The third path looks like the first, but it does not lead to Being. Hence it provokes the semblance that it too is only a path to not-Being in the sense of Nothing.

Fragment 6 at first holds the two paths indicated in fragment 4, the one to Being and the one into Nothing, in strict opposition to each other. But at the same time, in opposition to the second way, the one into Nothing that is inaccessible and thus hopeless, a third way is indicated:

Needful is the setting-down that gathers, as well as apprehending: the being in its Being <Seiend in dessen Sein>;

For the being has Being; not-Being has no “is”; to this I bid you attend.

Above all, keep away from this way of inquiring.

But also from the way that human beings openly prepare for themselves, those who know nothing,

the two-headed ones; for disorientation

is the directive for their errant apprehending; but they are thrown this way and that,

both dull and blind, bewildered; the tribe of those who do not distinguish,

whose ordinance it is that the present-at-hand and not present-at-hand are the same

and also not the same—for them the path is altogether contrary.¹⁸

The way now mentioned is the way of δόξα in the sense of seeming. Along this way, that which is has now this look, now that look. Here only views prevail.

18. A more conventional translation would render the first line of this fragment as “It is necessary both to say and to think that being is,” and the last two lines as “who believe that to be and not to be are the same and also not the same, and the path of all turns backward.”