On Nature: the fragments (DK 28 B)
On Nature: the fragments (DK 28 B)
Chinese content v1.3｜method version v1.3｜2026-10-23
Reading baseline: the T grade is the level of textual attribution / transmission, and A—D is the strength of interpretive argument; “a single sentence verifiable as A” does not automatically yield an overall six-position A. Quotation marks are used only where a short original phrase can be established; everything else is given as “gist of the original” rather than a fabricated word-for-word translation.
One-line placement: through the goddess’s teaching, Parmenides establishes two roads of enquiry and, around the conditions under which “is” and “is not” can be thought, spoken and argued, derives the determinations unborn, imperishable, whole, continuous and unmoved (B2, B6—8). This is a positive determination of and argument about the ground; having an answer can still belong to ③: the criterion for ③ is that the main mission deals with the ground, not that nothing is ever settled. At the same time the proem requires learning both parts, truth and mortal opinion, and from B8.50 on there is a substantial account of the cosmos and perception, which cannot be treated as an appendix to be thrown away at will. Overall ③「Inquiring into the Ground」 (C) is taken as the provisional main position, with ④「Explaining the World」 as a strong competitor; ② has grounds for the completing role of “reliable understanding”, but not enough to govern the whole poem.
Most delicate point: B3’s τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι can be given different syntactic-philosophical accounts, as “thinking and being are identical” or as “what can be thought and what can be are the same”.
B6/B8 constrain at once what can be thought and what can be said, but one cannot claim from this that the concrete acts of writing and understanding have been positively absorbed into an occurring whole prior to philosophy. B1 and B8.50—61 also require that the road of truth and the organized cosmology of mortal opinion both be taken into the task of the text.
Candidate for the ground in the final structure: the way of being and the limit of non-being, which cannot be spoken or thought, and the argument for the unborn, imperishable and whole; “being” may not be reified into an ordinary thing.
Most distinctive point: one and the same surviving long poem lays the foundation of argument on the conditions under which “is” can be thought and said, while the goddess requires learning the two paths of truth and mortal opinion. Neither the fundamental argument of B2—B8 nor the substantial cosmological account after B8 can be directly cancelled; the loss of the original poem means the weight of ③ and ④ as main task can only be judged C (E-01, E-02, E-10—20).
Final load-bearing point (in brief): “being” is not turned into a thing produced by a knower, nor is the goddess’s teaching turned into the historical author’s personal realization.
The whole archive keeps the judging of roads and the ontological argument of B2—B8, and the account of the world in B1 and the part on opinion; deleting the right judging of roads damages the teaching layer and the structural layer of the philosophical argument, but is not enough to prove independently the realized endpoint of ② (see chapter 8).
The six-position system judges only by the complete structure of thought and its main mission: ① “The Occurring Itself” requires two things to hold at once — (a) cognition and philosophy’s own expression and understanding are positively placed within a more basic occurring whole, and (b) after the function of “rightly cognizing the ground” is deleted, the complete ultimate account remains undamaged. ② “Direct Seeing of the Ground” requires that right recognition of the ground be non-deletable in the complete structure of completion; the endpoint need not keep a continuous cognitive act. ③ “Inquiring into the Ground” means taking the proposing, determining, arguing for and investigating of the ground as the main task of thought, without requiring that the author never has an answer.
④ “Explaining the World” includes the explanation and regulation of the empirical world and of ethical, political and psychological life. For ③/④ the main task is judged first, and the completion criteria of religious liberation may not be mechanically applied; the levels of break are uniformly the expression layer, teaching layer, path layer, structural layer and final layer.
T1–T4 ask only about “the reliability of the text as evidence of the thought of the object of study”; A–D ask only about “the certainty of the philosophical judgment”. A = stated directly in the original, B = a strong structural inference supported by several texts, C = at least two grounded readings, D = only a stress test. Historical testimony, modern interpretation and speeches by characters in an author’s work may not be confused.
Active around the fifth century BCE; Eleatic school; the long poem On Nature survives only in fragments, preserved through quotation by ancient authors such as Simplicius and Sextus Empiricus. Traditional numbering DK 28 B; Plato’s dramatic portrayal of him is not taken as the author’s original poem.
