This, therefore, though there should be nothing else, almost shows us

what sort of thing Fate is; but not particularly or in every respect.

What kind of thing then is it in its own form? It is, as far as one can

compare it, like to the civil or politic law. For first it orders the

most part of things at least, if not all, conditionally; and then it

comprises (as far as is possible for it) all things that belong to the

public in general; and the better to make you understand both the one

and the other, we must specify them by an example. The civil law speaks

and ordains in general of a valiant man, and also of a deserter and a

coward; and in the same manner of others. Now this is not to make the

law speak of this or that man in particular, but principally to propose

such things as are universal or general, and consequently such as fall

under them. For we may very well say, that it is legal to reward

this from his colors; because the law has virtually--though not in express

terms and particularly yet in such general ones as they are comprehended

under,--so determined of them. As the law (if I may so speak) of

physicians and masters of corporal exercises potentially comprehends

particular and special things within the general; so the law of Nature,

determining first and principally general matters, secondarily and

subordinately determines such as are particular. Thus, general things

being decreed by Fate, particular and individual things may also in

some sort be said to be so, because they are so by consequence with the

general. But perhaps some one of those who more accurately examine and

more subtly search into these things may say, on the contrary, that

particular and individual things precede the composition of general

things, and that the general exist only for the particular, since that

for which another thing is always goes before that which is for it.

Nevertheless, this is not the proper place to treat of this difficulty,

but it is to be remitted to another. However, that Fate comprehends not

all things clearly and expressly, but only such as are universal and

general, let it pass for resolved on at present, as well for what we

have already said a little before, as for what we shall say hereafter.

For that which is finite and determinate, agreeing properly with

divine Providence, is seen more in universal and general things than in

particular; such therefore is the divine law, and also the civil; but

infinity consists in particulars and individuals.

After this we are to declare what this term "conditionally" means; for

it is to be thought that Fate is also some such thing. That, then, is

said to be conditionally, which is supposed to exist not of itself or

absolutely, but as really dependent upon and joined to another; which

signifies a suit and consequence. "And this is the sanction of Adrastea

(or an inevitable ordinance), that whatever soul, being an attendant

on God, shall see anything of truth, shall till another revolution be

exempt from punishment; and if it is ever able to do the same, it shall

never suffer any damage." This is said both conditionally and also

universally. Now that Fate is some such thing is clearly manifest,

as well from its substance as from its name. For it is called [Greek

omitted] as being [Greek omitted], that is, dependent and linked; and it

is a sanction or law, because things are therein ordained and disposed

consequentially, as is usual in civil government.

We ought in the next place to consider and treat of mutual relation

and affection; that is, what reference and respect Fate has to divine

Providence, what to Fortune, what also to "that which is in our power,"

what to contingent and other such like things; and furthermore we are

to determine, how far and in what it is true or false that all things

happen and are done by and according to Fate. For if the meaning is,

that all things are comprehended and contained in Fate, it must be

granted that this proposition is true; and if any would farther have it

so understood, that all things which are done amongst men, on earth,

and in heaven are placed in Fate, let this also pass as granted for the

present. But if (as the expression seems rather to imply) the "being

done according to Fate" signifies not all things, but only that which

is a direct consequent of Fate, then it must not be said that all things

happen and are done by and according to Fate, though all things are so

according to Fate as to be comprised in it. For all things that the law

comprehends and of which it speaks are not legal or according to law;

for it comprehends treason, it treats of the cowardly running away from

one's colors in time of battle, of adultery, and many other such like

things, of which it cannot be said that any one of them is lawful.

Neither indeed can I affirm of the performing a valorous act in war, the

killing of a tyrant, or the doing any other virtuous deed, that it

is legal; because that only is proper to be called legal, which is

commanded by the law. Now if the law commands these things, how can they

avoid being rebels against the law and transgressors of it, who neither

perform valiant feats of arms, kill tyrants, nor do any other such

remarkable acts of virtue? And if they are transgressors of the law, why

is it not just they should be punished? But if this is not reasonable,

it must then be also confessed that these things are not legal or

according to law; but that legal and according to law is only that which

is particularly prescribed and expressly commanded by the law, in any

action whatsoever. In like manner, those things only are fatal and

according to Fate, which are the consequences of causes preceding in the

divine disposition. So that Fate indeed comprehends all things which are

done; yet many of those things that are comprehended in it, and almost

all that precede, should not (to speak properly) be pronounced to be

fatal or according to Fate.

These things being so, we are next in order to show, how "that which is

in our power" (or free will), Fortune, possible, contingent, and other

like things which are placed among the antecedent causes, can consist

with Fate, and Fate with them; for Fate, as it seems, comprehends all

things, and yet all these things will not happen by necessity, but every

one of them according to the principle of its nature. Now the nature

of the possible is to presubsist, as the genus, and to go before the

contingent; and the contingent, as the matter and subject, is to be in

the sphere of free will; and our free will ought as a master to make

use of the contingent; and Fortune comes in by the side of free will,

through the property of the contingent of inclining to either part. Now

you will more easily apprehend what has been said, if you shall consider

that everything which is generated, and the generation itself, is not

done without a generative faculty or power, and the power is not without

a substance. As for example, neither the generation of man, nor that

which is generated, is without a power; but this power is about man, and

man himself is the substance. Now the power or faculty is between the

substance, which is the powerful, and the generation and the thing

generated, which are both possibles. There being then these three

things, the power, the powerful, and the possible; before the power can

exist, the powerful must of necessity be presupposed as its subject,

and the power must also necessarily subsist before the possible. By

this deduction then may in some measure be understood what is meant by

possible; which may be grossly defined as "that which power is able to

produce;" or yet more exactly, if to this same there be added, "provided

there be nothing from without to hinder or obstruct it." Now of possible

things there are some which can never be hindered, as are those in

heaven, to wit, the rising and setting of the stars, and the like to

these; but others may indeed be hindered, as are the most part of human

things, and many also of those which are done in the air. The first,

as being done by necessity, are called necessary; the others, which may

fall one way or other, are called contingent; and they may both thus be

described. The necessary possible is that whose contrary is impossible;

and the contingent possible is that whose contrary is also possible.

For that the sun should set is a thing both necessary and possible,

forasmuch as it is contrary to this that the sun should not set, which

is impossible; but that, when the sun is set, there should be rain or

not rain, both the one and the other is possible and contingent. And

then again of things contingent, some happen oftener, others rarely and

not so often, others fall out equally or indifferently, as well the one

way as the other, even as it happens. Now it is manifest that those are

contrary to one another,--to wit, those which fall out oftener and those

which happen but seldom,--and they both for the most part are dependent

on Nature; but that which happens equally, as much one way as another,

depends on ourselves. For that under the Dog it should be either hot or

cold, the one oftener, the other seldomer, are both things subject to

Nature; but to walk and not to walk, and all such things of which both

the one and the other are submitted to the free will of man, are said

to be in us and our election; but rather more generally to be in us.

For there are two sorts of this "being in our power"; the one of which

proceeds from some sudden passion and motion of the mind, as from anger

or pleasure; the other from the discourse and judgment of reason, which

may properly be said to be in our election. And some reason there is to

hold that this possible and contingent is the same thing with that which

is said to be in our power and according to our free will, although

named differently. For in respect to the future, it is called possible

and contingent; and in respect of the present, it is named "in our

power" and "in our free choice." These things may thus be defined: The

contingent is that which is itself--as well as its contrary--possible;

and "that which is in our power" is one part of the contingent, to wit,

that which now takes place according to our choice. Thus have we in a

manner declared, that the possible in the order of Nature precedes the

contingent, and that the contingent exists before free will; as also

what each of them is, whence they are so named, and what are the

qualities adjoined or appertaining to them.

It now remains, that we treat of Fortune and casual adventure, and

whatever else is to be considered with them. It is therefore certain

that Fortune is a cause. Now of causes, some are causes by themselves,

and others by accident. Thus for example, the proper cause by itself

of an house or a ship is the art of the mason, the carpenter, or the

shipwright; but accidental causes are music, geometry, and whatever else

may happen to be joined with the art of building houses or ships, in

respect either of the body, the soul, or any exterior thing. Whence it

appears, that the cause by itself must needs be determinate and one;

but the causes by accident are never one and the same, but infinite and

undetermined. For many--nay, infinite--accidents, wholly different one

from the other, may be in one and the same subject. Now the cause by

accident, when it is found in a thing which not only is done for some

end but has in it free will and election, is then called Fortune; as is

the finding a treasure while one is digging a hole to plant a tree, or

the doing or suffering some extraordinary thing whilst one is flying,

following, or otherwise walking, or only turning about, provided it be

not for the sake of that which happens, but for some other intention.

Hence it is, that some of the ancients have declared Fortune to be a

cause unknown that cannot be foreseen by the human reason. But according

to the Platonics, who have approached yet nearer to the true reason of

it, it is thus defined: Fortune is a cause by accident, in those

things which are done for some end, and which are of our election. And

afterwards they add, that it is unforeseen and unknown to the human

reason; although that which is rare and strange appears also by the same

means to be in this kind of cause by accident. But what this is, if it

is not sufficiently evidenced by the oppositions and disputations made

against it, will at least most clearly be seen by what is written in

Plato's Phaedo, where you will find these words:--

PHAED. Have you not heard how and in what manner the judgment passed?

