Some god shall wounded be by mortal hand.

(Euripides, "Orestes," 271.)

But that Corinthian captive boy excelled all, who, when the city was

destroyed, and Mummius, taking a survey of all the free-born children

that understood letters, commanded each to write a verse, wrote thus:--

Thrice, four times blest, the happy Greeks that fell.

("Odyssey," v. 306.)

For they say that Mummius was affected with it, wept and gave all the

free-born children that were allied to the boy their liberty. And some

mentioned the wife of Theodorus the tragedian, who refused his embraces

a little before he contended for the prize; but, when he was conqueror

and came in unto her, clasped him and said,

Now, Agamemnon's son, you freely may

(Sophocles "Electra," 2.)

After this a great many sayings were mentioned as unseasonably spoken,

it being fit that we should know such and avoid them;--as that to

Pompey the Great, to whom, upon his return from a dangerous war, the

schoolmaster brought his little daughter, and, to show him what a

proficient she was, called for a book, and bade her begin at this line,

Returned from war; but hadst thou there been slain,

My wish had been complete;

("Iliad," iii. 428.)

and that to Cassius Longinus, to whom a flying report of his son's

dying abroad being brought, and he no ways appearing either to know

the certain truth or to clear the doubt, an old senator came and said:

Longinus, will you not despise the flying uncertain rumor, as if you did

not know nor had read this line,

For no report is wholly false?

(Hesiod, "Works and Days," 763.)

And he that at Rhodes, to a grammarian demanding a line upon which he

might show his skill in the theatre, proposed this,

Fly from the island, worst of all mankind,

("Odyssey," x. 72.)

either slyly put a trick upon him, or unwittingly blundered. And this

discourse quieted the tumult.

QUESTIONS II. AND III. WHAT IS THE REASON THAT ALPHA IS PLACED FIRST IN

THE ALPHABET, AND WHAT IS THE PROPORTION BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF VOWELS

AND SEMI-VOWELS?

AMMONIUS, HERMEAS, PROTOGENES, PLUTARCH, ZOPYRION.

It being the custom of the Muses' feast to draw lots, and those that

were matched to propose curious questions to one another, Ammonius,

fearing that two of the same profession might be matched together,

ordered, without drawing lots, a geometrician to propose questions to a

grammarian, and a master of music to a rhetorician.

First, therefore, Hermeas the geometrician demanded of Protogenes the

grammarian a reason why Alpha was the first letter of the alphabet. And

he returned the common answer of the schools, that it was fit the vowels

should be set before the mutes and semi-vowels. And of the vowels, some

being long, some short, some both long and short, it is just that the

latter should be most esteemed. And of these that are long and short,

that is to be set first which is usually placed before the other two,

but never after either; and that is Alpha. For that put after either

Iota or Upsilon will not be pronounced, will not make one syllable with

them, but as it were resenting the affront and angry at the position,

seeks the first as its proper place. But if you place Alpha before

either of those, they are obedient, and quietly join in one syllable,

as in these words, [Greek omitted] and a thousand others. In these three

respects therefore, as the conquerors in all the five exercises, it

claims the precedence,--that of most other letters by being a vowel,

that of other vowels by being dichronous, and lastly, that of these

double-timed vowels themselves because it is its nature to go before and

never after them.

Protogenes making a pause, Ammonius, speaking to me, said: What! have

you, being a Boeotian, nothing to say for Cadmus, who (as the story

goes) placed Alpha the first in order, because a cow is called Alpha by

the Phoenicians, and they account it not the second or third (as

Hesiod doth) but the first of their necessary things? Nothing at all, I

replied, for it is just that, to the best of my power, I should rather

assist my own than Bacchus's grandfather. For Lamprias my grandfather

said, that the first articulate sound that is made is Alpha; for the air

in the mouth is formed and fashioned by the motion of the lips; now as

soon as those are opened, that sound breaks forth, being very plain and

simple, not requiring or depending upon the motion of the tongue, but

gently breathed forth whilst that lies still. And therefore that is the

first sound that children make. Thus [Greek omitted], TO HEAR, [Greek

omitted], TO SING, [Greek omitted], TO PIPE, [Greek omitted], TO HOLLOW,

begin with the letter Alpha; and I think that [Greek omitted], TO LIFT

UP, and [Greek omitted], TO OPEN, were fitly taken from that opening and

lifting up of the lips when his voice is uttered. Thus all the names of

the mutes besides one have an Alpha, as it were a light to assist their

blindness; for Pi alone wants it, and Phi and Chi are only Pi and Kappa

with an aspirate.

Hermeas saying that he approved both reasons, why then (continued I) do

not you explain the proportion, if there be any, of the number of the

letters; for, in my opinion, there is; and I think so, because the

number of mutes and semi-vowels, compared between themselves or with the

vowels, doth not seem casual and undesigned, but to be according to the

first proportion which you call arithmetical. For their number being

nine, eight, and seven, the middle exceeds the last as much as it wants

of the first. And the first number being compared with the last,

hath the same proportion that the Muses have to Apollo; for nine is

appropriated to them, and seven to him. And these two numbers

tied together double the middle; and not without reason, since the

semi-vowels partake the power of both.

And Hermeas replied: It is said that Mercury was the first god that

discovered letters in Egypt; and therefore the Egyptians make the figure

of an Ibis, a bird dedicated to Mercury, for the first letter. But it

is not fit, in my opinion, to place an animal that makes no noise at the

head of the letters. Amongst all the numbers the fourth is peculiarly

dedicated to Mercury, because, as some say, the god was born on the

fourth day of the month. And the first letters called Phoenician from

Cadmus are four times four, or sixteen; and of those that were afterward

added, Palamedes found four, and Simonides four more. Now amongst

numbers, three is the first perfect, as consisting of a first, a middle,

and a last; and after that six, as being equal the sum of its own

divisors (1+2+3). Of these, six multiplied by four makes twenty-four;

and also the first perfect number, three, multiplied by the first cube,

eight, make the same.

Whilst he was discoursing thus, Zopyrion the grammarian sneered and

muttered between his teeth; and, as soon as he had done, cried out that

he most egregiously trifled; for it was mere chance, and not design,

that gave such a number and order to the letters, as it was mere chance

that the first and last verses of Homer's Iliads have just as many

syllables as the first and last of his Odysseys.

QUESTION IV. WHICH OF VENUS'S HANDS DIOMEDES WOUNDED.

HERMEAS, ZOPYRION, MAXIMUS.

Hermeas would have replied to Zopyrion, but we desired him to hold; and

Maximus the rhetorician proposed to him this far-fetched question out of

Homer, Which of Venus's hands Diomedes wounded. And Zopyrion presently

asking him again, of which leg was Philip lame?--Maximus replied, It is

a different case, for Demosthenes hath left us no foundation upon which

we may build our conjecture. But if you confess your ignorance in this

matter, others will show how the poet sufficiently intimates to an

understanding man which hand it was. Zopyrion being at a stand, we all,

since he made no reply, desired Maximus to tell us.

And he began: The verses running thus

Then Diomedes raised his mighty spear,

And leaping towards her just did graze her hand;

("Iliad," v. 335. It is evident from what follows that

Plutarch interprets [Greek omitted] in this passage HAVING

LEAPED TO ONE SIDE. (G.))

it is evident that, if he designed to wound her left hand, there had

been no need of leaping, since her left hand was opposite to his right.

Besides, it is probable that he would endeavor to wound the strongest

hand, and that with which she drew away Aeneas; and which being wounded,

it was likely she would let him go. But more, after she returned to

Heaven, Minerva jeeringly said,

No doubt fair Venus won a Grecian dame,

To follow her beloved Trojan youths,

And as she gently stroked her with her hand,

Her golden buckler scratched this petty wound.

("Iliad", v. 422.)

And I suppose, you sir, when you stroke any of your scholars, you use

your right hand, and not your left; and it is likely that Venus, the

most skilful of all the goddesses, soothed the heroines after the same

manner.

QUESTION V. WHY PLATO SAYS THAT AJAX'S SOUL CAME TO DRAW HER LOT IN THE

TWENTIETH PLACE IN HELL.

HYLAS, SOSPIS, AMMONIUS, LAMPRIAS.

These discourses made all the other company merry; but Sospis the

rhetorician, seeing Hylas the grammarian sit silent and discomposed (for

he had not been very happy in his exercises), cried out,

But Ajax's soul stood far apart;

and raising his voice repeated the rest to him,

But sit, draw near, and patiently attend,

Hear what I say, and tame, your violent rage.

To this Hylas, unable to contain, returned a scurvy answer saying that

Ajax's soul, taking her lot in the twentieth place in hell, changed her

nature, according to Plato, for a lion's; but, for his part, he could

not but often think upon the saying of the old comedian,

'Tis better far to be an ass than see

Unworthwhile men in greater honor shine

At this Sospis, laughing heartily, said: But in the meantime, before we

have the pack-saddles on, if you have any regard for Plato, tell us

why he makes Ajax's soul, after the lots drawn, to have the twentieth

choice. Hylas, with great indignation, refused, thinking that this was

a jeering reflection on his former miscarriage. And therefore my brother

began thus: What, was not Ajax counted the second for beauty, strength,

and courage, and the next to Achilles in the Grecian army? And twenty is

the second ten, and ten is the chiefest of numbers, as Achilles of the

Greeks. We laughing at this, Ammonius said: Well, Lamprias, let this

suffice for a joke upon Hylas; but since you have voluntarily taken upon

you to give an account of this matter, leave off jesting, and seriously

proceed.

This startled Lamprias a little, but, after a short pause, he continued

thus: Plato often tells merry stories under borrowed names, but when

he puts any fable into a discourse concerning the soul, he hath some

considerable meaning in it. The intelligent nature of the heavens he

calls a flying chariot, intimating the harmonious whirl of the world.

And here he introduceth one Er, the son of Harmonius, a Pamphylian, to

tell what he had seen in hell; intimating that our souls are begotten

according to harmony, and are agreeably united to our bodies, and that,

when they are separated, they are from all parts carried together into

the air, and from thence return to second generations. And what hinders

but that [Greek omitted] twentieth should intimate that this was not a

true story, but only probable and fictitious [Greek omitted], and that

the lot fell casually [Greek omitted]. For Plato always toucheth upon

three causes, he being the first and chiefest philosopher that knew

how fate accords with fortune, and how our free-will is mixed and

complicated with both. And now he hath admirably discovered what

influence each hath upon our affairs. The choice of our life he hath

left to our free-will, for virtue and vice are free. But that those who

have made a good choice should live religiously, and those who have made

an ill choice should lead a contrary life, he leaves to the necessity of

fate. But the chances of lots thrown at a venture introduce fortune into

the several conditions of life in which we are brought up, and which

pre-occupates and perverts our own choice. Now consider whether it is

not irrational to inquire after a cause of those things that are done by

chance. For if the lot seems to be disposed of by design, it ceaseth to

be chance and fortune, and becomes fate and providence.

