1. LAMPRIAS. You, O Diadumenus, seem not much to care, if any one
thinks that you philosophize against the common notions; since you
confess that you contemn also the senses, from whence the most part of
these notions in a manner proceed, having for their seat and foundation
the belief of such things as appear to us. But I beseech you, with
what speed you can, either by reasons, incantations, or some other
manner of discourse, to cure me, who come to you full, as I seem to
myself, of great and strange perturbations; so much have I been shaken,
and into such a perplexity of mind have I been brought, by certain
Stoics, in other things indeed very good men and my familiar friends,
but most bitterly and hostilely bent against the Academy. These, for
some few words modestly spoken by me, have (for I will tell you no
lie) rudely and unkindly reprehended me; angrily reputing and branding
the ancient philosophers as sophisters and corrupters of students of
philosophy, and subverters of regular doctrines; and saying things yet
more absurd than these, they fell at last upon the conceptions, into
which (they maintained) the Academics had brought a certain confusion
and disturbance. At length one of them said, that he thought it was not
by fortune, but by the providence of the Gods, that Chrysippus came
into the world after Arcesilaus and before Carneades; of which the
one was the author of the contumelies and injuries done to custom,
and the other flourished most of all the Academics. Chrysippus then,
coming between them, by his writings against Arcesilaus, stopped also
the way against the eloquence of Carneades, leaving indeed many things
to the senses, as provisions against a siege, but wholly taking away
the trouble about anticipations and conceptions, directing every one
of them and putting it in its proper place; so that they who will
again embroil and disquiet matters should accomplish nothing, but
be convinced of being malicious and deceitful sophisters. I, having
been this morning set on fire by these discourses, want some cooling
remedies to extinguish and take away this doubting, as an inflammation,
out of my mind.
2. DIADUMENUS. You perhaps have suffered the same things with some of
the vulgar. But if you believe the poets, who say that the ancient city
Sipylus was overthrown by the providence of the Gods when they punished
Tantalus, believe also the companions of the Stoa saying that Nature,
not by chance but by divine providence, brought forth Chrysippus, when
she had a mind to turn things upside down and alter the course of
life; for which purpose never any man was fitter than he. But as Cato
said of Caesar, that never any but he came to the management of public
affairs sober and considerately resolved on the ruin of the state; so
does this man seem to me with the greatest diligence and eloquence to
overturn and demolish custom, as they who magnify the man testify, when
they dispute against him concerning the sophism called Pseudomenos
(or the Liar). For to say, my best friend, that a conclusion drawn
from contrary positions is not manifestly false, and again to say
that some arguments having true premises and true inductions may yet
moreover have the contrary to their conclusions true, what conception
of demonstration or what presumption of faith does it not overthrow?
They say, that the polypus in the winter gnaws his own claws; but the
logic of Chrysippus, taking away and cutting off its own chiefest parts
and principles,—what other notion has it left unsuspected of falsehood?
For the superstructures cannot be steady and sure, if the foundations
remain not firm but are shaken with so many doubts and troubles. But
as those who have dust or dirt upon their bodies, if they touch or rub
the filth that is upon them, seem rather to increase than remove it; so
some men blame the Academics, and think them guilty of the faults with
which they show themselves to be burdened. For who do more pervert the
common conceptions than the Stoics? But if you please, let us leave
accusing them, and defend ourselves from the things with which they
charge us.
3. LAMPRIAS. Methinks, Diadumenus, I am this day become a various and
unconstant man. For erewhile I came dejected and trembling, as one
that wanted an apology; and now I am changed to an accuser, and desire
to enjoy the pleasure of revenge, in seeing them all convicted of
philosophizing against the common conceptions and presumptions, from
which they think chiefly their doctrine is derived, whence they say
that it alone agrees with Nature.
DIADUMENUS. Shall we then first attack those common and celebrated
doctrines of theirs which themselves, gently admitting their absurdity,
style paradoxes; as that only wise men are kings, that they only are
rich and fair, they only citizens and judges? Or shall we send all this
to the brokers, as old decayed frippery, and make our enquiry into
such things as are most practical and with the greatest earnestness
delivered by them?
