Zeno on the contrary made use of such an argument as this: “If he who
spake first has plainly proved his cause, the second is not to be
heard, for the question is at an end; and if he has not proved it, it
is the same case as if being cited he did not appear, or appearing
did nothing but wrangle; so that, whether he has proved or not proved
his cause, the second is not to be heard.” And yet he who made this
dilemma has written against Plato’s Commonweal, dissolved sophisms, and
exhorted his scholars to learn logic, as enabling them to do the same.
Now Plato has either proved or not proved those things which he writ in
his Commonweal; but in neither case was it necessary to write against
him, but wholly superfluous and vain. The same may be said concerning
sophisms.
9. Chrysippus is of opinion, that young students should first learn
logic, secondly, ethics, and after these, physics, and likewise in
this to meddle last of all with the disputes concerning the Gods. Now
these things having been often said by him, it will suffice to set down
what is found in his Fourth Book of Lives, being thus word for word:
“First then, it seems to me, according as it has been rightly said by
the ancients, that there are three kinds of philosophical speculations,
logical, ethical, and physical, and that of these, the logical ought
to be placed first, the ethical second, and the physical third, and
that of the physical, the discourse concerning the Gods ought to be
the last; wherefore also the traditions concerning this have been
styled Τελεταί, or the _Endings_.” But that very discourse concerning
the Gods, which he says ought to be placed the last, he usually places
first and sets before every moral question. For he is seen not to
say any thing either concerning the ends, or concerning justice, or
concerning good and evil, or concerning marriage and the education of
children, or concerning the law and the commonwealth; but, as those who
propose decrees to states set before them the words To Good Fortune,
so he also premises something of Jupiter, Fate, Providence, and of
the world’s being one and finite and maintained by one power. None
of which any one can be persuaded to believe, who has not penetrated
deeply into the discourses of natural philosophy. Hear what he says
of this in his Third Book of the Gods: “For there is not to be found
any other beginning or any other generation of Justice, but what is
from Jupiter and common Nature. From thence must every such thing have
its beginning, if we will say any thing concerning good and evil.” And
again, in his Natural Positions he says: “For one cannot otherwise or
more properly come to the discourse of good and evil, to the virtues,
or to felicity, than from common Nature and the administration of the
world.” And going farther on, he adds: “For to these we must annex
the discourse concerning good and evil, there being no other better
beginning or relation thereof, and the speculation of Nature being
learned for nothing else, but to understand the difference between good
and evil.” According to Chrysippus, therefore, the natural science is
both before and after the moral; or rather, it is an inversion of order
altogether absurd, if this must be put after those things none of which
can be comprehended without this; and his contradicting himself is
manifest, when he asserts the discourse of Nature to be the beginning
of that concerning good and evil, and yet commands it to be delivered,
not before, but after it.
Now, if any one shall say that Chrysippus in his book concerning the
Use of Speech has written, that he who applies himself to logic first
needs not absolutely to abstain from the rest, but should take as
much of them as shall fall in his way, he will indeed say the truth,
but will withal confirm the fault. For he oppugns himself, one while
commanding that the science concerning God should be taken last and
for a conclusion, as being therefore also called Τελετή, and again,
another while saying that this is to be learned together with the very
first. For order is at an end, if all things must be used at all times.
But this is more, that having made the science concerning the Gods
the beginning of that concerning good and evil, he bids not those who
apply themselves to the ethics to begin with that; but learning these,
to take of that also as it shall come in their way, and then to go
from these to that, without which, he says, there is no beginning or
entrance upon these.
10. As for disputing on both sides, he says, that he does not
universally reject it, but exhorts us to use it with caution, as
is done in pleadings, not with a design really to disprove, but to
dissolve their probability. “For to those,” says he, “who endeavor a
suspension of assent concerning all things, it is convenient to do
this, and it co-operates to what they desire; but as for those who
would work and establish in us a certain science according to which
we shall professedly live, they ought, on the contrary, to state
the first principles, and to direct their novices who are entered
from the beginning to the end; and where there is occasion to make
mention of contrary discourses, to dissolve their probability, as is
done in pleadings.” For this he hath said in express words. Now that
it is absurd for philosophers to think that they ought to set down
the contrary opinion, not with all its reasons, but like pleaders,
disabling it, as if they contended not for truth but victory, we have
elsewhere spoken against him. But that he himself has, not here and
there in his disputations, but frequently, confirmed the discourses
which are contrary to his own opinions,—and that stoutly, and with
so much earnestness and contention that it was not for every one to
understand what he liked,—the Stoics themselves affirm, who admire the
man’s acuteness, and think that Carneades said nothing of his own, but
that catching hold of those arguments which Chrysippus alleged for the
contrary opinion, he assaulted with them his positions, and often cried
out,