Specific T-grade rules in this study: although the Greek original is lost, the fragments of the poem preserved in ancient quotation and generally attributed to Parmenides are listed as T1 “fragment text”, with the later quoting authors marked at the same time; the quoting authors’ interpretations may not pass for the poet’s own words. Plato’s Parmenides is a T1 dialogue composed by Plato, and is not listed as T1 evidence of the historical Parmenides himself.
Edition note: the core sentences have been checked by DK 28 B fragment number against several online entry points for the original and English translations; no page-by-page critical edition has been obtained. The syntactic dispute over B3 and the mutual explanation with B8.34—36 must be kept at C; it cannot be claimed that all variants between DK and Laks–Most have been collated. The proportion of the surviving opinion fragments is not the original proportion of the two parts of the poem; the loss of the poem means that its total length cannot be recovered precisely.
Core question: what is the “is” that can be reliably thought and spoken? Why does the goddess still require knowledge of mortal opinions and of ordered appearances? This archive tests both the argument for the ground constructed in B2—B8 and whether the cosmology of opinion makes ④ an equally main mission; “having completed an argument about being” is not swapped for a non-deletable personal event of awakening.
1. Proem: being taught by the goddess does not mean that the historical author had a mystical experience; it requires learning truth and opinion (B1)
2. The fork of enquiry: “is, and cannot not be”, and “is not, and must not be” (B2)
3. The boundary of knowing and speaking: the relation of thinking and being (B3, B6, B8.34—36); the prohibition on asserting non-being (B7)
4. The logical unfolding: unborn, imperishable, whole, continuous, balanced, unmoved (B8)
5. The order of opinion: the two forms, fire and night, the constitution of the cosmos and perception / thought (after B8, B9, B12, B16)
6. This archive’s criterion: “how the ground is determined and argued for” is evidence for ③; the independent explanatory task of the cosmology of opinion tests ④; it is further tested whether “reliable understanding” constitutes a complete endpoint in the sense of ②, rather than judging ② merely because “knowing” appears.
E-01—E-20 below are all located by the specified position in the original; the wording is a checked gist and does not claim to be a word-for-word Chinese translation of the Greek. Each card states its range of support and its prohibited overreach.
Gist of the original: The goddess declares that one must learn “the heart of persuasive truth” and the opinions of mortals, and learn how opinions make up a world one can pass through.
Role in this archive: The two objects of learning are listed explicitly;
one should not compile only the “road of truth” and delete the road of opinion.
What it does not prove: The goddess speaking does not mean that the author attained an extraordinary realization.
Gist of the original: It sets out the road that can be enquired into, “is, and cannot not be”, connected with truth and persuasion.
Role in this archive: This defines the modal conditions of the ground that can be enquired into.
What it does not prove: “Necessary being” and the logical law of identity may not be equated without argument.
Gist of the original: The road “is not, and must not be” is unknowable; what is not cannot be known or spoken.
Role in this archive: It binds the conditions of knowing to those of being.
What it does not prove: It cannot be inferred that no negative sentence at all can be used.
Original phrase / syntactic boundary: τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι. A literal rendering may stress “the same thing can be thought and can be”, or “thinking and being are the same”.
This archive does not let any one rendering serve as an undisputed conclusion; see the limits on what can be thought and said in B6 and B8.34—36, and B3 is kept as substantive C-grade material in the ① / ② direction.
Role in this archive: The meeting point of ontology and epistemology; possibly “what can be thought and what can be are in the same place”.
What it does not prove: It cannot be directly translated into the modern idealism of “thinking creates being”.
Gist of the original: “What is absent is still firmly present to thought”; what is cannot be interrupted by scattering or gathering.
Role in this archive: Even when spatially absent, there is an account of cognitive accessibility.
What it does not prove: It cannot be inferred from presence to mind that reality is produced by thought.
Gist of the original: “It is all one to me where I begin, for I shall come back there again”: a fragmentary line about the circularity of argument.
Role in this archive: It can serve as a clue to the structure of the argument.
What it does not prove: The context is missing; it cannot be concluded that circular argument is the absolute one.
Gist of the original: “One must say and think that what is is”, followed by criticism of confused mortals.
Role in this archive: It directly constrains thought and speech to follow being.
What it does not prove: Attention should be paid to the Greek wording and variant readings; it should not be absolutized.
Gist of the original: Mortals wander, taking “is” and “is not” at once as the same and not the same.