Whilst Lamprias was speaking, Marcus the grammarian seemed to be

counting to himself, and when he had done, he began thus: Amongst the

souls which Homer mentions in his [Greek omitted], Elpenor's is not to

be reckoned as mixed with those in hell, but, his body being not buried,

as wandering about the banks of the river Styx. Nor is it fit that we

should reckon Tiresias's soul amongst the rest,--

On whom alone, when deep in hell beneath,

Wisdom Proserpina conferred,

to discourse and converse with the living even before he drank the

sacrifice's blood. Therefore, Lamprias, if you subtract these two,

you will find that Ajax was the twentieth that Ulysses saw, and Plato

merrily alludes to that place in Homer's [Greek omitted].

QUESTION VI. WHAT IS SIGNIFIED BY THE FABLE ABOUT THE DEFEAT OF

NEPTUNE? AND ALSO, WHY DO THE ATHENIANS OMIT THE SECOND DAY OF THE MONTH

BOEDROMION?

MENEPHYLUS, HYLAS, LAMPRIAS.

While all were making a disturbance, Menephylus, a Peripatetic

philosopher, addressing Hylas: You see, he said, how this investigation

is no foolery nor insolence. But leave now, my dear fellow, that

obstinate Ajax, whose name is ill-omened, as Sophocles says, and

side with Poseidon, whom you yourself are wont to tell has often been

overcome, once by Athene here, in Delphi by Apollo, in Argos by Here, in

Aegina by Zeus, in Naxos by Bacchus, yet in his misfortunes has always

been mild and amiable. Here at least he shares a temple in common with

Athene, in which there is an altar dedicated to Lethe. And Hylas, as if

he had become better tempered: One thing has escaped you, Menephylus,

that we have given up the second day of September, not on account of the

moon, but because on that day the gods seemed to have contended for the

country. By all means, said Lamprias, by as much as Poseidon was more

civilized than Thrasybulus, since not like him a winner but a loser....

(The rest of this book to Question XIII is lost; with the exception of

the titles that follow, and the fragment of Question XII.)

QUESTION VII. WHY THE ACCORDS IN MUSIC ARE SEPARATED INTO THREE.

QUESTION VIII. WHEREIN THE INTERVALS MELODIOUS DIFFER FROM THOSE THAT

ARE HARMONIC.

QUESTION IX. WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF ACCORD? AND ALSO, WHY, WHEN TWO

ACCORDANT STRINGS ARE TOUCHED TOGETHER, IS THE MELODY ASCRIBED TO THE

BASE?

QUESTION X. WHY, WHEN THE ECLIPTIC PERIODS OF THE SUN AND THE MOON ARE

EQUAL IN NUMBER, THE MOON APPEARS OFTENER ECLIPSED THAN THE SUN.

QUESTION XI. THAT WE CONTINUE NOT ALWAYS THE SAME, IN REGARD OF THE

DEFLUX OF OUR SUBSTANCE.

QUESTION XII. IS IT MORE PROBABLE THAT THE NUMBER OF THE STARS IS EVEN

OR ODD?

Men must be cheated by oaths. And Glaucias said: I have heard this

saying used against Polycrates the tyrant; probably too it was said

against others: but why do you ask these questions? Because, by Zeus,

said Sospis, I see the children playing odd and even with jackstones

and the Academics with words. For such tempers as these differ in no

way from those who ask whether they hold clutched in their hands odd or

even. Then Protogenes stood up and called me by name: What is the matter

with us that we allow these rhetoricians to be so conceited, and to

laugh down others while they are asked nothing, and contribute nothing

in the way of argument,--unless they swear that they have no part in the

wine as admirers and disciples of Demosthenes, a man who in his whole

life never drank wine. That is not the cause of this, said I; but we

have never asked them anything. But unless you have something more

useful, I think I can put before them from Homer's poetry a case of

antinomy in rhetorical theses.

QUESTION XIII. A MOOT-POINT OUT OF THE THIRD BOOK OF HOMER'S ILIADS.

PLUTARCH, PROTOGENES, GLAUCIAS, SOSPIS.

What question will you put them, said Protogenes? I will tell you,

continued I, and let them carefully attend. Paris makes his challenge in

these express words:--

Let me and valiant Menelaus fight

For Helen, and for all the goods she brought;

And he that shall o'ercome, let him enjoy

The goods and woman; let them be his own.

And Hector afterwards publicly proclaiming this challenge in these plain

words:--

He bids the Trojans and the valiant Greeks

To fix their arms upon the fruitful ground;

Let Menelaus and stout Paris fight

For all the goods; and he that beats have all.

Menelaus accepted the challenge, and the conditions were sworn to,

Agamemnon dictating thus:--

If Paris valiant Menelaus kills,

Let him have Helen, and the goods possess;

If youthful Menelaus Paris kills,

The woman and the goods shall all be his.

(See "Iliad," iii. 68, 88, 255, and 281.)

Now since Menelaus only overcame but did not kill Paris, each party hath

somewhat to say for itself, and against the other. The one may demand

restitution, because Paris was overcome; the other deny it, because he

was not killed. Now how to determine this case and clear the seeming

repugnancies doth not belong to philosophers or grammarians, but to

rhetoricians, that are well skilled both in grammar and philosophy.

Then Sospis said: The challenger's word decides; for the challenger

proposed the conditions, and when they were accepted, the opposite

party had no power to make additions. Now the condition proposed in this

challenge was not killing, but overcoming; and there was reason that

it should be so, for Helen ought to be the wife of the bravest. Now the

bravest is he that overcomes; for it often happens that an excellent

soldier might be killed by a coward, as is evident in what happened

afterward, when Achilles was shot by Paris. For I do not believe that

you will affirm, that Achilles was not so brave a man as Paris because

he was killed by him, and that it should be called the victory, and not

rather the unjust good fortune, of him that shot him. But Hector was

overcome before he was killed by Achilles, because he would not stand,

but trembled and fled at his approach. For he that refuseth the combat

or flies cannot palliate his defeat, and plainly grants that his

adversary is the better man. And therefore Iris tells Helen beforehand,

In single combat they shall fight for you,

And you shall be the glorious victor's wife.

(2 Ibid. iii. 137.)

And Jupiter afterwards adjudges the victory to Menelaus in these words:

The conquest leans to Menelaus's side.

(3 Ibid. iv. 13.)

For it would be ridiculous to call Menelaus a conqueror when he shot

Podes, a man at a great distance, before he thought of or could provide

against his danger, and yet not allow him the reward of conquest over

him whom he made fly and sneak into the embraces of his wife, and whom

he spoiled of his arms whilst he was yet alive, and who had himself

offered the challenge, by the articles of which Menelaus now appeared to

be the conqueror.

Glaucias subjoined: in all laws, decrees, contracts, and promises, those

latest made are always accounted more valid than the former. Now the

later contract was Agamemnon's, the condition of which was killing,

and not only overcoming. Besides the former was mere words, the latter

confirmed by oath; and, by the consent of all, those were cursed that

broke them; so that this latter was properly the contract, and the other

a bare challenge. And this Priam at his going away, after he had sworn

to the conditions, confirms by these words:--

But Jove and other gods alone do know,

Which is designed to see the shades below;

("Iliad," iii. 308.)

for he understood that to be the condition of the contract. And

therefore a little after Hector says,

But Jove hath undetermined left our oaths,

(Ibid. vii. 69.)

for the combat had not its designed and indisputable determination,

since neither of them fell. Therefore this question doth not seem to

me to contain any contrariety of law, since the former contract is

comprised and overruled by the latter; for he that kills certainly

overcomes, but he that overcomes doth not always kill. But, in short,

Agamemnon did not annul, but only explain the challenge proposed by

Hector. He did not change anything, but only added the most principal

part, placing victory in killing; for that is a complete conquest, but

all others may be evaded or disputed, as this of Menelaus, who neither

wounded nor pursued his adversary. Now as, where there are laws really

contrary, the judges take that side which is plain and indisputable,

and mind not that which is obscure; so in this case, let us admit

that contract to be most valid which contained killing, as a known and

undeniable evidence of victory. But (which is the greatest argument) he

that seems to have had the victory, not being quiet, but running up and

down the army, and searching all about,

To find neat Paris in the busy throng,

(Ibid. iii. 450.)

sufficiently testifies that he himself did not imagine that the conquest

was perfect and complete. For when Paris had escaped he did not forget

his own words:--

And which of us black fate and death design,

Let him be lost; the others cease from war.

(Iliad, iii. 101,)

Therefore it was necessary for him to seek after Paris, that he might

kill him and complete the combat; but since he neither killed nor took

him, he had no right to the prize. For he did not conquer him, if we may

guess by what he said when he expostulated with Jove and bewailed his

unsuccessful attempt:--

Jove, Heaven holds no more spiteful god than thou.

Now would I punish Paris for his crimes;

But oh! my sword is broke, my mighty spear,

Stretched out in vain, flies idly from my hand!

(Ibid. iii, 365.)

For in these words he confessed that it was to no purpose to pierce

the shield or take the head-piece of his adversary, unless he likewise

wounded or killed him.

QUESTION XIV. SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE NUMBER OF THE MUSES, NOT

COMMONLY KNOWN.

HERODES, AMMONIUS, LAMPRIAS, TRYPHON, DIONYSIUS, MENEPHYLUS, PLUTARCH.

This discourse ended, we poured out our offerings to the Muses, and

together with a hymn in honor of Apollo, the patron of the Muses, we

sung with Erato, who played upon the harp, the generation of the Muses

out of Hesiod. After the song was done, Herod the rhetorician said:

Pray, sirs, hearken. Those that will not admit Calliope to be ours say

that she keeps company with kings, not such, I suppose, as are busied

in resolving syllogisms or disputing, but such who do those things that

belong to rhetoricians and statesmen. But of the rest of the Muses, Clio

abets encomiums, for praises are called [Greek omitted]; and Polymnia

history, for her name signifies the remembrance of many things; and it

is said that all the Muses were somewhere called Remembrances. And for

my part, I think Euterpe hath some relation to us too, if (as Chrysippus

says) her lot be agreeableness in discourse and pleasantness in

conversation. For it belongs to an orator to converse, as well as plead

or give advice; since it is his part to gain the favor of his auditors,

and to defend or excuse his client. To praise or dispraise is the

commonest theme; and if we manage this artfully, it will turn to

considerable account; if unskilfully, we are lost. For that saying,

Gods! how he is honored and beloved by all,

("Odyssey," x. 38.)

chiefly, in my opinion, belongs to those men who have a pleasing and

persuasive faculty in discourse.

Then said Ammonius to Herod: We have no reason to be angry with you for

grasping all the Muses, since the goods that friends have are common,

and Jove hath begotten a great many Muses, that every man may be

plentifully supplied; for we do not all need skill in hunting, military

arts, navigation, or any mechanical trades; but learning and instruction

is necessary for every one that

Consumes the fruits of the spacious earth.

(From Simonides.)

