Either being exists or it does not exist. It has been decided in accordance with necessity to leave the unthinkable, unspeakable path, as this is not the true path, but that the other path exists and is true. {75} How then should being suffer destruction? How come into existence? If it came into existence, it is not being, nor will it be if it ever is to come into existence.... So its generation is extinguished, and its destruction is proved incredible. Nor is it subject to division, for it is all alike; nor is anything more in it, so as to prevent its cohesion, nor anything less, but all is full of being; {80} therefore the all is continuous, for being is contiguous to being. Farther it is unmoved, in the hold of great chains, without beginning or end, since generation and destruction have completely disappeared and {85} true belief has rejected them. It lies the same, abiding in the same state and by itself; accordingly it abides fixed in the same spot. For powerful necessity holds it in confining bonds, which restrain it on all sides. Therefore divine right does not permit being to have any end; but it is lacking in nothing, for if it lacked anything it would lack everything.[59] {90} Nevertheless, behold steadfastly all absent things as present to thy mind; for thou canst not separate being in one place from contact with being in another place; it is not scattered here and there through the universe, nor is it compounded of parts. Therefore thinking and that by reason of which {95} thought exists are one and the same thing, for thou wilt not find thinking without the _being_ from which it receives its name. Nor is there nor will there be anything apart from being; for fate has linked it together, so that it is a whole and immovable. Wherefore all these things will be but a name, all these things which mortals determined in the belief that they were true, viz. that things arise and perish, {100} that they are and are not, that they change their position and vary in colour. But since there is a final limit, it is perfected on every side, like the mass of a rounded sphere, equally distant from the centre at every point. For {105} it is necessary that it should neither be greater at all nor less anywhere, since there is no not-being which can prevent it from arriving at equality, nor is being such that there may ever be more than what is in one part and less in another, since the whole is inviolate. For if it is equal on all sides, it abides in equality within its limits. CONCERNING OPINIONS. {110} At this point I cease trustworthy discourse and the thought about truth; from here on, learn the opinions of mortals, hearing of the illusive order of my verses.