LAMPRIAS. I indeed like this best. For who is there that is not already
full of the arguments brought against those paradoxes?
4. DIADUMENUS. First then consider this, whether, according to the
common conceptions, they can be said to agree with Nature, who think
all natural things indifferent, and esteem neither health, vigorousness
of body, beauty, nor strength as desirable, commodious, profitable,
or any way contributary to the completing of natural perfection;
nor believe that their contraries, as maims, pains, disgraces, and
diseases, are hurtful or to be shunned? To the latter of these they
themselves say that Nature gives us an abhorrence, and an inclination
to the former. Which very thing is not a little repugnant to common
understanding, that Nature should incline us to such things as are
neither good nor available, and avert us from such as are neither ill
nor hurtful, and which is more, that she should render this inclination
and this aversion so violent, that they who either possess not the one
or fall into the other detest their life with good reason, and withdraw
themselves out of it.
5. I think also that this is said by them against common sense, that
Nature herself is indifferent, and yet that it is good to agree
with Nature. For it is not our duty either to follow the law or be
persuaded by argument, unless the law and argument be good and honest.
And this indeed is the least of their errors. But if, as Chrysippus
has written in his First Book concerning Exhortation, a happy life
consists only in living according to virtue, other things (as he says)
being nothing to us, nor co-operating any ways towards it, Nature
is not only indifferent, but foolish also and stupid, in inclining
us to such things as belong nothing to us; and we also are fools in
thinking felicity to be an agreeing with Nature, which draws us after
such things as contribute nothing to happiness. For what can be more
agreeable to common sense, than that, as desirable things are requisite
to live commodiously, so natural things are necessary that we may live
according to Nature? Now these men say not so; but having settled the
living according to Nature for their end, do nevertheless hold those
things which are according to Nature to be indifferent.
6. Nor is this less repugnant to common sense, that an intelligent and
prudent man should not be equally affected to equal good things, but
should put no value on some, and be ready to undergo and suffer any
thing for others, though the things themselves are neither greater
nor less one than another. For they say, It is the same thing to
abstain from the enjoyment of an old woman that has one foot in the
grave, and ... since in both cases we do what duty requires. And yet
for this, as a great and glorious thing, they should be ready to die;
when as to boast of the other would be shameful and ridiculous. And
even Chrysippus himself in his commentary concerning Jupiter, and in
the Third Book of the Gods, says, that it were a poor, absurd, and
impertinent thing to glory in such acts, as proceeding from virtue, as
bearing valiantly the stinging of a wasp, or abstaining chastely from
an old woman that lies a dying. Do not they then philosophize against
the common conception, who profess nothing to be more commendable than
those things which yet themselves are ashamed to praise? For how can
that be desirable or to be approved, which is worthy neither of praise
nor admiration, but the praisers and admirers of which they esteem
absurd and ridiculous?
7. And yet this will (I suppose) appear to you more against common
sense, that a wise man should take no care whether he enjoys or not
enjoys the greatest good things, but should carry himself after the
same manner in these things, as in those that are indifferent and in
their management and administration. For all of us, “whoever we are
that eat the fruit of the spacious earth,” judge that desirable, good,
and profitable, which being present we use, and absent we want and
desire. But that which no man thinks worth his concern, either for his
profit or delight, is indifferent. For we by no other means distinguish
a laborious man from a trifler, who is for the most part also employed
in action, but that the one busies himself in useless matters and
indifferently, and the other in things commodious and profitable. But
these men act quite contrary; for with them, a wise and prudent man,
being conversant in many comprehensions and memories of comprehension,
esteems few of them to belong to him; and not caring for the rest, he
thinks he has neither more or less by remembering that he lately had
the comprehension of Dion sneezing or Theon playing at ball. And yet
every comprehension in a wise man, and every memory having assurance
and firmness, is a great, yea, a very great good. When therefore his
health fails, when some organ of his senses is disordered, or when
his wealth is lost, is a wise man so careless as to think that none
of these things concern him? Or does he, “when sick, give fees to the
physicians: for the gaining of riches sail to Leucon, governor in
the Bosphorus, or travel to Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians,” as
Chrysippus says? And being deprived of some of his senses, does he not
grow weary even of life? How then do they not acknowledge that they
philosophize against the common notions, employing so much care and
diligence on things indifferent, and recking not whether they have or
have not great good things?