Role in this archive: It criticizes the cognitive state of contradictory opinion.
What it does not prove: One cannot reconstruct from this precisely that the target of his criticism is Heraclitus himself.
Gist of the original: Non-being cannot be forced to be; one should judge by logos, not let the habits of the senses rule.
Role in this archive: It places rational testing at the core of enquiry into the ground.
What it does not prove: Logos is not sudden awakening or intuition apart from words.
Gist of the original: Only one road remains, “it is”; what is is described as ungenerated, imperishable, whole, balanced, unmoved.
Role in this archive: It derives the properties of what is by arguments from necessity, the strongest evidence for the main task.
What it does not prove: The single word “complete” cannot be read as the result of mystical practice.
Gist of the original: It argues against what is coming from non-being or returning to nothing; being unborn and imperishable is argued from the impossibility of non-being.
Role in this archive: An explicit ontological derivation of the ground.
What it does not prove: “There is no coming to be” is not the same as all natural empirical change being nothing.
Gist of the original: What is cannot be divided; everywhere is full of what is, and it is continuous.
Role in this archive: Whole continuity is not merely a spatial model.
What it does not prove: The image “everywhere” cannot be taken as a modern doctrine of physical fields.
Gist of the original: Statements that it is unmoved, the same, and held by the bonds of necessity / justice.
Role in this archive: It continues to unfold the constraining conditions of the same ground.
What it does not prove: Unmoved does not necessarily mean that all visible phenomena are absolutely at rest.
Gist of the original: Thinking and what is thought / what is cannot be separated; mortals give names to coming to be, perishing and change.
Role in this archive: It provides stronger internal text for the connection of thinking and what is.
What it does not prove: That “naming” is criticized does not mean that the poem’s own speech can be unconditionally deleted.
Gist of the original: It compares the balance to a perfect sphere, stressing that it is balanced everywhere, neither more nor less.
Role in this archive: It can be used to distinguish between interpretations of whole balance and of a spatial sphere.
What it does not prove: It cannot be directly claimed that Parmenides proposed a physical spherical cosmos.
Gist of the original: The goddess ends the trustworthy account of truth and turns to the opinions of mortals and the construction of the world from two forms; this transition carries a difference of epistemological level.
Role in this archive: Read with B1’s “one should learn both”, opinion has an independent task of cosmological explanation; without unconditionally raising its truth status, ④ constitutes a strong competitor.
What it does not prove: Opinion cannot be treated as a cosmology as certain as truth, still less can the original proportion of the poem’s two parts be inferred from the surviving length.
Gist of the original: All things, as people name them, are light and night, and are thought to partake of both.
Role in this archive: An actual component of the cosmology of opinion.
What it does not prove: The dualist cosmology cannot conversely be raised into the sole ground of the road of truth.
Gist of the original: In the generation of the cosmos, accounts of hot and cold, a goddess and Eros appear.
Role in this archive: It reminds us that the cosmological passages have independent substantive content.
What it does not prove: With multiple witnesses / differences in reconstruction, one may not pretend that the original order is certain.
Gist of the original: The activity of thought is connected with the mixture constituting the limbs; there is a complex relation between perception and thought.
Role in this archive: It forces the reading of “pure rationalism, with no place at all for the senses” to be narrowed.
What it does not prove: The context of the witness and the ambiguity of the words are great; a modern mind-brain identity theory may not be substituted.
Gist of the original: The coming to be, growth and passing away of things in mortal opinion: a description of the order of appearances.
Role in this archive: It helps to locate the relation of the two accounts.
What it does not prove: It cannot prove from this that being itself really comes to be and passes away.
Boundary of term use: the following Greek words and Chinese definitions are analytical tools compiled by this archive from the fragments / dialogues cited; it is not claimed that every E card supplies the full Greek original sentence for these words. The status of quotations, translation and edition disputes remain as set out in chapters 5 and 16.
τὸ ἐόν / ἔστιν (“is / what is”)｜the fundamental determination of B2, B6—8; “is” is not treated as a kind of everyday thing.
νοεῖν (thinking)｜its relation to what is involves B3 and B8.34—36; the syntactic competition is still C, and thinking is not automatically taken as a world-creating power.
