From the Beginning to Plato

126 PYTHAGOREANS AND ELEATICS
(DK 28 B 7.1)
There is no problem in understanding the rejection of a way that is clearly selfcontradictory.
But why does Parmenides identify this way as the way of
‘mortals’; and are all human beings meant, or only some particular group?
From the text, the ‘mortals’ seems to be ‘people’ generally, humanity in the
mass. The ‘confused tribes’ can hardly be just a particular group of theorists. 16
Besides, the goddess associates this way with an unthinking interpretation of the
evidence of the senses, which is due to ‘habit of much experience’ and therefore
presumably almost universal among adults:
do not let the habit of much experience drive you along this way,
exercising an unexamining eye, and a hearing and a tongue full of noise;
but judge by reason the controversial test which I have stated.
(DK 28 B 7.3–6)
It seems to be, not sense perception itself which is at fault here, but people’s lazy
habits in selecting and interpreting the information given by sense perception.
The distinction had already been made by Heraclitus, who remarked: ‘Bad
witnesses to people are eyes and ears, if [those people] have uncomprehending
souls’ (DK 22 B 107). It is reason that must dictate how sense perception is to be
understood, and not the other way round.
On what grounds Parmenides took ordinary people to be enmeshed in
contradiction about reality, is not yet clear. The reference to ‘the controversial
test which I have stated’ must include the rejection of ‘it is not’. Parmenides may
see people as accepting both ‘it is’ and ‘it is not’, because, while they see the
need to assume some kind of reality, they at once contradict that assumption, as
Parmenides believes, by allowing reality to contain features which are excluded
by the test. For example, the existence of unrealized possibilities, and other things
which are yet to be expressly excluded. The ‘controversial test’ probably
includes also the negative implications of what is yet to come: the examination
of the way that says ‘it is’.
Consequences of ‘it is’
The other ways having been shown false, only the way that says ‘it is’ remains,
so that this must be true.
Only one story of a way is still left: that it is. On this [way] are very many
signs: that what is cannot come-to-be nor cease-to-be; [that it is] whole,
unique, unmoving and complete—nor was it ever nor will it be, since it is
all together now—one, coherent.
(DK 28 B 8.1–6)