8. But this is also yet against the common conceptions, that he who
is a man should not rejoice when coming from the greatest evils to
the greatest goods. Now their wise men suffer this. Being changed
from extreme viciousness to the highest virtue, and at the same time
escaping a most miserable life and attaining to a most happy one, he
shows no sign of joy, nor does this so great change lift him up or yet
move him, being delivered from all infelicity and vice, and coming to a
certain sure and firm perfection of virtue. This also is repugnant to
common sense, to maintain that the being immutable in one’s judgments
and resolutions is the greatest of goods, and yet that he who has
attained to the height wants not this, nor cares for it when he has
it, nay, many times will not so much as stretch forth a finger for
this security and constancy, which nevertheless themselves esteem the
sovereign and perfect good. Nor do the Stoics say only these things,
but they add also this to them,—that the continuance of time increases
not any good thing; but if a man shall be wise but a minute of an hour,
he will not be any way inferior in happiness to him who has all his
time practised virtue and led his life happily in it. Yet, whilst they
thus boldly affirm these things, they on the contrary also say, that
a short-lived virtue is nothing worth; “For what advantage would the
attainment of wisdom be to him who is immediately to be swallowed up by
the waves or tumbled down headlong from a precipice? What would it have
benefited Lichas, if being thrown by Hercules, as from a sling into
the sea, he had been on a sudden changed from vice to virtue?” These
therefore are the positions of men who not only philosophize against
the common conceptions but also confound their own, if the having been
but a little while endued with virtue is no way short of the highest
felicity, and at the same time nothing worth.
9. Nor is this the strangest thing you will find in their doctrine; but
their being of opinion that virtue and happiness, when present, are
frequently not perceived by him who enjoys them, nor does he discern
that, having but a little before been most miserable and foolish, he
is of a sudden become wise and happy. For it is not only childish to
say that he who is possessed of wisdom is ignorant of this thing alone,
that he is wise, and knows not that he is delivered from folly; but,
to speak in general, they make goodness to have very little weight or
strength, if it does not give so much as a feeling of it when it is
present. For according even to them, it is not by nature imperceptible;
nay, even Chrysippus in his books of the End expressly says that good
is sensible, and demonstrates it also, as he thinks. It remains then,
that by its weakness and littleness it flies the sense, when being
present it is unknown and concealed from the possessors. It were more
over absurd to imagine that the sight, perceiving those things which
are but a little whitish or inclining to white, should not discern such
as are white in perfection; or that the touch, feeling those things
which are but warm or moderately hot, should be insensible of those
that are hot in the highest degree. And yet more absurd it is, that a
man who perceives what is commonly according to Nature—as are health
and good constitution of body—should yet be ignorant of virtue when it
is present, which themselves hold to be most of all and in the highest
degree according to Nature. For how can it but be against sense, to
conceive the difference between health and sickness, and yet so little
to comprehend that between wisdom and folly as to think the one to be
present when it is gone, and possessing the other to be ignorant that
one has it? Now because there is from the highest progress a change
made to felicity and virtue, one of these two things must of necessity
follow; either that this progress is not vice and infelicity, or that
virtue is not far distant from vice, nor happiness from misery, but
that the difference between good and evil is very small and not to be
perceived by sense; for otherwise they who have the one for the other
could not be ignorant of it.