λόγος (reasoning / argument)｜B7 requires disputes to be judged by reasoning; it does not set up a separate mystical knower.
ἀλήθεια (truth)｜the road of truth in the goddess’s teaching; it stands in the structure of the text together with the part on mortal opinion.
δόξα (mortal opinion)｜the level of statement at which B1 and the cosmology after B8 stand; the whole epistemic significance cannot be denied merely by the word “opinion”.
φάος / νύξ (light / night)｜the account of the world by two forms within opinion; specific variants and punctuation follow each card and the limits of collation.
What the ground / task still carries: the fork of enquiry in B2, the argumentative constraints on what can be thought and said in B6—B8, and the account of the world of appearances in B1 / after B8. The determination of being itself does not come about through the cognition of a finite subject; but the poem’s “reliable enquiry” requires judging and refusing the road of non-being. These two levels may not be merged into one.
Claims explicitly lowered: taking unexamined common opinion as the ground, taking each sensory phenomenon or each single textual voice as the highest judgment, and judging ② directly because “knowing” appears in the text.
Whether the ontological object does not wait on knowing and whether the philosopher must cognize rightly must be strictly separated; cognition having once been a necessary condition and cognition operating continuously after completion must also be separated.
(a)｜Textual facts that can stand independently: the propositions or dialogue tasks discussed at the position of each E card, allowing conditions of passage and witness; if a sentence belongs to a character or an ancient quotation, it cannot be upgraded to the author’s independent signed statement.
(b)｜Strong cross-passage philosophical inferences: B2—B8 make what can be thought, said and argued an important theme of the whole poem, and derive that “is” is unborn, imperishable, whole and continuous; “having given an answer” does not cancel this fundamental task, so it supports ③. B1, B8.50—61, B9, B12—13, B16 and B19 also constitute a fairly important account of the world of appearances; ④ is no longer an appendage that can be lightly excluded. Both the main position ③ and the competitor ④ have substantive textual grounds, and the overall judgment is C.
(c)｜Points of dispute: (1) ② — the goddess requires “learning both”, the two roads of B2 are for the sake of understanding, and B7 stipulates discerning by logos;
reliable understanding has a purpose, but whether it has a completion condition inseparable from complete ultimate realization is not stipulated consistently, explicitly and independently in the poem. (2) ① — the identity of thinking and being in B3 allows positive epistemological discussion, but does not prove a self-inclusion of philosophical speech and the hearer’s understanding as an occurrence of a more basic occurring whole, still less prove that the right discernment of roads can be wholly deleted. (3) ④ — opinion is not a blank; its degree of independence and the lost length of the original poem still leave a real C-grade ambiguity.
Strict single-function deletion test: delete only the cognitive function “the finite hearer actually obtains reliable understanding of ‘is’ and can discern truth from opinion”; keep the ontological determination of “is”, the propositional content of the argument of B8, and the cosmological content of light and night. After the deletion “is” still holds, the argumentative text can still be set out, and the description of opinion can still be written as before;
but the teaching layer of the goddess “leading one to learn to judge the roads” and the structural layer that takes right enquiry as the philosophical task break. The “structural layer” here is the cognitive-argumentative task of the whole poem, not an already proven final state of liberation / awakening. The test therefore supports the centre of gravity of ③’s work, and does not yet independently prove ②. To delete further the “relation of what can be thought and what can be” in B3 would be to change the determination of the ground itself, violating the single-function deletion method.
Uniform levels of break: expression layer = whether the propositions can be stated; teaching layer = the goddess teaching and the hearer learning; path layer = the specific steps of argument / judging the roads; structural layer = taking the arguable “is” as the main philosophical mission; final layer = an explicitly stipulated ultimate state of realization (the extant poem cannot reliably recover an additional final state of liberation). Only the structural layer is damaged; one may not claim on one’s own authority that the final layer is damaged.
B3 can be strong candidate material for a deep connection of thinking and being, and B6/B8 place universal constraints on any qualified argument, the poem itself included, constituting a fairly strong self-reflexivity. But “arguments too are bound by the rules of argument” is not the same as “the proposing, hearing and understanding of this poem are positively accounted for as part of a more basic occurring”. Even if the two are philosophically related, the surviving fragments are still insufficient to prove ①’s first condition; after cognition is deleted the teaching and task structure is damaged, so the second condition cannot pass either. ① as a whole is kept only as a D-grade stress test, not as a parallel main class beside ②/③/④.
