It will perhaps interest readers of The Monist to have before them the following attempt at an English version of the poem (or rather of the principal fragments of it that survive) in which the father of monism embodied the passion, one might almost say the fury, of his conviction that What Is is One.

The verses of Parmenides “On the Nature of Things” are remarkable for two reasons: they are the first thorough-going attempt to prove that reality is a unity, and they are the earliest expression of an idea which was to dominate philosophy with tremendous consequences for nearly two thousand years afterward.

The conclusions of the Eleatic school as to the nature of reality were too fantastic to be widely accepted; but the theory stated by Parmenides, the first

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PARMENIDES ON THE NATURE OF THINGS.

I. The Journey

And so, behind that team of sapient steeds,

On the illustrious road divine that leads

The wise world-wanderer to his heart’s desire,

The straining car that bears me onward speeds ;

On, ever on, its forerunners a band

Of Maids. The axle-tree even as a brand

Smouldered, and shrilled a music as of pipes

To the twin wheels that rac’d on either hand,

When, once again from the dim house of night

Hastening upwards to the realms of light,

The Daughters of the Sun-God cast away

Their sable kerchiefs and their heads undight.

Here stands the portal where the paths divide

Of night and day ; stony the threshold, wide

The lintel ; filled with mighty doors it is,

By which the great Avenger doth abide, –

Justice, who grasps the ever-changing key.

Her did the Maids pursuade

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