10. Since then they will not depart from any of these contrarieties,
but confess and hold them all,—that those who are proceeding towards
virtue are fools and vicious, that those who are become good and wise
perceive not this change in themselves, and that there is a great
difference between folly and wisdom,—they must surely seem to you
wonderfully to preserve an agreement in their doctrines and yet more
so in their actions, when affirming all men who are not wise to be
equally wicked, unjust, faithless, and fools, they on the other side
abhor and detest some of them,—nay, sometimes to such a degree that
they refuse even to speak to them when they meet them,—while others
of them they trust with their money, choose to offices, and take for
husbands to their daughters. Now if they say these things in jest,
let them smooth their brows; but if in earnest and as philosophers,
it is against the common notions to reprove and blame all men alike
in words, and yet to deal with some of them as moderate persons and
with others as very wicked; and exceedingly to admire Chrysippus, to
deride Alexinus, and yet to think neither of them more or less mad than
the other. “’Tis so,” say they; “but as he who is not above a cubit
under the superficies of the sea is no less drowned than he who is
five hundred fathom deep, so they that are coming towards virtue are
no less in vice than those that are farther off. And as blind men are
still blind, though they shall perhaps a little after recover their
sight; so these that have proceeded towards virtue, till such time as
they have attained to it, continue foolish and wicked.” But that they
who are in the way towards virtue resemble not the blind, but such as
see less clearly, nor are like to those who are drowned, but—those
which swim, and that near the harbor,—they themselves testify by their
actions. For they would not use counsellors and generals and lawgivers
as blind guides, nor would they imitate the works and actions and words
and lives of some, if they saw them all equally drowned in folly and
wickedness. But leaving this, wonder at the men in this behalf, that
they are not taught by their own examples to give up the doctrine that
these men are wise being ignorant of it themselves, and neither knowing
nor being sensible that they are recovered from being drowned and see
the light, and that being gotten above vice, they fetch breath again.
11. This also is against common sense, that it should be convenient
for a man who has all good things, and wants nothing requisite to
felicity and happiness, to make away himself; and much more this, that
for him who neither has nor ever shall have any good thing, but who
is and ever shall be accompanied with all adversities, difficulties,
and mishaps, it should not be fitting to quit this life unless some of
the indifferent things befall him. These laws are enacted in the Stoa;
and by these they incite many wise men to kill themselves, as if they
would be thereby more happy; and they restrain many foolish men, as
if it were fitting for them to live on in wretchedness. Although the
wise man is fortunate, blessed, every way happy, secure, and free from
danger; but the vicious and foolish man is “full, as I may say, of
evils, so that there is not room to put them in;” and yet they think
that continuing in life is fit for the latter, and departing out of it
for the former. And not without cause, says Chrysippus, for we are not
to measure life by good things or evil, but by those that are according
to Nature. In this manner do they maintain custom, and philosophize
according to the common conceptions. What do you say?—that he who
enters upon a deliberation of life and death has no right to consider
What good or ill in his own house there is;
or to weigh, as in a balance, what things have the greatest sign of
serving to felicity or infelicity; but must argue whether he should
live or die from those things which are neither profitable nor
prejudicial, and follow such principles and sentences as command the
choosing of a life full of all things to be avoided, and the shunning
of one which wants nothing of all those things that are desirable? For
though it is an absurd thing, friend Lamprias, to shun a life in which
there is no evil, it is yet more absurd, if any one should leave what
is good because he is not possessed of what is indifferent, as these
men do who leave present felicity and virtue for want of riches and
health which they have not.
Saturnian Jove from Glaucus took his wits,
when he went about to change his suit of golden armor for a brazen
one, and to give what was worth a hundred oxen for that which was
worth but nine. And yet the brazen armor was no less useful for fight
than the golden; whereas beauty and health of body, as the Stoics say,
contribute not the least advantage as regards happiness. And yet they
seek health in exchange for wisdom. For they say, it would well enough
have become Heraclitus and Pherecydes to have parted with their virtue
and wisdom, if the one of them could have thereby been freed from his
lousy disease, and the other from his dropsy; and if Circe had used two
sorts of magical drinks, one to make wise men fools, and the other to
make fools wise, Ulysses would rather have drunk that of folly, than
have changed his shape for the form of a beast, though having with it
wisdom, and consequently also happiness. And, they say, wisdom itself
dictates to them these things, exhorting them thus: Let me go, and
value not my being lost, if I must be carried about in the shape of
an ass. But this, some will say, is an ass-like wisdom which teacheth
thus; if indeed to be wise and enjoy felicity is good, and to wear the
shape of an ass is indifferent. They say, there is a nation of the
Ethiopians where a dog reigns, is called king, and has all regal honors
and services done to him; but men execute the offices of magistrates
and governors of cities. Do not the Stoics act in the very same manner?