ECH. Yes indeed; for there came one and told us of it. At which we

wondered very much that, the judgment having been given long before, it

seems that he died a great while after. And what, Phaedo, might be the

cause of it? PHAED. It was a fortune which happened to him, Echecrates.

For it chanced that, the day before the judgment, the prow of the galley

which the Athenians send every year to the isle of Delos was crowned.

(Plato, "Phaedo," p.58 A.)

In which discourse it is to be observed, that the expression HAPPENED TO

HIM is not simply to be understood by WAS DONE or CAME TO PASS, but

it much rather regards what befell him through the concurrence of many

causes together, one being done in connection with another. For the

priest crowned the ship and adorned it with garlands for another end and

intention, and not for the sake of Socrates; and the judges also had

for some other cause condemned him. But the event was contrary to

experience, and of such a nature that it might seem to have been

effected by the foresight of some human creature, or rather of the

superior powers. And so much may suffice to show with what Fortune must

of necessity subsist, and that there must subsist first such things as

are in our free will: what it effects is, like itself called Fortune.

============== But chance or casual adventure is of a larger extent than

Fortune; which it comprehends, and also several other things which may

of their own nature happen sometimes one way, sometimes another. And

this, as it appears by the derivation of the word, which is in Greek

[Greek omitted] CHANCE, is that which happens of itself, when that which

is ordinary happens not, but another thing in its place; such as cold

in the dog-days seems to be; for it is sometimes then cold.... Once for

all, as "that which is in our power" is a part of the contingent, so

Fortune is a part of chance or casual adventure; and both the two events

are conjoined and dependent on the one and the other, to wit, chance on

contingent, and Fortune on "that which is in our choice,"--and yet

not on all, but on what is in our election, as we have already said.

Wherefore chance is common to things inanimate, as well as to those

which are animated; whereas Fortune is proper to man only, who has his

actions voluntary. And an argument of this is, that to be fortunate and

to be happy are thought to be one and the same thing. Now happiness is

a certain well-doing, and well-doing is proper only to man, and to him

perfect.

These, then, are the things which are comprised in Fate, to wit,

contingent, possible, election, "that which is in our power," Fortune,

chance, and their adjuncts, as are the things signified by the words

perhaps and peradventure; all which indeed are contained in Fate. Yet

none Of them is fatal. It now remains, that we discourse of divine

Providence, and show how it comprehends even Fate itself.

The supreme therefore and first Providence is the understanding or (if

you had rather) the will of the first and sovereign God, doing good

to everything that is in the world, by which all divine things have

universally and throughout been most excellently and most wisely

ordained and disposed. The second Providence is that of the second

gods, who go through the heaven, by which temporal and mortal things are

orderly and regularly generated, and which pertains to the continuation

and preservation of every kind. The third may probably be called the

Providence and procuration of the Daemons, which, being placed on the

earth, are the guardians and overseers of human actions. This threefold

Providence therefore being seen, of which the first and supreme is

chiefly and principally so named, we shall not be afraid to say,

although we may in this seem to contradict the sentiments of some

philosophers, that all things are done by Fate and by Providence, but

not also by Nature. But some are done according to Providence, these

according to one, those according to another,--and some according to

Fate; and Fate is altogether according to Providence, while Providence

is in no wise according to Fate. But let this discourse be understood

of the first and supreme Providence. Now that which is done according to

another, whatever it is, is always posterior to that according to which

it is done; as that which is according to the law is after the law,

and that which is according to Nature is after Nature, so that which is

according to Fate is after Fate, and must consequently be more new and

modern. Wherefore supreme Providence is the most ancient of all things,

except him whose will or understanding it is, to wit, the sovereign

author, maker, and father of all things. "Let us therefore," says

Timaeus, "discourse for what cause the Creator made and framed this

machine of the universe. He was good, and in him that is good there

can never be imprinted or engendered any envy against anything. Being

therefore wholly free from this, he desired that all things should, as

far as it is possible, resemble himself. He, therefore, who admits

this to have been chiefly the principal original of the generation

and creation of the world, as it has been delivered to us by wise men,

receives that which is most right. For God, who desired that all things

should be good, and nothing, as far as possibly might be, evil, taking

thus all that was visible,--restless as it was, and moving rashly and

confusedly,--reduced it from disorder to order, esteeming the one to be

altogether better than the other. For it neither was nor is convenient

for him who is in all perfection good, to make anything that should

not be very excellent and beautiful." (Plato, "Timaeus," p.29 D.) This,

therefore, and all that follows, even to his disputation concerning

human souls, is to be understood of the first Providence, which in the

beginning constituted all things. Afterwards he speaks thus: "Having

framed the universe, he ordained souls equal in number to the stars, and

distributed to each of them one; and having set them, as it were, in a

chariot, showed the nature of the universe, and appointed them the laws

of Fate." (Ibid. p.41 D.) Who, then, will not believe, that by these

words he expressly and manifestly declares Fate to be, as it were, a

foundation and political constitution of laws, fitted for the souls of

men? Of which he afterwards renders the cause.

As for the second Providence, he thus in a manner explains it, saying:

"Having prescribed them all these laws, to the end that, if there should

afterwards happen any fault, he might be exempt from being the cause of

any of their evil, he dispersed some of them upon the earth, some into

the moon, and some into the other instruments of time. And after this

dispersion, he gave in charge to the young gods the making of human

bodies, and the making up and adding whatever was wanting and deficient

in human souls; and after they had perfected whatever is adherent and

consequent to this, they should rule and govern, in the best manner

they possibly could, this mortal creature, so far as it might not be the

cause of its own evils." (Ibid. p.42 D.) For by these words, "that he

might be exempt from being the cause of any of their evil," he most

clearly signifies the cause of Fate; and the order and office of the

young gods manifests the second Providence; and it seems also in

some sort to have touched a little upon the third, if he therefore

established laws and ordinances that he might be exempt from being the

cause of any of their evil. For God, who is free from all evil, has no

need of laws or Fate; but every one of these petty gods, drawn on by the

providence of him who has engendered them, performs what belongs to his

office. Now that this is true and agreeable to the opinion of Plato,

these words of the lawgiver, spoken by him in his Book of Laws, seems to

me to give sufficient testimony: "If there were any man so sufficient

by Nature, being by divine Fortune happily engendered and born, that he

could comprehend this, he would have no need of laws to command him.

For there is not any law or ordinance more worthy and powerful than

knowledge; nor is it suitable that Mind, provided it be truly and really

free by Nature, should be a subject or slave to any one, but it ought to

command all." (Plato, "Laws," ix. p.875 C.)

I therefore do for mine own part thus understand and interpret this

sentence of Plato. There being a threefold Providence, the first, as

having engendered Fate, does in some sort comprehend it; the second,

having been engendered with Fate, is with it totally comprehended and

embraced by the first; the third, as having been engendered after Fate,

is comprehended by it in the same manner as are free choice and Fortune,

as we have already said. "For they whom the assistance of a Daemon's

power does help in their intercourse" says Socrates, declaring to

Theages what is the almost settled ordinance of Adrastea "are those whom

you also mean; for they advance quickly." (Plato, "Theages", p.129 E.)

In which words, what he says of a Daemon's aiding some is to be ascribed

to the third Providence, and the growing and coming forward with speed

to Fate. In brief, it is not obscure or doubtful but that this also is

a kind of Fate. And perhaps it may be found much more probable that the

second Providence is also comprehended under Fate, and indeed all things

that are done; since Fate, as a substance, has been rightly divided

by us into three parts, and the simile of the chain comprehends the

revolutions of the heavens in the number and rank of those things

which happen conditionally. But concerning these things I will not much

contend, to wit, whether they should be called conditional, or rather

conjoined with Fate, the precedent cause and commander of Fate being

also fatal.

Our opinion, then, to speak briefly, is such. But the contrary sentiment

not only places all things in Fate, but affirms them all to be done by

Fate. It agrees indeed in all things to the other (the Stoic) doctrine;

and that which accords to another thing, 'tis clear, is the same with

it. In this discourse therefore we have first spoken of the contingent;

secondly, of "that which is in our power"; thirdly, of Fortune and

chance, and whatever depends on them; fourthly, of praise, blame, and

whatever depends on them; the fifth and last of all may be said to be

prayers to the gods, with their services and ceremonies.

For the rest, as to those which are called idle and cropping arguments,

and that which is named the argument against destiny, they are indeed

but vain subtleties and captious sophisms, according to this discourse.

But according to the contrary opinion, the first and principal

conclusion seems to be, that there is nothing done without a cause,

but that all things depend upon antecedent causes; the second, that the

world is governed by Nature, and that it conspires, consents, and is

compatible with itself; the third seems rather to be testimonies,--of

which the first is divination, approved by all sorts of people, as being

truly in God; the second is the equanimity and patience of wise men, who

take mildly and bear patiently whatever befalls, as happening by divine

ordinance and as it ought; the third is the speech so common and usual

in every one's mouth, to wit, that every proposition is true or false.

Thus have we contracted this discourse into a small number of short

articles, that we might in few words comprehend the whole matter of

Fate; into which a scrutiny ought to be made, and the reasons of both

opinions to be weighed with a most exact balance. But we shall come to

discuss particulars later.