And therefore Jove made but one Minerva, one Diana, one Vulcan, but many

Muses. But why there should be nine, and no more nor less, pray acquaint

us; for you, so great a lover of, and so well acquainted with, the

Muses, must certainly have considered this matter. What difficulty is

there in that? replied Herod. The number nine is in everybody's mouth,

as being the first square of the first odd number; and as doubly odd,

since it may be divided into three equal odd numbers. Ammonius with a

smile subjoined: Boldly said; and pray add, that this number is

composed of the two first cubes, one and eight, and according to another

composition of two triangles, three and six, each of which is itself

perfect. But why should this belong to the Muses more than any other of

the gods? For we have nine Muses, but not nine Cereses, nine Minervas or

Dianas. For I do not believe that you take it for a good argument,

that the Muses must be so many, because their mother's name (Mnemosyne)

consists of just so many letters. Herod smiling, and everybody being

silent, Ammonius desired our opinions.

My brother said, that the ancients celebrated but three Muses, and that

to bring proofs for this assertion would be pedantic and uncivil in such

a company. The reason of this number was (not as some say) the three

different sorts of music, the diatonic, the chromatic, and harmonic, nor

those stops that make the intervals nete, mese, and hypate, though

the Delphians gave the Muses this name erroneously, in my opinion,

appropriating it to one science, or rather to a part of one single

science, the harmoniac part of music. But, as I think, the ancients,

reducing all arts and sciences which are executed and performed

by reason or discourse to three heads, philosophy, rhetoric, and

mathematics, accounted them the gifts of three gods, and named them the

Muses. Afterwards, about Hesiod's time, the sciences being better and

more thoroughly looked into, and men subdividing them found that each

science contained three different parts. In mathematics are comprehended

music, arithmetic, and geometry; in philosophy are logic, ethics, and

physics. In rhetoric, they say the first part was demonstrative or

encomiastic, the second deliberative, the third judicial. None of all

which they believed to be without a god or a Muse or some superior power

for its patron, and did not, it is probable, make the Muses equal in

number to these divisions, but found them to be so. Now, as you may

divide nine into three threes, and each three into as many units;

so there is but one rectitude of reason, which is employed about the

highest truth, and which belongs to the whole in common, while each of

the three kinds of science is assigned three Muses, and each of these

has her distinct faculty assigned to her, which she disposes and orders.

And I do not think the poets and astrologers will find fault with us for

passing over their professions in silence, since they know, as well as

we, that astrology is comprehended in geometry, and poetry in music.

As soon as he had said this, Trypho the physician subjoined: How hath

our art offended you, that you have shut the Museum against us? And

Dionysius of Melite added: Sir, you have a great many that will side

with you in the accusation; for we farmers think Thalia to be ours,

assigning her the care of springing and budding seeds and plants. But

I interposing said: Your accusation is not just; for you have bountiful

Ceres, and Bacchus who (as Pindar phraseth it) increaseth the trees, the

chaste beauty of the fruits; and we know that Aesculapius is the patron

of the Physicians, and they make their address to Apollo as Paean, but

never as the Muses' leader. All men (as Homer says) stand in need of the

gods, but all stand not in need of all. But I wonder Lamprias did not

mind what the Delphians say in this matter; for they affirm that the

Muses amongst them were not named so either from the strings or sounds

in music; but the universe being divided into three parts, the first

portion was of the fixed stars, the second of the planets, the third of

those things that are under the concave of the moon; and all these are

ordered according to harmonical proportions, and of each portion a

Muse takes care; Hypate of the first, Nete of the last, and Mese in the

middle, combining as much as possible, and turning about mortal things

with the gods and earthly with heavenly. And Plato intimates the same

thing under the names of the Fates, calling one Atropos, the other

Lachesis, and the other Clotho. For he hath committed the revolutions of

the eight spheres to so many Sirens, and not Muses.

Then Menephylus the Peripatetic subjoined: The Delphians' opinion hath

indeed somewhat of probability in it; but Plato is absurd in committing

the eternal and divine revolutions not to the Muses but to the Sirens,

Daemons that neither love nor are benevolent to mankind, wholly passing

by the Muses, or calling them by the names of the Fates, the daughters

of Necessity. For Necessity is averse to the Muses; but Persuasion being

more agreeable and better acquainted with them, in my opinion, than the

grace of Empedocles,

Intolerable Necessity abhors.

No doubt, said Ammonius, as it is in us a violent and involuntary

cause; but in the gods Necessity is not intolerable, uncontrollable, or

violent, unless it be to the wicked; as the law in a commonwealth to

the best man is its best gift, not to be violated or transgressed, not

because they have no power, but because they have no will, to change it.

And Homer's Sirens give us no just reason to be afraid; for he in that

fable rightly intimates the power of their music not to be hurtful to

man, but delightfully charming, and detaining the souls which pass

from hence thither and wander after death; working in them a love for

heavenly and divine things, and a forgetfulness of everything on earth;

and they extremely pleased follow and attend them. And from thence some

imperfect sound, and as it were echo of that music, coming to us by the

means of reason and good precepts, rouseth our souls, and restores the

notice of those things to our minds, the greatest part of which

lie encumbered with and entangled in disturbances of the flesh and

distracting passions. But the generous soul hears and remembers, and

her affection for those pleasures riseth up to the most ardent passion,

whilst she eagerly desires but is not able to free herself from the

body.

It is true, I do not approve what he says; but Plato seems to me, as he

hath strangely and unaccountably called the axes spindles and distaffs,

and the stars whirls, so to have named the Muses Sirens, as delivering

divine things to the ghosts below, as Ulysses in Sophocles says of the

Sirens,

I next to Phorcus's daughters came,

Who fix the sullen laws below.

Eight of the Muses take care of the spheres, and one of all about the

earth. The eight who govern the motions of the spheres maintain the

agreement of the planets with the fixed stars and one another. But that

one who looks after the place betwixt the earth and moon and takes care

of mortal things, by means of discourse and song introduceth persuasion,

aiding our natural consent to community and agreement, and giveth men

as much harmony, grace, and order as is possible for them to take;

introducing this persuasion to appease and quiet our disturbances, and

as it were to recall our wandering desires out of the wrong way, and to

set us in the right path. But, as Pindar says,

Whom Jove abhors, he starts to hear

The Muses sounding in his ear.

(Pindar, "Pythian," i. 25.)

To this discourse Ammonius, as he used to do, subjoined that verse of

Xenophanes,

This fine discourse seems near allied to truth,

and desired every one to deliver his opinion. And I after a short

silence, said: As Plato thinks by the name, as it were by tracks, to

discover the powers of the gods, so let us place in heaven and over

heavenly things one of the Muses, Urania. And it is likely that those

require no distracting variety of cares to govern them, since they have

the same single nature for the cause of all their motions. But where are

a great many irregularities and disorders, there we must place the eight

Muses, that we may have one to correct each particular irregularity and

miscarriage. There are two parts in a man's life, the serious and the

merry; and each must be regulated and methodized. The serious role,

which instructs us in the knowledge and contemplation of the gods,

Calliope, Clio, and Thalia appear chiefly to look after and direct.

The other Muses govern our weak part, which changes presently into

wantonness and folly; they do not neglect our brutish and violent

passions and let them run their own course, but by appropriate dancing,

music, song, and orderly motion mixed with reason, bring them down to

a moderate temper and condition. For my part, since Plato admits two

principles of every action, viz, the natural desire after pleasure, and

acquired opinion which covets and wishes for the best, and calls one

reason and the other passion, and since each of these is manifold,

I think that each requires a considerable and, to speak the truth, a

divine direction. For instance, one faculty of our reason is said to be

political or imperial, over which Hesiod says Calliope presides; Clio's

province is the noble and aspiring; and Polymnia's that faculty of the

soul which inclines to attain and keep knowledge (and therefore the

Sicyonians call one of their three Muses Polymathia); to Euterpe

everybody allows the searches into nature and physical speculations,

there being no greater, no sincerer pleasure belonging to any other sort

of speculation in the world. The natural desire to meat and drink Thalia

reduceth from brutish and uncivil to be sociable and friendly; and

therefore we say [Greek omitted] of those that are friendly, merry, and

sociable over their cups, and not of those that are quarrelsome and mad.

Erato, together with Persuasion, that brings along with it reason and

opportunity, presides over marriages; she takes away and extinguisheth

all the violent fury of pleasure, and makes it tend to friendship,

mutual confidence, and endearment, and not to effeminacy, lust, or

discontent. The delight which the eye or ear receives is a sort of

pleasure, either appropriate to reason or to passion, or common to them

both. This the two other Muses, Terpsichore and Melpomene, so moderate,

that the one may only tickle and not charm, the other only please and

not bewitch.

QUESTION XV. THAT THERE ARE THREE PARTS IN DANCING: [Greek omitted],

MOTION, [Greek omitted], GESTURE, AND [Greek omitted], REPRESENTATION.

WHAT EACH OF THOSE IS AND WHAT IS COMMON TO BOTH POETRY AND DANCING.

AMMONIUS AND THRASYBULUS.

After this, a match of dancing was proposed, and a cake was the prize.

The judges were Meniscus the dancing-master, and my brother Lamprias;

for he danced the Pyrrhic very well, and in the Palaestra none could

match him for the graceful motion of his hands and arms in dancing. Now

a great many dancing with more heat than art, some desired two of the

company who seemed to be best skilled and took most care to observe

their steps, to dance in the kind called [Greek omitted]. Upon this

Thrasybulus, the son of Ammonius, demanded what [Greek omitted]

signified, and gave Ammonius occasion to run over most of the parts of

dancing.

He said they were three,--[Greek omitted], [Greek omitted] and [Greek

omitted]. For dancing is made up of motion and manner [Greek omitted]

as a song of sounds and stops; stops are the ends of motion. Now the

motions they call [Greek omitted], and the gestures and likeness

to which the motions tend, and in which they end, they call [Greek

omitted]: as, for instance, when by their own motions they represent the

figure of Apollo, Pan, or any of the raging Bacchae. The third is [Greek

omitted]; which is not an imitation, but a plain downright indication

of the things represented. For as the poets, when they would speak of

Achilles, Ulysses, the earth, or heaven, use their proper names,

and such as the vulgar usually understand. But for the more lively

representation, they use such words as by their very sound express

some eminent quality in the thing, or metaphors; as when they say that

streams do "babble and flash"; that arrows fly "desirous the flesh to

wound"; or when they describe an equal battle by saying "the fight had

equal heads." They have likewise a great many significative compositions

in their verses. Thus Euripides of Perseus,

He that Medusa slew, and flies in air;

and Pindar of a horse,

When by the smooth Alpheus's banks

He ran the race, and never felt the spur;

and Homer of a race,

The chariots, overlaid with tin and brass,

By fiery horses drawn ran swiftly on.

(Euripedes, Frag. 975; Pindar, "Olympian," i. 31;

"Iliad," xxiii. 503.)

