There are the gates of the ways of Night and Day,[2]
fitted above with a lintel and below with a threshold of stone.
They themselves, high in the air, are closed by mighty doors,
and Avenging Justice keeps the keys that fit them.
Her did the maidens entreat with gentle words
and cunningly persuade to unfasten without demur the bolted bars
from the gates. Then, when the doors were thrown back,
they disclosed a wide opening,
when their brazen posts fitted with rivets and nails
swung back one after the other. Straight through them,
on the broad way, did the maidens guide the horses and the car,
and the goddess greeted me kindly, and took
my right hand in hers, and spake to me these words:
Welcome, O youth, that comest to my abode on the car
that bears thee tended by immortal charioteers!
It is no ill chance, but right and justice that has sent thee forth to travel
on this way. Far, indeed, does it lie from the beaten track of men!
Meet it is that thou shouldst learn all things,
as well the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth,
as the opinions of mortals in which is no true belief at all.
Yet none the less shalt thou learn these things also,—how passing right
through all things one should judge the things that seem to be.[3]
[...]
Come now, I will tell thee—and do thou hearken to my saying and carry it away—
the only two ways of search that can be thought of.
The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for it not to be,
is the way of belief, for truth is its companion.
The other, namely, that It is not, and that it must needs not be,—
that, I tell thee, is a path that none can learn of at all.
For thou canst not know what is not—that is impossible—
nor utter it; . . .
. . . for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.[4]