END OF NINE-----------

AGAINST COLOTES, THE DISCIPLE AND FAVORITE OF EPICURUS.

COLOTES, whom Epicurus was wont diminutively and by way of familiarity

or fondness to call Colotaras and Colotarion, composed, O Saturninus,

and published a little book which he entitled, "That according to the

opinions of the other philosophers one cannot so much as live." This was

dedicated to King Ptolemy. Now I suppose that it will not be unpleasant

for you to read, when set down in writing, what came into my mind

to speak against this Colotes, since I know you to be a lover of all

elegant and honest treatises, and particularly of such as regard the

science of antiquity, and to esteem the bearing in memory and having (as

much as possible may be) in hand the discourses of the ancient sages to

be the most royal of all studies and exercises.

Not long since, therefore, as this book was being read, Aristodemus of

Aegium, a familiar friend of ours (whom you well know to be one of the

Academy, and not a mere thyrsus-bearer, but one of the most frantic

celebrators of Plato's name), did, I know not how, keep himself contrary

to his custom very still all the while, and patiently gave ear to it

even to the end. But the reading was scarce well over when he said:

Well, then, whom shall we cause to rise up and fight against this man,

in defence of the philosophers? For I am not of Nestor's opinion, who,

when the most valiant of those nine warriors that presented themselves

to enter into combat was to be chosen, committed the election to the

fortune of a lot.

Yet, answered I, you see he so disposed himself in reference to the lot,

that the choice might pass according to the arbitrament of the wisest

man;

And th' lot drawn from the helmet, as they wished,

On Ajax fell.

But yet since you command me to make the election,

How can I think a better choice to make

Than the divine Ulysses?

("Iliad," vii. 182; x. 243.)

Consider therefore, and be well advised, in what manner you will

chastise this man.

But you know, replied Aristodemus, that Plato, when highly offended with

his boy that waited on him, would not himself beat him, but requested

Speusippus to do it for him, saying that he himself was angry. As much

therefore may I say to you; Take this fellow to you, and treat him as

you please; for I am in a fit of choler.

When therefore all the rest of the company desired me to undertake this

office; I must then, said I, speak, since it is your pleasure. But I

am afraid that I also shall seem more vehemently transported than is

fitting against this book, in the defending and maintaining Socrates

against the rudeness, scurrility, and insolence of this man; who,

because Socrates affirmed himself to know nothing certainly, instead

of bread (as one would say) present him hay, as if he were a beast, and

asks him why he puts meat into his mouth and not into his ear. And yet

perhaps some would make but a laughing matter of this, considering the

mildness and gentleness of Socrates; "but for the whole host of

the Greeks," that is, of the other philosophers, amongst which are

Democritus, Plato, Stilpo, Empedocles, Parmenides, and Melissus, who

have been basely traduced and reviled by him, it were not only a shame

to be silent, but even a sacrilege in the least point to forbear

or recede from freedom of speech in their behalf, who have advanced

philosophy to that honor and reputation it has gotten.

And our parents indeed have, with the assistance of the gods, given

us our life; but to live well comes to us from reason, which we have

learned from the philosophers, which favors law and justice, and

restrains our concupiscence. Now to live well is to live sociably,

friendly, temperately, and justly; of all which conditions they leave

us not one, who cry out that man's sovereign good lies in his belly, and

that they would not purchase all the virtues together at the expense of

a cracked farthing, if pleasure were totally and on every side removed

from them. And in their discourses concerning the soul and the gods,

they hold that the soul perishes when it is separated from the body, and

that the gods concern not themselves in our affairs. Thus the Epicureans

reproach the other philosophers, that by their wisdom they bereave man

of his life; whilst the others on the contrary accuse them of teaching

men to live degenerately and like beasts.

Now these things are scattered here and there in the writings of

Epicurus, and dispersed through all his philosophy. But this Colotes, by

having extracted from them certain pieces and fragments of discourses,

destitute of any arguments whatever to render them credible and

intelligible, has composed his book, being like a shop or cabinet of

monsters and prodigies; as you better know than any one else, because

you have always in your hands the works of the ancients. But he seems to

me, like the Lydian, to open not only one gate against himself, but

to involve Epicurus also in many and those the greatest doubts and

difficulties. For he begins with Democritus, who receives of him an

excellent and worthy reward for his instruction; it being certain that

Epicurus for a long time called himself a Democritean, which as well

others affirm, as Leonteus, a principal disciple of Epicurus, who in

a letter which he writ to Lycophron says, that Epicurus honored

Democritus, because he first attained, though a little at a distance,

the right and sound understanding of the truth, and that in general all

the treatise concerning natural things was called Democritean, because

Democritus was the first who happened upon the principles and met with

the primitive foundations of Nature. And Metrodorus says openly of

philosophy, If Democritus had not gone before and taught the way,

Epicurus had never attained to wisdom. Now if it be true, as Colotes

holds, that to live according to the opinions of Democritus is not to

live, Epicurus was then a fool in following Democritus, who led him to a

doctrine which taught him not to live.

Now the first thing he lays to his charge is, that, by supposing

everything to be no more individual than another, he wholly confounds

human life. But Democritus was so far from having been of this opinion,

that he opposed Protagoras the philosopher who asserted it, and writ

many excellent arguments concluding against him, which this fine fellow

Colotes never saw nor read, nor yet so much as dreamed of; but deceived

himself by misunderstanding a passage which is in his works, where he

determines that [Greek omitted] is no more than [Greek omitted], naming

in that place the body by [Greek omitted], and the void by [Greek

omitted], and meaning that the void has its own proper nature and

subsistence, as well as the body.

But he who is of opinion that nothing has more of one nature than

another makes use of a sentence of Epicurus, in which he says that all

the apprehensions and imaginations given us by the senses are true. For

if of two saying, the one, that the wine is sour, and the other, that it

is sweet, neither of them shall be deceived by his sensation, how shall

the wine be more sour than sweet? And we may often see that some men

using one and the same bath find it to be hot, and others find it to be

cold; because those order cold water to be put into it, as these do hot.

It is said that, a certain lady going to visit Berenice, wife to

King Deiotarus, as soon as ever they approached each other, they both

immediately turned their backs, the one, as it seemed, not being able to

bear the smell of perfume, nor the other of butter. If, then, the sense

of one is no truer than the sense of another, it is also probable, that

water is no more cold than hot, nor sweet ointment or butter better or

worse scented one than the other. For if any one shall say that it seems

the one to one, and the other to another, he will, before he is aware,

affirm that they are both the one and the other.

And as for these symmetries and proportions of the pores, or little

passages in the organs of the senses, about which they talk so much,

and those different mixtures of seeds, which, they say, being dispersed

through all savors, odors, and colors, move the senses of different

persons to perceive different qualities, do they not manifestly drive

them to this, that things are no more of one nature than another? For to

pacify those who think the sense is deceived and lies because they see

contrary events and passions in such as use the same objects, and to

solve this objection, they teach,--that when almost everything was

confused and mixed up together, since it has been arranged by Nature

that one thing shall fit another thing, it was not the contact or the

apprehension of the same quality nor were all parts affected in the same

way by what was influencing them. But those only coalesced with anything

to which they had a characteristic, symmetrical in a corresponding

proportion; so that they are in error so obstinately to insist that a

thing is either good or bad, white or not white, thinking to establish

their own senses by destroying those of others; whereas they ought

neither to combat the senses,--because they all touch some quality,

each one drawing from this confused mixture, as from a living and large

fountain, what is suitable and convenient,--nor to pronounce of the

whole, by touching only the parts, nor to think that all ought to be

affected after one and the same manner by the same thing, seeing

that one is affected by one quality and faculty of it, and another

by another. Let us investigate who those men are which bring in this

opinion that things are not more of one quality than another, if they

are not those who affirm that every sensible object is a mixture,

compounded of all sorts of qualities, like a mixture of new wine

fermenting, and who confess that all their rules are lost and their

faculty of judging quite gone, if they admit any sensible object that is

pure and simple, and do not make each one thing to be many?

See now to this purpose, what discourse and debate Epicurus makes

Polyaenus to have with him in his Banquet concerning the heat of wine.

For when he asked, "Do you, Epicurus, say, that wine does not heat?"

some one answered, "It is not universally to be affirmed that wine

heats." And a little after: "For wine seems not to be universally a

heater; but such a quantity may be said to heat such a person." And

again subjoining the cause, to wit, the compressions and disseminations

of the atoms, and having alleged their commixtures and conjunctions

with others when the wine comes to be mingled in the body, he adds this

conclusion: "It is not universally to be said that wine is endued with a

faculty of heating; but that such a quantity may heat such a nature and

one so disposed, while such a quantity to such a nature is cooling.

For in such a mass there are such natures and complexions of which cold

might be composed, and which, united with others in proper measure,

would yield a refrigerative virtue. Wherefore some are deceived, who

say that wine is universally a heater; and others, who say that it is

universally a cooler." He then who says that most men are deceived and

err, in holding that which is hot to be heating and that which is cold

to be cooling, is himself in an error, unless he should allow that his

assertion ends in the doctrine that one thing is not more of one nature

than another. He farther adds afterwards that oftentimes wine entering

into a body brings with it thither neither a calefying nor refrigerating

virtue, but, the mass of the body being agitated and disturbed, and

a transposition made of the parts, the heat-effecting atoms being

assembled together do by their multitude cause a heat and inflammation

in the body, and sometimes on the contrary disassembling themselves

cause a refrigeration.

