day. Now the heavenly maidens approach the great doors, Whose lock double-turned the punishing Dice protects. To this one soft words were by the maidens addressed Subtly persuading her the barriers of oak from the gates, Now to withdraw. Yet these, Directly the yawning breadth of the doors was revealed, Drove the horses and waggon, on through the gate. The goddess received me in friendship, seized with her one hand my right, And turning towards me, she said: ‘Oh, thou, who with guides all immortal and horses, Camest here in my palace,—be welcome, young man. For no evil fate has led thee into this path, (Indeed it lies far from the ways of a man) But Themis and Dice. Now shalt thou all things explore, The heart never-flinching of the truth that persuades, The transient opinions which are not to be trusted. But from such paths keep the inquiring soul far away. On this way let not the much followed custom Cause thee to take the rash eye as thy guide, Or the confused sounding ear and the tongue. Ponder considerately With thy reason alone, the doctrine much and often examined, Which I will proclaim. For there lacks but desire on your way.’” The goddess develops everything from the double knowledge (_α_) of thought, of the truth, and (_β_) of opinion; these make up the two parts of the poem. In another fragment taken from Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 25; 19 a) and from Proclus on the Timæus (p. 29 b), we have the principal part of what is here related preserved to us. “Understand,” says the goddess, “which are the two roads of knowledge. The one which is only Being, and which is not non-being, is the path of conviction, the truth is in it. The other that is not Being, and which is necessarily non-being, is, I must tell you, a path quite devoid of reason, for thou canst neither know, or attain to, or express, non-being.” The nothing, in fact, turns into something, since it is thought or is said: we say something, think something, if we wish to think and say the nothing. “It is necessary that saying and thinking should be Being; for Being is, but nothing is not at all.” There the matter is stated in brief; and in this nothing, falls negation generally, or in more concrete form, limitation, the finite, restriction: _determinatio est negatio_ is Spinoza’s great saying. Parmenides says, whatever form the negation may take, it does not exist at all. To consider the nothing as the true is “the way of error in which the ignorant and double-minded mortals wander. Perplexity of mind sways the erring sense. Those who believe Being and non-being to be the same, and then again not the same, are like deaf and blind men surprised, like hordes confusedly driven.” The error is to confuse them and to ascribe the same value to each, or to distinguish them as if non-being were the limited generally. “Whichever