So in dancing, the [Greek omitted] represents the shape and figure, the

[Greek omitted] shows some action, passion, or power; but by the [Greek

omitted] are properly and significatively shown the things themselves,

for instance, the heaven, earth, or the company. Which, being done in

a certain order and method, resembles the proper names used in poetry,

decently clothed and attended with suitable epithets. As in these lines,

Themis the venerable and admired,

And Venus beauteous with her bending brows,

Fair Dione, and June crowned with gold.

(Hesiod, "Theogony," 16.)

And in these,

From Hellen kings renowned for giving laws,

Great Dorus and the mighty Xuthus sprang,

And Aeolus, whose chief delight was horse.

For if poets did not take this liberty, how mean, how grovelling and

flat, would be their verse! As suppose they wrote thus,

From this sprung Hercules, from the other Iphitus.

Her father, husband, and her son were kings,

Her brother and forefathers were the same;

And she in Greece Olympias was called.

The same faults may be committed in that sort of dancing called [Greek

omitted] unless the representation be lively and graceful, decent and

unaffected. And, in short, we may aptly transfer what Simonides said of

painting to dancing, and call dancing mute poetry, and poetry speaking

dancing; for poesy doth not properly belong to painting, nor painting

to poesy, neither do they any way make use of one another. But poesy

and dancing share much in common especially in that type of song called

Hyporchema, in which is the most lively representation imaginable,

dancing doing it by gesture, and poesy by words. So that poesy may bear

some resemblance to the colors in painting, while dancing is like the

lines which mark out the features. And therefore he who was the

most famous writer of Hyporchemes, who here even surpassed himself,

sufficiently proveth that these two arts stand in need of one another he

shows what tendency poetry hath to dancing; whilst the sound excites the

hands and feet, or rather as it were by some cords distends and raiseth

every member of the whole body; so that, whilst such songs are recited

or sung, they cannot be quiet. But nowadays no sort of exercise hath

such bad depraved music applied to it as dancing; and so it suffers that

which Ibyeus as to his own concerns was fearful of, as appears by these

lines,

I fear lest, losing fame amongst the gods,

I shall receive respect from men alone.

For having associated to itself a mean paltry sort of music, and falling

from that divine sort of poetry with which it was formerly acquainted,

it rules now and domineers amongst foolish and inconsiderate spectators,

like a tyrant, it hath subjected nearly all music, but hath lost all its

honor with excellent and wise men.

These, my Sossius Senecio, were almost the last discourses which we had

at Ammonius's house during the festival of the Muses.

END OF FIVE------------

COMMON CONCEPTIONS AGAINST THE STOICS.

LAMPRIAS, DIADUMENUS

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 hostility 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 censuring and branding the ancient philosophers as Sophists

and corrupters 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 contend) 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 gain nothing, but be convinced

of being malicious and deceitful Sophists. 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.

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 those 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

assumption of confidence 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 subvert the common

conceptions than the Stoic school? But if you please, let us leave

accusing them, and defend ourselves from the things with which they

charge us.

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, on which

they think chiefly their doctrine is founded, 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 inquiry 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?

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, strength of body,

beauty, nor strength as desirable, commodious, profitable, or any way

contributory to the completing of natural perfection; nor consider 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.

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 cooperating 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.

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 anything

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 is about to die as to take part in the

greatest actions with moderation... 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?

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 both in their management

and administration. For all of us, "whoever we are that eat the fruit

of the broad 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 become 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 not minding

whether they have or have not great good things?

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 hold 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. 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

maintains. 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 moreover 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.

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 assuredly seem to you wonderfully

to preserve an agreement in their doctrines, and yet more so in their

conduct, 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 their 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 leaders, 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.

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 prevent many foolish men, as if it were proper for

them to live on in misery. 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.

Satumian 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 so far as happiness is concerned. 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;

granting that 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 meantime 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.

But the corollary which Chrysippus himself has given for a conclusion to

his doctrines seems to free us from the trouble of saying anything 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.

(Iliad, viii. 14.)

Having therefore said in his Third Book concerning 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, which makes us 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?

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 other wise 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 conduct 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,

Lies, fawning speeches, and deceitful manners,

(Hesiod, "Works and Days," 78.)

if, when these are taken away, virtue will also vanish and be lost?

Or do you desire to understand the greatest sweetness of his eloquence

and persuasion? "For," says he, "as comedies have in them sometimes

ridiculous epigrams, which, though bad in themselves, give nevertheless

a certain grace to the whole poem; so, though you may blame vice in

itself, yet is it not useless to other things." First, then, to say that

vice was made by the providence of God, as a wanton epigram by the will

of the poet, transcends in absurdity all imagination. For this being

granted, how will the gods be rather givers of good than evil? How will

wickedness be displeasing to them, and hated by them? And what shall we

have to oppose against these ill-sounding sentences of the poets.--

A cause to men God sends,

When to chastise some house his wrath intends;

(From the "Niobe" of Aeschylus, Frag. 151.)

and again,

What God those seeds of strife 'twixt them did sow?

(Iliad, i. 8.)

Moreover, a lewd epigram adorns the comedy and contributes to its end,

which is to delight the spectators and make them laugh. But Jupiter,

who is surnamed fatherly, supreme, just, and (as Pindar has it) the most

perfect artist, framing the world, not as a great interlude, full of

variety and great learning, but as a common city of Gods and men, living

together in concord and happiness with justice and virtue,--what need

had he, for the attaining to this excellent end, of thieves, murderers,

parricides, and tyrants? For vice entered not as a morris-dance,

pleasing and delightful to the Divinity; nor was it brought in amongst

the affairs of men, to cause mirth and laughter by its raillery and

facetiousness, since there is not to be seen in it so much as a dream of

that celebrated agreement with Nature. Besides, that foolish epigram is

a very small part of the poem, and takes up but a very little place in

the comedy; neither do such things abound in it, nor do they corrupt any

of those things which seem to have been well done, or spoil their grace.

But all human affairs are replete with vice, and the whole life, from

the very prologue and beginning to the end, being disordered, depraved,

and disturbed, and having no part of it pure or irreprehensible (as

these men say), is the most filthy and most unpleasant of all farces.

Wherefore I would willingly ask, in what vice is profitable to the

universe. Not surely in respect of heavenly things, and such as are

divine by nature. For it would be ridiculous to say, that if there had

not arisen, or were not amongst men, malice and covetousness and lying,

or that if we did not rob, plunder, slander, and murder one another, the

sun would not run his appointed course, the world enjoy its seasons

and periods of time, or the earth, which is seated in the midst of the

universe, afford the principles of the wind and rain. It remains, then,

that the existence of vice must be profitable for us and our affairs;

and that perhaps these men mean. Are we more healthy for being vicious,

or do we more abound with necessaries? Or does vice contribute anything

to our beauty and strength? They say, no. But where on earth is virtue

to be met with? Is it then only a base name, and a visionary opinion

of night-walking Sophists, and not an actual thing lying conspicuous to

all, like vice, so that we cannot partake of anything as profitable,...

but least, O ye gods! of virtue, for which we were created? Is it

not then absurd, that the utensils of the husbandman, mariner, and

charioteer should be serviceable and aiding towards his intended end,

whilst that which was by God made for virtue destroys and corrupts

virtue? But perhaps it is time now to leave this point, and pass to

another.

LAMPRIAS. Not for my sake, my dear friend, I beseech you; for I desire

to understand, in what manner these men bring in evil things before the

good, and vice before virtue.

DIADUMENUS. It is indeed, sir, a thing worth knowing. They babble indeed

much; but in conclusion they say that prudence, being the knowledge of

good and evil, would be wholly taken away if there were no evil. For as,

if there are truths, it is impossible but there must be some lies also

near to them; so it stands with reason, that if there are good things,

there must also be evil things.

LAMPRIAS. One of these things is not said amiss; and I think also that

the other is not unapprehended by me. For I see a difference here:

that which is not true must immediately be false; but that is not of

necessity evil which is not good; because that between true and false

there is no medium, but between good and evil there is the indifferent.

Nor is it of necessity that the one must subsist with the other. For

Nature may have good without having any need of evil, but only having

that which is neither good nor evil. But if there is anything to be said

by you to the former reason, let us hear it.

DIADUMENUS. Many things indeed are said; but at present we shall make

use only of what is most necessary. In the first place, it is a folly

to imagine that good and evil have their existence for the sake

of prudence. For good and evil being already extant, prudence came

afterwards; as the art of physic was invented, there being already

things wholesome and unwholesome. For good and evil are not therefore

extant that there may be prudence; but the faculty by which we judge

good and evil that are already in being is named prudence. As sight is

a sense distinguishing white from black; which colors were not therefore

made that we might have sight, but we rather wanted sight to discern

these things. Secondly, when the world shall be set on fire (as the

Stoics hold), there will then no evil be left, but all will then be

prudent and wise. There is therefore prudence, though there is no evil;

nor is it of necessity for evil to exist that prudence may have a being.

But supposing that prudence must always be a knowledge of good and

evil, what inconvenience would it be if, evil being taken away, prudence

should no longer subsist; but instead of this we should have another

virtue, not being the knowledge of good and evil, but of good only? So,

if black should be wholly lost from among the colors, and any one should

therefore contend that sight is also lost, for that there is no more

the sense of discerning black and white, what should hinder us from

answering him: It is no prejudice to us, if we have not what you call

sight, but in lieu of that have another sense and faculty, by which we

apprehend colors that are white and not white. For I indeed think that

neither our taste would be lost, if bitter things were wanting, nor our

feeling, if pain were taken away, nor prudence, if evil had no being;

but that these senses would remain, to apprehend things sweet and

grateful and those that are not so, and prudence to be the science of

things good and not good. But let those who think otherwise take the

name to themselves, leaving us the thing.

Besides all this, what should hinder but there may be an understanding

of evil, and an existence of good? As the gods, I believe, enjoy health,

but understand the fever and pleurisy. Since even we, who, as they

say, have abundance of evils but no good, are not yet destitute of the

knowledge what prudence, what goodness, and what happiness is. And this

also would be remarkable, that if virtue were absent, there should be

those who could teach us what it is and give us a comprehension of

it, when if vice were not extant, it should be impossible to have any

understanding of it. For see what these men persuade us who philosophize

against the conceptions,--that by folly indeed we comprehend prudence,

but prudence without folly cannot so much as comprehend folly itself.

And if Nature had absolutely stood in need of the generation of evil,

yet might one or two examples of vice have been sufficient; or if you

will, it might have been requisite that ten, a thousand, or ten thousand

vicious men should be brought forth, and not that the multitude of vices

should be so great as "to exceed in number the sands of the sea, the

dust of the earth, and the feathers of all the various kinds of birds in

the world," and yet that there should not be so much all this while as a

dream of virtue. Those who in Sparta had the charge of the public halls

or eating places called Phiditia were wont to bring forth two or

three Helots drunken and full of wine, that the young men, seeing what

drunkenness was, might learn to keep sobriety. But in human life there

are many such examples of vice. For there is not any one sober to

virtue; but we all stagger up and down, acting shamefully and living

miserably. Thus does reason inebriate us, and with so much trouble and

madness does it fill us, that we fall in nothing short of those dogs of

whom Aesop says, that seeing certain skins swimming in the water, they

endeavored to gulp down the sea, but burst before they could get at

them. For reason also, by which we hope to gain reputation and attain

to virtue, does, ere we can reach to it, corrupt and destroy us, being

before filled with abundance of heady and bitter vice;--if indeed, as

these men say, they who are got even to the uppermost step have no ease,

cessation, or breathing from folly and infelicity.