But it is moreover wholly evident, that we may employ this argument to

all those things which are called and esteemed bitter, sweet, purging,

dormitive, and luminous, not any one of them having an entire and

perfect quality to produce such effects, nor to act rather than to be

acted on when they are in the bodies, but being there susceptible,

of various temperatures and differences. For Epicurus himself, in

his Second Book against Theophrastus, affirming that colors are not

connatural to bodies, but are engendered there according to certain

situations and positions with respect to the sight of man, says: "For

this reason a body is no more colored than destitute of color." And a

little above he writes thus, word for word: "But apart from this, I

know not how a man may say that those bodies which are in the dark have

color; although very often, an air equally dark being spread about them,

some distinguish diversities of colors, others perceive them not through

the weakness of their sight. And moreover, going into a dark house or

room, we at our first entrance see no color, but after we have stayed

there awhile, we do. Wherefore we are to say that every body is not more

colored than not colored. Now, if color is relative and has its being in

regard to something else, so also then is white, and so likewise blue;

and if colors are so, so also are sweet and bitter. So that it may truly

be affirmed of every quality, that it cannot more properly be said

to exist than not to exist. For to those who are in a certain manner

disposed, they will be; but to those who are not so disposed, they will

not be." Colotes therefore has bedashed and bespattered himself and

his master with that dirt, in which he says those lie who maintain that

things are not more of one quality than another.

But is it in this alone, that this excellent man shows himself--

To others a physician, whilst himself

Is full of ulcers?

(Euripides, Frag. 1071.)

No indeed; but yet much farther in his second reprehension, without any

way minding it, he drives Epicurus and Democritus out of this life. For

he affirms that the statement of Democritus--that the atoms are to the

senses color by a certain human law or ordinance, that they are by the

same law sweetness, and by the same law concretion--is at war with our

senses, and that he who uses this reason and persists in this opinion

cannot himself imagine whether he is living or dead. I know not how to

contradict this discourse; but this I can boldly affirm, that this is

as inseparable from the sentences and doctrines of Epicurus as they say

figure and weight are from atoms. For what is it that Democritus says?

"There are substances, in number infinite, called atoms (because

they cannot be divided), without difference, without quality, and

passibility, which move, being dispersed here and there, in the infinite

voidness; and that when they approach one another, or meet and are

conjoined, of such masses thus heaped together, one appears water,

another fire, another a plant, another a man; and that all things are

thus properly atoms (as he called them), and nothing else; for there is

no generation from what does not exist; and of those things which are

nothing can be generated, because these atoms are so firm, that they can

neither change, alter, nor suffer; wherefore there cannot be made color

of those things which are without color, nor nature or soul of those

things which are without quality and impassible." Democritus then is

to be blamed, not for confessing those things that happen upon his

principles, but for supposing principles upon which such things happen.

For he should not have supposed immutable principles; or having supposed

them, he should have seen that the generation of all quality is taken

away; but having seen the absurdity, to deny it is most impudent. But

Epicurus says, that he supposes the same principles with Democritus, but

that he says not that color, sweet, white, and other qualities, are

by law and ordinance. If therefore NOT TO SAY is the same as NOT TO

CONFESS, he does merely what he is wont to do. For it is as when, taking

away divine Providence, he nevertheless says that he leaves piety and

devotion towards the gods; and when, choosing friendship for the sake

of pleasure, that he suffers most grievous pains for his friends; and

supposing the universe to be infinite, that he nevertheless takes not

away high and low.... Indeed having taken the cup, one may drink what

he pleases, and return the rest. But in reasoning one ought chiefly

to remember this wise apothegm, that where the principles are not

necessary, the ends and consequences are necessary. It was not

then necessary for him to suppose or (to say better) to steal from

Democritus, that atoms are the principles of the universe; but having

supposed this doctrine, and having pleased and glorified himself in the

first probable and specious appearances of it, he must afterwards also

swallow that which is troublesome in it, or must show how bodies which

have not any quality can bring all sorts of qualities to others only by

their meetings and joining together. As--to take that which comes next

neither had heat when they came, nor are become hot after their being

joined together? For the one presupposes that they had some quality, and

the other that they were fit to receive it. And you affirm, that neither

the one nor the other must be said to be congruous to atoms, because

they are incorruptible.

How then? Do not Plato, Aristotle, and Xenocrates produce gold from

that which is not gold, and stone from that which is not stone, and many

other things from the four simple first bodies? Yes indeed; but with

those bodies immediately concur also the principles for the generation

of everything, bringing with them great contributions, that is, the

first qualities which are in them; then, when they come to assemble and

join in one the dry with the moist, the cold with the hot, and the solid

with the soft,--that is, active bodies with such as are fit to suffer

and receive every alteration and change,--then is generation wrought by

passing from one temperature to another. Whereas the atom, being alone,

is alone, is deprived and destitute of all quality and generative

faculty, and when it comes to meet with the others, it can make only a

noise and sound because of its hardness and firmness, but nothing more.

For they always strike and are stricken, not being able by this means

to compose or make an animal, a soul, or a nature, nay, not so much as

a mass or heap of themselves; for that as they beat upon one another, so

they fly back again asunder.

But Colotes, as if he were speaking to some ignorant and unlettered

king, again attacks Empedocles for expressing the same thought:--

I've one thing more to say. 'Mongst mortals there

No Nature is; nor that grim thing men fear

So much, called death. There only happens first

A mixture, and mixt things asunder burst

Again, when them disunion does befall.

And this is that which men do Nature call.

For my part, I do not see how this is repugnant and contrary to life or

living, especially amongst those who hold that there is no generation

of that which is not, nor corruption of that which is, but that the

assembling and union of the things which are is called generation, and

their dissolution and disunion named corruption and death. For that he

took Nature for generation, and that this is his meaning, he has himself

declared, when he opposed Nature to death. And if they neither live nor

can live who place generation in union and death in disunion, what else

do these Epicureans? Yet Empedocles, gluing, (as it were) and conjoining

the elements together by heats, softnesses, and humidifies, gives them

in some sort a mixtion and unitive composition; but these men who hunt

and drive together the atoms, which they affirm to be immutable and

impassible, compose nothing proceeding from them, but indeed make many

and continual percussions of them.

For the interlacement, hindering the dissolution, more and more augments

the collision and concussion; so that there is neither mixtion nor

adhesion and conglutination, but only a discord and combat, which

according to them is called generation. And if the atoms do now recoil

for a moment by reason of the shock they have given, and then return

again after the blow is past, they are above double the time absent from

one another, without either touching or approaching, so as nothing can

be made of them, not even so much as a body without a soul. But as for

sense, soul, understanding, and prudence, there is not any man who can

in the least conceive or imagine how it is possible they should be made

in a voidness, and atoms which neither when separate and apart have

any quality, nor any passion or alteration when they are assembled and

joined together, especially seeing this their meeting together is not

an incorporation or congress, making a mixture or coalition, but rather

percussions and repercussions. So that, according to the doctrine of

these people, life is taken away, and the existence of an animal denied,

since they posit principles void, impassible, godless, and soulless, and

such as cannot allow or receive any mixture or commingling whatever.

How then is it, that they admit and allow Nature, soul, and living

creature? Even in the same manner as they do an oath, prayer, and

sacrifice, and the adoration of the gods. Thus they adore by word and

mouth, only naming and feigning that which by their principles they

totally take away and abolish. If now they call that which is born

Nature, and that which is engendered generation,--as those who are

accustomed to call wood wood-work and the voices that accord and sound

together symphony,--whence came it into his mind to object these words

against Empedocles? "Why," says he, "do we tire ourselves in taking such

care of ourselves, in desiring and longing after certain things, and

shunning and avoiding others? For we neither are ourselves, nor do we

live by making use of others." But be of good cheer, my dear little

Colotes, may one perhaps say to him: there is none who hinders you

from taking care of yourself by teaching that the nature of Colotes

is nothing else but Colotes himself, or who forbids you to make use of

things (now things with you are pleasures) by showing that there is no

nature of tarts and marchpanes, of sweet odors, or of venereal delights,

but that there are tarts, marchpanes, perfumes, and women. For neither

does the grammarian who says that the "strength of Hercules" is Hercules

himself deny the being of Hercules; nor do those who say that symphonies

and roofings are but absolute derivations affirm that there are neither

sounds nor timbers; since also there are some who, taking away the soul

and intelligence, do not yet seem to take away either living or being

intelligent.

And when Epicurus says that the nature of things is to be found in

bodies and their place, do we so comprehend him as if he meant that

Nature were something else than the things which are, or as if

he insinuated that it is merely the things which are, and nothing

else?--as, to wit, he is wont to call voidness itself the nature of

voidness, and the universe, by Jupiter, the nature of the universe. And

if any one should thus question him; What sayst thou, Epicurus, that

this is voidness, and that the nature of voidness? No, by Jupiter, would

he answer; but this transference of names is in use by law and custom.

