#475 b.c.

Come, I will tell you—and you must accept my word when you have heard it—the ways of inquiry which alone are to be thought: the one that it is, and it is not possible for it not to be, is the way of credibility, for it follows Truth; the other, that it is not, and that it is bound not to be: this I tell you is a path that cannot be explored; for you could neither recognise that which is not, nor express it. For it is the same thing to think and to be. Observe nevertheless how things absent are securely present to the mind; for it will not sever Being from its connection with Being, whether it is scattered everywhere utterly throughout the universe, or whether it is collected together. It is all the same to me from what point I begin, for I shall return again to this same point.