They give the name and appearance of good to virtue, saying that it
alone is desirable, profitable, and available; but in the mean time
they act these things, they philosophize, they live and die, as at
the command of things indifferent. And yet none of the Ethiopians
kill that dog; but he sits in state, and is revered by all. But these
men destroy and corrupt their virtue, that they may obtain health and
riches.
12. But the corollary which Chrysippus himself has given for a
conclusion to his doctrines seems to free us from the trouble of saying
any thing more about it. For there being, says he, in Nature some
things good, some things bad, and some things between them both, which
we call indifferent; there is no man but would rather have the good
than the indifferent, and the indifferent than the bad. And of this we
call the Gods to witness, begging of them by our prayers principally
the possession of good things, and if that may not be, deliverance from
evil; not desiring that which is neither good nor bad instead of good,
but willing to have it instead of evil. But this man, changing Nature
and inverting its order, removes the middle out of its own place into
the last, and brings back the last into the middle,—not unlike to those
tyrants who give the first place to the wicked,—and he gives us a law,
first to seek the good, and secondly the evil, and lastly to judge
that worst which is neither good nor evil; as if any one should place
infernal things next to celestial, thrusting the earth and earthly
things into Tartarus,
Where very far from hence, deep under ground,
Lies a vast gulf.[177]
Having therefore said in his Third Book of Nature, that it is more
expedient for a fool to live than not, though he should never attain
to wisdom, he adds these words: “For such are the good things of men,
that even evil things do in a manner precede other things that are in
the middle place; not that these things themselves really precede, but
reason, with which we should choose rather to live, though we were to
be fools.” Therefore also, though we were to be unjust, wicked, hated
of the Gods and unhappy; for none of these things are absent from those
that live foolishly. Is it then convenient rather to live miserably
than not to live miserably, and better to be hurt than not hurt, to
be unjust than not unjust, to break the laws than not to break them?
That is, is it convenient to do things that are not convenient, and a
duty to live even against duty? Yes indeed, for it is worse to want
sense and reason than to be a fool. What then ails them, that they will
not confess that to be evil which is worse than evil? Why do they say
that folly alone is to be avoided, if it is not less but rather more
convenient to shun that disposition which is not capable of folly?
13. But who can complain of this, that shall remember what he has
written in his Second Book of Nature, declaring that vice was not
unprofitably made for the universe? But it is meet I should set down
his doctrine in his own words, that you may understand in what place
those rank vice, and what discourses they hold of it, who accuse
Xenocrates and Speusippus for not reckoning health indifferent and
riches useless. “Vice,” saith he, “has its limit in reference to other
accidents. For it is also in some sort according to the reason of
Nature, and (as I may so say) is not wholly useless in respect of the
universe; for otherwise there would not be any good.” Is there then no
good among the Gods, because there is no evil? And when Jupiter, having
resolved all matter into himself, shall be alone, other differences
being taken away, will there then be no good, because there will be no
evil? But is there melody in a choir though none in it sings faultily,
and health in the body though no member is sick; and yet cannot virtue
have its existence without vice? But as the poison of a serpent or the
gall of an hyena is to be mixed with some medicines, was it also of
necessity that there must have been some conjunction of the wickedness
of Meletus with the justice of Socrates, and the dissolute demeanor of
Cleon with the probity of Pericles? And could not Jupiter have found
a means to bring into the world Hercules and Lycurgus, if he had not
also made for us Sardanapalus and Phalaris? It is now time for them to
say that the consumption was made for the sound constitution of men’s
bodies, and the gout for the swiftness of their feet; and that Achilles
would not have had a good head of hair if Thersites had not been bald.
For what difference is there between such triflers and ravers, and
those who say that intemperance was not brought forth unprofitably for
continence, nor injustice for justice, so that we must pray to the
Gods, there may be always wickedness,