I grant it is. Now what has Empedocles done else, but taught that Nature

is nothing else save that which is born, and death no other thing but

that which dies? But as the poets very often, forming as it were an

image, say thus in figurative language,

Strife, tumult, noise, placed by some angry god,

Mischief, and malice there had their abode;

("Iliad," xvii. 525.)

so do some authors attribute generation and corruption to things that

are contracted together and dissolved. But so far has he been from

stirring and taking away that which is, or contradicting that which

evidently appears, that he casts not so much as one single word out of

the accustomed use; but taking away all figurative fraud that might

hurt or endamage things, he again restored the ordinary and useful

signification to words in these verses:--

When from mixed elements we sometimes see

A man produced, sometimes a beast, a tree,

Or bird, this birth and geniture we name;

But death, when this so well compacted frame

And juncture is dissolved.

And yet I myself say that Colotes, though he alleged these verses, did

not understand that Empedocles took not away men, beasts, trees, or

birds, which he affirmed to be composed of the elements mixed together;

and that, by teaching how much they are deceived who call this

composition Nature and life, and this dissolution unhappy destruction

and miserable death, he did not abrogate the using of the customary

expressions in this respect.

And it seems to me, indeed, that Empedocles did not aim in this place at

the disturbing the common manner of expression, but that he really, as

it has been said, had a controversy about generation from things that

have no being, which some call Nature. Which he manifestly shows by

these verses:--

Fools, and of little thought, we well may deem

Those, who so silly are as to esteem

That what ne'er was may now engendered be,

And that what is may perish utterly.

For these are the words of one who cries loud enough to those which have

ears, that he takes not away generation, but procreation from nothing;

nor corruption, but total destruction that is, reduction to nothing.

For to him who would not so savagely and foolishly but more gently

calumniate, the following verses might give a colorable occasion of

charging Empedocles with the contrary, when he says:--

No prudent man can e'er into his mind

Admit that, whilst men living here on earth

(Which only life they call) both fortunes find,

They being have, but that before the birth

They nothing were, nor shall be when once dead.

For these are not the expressions of a man who denies those that are

born to be, but rather of him who holds those to be that are not yet

born or that are already dead. And Colotes also does not altogether

accuse him of this, but says that according to his opinion we shall

never be sick, never wounded. But how is it possible, that he who

affirms men to have being both before their life and after their death,

and during their life to find both fortunes (or to be accompanied both

by good and evil), should not leave them the power to suffer? Who then

are they, O Colotes, that are endued with this privilege never to be

wounded, never to be sick? Even you yourselves, who are composed of

atoms and voidness, neither of which, you say, has any sense. Now there

is no great hurt in this; but the worst is, you have nothing left that

can cause you pleasure, seeing an atom is not capable to receive those

things which are to effect it, and voidness cannot be affected by them.

But because Colotes would, immediately after Democritus, seem to inter

and bury Parmenides, and I have passed over and a little postponed his

defence, to bring in between them that of Empedocles, as seeming to

be more coherent and consequent to the first reprehensions, let us now

return to Parmenides. Him, then, does Colotes accuse of having broached

and set abroad certain shameful and villanous sophistries; and yet by

these his sophisms he has neither rendered friendship less honorable,

nor voluptuousness or the desire of pleasures more audacious and

unbridled. He has not taken from honesty its attractive property or its

being venerable or recommendable of itself, nor has he disturbed the

opinions we ought to have of the gods. And I do not see how, by saying

that the All (or the universe) is one, he hinders or obstructs our

living. For when Epicurus himself says that the All is infinite, that it

is neither engendered nor perishable, that it can neither increase

nor be diminished, he speaks of the universe as of one only thing. And

having in the beginning of his treatise concerning this matter said,

that the nature of those things which have being consists of bodies and

of vacuum, he makes a division (as it were) of one thing into two parts,

one of which has in reality no subsistence, being, as you yourselves

term it, impalpable, void, and incorporeal; so that by this means, even

with you also, all comes to be one; unless you desire, in speaking of

voidness, to use words void of sense, and to combat the ancients, as if

you were fighting against a shadow.

But these atomical bodies, you will say, are, according to the opinion

of Epicurus, infinite in number, and everything which appears to us is

composed of them. See now, therefore, what principles of generation

you suppose, infinity and voidness; one of which, to wit, voidness, is

inactive, impassible, and incorporeal; the other, to wit, infinity, is

disorderly, unreasonable, and unintelligible, dissolving and confounding

itself, because it cannot for its multitude be contained, circumscribed,

or limited. But Parmenides has neither taken away fire, nor water, nor

precipices, nor yet cities (as Colotes says) which are inhabited as

well in Europe as in Asia; since he has both constructed an order of the

world, and mixing the elements, to wit, light and dark, does of them and

by them arrange and finish all things that appear in the world. For he

has written very largely of the earth, heaven, sun, moon, and stars, and

has spoken of the generation of man; and being, as he was, an ancient

author in physiology, and one who in writing sought to save his own

and not to destroy another's doctrine, he has overlooked none of the

essential things in Nature. Moreover, Plato, and before him Socrates

himself, understood that in Nature there is one part subject to opinion,

and another subject to intelligence. As for that which is subject to

opinion, it is always unconstant, wandering, and carried away with

several passions and changes, liable to diminution and increase, and to

be variously disposed to various men, and not always appearing after one

manner even to the same individual. But as to the intelligible part, it

is quite of another kind,

Constant, entire, and still engenerable,

as himself says, always like to itself, and perdurable in its being.

Here Colotes, sycophant-like, catching at his expressions and drawing

the discourse from things to words, flatly affirms that Parmenides in

one word destroys the existence of all things by supposing ENS (or that

which is) to be one. But, on the contrary, he takes away neither the one

nor the other part of Nature; but rendering to each of them what belongs

to it and is convenient for it, he places the intelligible in the idea

of one and of "that which is," calling it ENS because it is eternal and

incorruptible, and one because it is always like itself and admits no

diversity. And as for that part which is sensible, he places it in the

rank of uncertain, disorderly, and always moving. Of which two parts, we

may see the distinct judgment:--

One certain truth and sincere knowledge is,

as regarding that which is intelligible, and always alike and of the

same sort;

The other does on men's opinions rest,

Which breed no true belief within our breast,

because it is conversant in things which receive all sorts of changes,

passions, and inequalities. Now how he could have left sense and

opinion, if he had not also left any sensible and opinable object, it

is impossible for any man to say. But because to that which truly IS

it appertains to continue in its being, and because sensible things

sometimes are, sometimes are not, continually passing from one being to

another and perpetually changing their state, he thought they required

some other name than that of ENTIA, or things which always are. This

speech therefore concerning ENS (or that which is), that it should be

but one, is not to take away the plurality of sensible things, but to

show how they differ from that which is intelligible. Which difference

Plato in his discussion of Ideas more fully declaring, has thereby

afforded Colotes an opportunity of cavilling.

Therefore it seems not unfitting to me to take next into our

consideration, as it were all in a train, what he has also said against

him. But first let us contemplate a little the diligence--together with

the manifold and profound knowledge--of this our philosopher, who says,

that Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, and all the Peripateties

have followed these doctrines of Plato. For in what corner of the

uninhabitable world have you, O Colotes, written your book, that,

composing all these accusations against such personages, you never have

lighted upon their works, nor have taken into your hands the books of

Aristotle concerning Heaven and the Soul, nor those of Theophrastus

against the Naturalists, nor the Zoroaster of Heraclides, nor his books

of Hell, nor that of Natural Doubts and Difficulties, nor the book of

Dicaearchus concerning the Soul; in all which books they are in the

highest degree contradictory and repugnant to Plato about the principal

and greatest points of natural philosophy? Nay, Strato himself, the very

head and prince of the other Peripatetics, agrees not in many things

with Aristotle, and holds opinions altogether contrary to Plato,

concerning motion, the understanding, the soul, and generation. In fine,

he says that the world is not an animal, and that what is according to

Nature follows what is according to Fortune; for that Chance gave

the beginning, and so every one of the natural effects was afterwards

finished.

Now as to the ideas,--for which he quarrels with Plato,--Aristotle,

by moving this matter at every turn, and alleging all manner of doubts

concerning them, in his Ethics, in his Physics, and in his Exoterical

Dialogues seems to some rather obstinately than philosophically to have

disputed against these doctrines, as having proposed to himself the

debasing and undervaluing of Plato's philosophy; so far he was from

following it. What an impudent rashness then is this, that having

neither seen nor understood what these persons have written and what

were their opinions, he should go and devise such things as they never

imagined; and persuading himself that he reprehends and refutes others,

he should produce a proof, written with his own hand, arguing and

convincing himself of ignorance, licentiousness, and shameful impudence,

in saying that those who contradict Plato agree with him, and that those

who oppose him follow him.

Plato, says he, writes that horses are in vain by us considered horses,

and men men. And in which of Plato's commentaries has he found this

hidden? For as to us, we read in all his books, that horses are horses,

that men are men, and that fire is by him esteemed fire, because he

holds that every one of these things is sensible and subject to opinion.

But this Colotes, as if he were not a hair's breadth distance from

wisdom, takes it to be one and the same thing to say, "Man is not" and

"Man is a NON ENS."