The measure for testing ① is the same across the three archives: it is not required that the verbatim sentence “this book is occurring” appear, but there must be a positive ontological / occurring relation sufficient to cover philosophical speech and its understanding; mere self-reflexivity, a general claim within the world that “thought exists”, or negative language do not automatically pass. The second condition must also independently complete the single deletion test of right cognition of the ground.
The most delicate point is the intersection of the two feasible readings of B3, “thinking and being”, with the goddess’s double teaching of “truth — opinion”. If B3 is read as “thinking itself is the same as being”, it still cannot be inferred that the actual writing of the poem and the hearer’s understanding have been fully accounted for as positive moments of a more primordial occurring; conversely, if it is read as “what is thought must be what is”, the limits B6/B8 place on philosophical speech itself cannot be ignored. The main position ③ (C) competes at equal rank with ④; the ② reading would need additional evidence of a non-deletable function of ultimate cognitive completion, and cannot substitute the poem’s oracle or “learning to judge the roads” for it (E-01, E-04, E-07, E-14, E-16—20).
② is not excluded for lack of religious experience: the reliable judging of roads in B2 and B7 does make right understanding important; but the extant material first of all completes an argument about being, not an explicitly stipulated independent structure of completion “cognition — ultimate realization”, so ② is kept as a C-grade competitor.
Nor is ④ an irrelevant part: the goddess requires learning opinion, and provides the two forms and accounts of perception / generation; which of this and “how the knowability of the ground is established” governs the whole poem is limited by the loss of the original poem and by the epistemological status of each passage — a real C-grade boundary.
This archive does not judge the main position by degree of philosophical abstraction, length of text, sudden or gradual, whether there is religious-style experience, or the figure’s date.
Ruling on the philosophical content: ③ Inquiring into the Ground (C), the ③/④ boundary open; ② a limited C-grade competitor, ① as a whole a D-grade stress test. ③ allows the philosopher to propose positive answers, and ④ does not become mere waste paper because it is called opinion.
Points of judgment: B2/B6—B8 do not only tell one “what being is”, they also stipulate how thinkable, sayable and trustworthy argument must proceed; the cosmology in B1 / after B8 has a clear explanatory function that cannot be ignored.
Deleting the reliable judging of roads breaks only the teaching layer and the structural layer of the philosophical task, and cannot claim to have proved ②’s final-layer necessity of cognition. Different fragments constitute two fairly strong lines of mission, so ③ (C) is adopted and ④ (C) is kept.
Boundary of judgment: much of the original poem is lost, and the syntax of B3 and the length of the opinion section cannot be settled without dispute; the C above is not a postponement of judgment, but the formal structural strength the present evidence can reach.
Not inferred: that ancient quotations are the author’s original manuscript; that a character’s lines are the author’s final self-statement; that whatever text mentions “god”, “light”, “good” or “knowing” belongs to ②; that a ground higher than experience automatically belongs to ①; that truth being originally there proves that cognition can be deleted; that the main philosophical task can be replaced by the researcher’s personal uncertainty; that an enquiry in the same position can replace the texts of a particular thinker.
Highest achievement: through the judging of roads “is / is not”, it connects the conditions of what can be thought, said and argued with the fundamental determinations “unborn, imperishable, whole and continuous”, forming a highly concentrated ontological argument in Presocratic philosophy; it also leaves a cosmology of opinion that tries to explain the order of appearances. Both are achievements of the work that this archive can confirm; the full scale of its cosmology cannot be inferred from the fragments, still less can the achievement of thought be written as the author having personally completed a realization (E-02, E-07, E-10—20; overall B/C).
Strongest objection: B3 already directly proves ①: thinking and being are identical
Adjudicated reply: The relation in B3 has a key difference between “identity” and “sameness of the object of thought”; even on the strong identity reading, it only directly constrains the relation of what can be thought and what is, and does not yet give a positive mechanism of occurrence for this poem’s speech / understanding, still less prove that the goddess’s task of teaching remains complete once cognition is deleted. So ① is D-grade pressure, and is not raised to the main position on the strength of the single sentence B3.
