Unbelief hides it
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… ἀπιστίῃ διαφυγγάνει μὴ γιγνώσκεσθαι
…it escapes being known through unbelief.
Preserved by Plutarch (Coriolanus 38) and echoed by Clement. Plutarch's fuller sentence is about 'the divine things, most of them,' which escape being known — the fragment as given opens with a lacuna.
Plutarch reports this of 'the divine things, most of them': they slip past being known — not because they are hidden, but because of <em>apistiē</em>, the hearer's own unbelief. διαφυγγάνει is a vivid verb, 'gets clean away,' the way prey escapes a hunter. What guards the truth is not its obscurity but our refusal to credit it.
This is the epistemic edge of 'nature loves to hide' (B123) and the god who 'neither speaks nor conceals but gives a sign' (B93). The failure is on the receiving side. The <em>logos</em> is common and available (B1, B2), yet distrust lets it escape: a person who will not believe cannot be shown. Heraclitus's contempt for the many who 'hear without understanding' (B34) has this diagnosis behind it — unbelief is itself the lock on the door.
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