Now to Plato there seems to be a wonderful great difference between

not being at all and being a NON ENS; because the first imports an

annihilation and abolishment of all substance, and the other shows the

diversity there is between that which is participated and that which

participates. Which diversity those who came after distinguished only

into the difference of genus and species, and certain common and proper

qualities or accidents, as they are called, but ascended no higher,

falling into more logical doubts and difficulties. Now there is the

same proportion between that which is participated and that which

participates, as there is between the cause and the matter, the original

and the image, the faculty and the result. Wherein that which is by

itself and always the same principally differs from that which is by

another and never remains in one and the same manner; because the one

never was nor ever shall be non-existent, and is therefore totally and

essentially an ENS; but to the other that very being, which it has not

of itself but happens to take by participation from another, does not

remain firm and constant, but it goes out of it by its imbecility,--the

matter always gliding and sliding about the form, and receiving several

functions and changes in the image of the substance, so that it is

continually moving and shaking. As therefore he who says that the image

of Plato is not Plato takes not away the sense and substance of the

image, but shows the difference of that which is of itself from that

which is only in regard to some other, so neither do they take away

the nature, use, or sense of men, who affirm that every one of us, by

participating in a certain common substratum, that is, in the idea, is

become the image of that which afforded the likeness for our generation.

For neither does he who says that a red-hot iron is not fire, or that

the moon is not the sun, but, as Parmenides has it,

A torch which round the earth by night

Does bear about a borrowed light,

take away therefore the use of iron, or the nature of the moon. But if

he should deny it to be a body, or affirm that it is not illuminated,

he would then contradict the senses, as one who admitted neither body,

animal, generation, nor sense. But he who by his opinion imagines that

these things subsist only by participation, and reflects how far remote

and distant they are from that which always is and which communicates

to them their being, does not reject the sensible, but affirms that the

intelligible is; nor does he take away and abolish the results which

are wrought and appear in us; but he shows to those who follow him that

there are other things, firmer and more stable than these in respect

of their essence, because they are neither engendered, nor perish,

nor suffer anything; and he teaches them, more purely touching the

difference, to express it by names, calling these [Greek omitted] or

[Greek omitted] (THINGS THAT HAVE BEING), and those [Greek omitted]

or FIENTIA (THINGS ENGENDERED). And the same also usually befalls

the moderns; for they deprive many--and those great things--of the

appellation of ENS or BEING; such as are voidness, time, place, and

simply the entire genus of things spoken, in which are comprised all

things true. For these things, they say, are not ENTIA but SOME

THINGS; and they perpetually treat of them in their lives and in their

philosophy, as of things having subsistence and existence.

But I would willingly ask this our fault-finder, whether themselves do

not in their affairs perceive this difference, by which some things

are permanent and immutable in their substances,--as they say of their

atoms, that they are at all times and continually after one and the

same manner, because of their impassibility and hardness,--but that

all compound things are fluxible, changeable, generated, and perishing;

forasmuch as infinite images are always departing and going from them,

and infinite others as it is probable, repair to them from the ambient

air, filling up what was diminished from the mass, which is much

diversified and transvasated, as it were, by this change, since those

atoms which are in the very bottom of the said mass can never cease

stirring and reciprocally beating upon one another; as they themselves

affirm. There is then in things such a diversity of substance. But

Epicurus is in this wiser and more learned than Plato, that he calls

them all equally ENTIA,--to wit, the impalable voidness, the solid and

resisting body, the principles, and the things composed of them,--and

thinks that the eternal participates of the common substance with that

which is generated, the immortal with the corruptible, and the natures

that are impassible, perdurable, unchangeable, and that can never fall

from their being, with those which have their essence in suffering and

changing, and can never continue in one and the same state. But though

Plato had with all the justness imaginable deserved to be condemned

for having offended in this, yet should he have been sentenced by these

gentlemen, who use Greek more elegantly and discourse more correctly

than he, only as having confounded the terms, and not as having taken

away the things and driven life from us, because he named them FIENTIA

(or things engendered), and not ENTIA (things that have being), as these

men do.

But because we have passed over Socrates, who should have come next

after Parmenides, we must now turn back our discourse to him. Him

therefore has Colotes begun at the very first to remove, as the

common proverb has it, from the sacred line; and having mentioned

how Chaerephon brought from Delphi an oracle, well known to us all,

concerning Socrates, he says thus: "Now as to this narration of

Chaerephon's, because it is odious and entirely sophistical, we will

overpass it." Plato, then, that we may say nothing of others, is also

odious, who has committed it to writing; and the Lacedaemonians are yet

more odious, who keep the oracle of Lycurgus amongst their most ancient

and most authentic inscriptions. The oracle also of Themistocles, by

which he persuaded the Athenians to quit their town, and in a naval

fight defeated the barbarous Xerxes, was a sophistical fiction. Odious

also were all the ancient legislators and founders of Greece who

established the most part of their temples, sacrifices, and solemn

festivals by the answer of the Pythian Oracle. But if the oracle brought

from Delphi concerning Socrates, a man ravished with a divine zeal to

virtue, by which he is styled and declared wise, is odious, fictitious,

and sophistical, by what name shall we call your cries, noises, and

shouts, your applauses, adorations and canonizations, with which you

extol and celebrate him who incites and exhorts you to frequent

and continual pleasures? For thus has he written in his epistle to

Anaxarchus: "I for my part incite and call you to continual pleasures,

and not to vain and empty virtues, which have nothing but turbulent

hopes of uncertain fruits." And yet Metrodorus, writing to Timarchus,

says: "Let us do some extraordinarily excellent thing, not suffering

ourselves to be plunged in reciprocal affections, but retiring from this

low and terrestrial life, and elevating ourselves to the truly holy

and divinely revealed ceremonies and mysteries of Epicurus." And even

Colotes himself, hearing one day Epicurus discoursing of natural things,

fell suddenly at his feet and embraced his knees, as Epicurus himself,

glorying in it, thus writes: "For as if you had adored what we were then

saying, you were suddenly taken with a desire, proceeding not from any

natural cause, to come to us, prostrate yourself on the ground, embrace

our knees, and use all those gestures to us which are ordinarily

practised by those who adore and pray to the gods. So that you made

us also," says he, "reciprocally sanctify and adore you." Those, by

Jupiter, well deserve to be pardoned, who say, they would willingly give

any money for a picture in which should be presented to the life this

fine story of one lying prostrate at the knees and embracing the legs of

another, who mutually again adores him and makes his devout prayers to

him. Nevertheless this devout service, how well soever it was ordered

and composed by Colotes, received not the condign fruit he expected; for

he was not declared wise; but it was only said to him: Go they ways, and

walk immortal; and understand that we also are in like manner immortal.

These men, knowing well in their consciences that they have used

such foolish speeches, have had such motions, and such passions, dare

nevertheless call others odious. And Colotes, having shown us these fine

first-fruits and wise positions touching the natural senses,--that

we eat meat, and not hay or forage; and that when rivers are deep and

great, we pass them in boats, but when shallow and easily fordable, on

foot,--cries out, "You use vain and arrogant speeches, O Socrates; you

say one thing to those who come to discourse with you, and practise

another." Now I would fain know what these vain and arrogant speeches

of Socrates were, since he ordinarily said that he knew nothing, that he

was always learning, and that he went inquiring and searching after

the truth. But if, O Colotes, you had happened on such expressions of

Socrates as are those which Epicurus writ to Idomeneus, "Send me then

the first-fruits for the entertainment of our sacred body, for ourself

and for our children: for so it comes upon me to speak;" what more

arrogant and insolent words could you have used? And yet that Socrates

spake otherwise than he lived, you have wonderful proofs in his gests

at Delium, at Potidaea, in his behavior during the time of the Thirty

Tyrants, towards Archelaus, towards the people of Athens, in his

poverty, and in his death. For are not these things beseeming and

answerable to the doctrine of Socrates? They would indeed, good sir,

have been indubitable testimonies to show that he acted otherwise than

he taught, if, having proposed pleasure for the end of life, he had led

such a life as this.

Thus much for the calumnies he has uttered against Socrates. Colotes

besides perceives not that he is himself found guilty of the same

offences in regard to theory and practice which he objects against

Socrates. For this is one of the sentences and propositions of Epicurus,

that none but the wise man ought irrevocably and unchangeably to be

persuaded of anything. Since then Colotes, even after those adorations

he performed to Epicurus, became not one of the sages, let him first

make these questions and interrogatories his own: How is it that being

hungry he eats meat and not hay, and that he puts a robe about his body

and not about a pillar, since he is not indubitably persuaded either

that a robe is a robe or that meat is meat? But if he not only does

these things, but also passes not over rivers, when they are great and

high, on foot, and flies from wolves and serpents, not being irrevocably

persuaded that any of these things is such as it seems, but yet doing

everything according to what appears to him; so likewise the opinion of

Socrates concerning the senses was no obstacle to him, but that he might

in like manner make use of things as they appeared to him. For it is not

likely that bread appeared bread and hay hay to Colotes, because he had

read those holy rules of Epicurus which came down from heaven, while

Socrates on account of his vanity imagined that hay was bread and bread

hay. For these wise men use better opinions and reasons than we; but to

have sense, and to receive an impression from objects as they appear, is

common as well to the ignorant as to the wise, as proceeding from causes

where there needs not the discourse of reason. And the proposition which

affirms that the natural senses are not perfect, nor certain enough to

cause an entire belief, hinders not that everything may appear to us;

but leaving us to make use of our senses in our actions according to

that which appears, it permits us not so to give credit to them as if

they were exactly true and without error. For it is sufficient that in

what is necessary and commodious for use there is nothing better. But as

for the science and knowledge which the soul of a philosopher desires to

have concerning everything, the senses have it not.