But let us see what manner of thing he shows vice to be who says that it

was not brought forth unprofitably, and of what use and what a thing

he makes it to be to those who have it, writing in his book of right

conduct, that a wicked man wants nothing, has need of nothing, nothing

is useful to him, nothing proper, nothing fit for him. How then is

vice useful, with which neither health nor abundance of riches nor

advancement in virtue is profitable? Who then does not want these

things, of which some are "preferable" and "acceptable" and therefore

highly useful, and others are "according to Nature," as themselves term

them? But (they affirm) no one has need of them, unless he become wise.

So the vicious man does not even stand in want of being made wise.

Nor are men hungry and thirsty before they become wise. When thirsty,

therefore, they have no need of water, nor when hungry, of bread.

Be like to courteous guests, and him

Who asks only fire and shelter:

does this man now not need entertainment? Nor had he need of a cloak,

who said,

Give Hipponax a cloak, for I'm stiff with cold.

But will you speak a paradox indeed, both extravagant and singular? Say

then that a wise man has need of nothing, that he wants nothing, he

is fortunate, he is free from want, he is self-sufficient, blessed,

perfect. Now what madness is this, that he to whom nothing is wanting

has need of the goods he has, but that the vicious indeed wants many

things, and stands in need of nothing. For thus indeed says Chrysippus,

that the vicious wants but stands not in need; removing the common

notions, like chessmen, backwards and forwards. For all men think that

having need precedes wanting, esteeming him who stands in need of things

that are not at hand or easy to be got, to want them. For no man wants

horns or wings, because no one has need of them. But we say that those

want arms and money and clothes who are destitute of them, when they

have occasion for them. But these men are so desirous of seeming always

to say something against the common notions, that for the love of

novelty they often depart from their own opinions, as they do here.

Recall yourself to the consideration of what has been said a little

above. This is one of their assertions against the common conception,

that no vicious man receives any utility. And yet many being instructed

profit, many being slaves are made free; many being besieged are

delivered, being lame are led by the hand, and being sick are cured.

"But possessing all these things, they are never the better, neither

do receive benefits, nor have they any benefactors, nor do they slight

them." Vicious men then are not ungrateful, no more than are wise men.

Ingratitude therefore has no being; because the good receiving a benefit

fail not to acknowledge it, and the bad are not capable of receiving

any. Behold, now, what they say to this,--that benefit is ranked among

mean or middle things, and that to give and receive utility belongs only

to the wise, but the bad also receive a benefit. Then they who partake

of the benefit partake not also of its use; and whither a benefit

extends, there is nothing useful or commodious. Now what else is there

that makes a kind office a benefit, but that the bestower of it is, in

some respect, useful to the needy receiver?

LAMPRIAS. But let these things pass. What, I beseech you, is this so

highly venerated utility, which preserving as some great and excellent

thing for the wise, they permit not so much as the name of it to the

vicious?

DIADUMENUS. If (say they) one wise man does but any way prudently

stretch out his finger, all the wise men all the world over receive

utility by it. This is the work of their amity; in this do the virtues

of the wise man terminate by their common utilities. Aristotle then and

Xenocrates doted, saving that men receive utility from the gods, from

their parents, from their masters, being ignorant of that wonderful

utility which wise men receive from one another, being moved according

to virtue, though they neither are together nor yet know it. Yet all

men esteem, that laying up, keeping, and bestowing are then useful and

profitable, when some benefit or profit is recovered by it. The thriving

man buys keys, and diligently keeps his stores,

With 's hand unlocking wealth's sweet treasury.

(From the "Bellerophontes" of Euripides, Frag. 287, vs. 8.)

But to store up and to keep with diligence and labor such things as are

for no use is not seemly or honorable, but ridiculous. If Ulysses indeed

had tied up with the knot which Circe taught him, not the gifts he

had received from Alcinous,--tripods, caldrons, cloths, and gold,--but

heaping up trash, stones, and such like trumpery, should have thought

his employment about such things, and the possession and keeping of

them, a happy and blessed work, would any one have imitated this

foolish providence and empty care? Yet this is the beauty, gravity, and

happiness of the Stoical consent, being nothing else but a gathering

together and keeping of useless and indifferent things. For such are

things according to Nature, and more exterior things; if indeed they

compare the greatest riches to fringes and golden chamberpots, and

sometimes also, as it happens, to oil-cruets. Then, as those who seem

proudly to have affronted and railed at some gods or demigods presently

changing their note, fall prostrate and sit humbly on the ground,

praising and magnifying the Divinity; so these men, having met with

punishment of this arrogancy and vanity, again exercise themselves in

these indifferent things and such as pertain nothing to them, crying

out with a loud voice that there is only one thing good, specious, and

honorable, the storing up of these things and the communication of them,

and that it is not meet for those to live who have them not, but to

despatch out of the way and famish themselves, bidding a long farewell

to virtue.

They esteem indeed Theognis to have been a man altogether of a base

and abject spirit, for saying, as one overfearful in regard to poverty,

which is an indifferent thing:--

From poverty to fly, into the deep

Throw thyself, Cyrnus, or from rocks so steep.

Yet they themselves exhort the same thing in prose, and affirm that a

man, to free himself from some great disease or exceedingly acute pain,

if he have not at hand sword or hemlock, ought to leap into the sea or

throw himself headlong from a precipice; neither of which is hurtful, or

evil, or incommodious, or makes them who fall into it miserable.

With what, then, says he, shall I begin? And what shall I take for the

principle of duty and matter of virtue, leaving Nature and that which is

according to Nature?

With what, O good sir, do Aristotle and Theophrastus begin? What

beginnings do Xenocrates and Polemo take? Does not also Zeno follow

these, who hold Nature and that which is according to Nature to be the

elements of happiness? But they indeed persisted in these things, as

desirable, good, and profitable; and joining to them virtue, which

employs them and uses every one of them according to its property,

thought to complete and consummate a perfect life and one every way

absolute, producing that concord which is truly suitable and consonant

to Nature. For these men did not run into confusion, like those who leap

up from the ground and presently fall down again upon it, terming

the same things acceptable and not desirable, proper and not good,

unprofitable and yet useful, nothing to us and yet the principles of

duties. But their life was such as their speech, and they exhibited

actions suitable and consonant to their sayings. But they who are of

the Stoic sect--not unlike to that woman in Archilochus, who deceitfully

carried in one hand water, in the other fire--by some doctrines draw

Nature to them, and by others drive her from them. Or rather, by their

deeds and actions they embrace those things which are according to

Nature, as good and desirable, but in words and speeches they reject and

contemn them, as indifferent and of no use to virtue for the acquiring

felicity.

Now, forasmuch as all men esteem the sovereign good to be joyous,

desirable, happy, of the greatest dignity, self-sufficient, and wanting

nothing; compare their good, and see how it agrees with this common

conception. Does the stretching out a finger prudently produce this joy?

Is a prudent torture a thing desirable? Is he happy, who with reason

breaks his neck? Is that of the greatest dignity, which reason often

chooses to let go for that which is not good? Is that perfect and

self-sufficient, by enjoying which, if they possess not too indifferent

things, they neither can nor will endure to live? There is also another

tenet of the Stoics, by which custom is still more injured, taking and

plucking from her genuine notions, which are as her legitimate children,

and supposing other bastardly, wild, and illegitimate ones in their

room, and necessitating her to nourish and cherish the one instead of

the other; and that too in those principles which concern things good

and bad, desirable and avoidable, proper and strange, the energy of

which ought to be more clearly distinguished than that of hot and cold,

black and white. For the imaginations of these things are brought in

by the senses from without; but those have their original bred from the

good things which we have within us. But these men entering with their

logic upon the topic of felicity, as on the sophism called Pseudomenos,

or that named Kyrieuon, have removed no ambiguities, but brought in very

many.

Indeed, of two good things, of which the one is the end and the other

belongs to the end, none is ignorant that the end is the greater and

perfecter good. Chrysippus also acknowledges this difference, as is

manifest from his Third Book of Good Things. For he dissents from

those who make science the end, and sets it down.... In his Treatise of

Justice, however, he does not think that justice can be preserved, if

any one makes pleasure to be the end; but allows it may, if pleasure is

not said to be the end, but simply a good. Nor do I think that you need

now to hear me repeat his words, since his Third Book of Justice is

everywhere to be had. When, therefore, O my friend, they elsewhere say

that no one good is greater or less than another, and that what is

not the end is equal to the end, they contradict not only the common

conceptions, but even their own words. Again, if of two evils, the one

when it is present renders us worse, and the other hurts us but renders

us not worse, it is against reason not to say that the evil which by

its presence renders us worse is greater than that which hurts us but

renders us not worse. Now Chrysippus indeed confesses, that there are

some fears and sorrows and errors which hurt us, but render us not

worse. Read his First Book of Justice against Plato; for in respect of

other things, it is worth the while to note the babbling of the man in

that place, expounding indifferently all matters and doctrines, as well

proper to his own sect as foreign to it.

It is likewise against common sense when he says that there may be two

ends or scopes proposed of life, and that all the things we do are not

to be referred to one; and yet this is more against common sense, to

say that there is an end, and yet that every action is to be referred to

another. Nevertheless they must of necessity endure one of these. For

if those things which are first according to Nature are not eligible for

themselves, but the choice and taking of them agreeably to reason is,

and if every one therefore does all his actions for the acquiring the

first things according to Nature, then all things which are done must

have their reference to this, that the principal things according to

Nature may be obtained. But they think that they who aim and aspire to

get these things do not have the things themselves as the end, but

that to which they must make reference, namely, the choice and not

the things. For the end indeed is to choose and receive these things

prudently. But the things themselves and the enjoying of them are not

the end, but the material ground, having its value only from the choice.

For it is my opinion that they both use and write this very expression,

to show the difference.

LAMPRIAS. You have exactly related both what they say and in what manner

they deliver it.

DIADUMENUS. But observe how it fares with them, as with those that

endeavor to leap over their own shadow; for they do not leave behind,

but always carry along with them in their speech some absurdity most

remote from common sense. For as, if any one should say that he who

shoots does all he can, not that he may hit the mark, but that he may do

all he can, such a one would rightly be esteemed to speak enigmatically

and prodigiously; so these doting dreamers, who contend that the

obtaining of natural things is not the end of aiming after natural

things, but the taking and choosing them is, and that the desire and

endeavor after health is not in every one terminated in the enjoyment of

health, but on the contrary, the enjoyment of health is referred to the

desire and endeavor after it, and that certain walkings and contentions

of speech and suffering incisions and taking of medicines, so they are

done by reason, are the end of health, and not health of them, they,

I say, trifle like to those who say, Let us sup, that we may offer

sacrifice, that we may bathe. But this rather changes order and custom,

and all things which these men say carry with them the total subversion

and confusion of affairs. Thus, we do not desire to take a walk in fit

time that we may digest our meat; but we digest our meat that we may

take a walk in fit time. Has Nature also made health for the sake of

hellebore, instead of producing hellebore for the sake of health?

