  The full sense of B36, however, may never be determined. Neither its context (a grammatical treatise of Herodian) nor its wording (“…however many they have made evident for mortals to look upon”) provides definitive guidance. Perhaps Xenophanes was seeking to set an upper limit to the range of things that can be known by human beings (i.e. to caution others that they could know only as many as things as the gods had made available to them to experience). But it is equally possible that the remark was intended (as B32 above) to encourage the members of his audience to explore and inquire on their own (i.e. to encourage them to investigate “however many things” the gods have made available to them to experience).