But as to this, Colotes will farther give us occasion to speak of

it hereafter, for he brings this objection against several others.

Furthermore, whereas he profusely derides and despises Socrates for

asking what man is, and in a youthful bravery (as he terms it) affirming

that he was ignorant of it, it is manifest that he himself, who scoffs

at it, never so much as thought of this matter; but Heraclitus on the

contrary, as having done some great and worthy thing, said, I have

been seeking myself. And of the sentences that were written in Apollo's

temple at Delphi, the most excellent and most divine seems to have been

this, Know thyself. And this it was which gave Socrates an occasion and

beginning of doubting and inquiring into it, as Aristotle says in his

Platonics. And yet this appears to Colotes ridiculous and fit to be

scoffed at. And I wonder that he derides not also his master himself,

who does as much whenever he writes concerning the substance of the soul

and the creation of man. For if that which is compounded of both, as

they themselves hold,--of the body, to wit, and the soul,--is man, he

who searches into the nature of the soul consequently also searches into

the nature of man, beginning from his chiefest principle. Now that the

soul is very difficult to be comprehended by reason, and altogether

incomprehensible by the exterior senses, let us not learn from Socrates,

who is a vainglorious and sophistical disputer, but let us take it from

these wise men, who, having forged and framed the substance of the soul

of somewhat hot, spiritual, and aerial, as far as to the faculties of

the flesh, by which she gives heat, softness and strength to the body,

proceed not to that which is the principal, but give over faint and

tired by the way. For that by which she judges, remembers, loves,

hates,--in a word, that which is prudent and rational, is,--say they,

made afterwards of I know not what nameless quality. Now we well know,

that this nameless thing is a confession of their shameful ignorance,

whilst they pretend they cannot name what they are not able to

understand or comprehend. But let this, as they say, be pardoned them.

For it seems not to be a light and easy matter, which every one can at

the first attempt find out and attain to, but has retired itself to the

bottom of some very remote place, and there lies obscurely concealed.

So that there is not, amongst so many words and terms as are in use, any

one that can explain or show it. Socrates therefore was not a fool

or blockhead for seeking and searching what himself was; but they are

rather to be thought shallow coxcombs, who inquire after any other thing

before this, the knowledge of which is so necessary and so hard to find.

For how could he expect to gain the knowledge of other things, who has

not been able to comprehend the principal element even of himself?

But granting a little to Colotes, that there is nothing so vain,

useless, and odious as the seeking into one's self, let us ask him, what

confession of human life is in this, and how it is that a man cannot

continue to live, when he comes once thus to reason and discourse in

himself: "Go to now, what am I? Am I a composition, made up of soul and

body; or rather a soul, serving itself and making use of the body, as an

horseman using his horse is not a subject composed of horse and man?

Or is every one of us the principal part of the soul, by which we

understand, infer, and act; and are all the other parts, both of soul

and body, only organs and utensils of this power? Or, to conclude, is

there no proper substance of the soul at all apart, but is only the

temperature and complexion of the body so disposed, that it has force

and power to understand and live?" But Socrates does not by these

questions overthrow human life, since all natural philosophers treat

of the same matter. But those perhaps are the monstrous questions and

inquiries that turn everything upside down, which are in Phaedrus,

(Plato, "Phaedrus," p. 230 A.) where he says, that every one ought

to examine and consider himself, whether he is a savage beast, more

cautelous, outrageous, and furious than ever was the monster Typhon; or

on the contrary, an animal more mild and gentle, partaking by Nature of

a certain divine portion, and such as is free from pride. Now by these

discourses and reasonings he overturns not the life of man, but drives

from it presumption and arrogance, and those haughty and extravagant

opinions and conceits he has of himself. For this is that monster

Typhon, which your teacher and master has made to be so great in you by

his warring against the gods and divine men.

Having done with Socrates and Plato, he next attacks Stilpo. Now as for

those his true doctrines and good discourses, by which he managed and

governed himself, his country, his friends, and such kings and princes

as loved him and esteemed him, he has not written a word; nor yet what

prudence and magnanimity was in his heart, accompanied with meekness,

moderation, and modesty. But having made mention of one of those little

sentences he was wont in mirth and raillery to object against the

sophisters, he does, without alleging any reason against it or solving

the subtlety of the objection, stir up a terrible tragedy against

Stilpo, saying that the life of man is subverted by him, inasmuch as he

affirms that one thing cannot be predicated of another. "For how," says

he, "shall we live, if we cannot style a man good, nor a man a captain,

but must separately name a man a man, good good, and a captain a

captain; nor can say ten thousand horsemen, or a fortified town, but

only call horsemen horsemen, and ten thousand ten thousand, and so of

the rest?" Now what man ever was there that lived the worse for this? Or

who is there that, hearing this discourse, does not immediately perceive

and understand it to be the speech of a man who rallies gallantly, and

proposes to others this logical question for the exercise of their wits?

It is not, O Colotes, a great and dangerous scandal not to call any man

good, or not to say ten thousand horsemen; but not to call God God,

and not to believe him to be God,--as you and the rest do, who will not

confess that there is a Jupiter presiding over generation, or a Ceres

giving laws, or a Neptune nourishing the plants,--it is this separation

of names that is pernicious, and fills our life with audaciousness and

an atheistical contempt of the gods. When you pluck from the gods the

names and appellations that are tied to them, you abolish also the

sacrifices, mysteries, processions, and feasts. For to whom shall we

offer the sacrifices preceding the tilling of the ground? To whom those

for the obtaining of preservation? How shall we celebrate the Phosphoria

or torch-festivals, the Bacchanals, and the ceremonies that go before

marriage, if we admit neither Bacchantes, gods of light, gods who

protect the sown field, nor preservers of the state? For this it is

that touches the principal and greatest points, being an error in

things,--not in words, in the structure of propositions, or use of

terms.

Now if these are the things that disturb and subvert human life, who are

there that more offend in speech than you? For you take utterly away

the whole category of namable things, which constitute the substance of

language; and leave only words and their accidental objects, while you

take away in the meantime the things particularly signfied by them, by

which are wrought disciplines, doctrines, preconceptions, intelligences,

inclination, and assent, which you hold to be nothing at all.

But as for Stilpo, thus his reasoning proceeds. "If of a man we

predicate good, and of an horse running, the predicate or thing

predicated is not the same with the subject or that of which it is

predicated, but the essential definition of man is one, and of good

another. And again, to be a horse differs from to be running. For being

asked the definition of the one and of the other, we do not give the

same for them both; and therefore those err who predicate the one of

the other. For if good is the same with man, and to run the same with

a horse, how is good affirmed also of food and medicine, and again (by

Jupiter) to run of a lion and a dog? But if the predicate is different,

then we do not rightly say that a man is good, and a horse runs." Now

if Stilpo is in this exorbitant and grossly mistaken, not admitting

any copulation of such things as are in the subject, or affirmed of the

subject, with the subject itself; but holding that every one of them,

if it is not absolutely one and the same thing with that to which it

happens or of which it is spoken, ought not to be spoken or affirmed of

it,--no, not even as an accident; it is nevertheless manifest, that he

was only offended with some words, and opposed the usual and accustomed

manner of speaking, and not that he overthrew man's life, and turned his

affairs upside down.

Colotes, then, having got rid of the old philosophers, turns to those of

his own time, but without naming any of them; though he would have done

better either to have reproved by name these moderns, as he did the

ancients, or else to have named neither of them. But he who has so often

employed his pen against Socrates, Plato, and Parmenides, evidently

demonstrates that it is through cowardice he dares not attack the

living, and not for any modesty or reverence, of which he showed not

the least sign to those who were far more excellent than these. But his

meaning is, as I suspect, to assault the Cyrenaics first, and afterwards

the Academics, who are followers of Arcesilaus. For it was these who

doubted of all things; but those, placing the passions and imaginations

in themselves, were of opinion that the belief proceeding from them is

not sufficient for the assuring and affirming of things but, as if it

were in the siege of a town, abandoning what is without, they have shut

themselves up in the passions, using only it seems, and not asserting

it is, of things without. And therefore they cannot, as Colotes says

of them, live or have the use of things. And then speaking comically of

them, he adds: "These deny that there is a man, a horse, a wall; but say

that they themselves (as it were) become walls, horses, men," or "take

on the images of walls, horses, or men." In which he first maliciously

abuses the terms, as caluminators are usually wont to do. For though

these things follow from the sayings of the Cyrenaics, yet he ought to

have declared the fact as they themselves teach it. For they affirm that

things then become sweet, bitter, lightsome, or dark, when each thing

has in itself the natural unobstructed operation of one of these

impressions. But if honey is said to be sweet, an olive-branch bitter,

hail cold, wine hot, and the nocturnal air dark, there are many beasts,

things, and men that testify the contrary. For some have an aversion for

honey, others feed on the branches of the olive-tree; some are scorched

by hail, others cooled with wine; and there are some whose sight is

dim in the sun but who see well by night. Wherefore opinion, containing

itself within these sensations, remains safe and free from error; but

when it goes forth and attempts to be curious in judging and pronouncing

concerning exterior things, it often deceives itself, and opposes

others, who from the same objects receive contrary sensations and

different imaginations.