For what is wanting to bring them to the highest degree of speaking

paradoxes, but the saying of such things? What difference is there

between him who says that health was made for the sake of medicines and

not medicines for the sake of health, and him who makes the choice

of medicines and their composition and use more desirable than health

itself?--or rather who esteems health not at all desirable, but placing

the end in the negotiation about these things, prefers desire to

enjoyment, and not enjoyment to desire? For to desire, forsooth (they

affirm), is joined the proceeding wisely and discreetly. It is true

indeed, we will say, if respect be had to the end, that is, the

enjoyment and possession of the things it pursues; but otherwise, it is

wholly void of reason, if it does all things for the obtaining of that

the enjoyment of which is neither honorable nor happy.

Now, since we are fallen upon this discourse, anything may rather

be said to agree with common sense, than that those who have neither

received nor have any conception of good do nevertheless desire

and pursue it. For you see how Chrysippus drives Ariston into this

difficulty, that he should understand an indifference in things

inclining neither to good nor to bad, before either good or bad is

itself understood; for so indifference will appear to have subsisted

even before itself, if the understanding of it cannot be perceived

unless good be first understood, while the good is nothing else than

this very indifference. Understand now and consider this indifference

which the Stoa refutes and calls consent, whence and in what manner it

gives us the knowledge of good. For if without good the indifference to

that which is not good cannot be understood, much less does the knowing

of good things give any intelligence of itself to those who had not

before some notion of the good. But as there can be no knowledge of the

art of things wholesome and unwholesome in those who have not first some

knowledge of the things themselves; so they cannot conceive any notion

of the science of good and evil who have not some fore-knowledge of good

and evil.

LAMPRIAS. What then is good? DIADUMENUS. Nothing but prudence. LAMPRIAS.

And what is prudence? DIADUMENUS. Nothing but the science of good.

LAMPRIAS. There is much then of "Jupiter's Corinth" (that is, much

begging the question) admitted into their reasoning. For I would have

you let alone the saying about the turning of the pestle, lest you

should seem to mock them; although an accident like to that has

insinuated itself into their discourse. For it seems that, to the

understanding of good, one has need to understand prudence, and to seek

for prudence in the understanding of good, being forced always to

pursue the one by the other, and thus failing of both; since to the

understanding of each we have need of that which cannot be known without

the other be first understood.

DIADUMENUS. But there is yet another way, by which you may perceive

not only the perversion but the eversion of their discourse, and the

reduction of it entirely to nothing. They hold the essence of good to be

the reasonable election of things according to Nature. Now the election

is not reasonable which is not directed to some end, as has been said

before. What, then, is this end? Nothing else, say they, but to reason

rightly in the election of things according to Nature. First, then, the

conception of good is lost and gone. For to reason rightly in election

is an operation proceeding from an habit of right reasoning, and

therefore being constrained to get this from the end; and the end not

without this, we fail of understanding either of them. Besides, which is

more, this reasonable election ought strictly to be a choice of

things good and useful, and cooperating to the end; for how can it be

reasonable to choose things which are neither convenient nor honorable

nor at all eligible? For be it, as they say, a reasonable election of

things having a fitness for the causing felicity; see then to what a

beautiful and solemn conclusion their discourse brings them. For the

end is (it seems), according to them, to reason rightly in the choice of

things which are useful in causing us to reason rightly.

LAMPRIAS. When I hear these words, my friend, what is laid down seems to

me strangely extravagant; and I farther want to know how this happens.

DIADUMENUS. You must then be more attentive; for it is not for every one

to understand this riddle. Hear therefore and answer. Is not the end,

according to them, to reason rightly in the election of things according

to Nature?

LAMPRIAS. So they say.

DIADUMENUS. And are these things according to Nature chosen as good,

or as having some fitness or preferences... either for this end or for

something else?

LAMPRIAS. I think not for anything else but for this end.

DIADUMENUS. Now, then, having discovered the matter, see what befalls

them. They affirm that the end is to reason rightly in the selection of

things which are of value in causing us to reason rightly, for they say

that we neither have nor understand any other principle either of good

or of felicity but this precious rectitude of reasoning in the election

of things that are of worth. But there are some who think that this is

spoken against Antipater, and not against the whole sect; for that he,

being pressed by Carneades, fell into these fooleries.

But as for those things that are against the common conceptions taught

in the Stoa concerning love, they are all of them concerned in the

absurdity. They say youths are deformed who are vicious and foolish,

and that the wise are fair; and yet that none of these beautiful ones

is either beloved or worthy of being beloved. Nor yet is this the worst;

but they add, that those who love the deformed ones cease to do so when

they are become fair. Now whoever knew such a love as is kindled and has

its being at the sight of the body's deformity joined with that of the

soul, and is quenched and decays at the accession of beauty joined with

prudence, justice, and temperance? These men are not unlike to those

gnats which love to settle on the dregs of wine, or on vinegar, but shun

and fly away from potable and pleasant wine. As for that which they call

and term an appearance of beauty, saying that it is the inducement of

love,--first, it has no probability, for in those who are very foul and

highly wicked there cannot be an appearance of beauty, if indeed (as is

said) the wickedness of the disposition fills the face with deformity.

And secondly, it is absolutely against all common experience for the

deformed to be worthy of love because he one day will be fair and

expects to have beauty, but that when he has got it and is become fair

and good, he is to be beloved of none.

LAMPRIAS. Love, they say, is a certain hunting after a young person

who is as yet indeed undeveloped, but naturally well disposed towards

virtue.

DIADUMENUS. And what do we now else, O my best friend, but demonstrate

that their sect perverts and destroys all our common conceptions with

improbable things and unusual expressions? For none would hinder the

solicitude of these wise men towards young persons, if it were free

from all passionate affection, from being named hunting or love

of instruction; but they ought to call love what all men and women

understand and call by this name, like that which Penelope's suitors in

Homer seem to acknowledge,

Who all desired to lie with her;

("Odyssey," i. 366)

or as Jupiter in another place says to Juno,

For neither goddess yet nor mortal dame

E'er kindled in my heart so great a flame.

("Iliad." xiv. 315.)

Thus casting moral philosophy into these matters, in which all is

A mazy whirl, with nothing sound, and all perplexed,

(Euripides, "Andromache," 448.)

they contemn and deride it, as if boasting themselves to be the only

men who observe nature and custom as it ought to be, and who at the

same time adapted reason to each man by means of aversions, desires,

appetites, pursuits, and impulses. But custom has received no good from

their logic, but, like the ear diseased by vain sounds, is filled

with difficulty and obscurity,--of which, if you think good, we will

elsewhere begin a new discourse. But now we will run through the chief

and principal heads of their natural philosophy, which no less confounds

the common conceptions than that other concerning ends. =============

First, this is altogether absurd and against sense, to say that is which

is not, and things which are not are. But above all that is most

absurd which they say of the universe. For, putting round about the

circumference of the world an infinite vacuum, they say that the

universe is neither a body nor bodiless. It follows then from this that

the universe has no being, since with them body only has a being.

Since therefore it is the part of that which has a being both to do and

suffer, and the universe has no being, it follows that the universe will

neither do nor suffer. Neither will it be in a place; for that which

takes up place is a body, and the universe is not a body, therefore the

universe exists nowhere. And since that only rests which continues in

one and the same place, the universe rests not, because it takes not up

place. Neither yet is it moved, for what is moved must have a place and

space in which to move. Moreover, what is moved either moves itself, or

suffers motion from another. Now, that which is moved by itself has

some bents and inclinations proceeding from its gravity or levity; and

gravity and levity are either certain habits or faculties or differences

of bodies. But the universe is not a body. It follows then of necessity,

that the universe is neither, heavy nor light, and consequently, that it

has not in itself any principle of motion. Nor yet will the universe be

moved by any other; for there is nothing else besides the universe. Thus

are they necessitated to say as they do, that the universe neither rests

nor is moved. Lastly since according to their opinion it must not

be said that the universe is a body, and yet the heaven, the earth,

animals, plants, men, and stones are bodies, it follows that that

which is no body will have bodies for its parts, and things which have

existence will be parts of that which has no existence, and that which

is not heavy will have parts that are heavy, and what is not light

will have parts that are light;--than which there cannot be any dreams

imagined more repugnant to the common conceptions.

Moreover, there is nothing so evident or so agreeing to common sense as

this, that what is not animate is inanimate, and what is not inanimate

is animate. And yet they overthrow also this evidence, confessing the

universe to be neither animate nor inanimate. Besides this, none thinks

the universe, of which there is no part wanting to be imperfect; but

they deny the universe to be perfect, saying that what is perfect may be

defined, but the universe because of its infiniteness cannot be defined.

Therefore, according to them, there is something which is neither

perfect nor imperfect. Moreover, the universe is neither a part, since

there is nothing greater than it; nor the whole, for the whole (they

say) is predicated only of that which is digested into order; but the

universe is, through its infiniteness, undetermined and unordered.

Moreover, there is no other thing which can be the cause of the

universe, there being nothing besides the universe; nor is the universe

the cause of other things or even of itself; for its nature suffers it

not to act, and a cause is understood by its acting. Suppose, now, one

should ask all men what they imagine NOTHING to be, and what notion they

have of it. Would they not answer, that it neither is a cause nor has

a cause, that it is neither the whole nor a part that it is neither

perfect nor imperfect, that it is neither animate nor inanimate, that

it neither is moved nor rests nor subsists, that it is neither corporeal

nor incorporeal; and that this and no other thing is meant by NOTHING?

Since, then, they alone predicate that of the universe which all others

do of NOTHING, it seems plain that they make the universe and NOTHING to

be the same. Time must then be said to be nothing; the same also must

be said of predicate, axiom, junction, conjunction, which terms they use

more than any of the other philosophers, yet they say that they have

no existence. But farther, to say that what is true has no being or

subsistence but is comprehended, and that that is comprehensible and

credible which no way partakes of the essence of being,--does not this

exceed all absurdity?

But lest these things should seem to have too much of logical

difficulty, let us proceed to such as pertain more to natural

philosophy. Since, then, as themselves say,

Jove is of all beginning, midst, and end,

(See "Orphic Fragments," vi. 10 (Herm.).)

they ought chiefly to have applied themselves to remedy, redress, and

reduce to the best order the conceptions concerning the gods, if there

were in them anything confused or erroneous; or if not, to have left

every one in those sentiments which they had from the laws and custom

concerning the Divinity:--

For neither now nor yesterday But always these things lived,

No one knows from whence they came.

