METAPHYSICS runs slowly is running all the time Similarly, for Parmenides, stuV which is Wrst water and then air goes on be-ing all the time Change is never from not-being to being, or vice versa; the most there can ever be is variation of being Interpreting Parmenides in this way helps us to understand how he draws some very remarkable conclusions from the theses of the universality of Being and the inconceivability of Unbeing One road there is, signposted in this wise: Being was never born and never dies Four-square, unmoved, no end it will allow It never was, nor will be; all is now, One and continuous How could it be born Or whence could it be grown? Unbeing?—No— That mayn’t be said or thought; we cannot go So far ev’n to deny it is What need, Early or late, could Being from Unbeing seed? Thus it must altogether be or not (DK 28 B8 1–11) From the principle ‘Nothing can come from nothing’ many philosophers of diVerent persuasions have drawn the conclusion that the world must always have existed Other philosophers, too, have oVered as a supporting argument that there could be no suYcient reason for a world to come into existence at one moment rather than another, earlier or later But Parmenides’ claim that Being has no beginning and no end takes a much more sweeping form Being is not only everlasting, it is not subject to change (‘four-square, unmoved’) or even to the passage of time (it is all now, and has no past or future) What could diVerentiate past from present and future? If it is no kind of being, then time is unreal; if it is some kind of being, then it is all part of Being Past, present, and future are all one Being By similar arguments Parmenides seeks to show that Being is undivided What could separate Being from Being? Being? In that case there is no division, but continuous Being Unbeing? In that case any division is unreal (DK 28 B8 22–5) We might expect him to argue in a parallel fashion that Being is unlimited What could set limits to Being? Unbeing cannot anything to anything; and if we imagine that Being is limited by Being, then Being has not yet reached its limits Some of Parmenides’ followers argued thus (Aristotle, GC 1.8 325a15), but this is not how Parmenides 203