"For to be aware and to be are the same....And it is all one to me Where I am to begin; for I shall return there again. ...It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not. ...Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts; they are carried along deaf and blind alike, dazed, beasts without judgment, convinced that to be and not to be are the same and not the same, and that the road of all things is a backward-turning one. ...Nor was once, nor will be, since is, now, all together, One, continuous; for what coming-to-be of it will you seek? In what way, whence, did grow? Neither from what-is-not shall I allow You to say or think; for it is not to be said or thought That is not. And what need could have impelled it to grow Later or sooner, if it began from nothing? Thus must either be completely or not at all. ...For this view, that That Which Is Not exists, can never predominate. You must debar your thought from this way of search, nor let ordinary experience in its variety force you along this way, ...the eye, sightless as it is, and the ear, full of sound, and the tongue, to rule; but ...judge by means of the Reason ...the much-contested proof which is expounded by me. ...[I]s now, all at once, one and continuous... Nor ...divisible, since ...all alike; nor ...any more or less ...in one place which might prevent ...holding together, but all is full of what is. ...How could what is perish? How could it have come to be? For if it came into being, it is not; nor is it... ever... going to be. Thus coming into being is extinguished, and destruction unknown. ...Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find thinking apart from what is... The mortals lay down and decided well to name two forms (...the flaming light and obscure darkness of night), out of which it is necessary not to make one, and in this they are led astray."