(Sophocles, "Antigone," 456.)

But these men, having begun (as it were) "from Vesta" to disturb the

opinions settled and received in every country concerning the gods, have

not (to speak sincerely) left anything entire and uncorrupted. For

what man is there or ever was, except these, who does not believe the

Divinity to be immortal and eternal? Or what in the common anticipations

is more unanimously chanted forth concerning the gods than such things

as these:--

There the blest gods eternally enjoy

Their sweet delights;

("Odyssey," vi. 46.)

and again,

Both gods immortal, and earth-dwelling men;

("Iliad," v. 442.)

and again,

Exempt from sickness and old age are they,

And free from toil, and have escaped the stream

Of roaring Acheron?

(From Pindar.)

One may perhaps light upon some nations so barbarous and savage as

not to think there is a God; but there was never found any man who,

believing a God, did not at the same time believe him immortal and

eternal. Certainly, those who were called Atheists, like Theodorus,

Diagoras, and Hippo, durst not say that the Divinity is corruptible, but

they did not believe that there is anything incorruptible; not indeed

admitting the subsistence of an incorruptibility, but keeping the notion

of a God. But Chrysippus and Cleanthes, having filled (as one may say)

heaven, earth, air, and sea with gods, have not yet made any one of

all these gods immortal or eternal, except Jupiter alone, in whom they

consume all the rest; so that it is no more suitable for him to consume

others than to be consumed himself. For it is alike an infirmity

to perish by being resolved into another, and to be saved by being

nourished by the resolution of others into himself. Now these are

not like other of their absurdities, gathered by argument from their

suppositions or drawn by consequence from their doctrines; but they

themselves proclaim it aloud in their writings concerning the gods,

Providence, Fate, and Nature, expressly saying that all the other gods

were born, and shall die by the fire, melting away, in their opinion,

as if they were of wax or tin. It is indeed as much against common sense

that God should be mortal as the man should be immortal; nay, indeed, I

do not see what the difference between God and man will be, if God also

is a reasonable and corruptible animal. For if they oppose us with

this subtle distinction, that man is mortal, and God not mortal but

corruptible, see what they get by it. For they will say either that

God is at the same time both immortal and corruptible, or else that he

neither is mortal nor immortal; the absurdity of which even those cannot

exceed who set themselves industriously to devise positions repugnant to

common sense. I speak of others; for these men have left no one of the

absurdest things unspoken or unattempted.

To these things Cleanthes, contending for the conflagration of the

world, says, that the sun will make the moon and all the other stars

like to himself, and will change them into himself. Indeed, if the

stars, being gods, should contribute anything to the sun towards

their own destruction by adding to its conflagration, it would be very

ridiculous for us to make prayers to them for our salvation, and to

think them the saviours of men, whose nature it is to accelerate their

own corruption and dissolution.

And yet these men leave nothing unsaid against Epicurus, crying out,

Fie, fie upon him, as confounding their presumption concerning God by

taking away Providence; for God (they say) is presumed and understood to

be not only immortal and happy, but also a lover of men and careful of

them and beneficial to them, and herein they say true. Now if they who

abolish Providence take away the preconception concerning God, what do

they who say that the gods indeed have care of us, but deny them to

be helpful to us, and make them not bestowers of good things but of

indifferent ones, giving, to wit, not virtue, but wealth, health,

children, and such like things, none of which is helpful, profitable,

desirable, or available? Or shall we not rather think, that Epicurus

does not take away the conceptions concerning the gods; but that these

Stoics scoff at the gods and deride them, saying one is a god of fruits,

another of marriage, another a physician, and another a diviner,

while yet health, issue, and plenty of fruits are not good things, but

indifferent things and unprofitable to those who have them?

The third point of the conception concerning the gods is, that the gods

do in nothing so much differ from men as in happiness and virtue. But

according to Chrysippus, they have not so much as this difference. For

he says that Jupiter does not exceed Dion in virtue, but that Jupiter

and Dion, being both wise, are equally aided by one another, when one

comes into the motion of the other. For this and none else is the good

which the gods do to men, and likewise men to the gods when they are

wise. For they say, that a man who falls not short in virtue comes not

behind them in felicity, and that he who, tormented with diseases and

being maimed in the body, makes himself away, is equally happy with

Jupiter the Saviour, provided he be but wise. But this man neither is

nor ever was upon the earth; but there are infinite millions of men

unhappy to the highest degree in the state and government of Jupiter,

which is most excellently administered. Now what can be more against

sense than that, when Jupiter governs exceedingly well, we should be

exceedingly miserable? But if (which it is unlawful even to say)

he would desire no longer to be a saviour, nor a deliverer, nor a

protector, but the contrary to all these glorious appellations, there

can no goodness be added to the things that are, either as to their

multitude or magnitude, since, as these men say, all men live to the

height miserably and wickedly, neither vice receiving addition, nor

unhappiness increase.

Nor is this the worst; but they are angry with Menander for saying upon

the stage,

The chief beginning of men's miseries

Are things exceeding good;

for that this is against sense. And yet they make God, who is good, the

beginning of evils. "For matter," they contend, "produced not any evil

of itself; for it is without quality, and whatever differences it has,

it has received them all from that which moves and forms it." But that

which moves and forms it is the reason dwelling in it, since matter is

not made to move and form itself. So that of necessity evil, if it come

by nothing, must have been produced from that which has no being; but if

by some moving principle, from God. But if they think that Jupiter has

not the command of his parts nor uses every one of them according to his

reason, they speak against common sense, and imagine an animal, many of

whose parts are not subservient to his will but use their own operations

and actions, to which the whole gives no incitation nor begins their

motion. For there is nothing which has life so ill compacted as that,

against its will, its feet shall go, its tongue speak, its horns push,

or its teeth bite. The most of which things God must of necessity

suffer, if the wicked, being parts of him, do against his will lie,

cheat, rob, and murder one another. But if, as Chrysippus says, the very

least part cannot possibly behave itself otherwise than according to

Jupiter's pleasure, and if every living thing is so framed by Nature as

to rest and move according as he inclines it and as he turns, stays, and

disposes it,

This saying is more impious than the first.

(See Nauck's "Tragic Fragments," p. 704 (No. 345).)

For it were more tolerable to say that many parts of Jupiter are,

through his weakness and want of power, hurried on to do many absurd

things against his nature and will, than that there is not any

intemperance or wickedness of which Jupiter is not the cause. Moreover,

since they affirm the world to be a city and the stars citizens, if this

be so, there must be also tribes-men and magistrates, the sun must be

some consul, and the evening star a praetor or mayor of a city. Now I

know not whether any one that shall go about to disprove such things

will not show himself more ridiculous than those who assert and affirm

them.

Is it not therefore against sense to say that the seed is more and

greater than that which is produced of it? For we see that Nature in all

animals and plants, even those that are wild, has taken small, slender,

and scarce visible things for principles of generation to the greatest.

For it does not only from a grain of wheat produce an ear-bearing stalk,

or a vine from the stone of a grape; but from a small berry or acorn

which has escaped being eaten by the bird, kindling and setting

generation on fire (as it were) from a little spark, it sends forth the

stock of a bush, or the tall body of an oak, palm, or pine tree. Whence

also they say that seed is in Greek called [Greek omitted], as it

were, the [Greek omitted] or the WINDING UP of a great mass in a little

compass; and that Nature has the name of [Greek omitted], as if it were

the INFLATION [Greek omitted] and diffusion of reason and numbers opened

and loosened by it. But now, in opposition to this, they hold that fire

is the seed of the world, which shall after the conflagration change

into seed the world, which will then have a copious nature from a

smaller body and bulk, and possess an infinite space of vacuum filled

by its increase; and the world being made, the form again recedes and

settles, the matter being after the generation gathered and contracted

into itself.

You may hear them and read many of their writings, in which they jangle

with the Academics, and cry out against them as confounding all things

with their paradox of indistinguishable identity, and as vehemently

contending that there is but one quality in two substances. And yet

there is no man who understands not this, and would not on the contrary

think it wonderful and extremely strange if there should not in all time

be found one kind of dove exactly and in all respects like to another

dove, a bee to a bee, a grain of wheat to a grain of wheat, or (as the

proverb has it) one fig to another. But these things are plainly against

common sense which the Stoics say and feign,--that there are in one

substance two individual qualities, and that the same substance, which

has particularly one quality, when another quality is added, receives

and equally conserves them both. For if there may be two, there may be

also three, four, and five, and even more than you can name, in one and

the same substance; I say not in its different parts, but all equally

in the whole, though even infinite in number. For Chrysippus says, that

Jupiter and the world are like to man, as is also Providence to the

soul; when therefore the conflagration shall be, Jupiter, who alone of

all the gods is incorruptible, will retire into Providence, and they

being together, will both perpetually remain in the one substance of the

ether.

But leaving now the gods, and beseeching them to give these Stoics

common sense and a common understanding, let us look into their

doctrines concerning the elements. It is against the common conceptions

that one body should be the place of another, or that a body should

penetrate through a body, neither of them containing any vacuity, but

the full passing into the full, and in which there is no vacuity--but

is full and has no place by reason of its continuity--receiving the

mixture. But these men, not thrusting one thing into one, nor yet two

or three or ten together, but jumbling all the parts of the world, being

cut piecemeal, into any one thing which they shall first light on, and

saying that the very least which is perceived by sense will contain the

greatest that shall come unto it, boldly frame a new doctrine, proving

themselves here, as in many other things, to be holding for their

suppositions things repugnant to common sense. And presently upon this

they are forced to admit into their discourse many monstrous and strange

positions, mixing whole bodies with whole; of which this also is one,

that three are four. For this others put as an example of those things

which cannot be conceived even in thought. But to the Stoics it is a

matter of truth, that when one cup of wine is mixed with two of water,

if it is not to disappear and if the mixture is to be equalized, it must

be spread through the whole and be confounded therewith, so as to make

that which was one two by the equalization of the mixture. For the one

remains, but is extended as much as two, and thus is equal to the double

of itself. Now if it happens in the mixture with two to take the measure

of two in the diffusion, this is together the measure both of three

and four,--of three because one is mixed with two, and of four because,

being mixed with two, it has an equal quantity with those with which

it is mixed. Now this fine subtilty is a consequence of their putting

bodies into a body, and so likewise is the unintelligibleness of the

manner how one is contained in the other. For it is of necessity that,

of bodies passing one into another by mixture, the one should not

contain and the other be contained, nor the one receive and the other be

received within; for this would not be a mixture, but a contiguity

and touching of the superficies, the one entering in, and the other

enclosing it without, and the rest of the parts remaining unmixed and

pure, and so it would be merely many different things. But there being

a necessity, according to their axiom of mixture, that the things which

are mixed should be mingled one within the other, and that the same

things should together be contained by being within, and by receiving

contain the other, and that neither of them could possibly exist again

as it was before, it comes to pass that both the subjects of the mixture

mutually penetrate each other, and that there is not any part of either

remaining separate, but that they are necessarily all filled with each

other.