Strongest objection: The goddess imparting knowledge in B1 is ②’s event of ultimate awakening
Adjudicated reply: The goddess’s revelation can be a serious candidate for reliable understanding, and ② cannot be denied on the ground that “it is not religious liberation”;
yet the poem itself organizes B2—B8 as judgment and argument about the arguable “is”, and lacks a unified account sufficient for right realization to carry a complete end independently. ② has grounds, but is still only a C-grade competitor.
Strongest objection: The road of truth speaks only of being, and needs no philosophical cognition
Adjudicated reply: Purely deleting individual knowing would not annihilate “is”, nor erase the propositions of B8. But B1/B2 require learning to discern truth from opinion, and after the deletion this teaching layer and the structural layer of the philosophical task cannot operate as in the original; this is still not the same as the independent condition of a realized end that ② requires.
Strongest objection: The part on opinion is all lies and can be deleted without loss
Adjudicated reply: B1 requires learning truth and opinion, and from B8.50 on a cosmological explanation is indeed unfolded. Its epistemological status may be lower than that of truth, but that does not mean it can be deleted without loss; the surviving proportion cannot yield the original proportion, so ④ is raised from a general appendage to a strong C competitor.
Strongest objection: Parmenides simply denies change, and belongs to ④ cosmology
Adjudicated reply: B2—B8 establish the argument for “is” and the constraints on what can be said and thought; the part on opinion accounts for the order of appearances. ③/④ require testing the main task of the whole poem, and cannot be decided directly by the textbook dichotomy “rest / flux” or by the length of the quoted fragments. The main class ③ is kept at C, without claiming a B-grade preponderance.
Strongest objection: Plato’s Parmenides can serve as T1 for his own thought
Adjudicated reply: Plato’s work characterizes and dramatizes him, and cannot serve as independent testimony to Parmenides’ own poem; it can only be used to read back from later transmission.
Compared with No.37 Heraclitus: one may not compare only with the textbook dichotomy “everything flows / everything rests”; the comparison should rest on the specific differences between Logos, what can be said and thought, the ground that can be enquired into, and the explanation of the phenomena of the world. Plato’s character in the Parmenides may not be filled back into the historical Parmenides.
Formal philosophical placement: ③「Inquiring into the Ground」 (C), the ③／④ boundary open; ② has textual grounds but is not sufficient alone to decide the complete final structure, and ①’s two conditions have not passed. This conclusion is a philosophical judgment within the range covered by the present evidence, and does not claim that what is lost from the fragments has been recovered.
Textual boundary: the relation of B3 and B8 keeps its edition / syntactic limits; the reconstructed length of opinion cannot be inferred from the surviving fragments; T1 for ancient quotations is the identity of the fragment text, and does not mean that Parmenides’ original manuscript survives.
Note on public archiving: this archive constitutes a complete text from the classical fragments, explicitly kept edition disputes and the six-position judgment; C-grade disputes may not be worked up into definite assertions.
Multi-translation comparison / line-by-line location of On Nature: https://parmenides.com/about_parmenides/ParmenidesPoem.html
SEP: Parmenides, method and interpretation of the roads: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/
SEP: Ancient Intentionality, B2, B6, B8: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality-ancient/
Oxford University Press, John Palmer’s edition and appended bibliography: https://academic.oup.com/book/12726/chapter-abstract/162821776
Philological projects not yet completed: the editorial differences in the syntax of B3 and B8.34—36, the specific testimony for B16 and perception-thought, passage-by-passage comparison of DK and Laks–Most.
What has not been checked is noted as such, and its unsettled parts are not made to bear load.
Discipline in handling the original texts: the source of Greek short phrases, the quoting authors of fragments, and the independent philosophical interpretations of modern scholars must be marked separately. The online entry points above are for checking; critical printed editions not seen may not be claimed as collated.
This archive is the finalized version of the research conclusion, keeping all E/R evidence and C-grade disputes. A thought “having answered about the ground” and “taking the ground as the main mission of argument” may not be confused; ③ does not require the author to ask forever without conclusion.
Citations uniformly mark the three layers of DK fragments, ancient testimony and modern research; Plato’s dramatic character of the historical Parmenides cannot be filled back in as testimony for the original poem.
Cross-archive comparison can only serve as a reference for the question; the “flux” of No.37 or the “theory of Forms” of No.40 may not be used to fabricate what Parmenides did not himself say.