Human beings slide back and forth from one view to the other. In this way, they mix together Being and seeming. [86|120]
This way is constantly traveled, so that human beings completely lose themselves upon it.
It is all the more needful to know this way as such, so that Being may unveil itself in and against seeming.
Accordingly, we find the indication of this third way and its relation to the first in fragment 1, verses 28–32:
… But it is also needful (for you, who are now setting out upon the way to Being) to experience all:
the untrembling heart of well-rounded unconcealment
as well as the views of human beings, in which there dwells no reliance on the unconcealed.
But in all this you shall also come to know how that which seems persists
in traversing all things (in its own way) as seeming, contributing to the completion of all things.19
The third way is the way of seeming, such that on this way, seeming is experienced as belonging to Being. For the Greeks, these words had an originary and striking force. Being and truth create their essence out of φύσις. The self-showing of the seeming belongs directly to Being and yet (at bottom) does not belong to it. So what seems must also be exposed as mere seeming, over and over again.
The threefold path provides this indication, unitary in itself:
19. The translation and interpretation of this passage is controversial, but most commentators see only two paths in Parmenides’s text.