Here now that famed leg of Arcesilaus comes in, with much laughter

insulting over their absurdities; for if these mixtures are through the

whole, what should hinder but that, a leg being cut off and putrefied

and cast into the sea and diffused, not only Antigonus's fleet (as

Arcesilaus said) might sail through it, but also Xerxes's twelve hundred

ships, together with the Grecians' three hundred galleys, might fight in

it? For the progress will not henceforth fail, nor the lesser cease

to be in the greater; or else the mixture will be at an end, and the

extremity of it, touching where it shall end, will not pass through the

whole, but will give over being mingled. But if the mixture is through

the whole, the leg will not indeed of itself give the Greeks room for

the sea-fight, for to this there is need of putrefaction and change;

but if one glass or but one drop of wine shall fall from hence into the

Aegean or Cretan Sea, it will pass into the Ocean or main Atlantic Sea,

not lightly touching its superficies, but being spread quite through

it in depth, breadth, and length. And this Chrysippus admits, saying

immediately in his First Book of Natural Questions, that there is

nothing to hinder one drop of wine from being mixed with the whole sea.

And that we may not wonder at this, he says that this one drop will by

mixtion extend through the whole world; than which I know not anything

that can appear more absurd.

And this also is against sense, that there is not in the nature of

bodies anything either supreme or first or last, in which the magnitude

of the body may terminate; but that there is always some phenomenon

beyond the body, still going on which carries the subject to infinity

and undeterminateness. For one body cannot be imagined greater or less

than another, if both of them may by their parts proceed IN INFINITUM;

but the nature of inequality is taken away. For of things that are

esteemed unequal, the one falls short in its last parts, and the other

goes on and exceeds. Now if there is no inequality, it follows that

there is no unevenness nor roughness of bodies; for unevenness is the

inequality of the same superficies with itself, and roughness is an

unevenness joined with hardness; neither of which is left us by those

who terminate no body in its last part, but extend them all by the

multitude of their parts unto an infinity. And yet is it not evident

that a man consists of more parts than a finger, and the world of more

than a man? This indeed all men know and understand, unless they become

Stoics; but if they are once Stoics, they on the contrary say and think

that a man has no more parts than a finger, nor the world than a man.

For division reduces bodies to an infinity; and of infinites neither is

more or less or exceeds in multitude, or the parts of the remainder will

cease to be divided and to afford a multitude of themselves.

LAMPRIAS. How then do they extricate themselves out of these

difficulties?

DIADUMENUS. Surely with very great cunning and courage. For Chrysippus

says: "If we are asked, if we have any parts, and how many, and of what

and how many parts they consist, we are to use a distinction, making

it a position that the whole body is compacted of the head, trunk, and

legs, as if that were all which is inquired and doubted of. But if they

extend their interrogation to the last parts, no such thing is to be

undertaken, but we are to say that they consist not of any certain

parts, nor yet of so many, nor of infinite, nor of finite." And I seem

to myself to have used his very words, that you may perceive how he

maintains the common notions, forbidding us to think of what or how many

parts every body is compacted, and whether of infinite or finite. For if

there were any medium between finite and infinite, as the indifferent

is between good and evil, he should, by telling us what that is, have

solved the difficulty. But if--as that which is not equal is

presently understood to be unequal, and that which is not mortal to be

immortal--we also understand that which is not finite to be immediately

infinite, to say that a body consists of parts neither finite nor

infinite is, in my opinion, the same thing as to affirm that an argument

is compacted of positions neither true nor false....

To this he with a certain youthful rashness adds, that in a pyramid

consisting of triangles, the sides inclining to the juncture are

unequal, and yet do not exceed one another in that they are greater.

Thus does he keep the common notions. For if there is anything greater

and not exceeding, there will be also something less and not deficient,

and so also something unequal which neither exceeds nor is deficient;

that is, there will be an unequal thing equal, a greater not greater,

and a less not less. See it yet farther, in what manner he answered

Democritus, inquiring philosophically and to the point, if a cone is

divided by a plane parallel with its base, what is to be thought of the

superficies of its segments, whether they are equal or unequal; for

if they are unequal, they will render the cone uneven, receiving many

steplike incisions and roughnesses; but if they are equal, the sections

will be equal, and the cone will seem to have the same qualities as the

cylinder, to wit, to be composed not of unequal but of equal circles;

which is most absurd. Here, that he may convince Democritus of

ignorance, he says, that the superficies are neither equal or unequal,

but that the bodies are unequal, because the superficies are neither

equal nor unequal. Indeed to assert this for a law, that bodies are

unequal while the superficies are not unequal, is the part of a man who

takes to himself a wonderful liberty of writing whatever comes into

his head. For reason and manifest evidence, on the contrary, give us to

understand, that the superficies of unequal bodies are unequal, and that

the bigger the body is, the greater also is the superficies, unless the

excess, by which it is the greater, is void of a superficies. For if the

superficies of the greater bodies do not exceed those of the less, but

sooner fail, a part of that body which has an end will be without an

end and infinite. For if he says that he is compelled to this. For

those rabbeted incisions, which he suspects in a cone, are made by the

inequality of the body, and not of the superficies. It is ridiculous

therefore not to reckon the superficies, and to leave the inequality in

the bodies themselves. But to persist still in this matter, what is more

repugnant to sense than the imagining of such things? For if we admit

that one superficies is neither equal nor unequal to another, we may say

also of magnitude and of number, that one is neither equal nor unequal

to another; and this, not having anything that we can call or think to

be a neuter or medium between equal and unequal. Besides, if there are

superficies neither equal nor unequal, what hinders but there may be

also circles neither equal nor unequal? For indeed these superficies

of conic sections are circles. And if circles, why may not also their

diameters be neither equal nor unequal? And if so, why not also angles,

triangles, parallelograms, parallelopipeds, and bodies? For if the

longitudes are neither equal nor unequal to one another, so will the

weight, percussion, and bodies be neither equal nor unequal. How then

dare these men inveigh against those who introduce vacuums, and suppose

that there are indivisible atoms, and who say that motion and rest

are not incompatible with each other, when they themselves affirm such

axioms as these to be false: If any things are not equal to one another,

they are unequal to one another; and the same things are not equal and

unequal to one another? But when he says that there is something greater

and yet not exceeding, it were worth the while to ask, whether these

things quadrate with one another. For if they quadrate, how is either

the greater? And if they do not quadrate, how can it be but the one must

exceed and the other fall short? For if neither of these are true, the

other both will and will not quadrate with the greater. For those

who keep not the common conceptions must of necessity fall into such

perplexities.

It is moreover against sense to say that nothing touches another; nor is

this less absurd, that bodies touch one another, but touch by nothing.

For they are necessitated to admit these things, who allow not the

least parts of a body, but assume something before that which appears to

touch, and never ceases to proceed still farther. What, therefore, these

men principally object to the patrons of those indivisible bodies called

atoms is this, that there is neither a touching of the whole by the

whole, nor of the parts by the parts; for that the one makes not a

touching but a mixture, and that the other is not possible, these

individuals having no parts. How then do not they themselves fall into

the same inconvenience, leaving no first or last part, whilst they say,

that whole bodies mutually touch one another by a term or extremity and

not by a part? But this term is not a body; therefore one body shall

touch one another by that which is incorporeal, and again shall not

touch, that which is incorporeal coming between them. And if it shall

touch, the body shall both do and suffer something by that which is

incorporeal. For it is the nature of bodies mutually to do and

suffer, and to touch. But if the body has a touching by that which

is incorporeal, it will have also a contact, and a mixture, and a

coalition. Again, in these contacts and mixtures the extremities of the

bodies must either remain, or not remain but be corrupted. Now both

of these are against sense. For neither do they themselves admit

corruptions and generations of incorporeal things; nor can there be a

mixture and coalition of bodies retaining their own extremities. For

the extremity determines and constitutes the nature of the body;

and mixtions, unless the mutual laying of parts by parts are thereby

understood, wholly confound all those that are mixed. And, as these men

say, we must admit the corruption of extremities in mixtures, and their

generation again in the separation of them. But this none can easily

understand. Now by what bodies mutually touch each other, by the same

they press, thrust, and crush each other. Now that this should be done

or take place in things that are incorporeal, is impossible and not

so much as to be imagined. But yet this they would constrain us to

conceive. For if a sphere touch a plane by a point, it is manifest that

it may be also drawn over the plane upon a point; and if the superficies

of it is painted with vermilion, it will imprint a red line on the

plane; and if it is fiery hot, it will burn the plane. Now for an

incorporeal thing to color, or a body to be burned by that which is

incorporeal, is against sense. But if we should imagine an earthen

or glassy sphere to fall from on high upon a plane of stone, it were

against reason to think it would not be broken, being struck against

that which is hard and solid; but it would be more absurd that it should

be broken, falling upon an extremity or point that is incorporeal. So

that the presumptions concerning things incorporeal and corporeal are

wholly disturbed, or rather taken away, by their joining to them many

impossibilities.

It is also against common sense, that there should be a time future and

past, but no time present; and that EREWHILE and LATELY subsist, but NOW

is nothing at all. Yet this often befalls the Stoics, who admit not the

least time between, nor will allow the present to be indivisible; but

whatsoever any one thinks to take and understand as present, one part of

that they say to be future, and the other part past; so that there is no

part remaining or left of the present time: but of that which is said

to be present, one part is distributed to the future, the other to the

past. Therefore one of these two things follows: either that, holding

there was a time and there will be a time, we must deny there is a time;

or we must hold that there is a time present, part of which has already

been and part will be, and say that of that which now is, one part is

future and the other past; and that of NOW, one part is before and the

other behind; and that now is that which is neither yet now nor any

longer NOW; for that which is past is no longer now, and that which is

to come is not yet NOW. And dividing thus the present, they must needs

say of the year and of the day, that part of it was of the year or day

past, and part will be of the year or day to come; and that of what is

together, there is a part before and a part after. For no less are they

perplexed, confounding together these terms, NOT YET and ALREADY and NO

LONGER and NOW and NOT NOW. But all other men suppose, esteem, and think

EREWHILE and AWHILE HENCE to be different parts of time from NOW, which

is followed by the one and preceded by the other. But Archedemus, saying

that now is the beginning and juncture of that which is past and that

which is near at hand, has (as it seems) without perceiving it thereby

destroyeth all time. For if NOW is no time, but only a term or extremity

of time, and if every part of time is such as now, all time seems

to have no parts, but to be wholly dissolved into terms, joints, and

beginnings. But Chrysippus, desiring to show more artifice in his

division, in his book of Vacuity and some others, says, that the past

and future time are not, but have subsisted (or will subsist), and

that the present only is; but in his third, fourth, and fifth books

concerning Parts, he asserts, that of the present time one part is past,

the other to come. Thus it comes to pass, that he divides subsisting

time into non-subsisting parts of a subsisting total, or rather leaves

nothing at all of time subsisting, if the present has no part but what

is either future or past.