And Colotes seems properly to resemble those young children who are but

beginning to learn their letters. For, being accustomed to learn them

where they see them in their own horn-books and primers, when they see

them written anywhere else, they doubt and are troubled; so those very

discourses, which he praises and approves in the writings of Epicurus,

he neither understands nor knows again, when they are spoken by others.

For those who say that the sense is truly informed and moulded when

there is presented one image round and another broken, but nevertheless

permit us not to pronounce that the tower is round and the oar broken,

confirm their own sensations and imaginations, but they will not

acknowledge and confess that the things without are so affected. But

as the Cyrenaics must say that they are imprinted with the figure of

a horse or of a wall, but refuse to speak of the horse or the wall; so

also it is necessary to say that the sight is imprinted with a figure

round or with three unequal sides, and not that the tower is in that

manner triangular or round. For the image by which the sight is affected

is broken; but the oar whence that image proceeds is not broken. Since,

then, there is a difference between the sensation and the external

subject, the belief must either remain in the sensation, or else--if

it maintains the being in addition to the appearing--be reproved and

convinced of untruth. And whereas they cry out and are offended in

behalf of the sense, because the Cyrenaics say not that the thing

without is hot, but that the effect made on the sense is such; is it not

the same with what is said touching the taste, when they say that the

thing without is not sweet, but that some function and motion about

the sense is such? And for him who says that he has received the

apprehension of an human form, but perceives not whether it is a man,

whence has he taken occasion so to say? Is it not from those who affirm

that they receive an apprehension of a bowed figure and form, but that

the sight pronounces not that the thing which was seen is bowed or

round, but that a certain image of it is such? Yes, by Jupiter, will

some one say; but I, going near the tower or touching the oar, will

pronounce and affirm that the one is straight and the other has many

angles and faces; but he, when he comes near it, will confess that it

seems and appears so to him, and no more. Yes, certainly, good sir, and

more than this, when he sees and observes the consequence, that every

imagination is equally worthy of belief for itself, and none for

another; but that they are all in like condition. But this your opinion

is quite lost, that all the imaginations are true and none false or to

be disbelieved, if you think that these ought to pronounce positively

of that which is without, but those you credit no farther than that they

are so affected. For if they are in equal condition as to their being

believed, when they are near or when they are far off, it is just that

either upon all of them, or else not upon these, should follow the

judgment pronouncing that a thing is. But if there is a difference in

the being affected between those that are near and those that are far

off, it is then false that one sense and imagination is not more express

and evident than another. Therefore those they call attestations and

counter-attestations are nothing to the sense, but are concerned only

with opinion. So, if they would have us following these to pronounce

concerning exterior things, making being a judgment of opinion, and what

appears an affection of sense, they transfer the judicature from which

is totally true to that which often fails.

But how full of trouble and contradictions in respect of one another

these things are, what need is there to say at present? But the

reputation of Arcesilaus, who was the best beloved and most esteemed of

all the philosophers in his time, seems to have been no small eyesore to

Epicurus; who says of him that delivering nothing peculiar to himself

or of his own invention, he imprinted in illiterate men the opinion and

esteem of his being very knowing and learned. Now Arcesilaus was so far

from desiring any glory by being a bringer-in of new opinions, and from

arrogating to himself those of the ancients, that the sophisters of

that time blamed him for attributing to Socrates, Plato, Parmenides,

and Heraclitus the doctrines concerning the retention of assent, and the

incomprehensibility of things; having no need so to do, but only that

he might strengthen them and render them recommendable by ascribing them

such illustrious personages. For this, therefore, thanks to Colotes, and

to every one who declares that the academic doctrine was from a higher

times derived to Arcesilaus. Now as for retention of assent and the

doubting of all things, not even those who have much labored in the

manner, and strained themselves to compose great books and large

treatises concerning it, were ever able to stir it; but bringing at last

out of the Stoa itself the cessation from all actions, as the Gorgon to

frighten away the objections that came against them, they were at last

quite tired and gave over. For they could not, what attempts and stirs

soever they made, obtain so much from the instinct by which the appetite

is moved to act, as to suffer itself to be called an assent, or to

acknowledge sense for the origin and principle of its propension, but it

appeared of its own accord to present itself to act, as having no need

to be joined with anything else. For against such adversaries the combat

and dispute is lawful and just. And

Such words as you have spoke, the like you may

Expect to hear.

("Iliad," xx. 250.)

For to speak to Colotes of instinct and consent is, I suppose, all one

as to play on the harp before an ass. But to those who can give ear

and conceive, it is said that there are in the soul three sorts of

motions,--the imaginative, the appetitive, and the consenting. As to

the imaginative or the apprehension, it cannot be taken away, though one

would. For one cannot, when things approach, avoid being informed and

(as it were) moulded by them, and receiving an impression from them. The

appetite, being stirred up by the imaginative, effectually moves man to

that which is proper and agreeable to his nature, just as when there is

made a propension and inclination in the principal and reasonable part.

Now those who withhold their assent and doubt of all things take

not away this, but make use of the appetition or instinct naturally

conducting every man to that which seems convenient for him. What, then,

is the only thing that they shun? That in which is bred falsehood and

deceit,--that is, opining, and haste in giving consent,--which is a

yielding through weakness to that which appears, and has not any

true utility. For action stands in need of two things, to wit, the

apprehension or imagination of what is agreeable to Nature, and the

instinct or appetition driving to that which is so imagined; of which,

neither the one nor the other is repugnant to the retention of assent.

For reason withdraws us from opinion, and not from appetition or

imagination. When, therefore, that which is delectable seems to us to be

proper for us, there is no need of opinion to move and carry us to it,

but appetition immediately exerts itself, which is nothing else but the

motion and inclination of the soul.

It is their own axiom, that a man must only have sense and be flesh and

blood and pleasure will appear to be good. Wherefore also it will seem

good to him who withholds his assent. For he also participates of sense,

and is made of flesh and blood, and as soon as he has conceived an

imagination of good, desires it and does all things that it may not

escape from him; but as much as possibly he can, he will keep himself

with that which is agreeable to his nature, being drawn by natural and

not by geometrical constraints. For these goodly, gentle, and tickling

motions of the flesh are, without any teacher, attractive enough of

themselves--even as these men forget not to say--to draw even him who

will not in the least acknowledge and confess that he is softened and

rendered pliable by them. "But how comes it to pass," perhaps you will

say, "that he who is thus doubtful and withholds his assent hastens not

away to the mountain, instead of going to the bath? Or that, rising

up to go forth into the market-place, he runs not his head against the

wall, but takes his way directly to the door?" Do you ask this, who

hold all the senses to be infallible, and the apprehensions of the

imagination certain and true? It is because the bath appears to him not

a mountain, but a bath; and the door seems not a wall, but a door;

and the same is to be said of every other thing. For the doctrine of

retention does not pervert the sense, nor by absurd passions and motions

work in it an alteration disturbing the imaginative faculty; but it

only takes away opinions, and for the rest, makes use of other things

according to their nature.

But it is impossible, you will say, not to consent to things that are

evident; for to deny such things as are believed is more absurd than

neither to deny nor affirm. Who then are they that call in question

things believed, and contend against things that are evident? They

who overthrow and take away divination, who say that there is not any

government of Divine Providence, who deny the sun and the moon--to whom

all men offer sacrifices and whom they honor and adore--to be animated.

And do not you take away that which is apparent to all the world, that

the young are contained in the nature of their parents? Do you not,

contrary to the sense of all men, affirm that there is no medium

between pleasure and pain, saying that not to be in pain is to be in

the fruition of pleasure, that not to do is to suffer, and that not to

rejoice is to be grieved?

But to let pass all the rest, what is more evident and more generally

believed by all men, than that those who are seized with melancholy

distempers, and whose brain is troubled and whose wits are distracted,

do, when the fit is on them and their understanding altered and

transported, imagine that they see and hear things which they neither

see nor hear? Whence they frequently cry out:--

Women in black arrayed bear in their hands,

To burn mine eyes, torches and fiery brands.

And again:--

See, in her arms she holds my mother dear.

(Euripides, "Iphigenia in Tauris," 289.)

These, and many other illusions more strange and tragical than

these,--resembling those mormos and bugbears which they themselves laugh

at and deride, as they are described by Empedocles to be, "with sinuous

feet and undeveloped hands, bodied like ox and faced like man,"--with

certain other prodigious and unnatural phantoms, these men have gathered

together out of dreams and the alienations of distracted minds, and

affirm that none of them is a deception of the sight, a falsity, or

inconsistence; but that all these imaginations are true, being bodies

and figures that come from the ambient air. What thing then is there so

impossible in Nature as to be doubted of, if it is possible to believe

such reveries as these? For these men, supposing that such things as

never any mask-maker, potter, designer of wonderful images, or skilful

and all-daring painter durst join together, to deceive or make sport for

the beholders, are seriously and in good earnest existent,--nay, which

is more, affirming that, if they are not really so, all firmness of

belief, all certainty of judgment and truth, is forever gone,--do

by these their suppositions and affirmations cast all things into

obscurity, and bring fears into our judgments, and suspicions into

our actions,--if the things which we apprehend, do, are familiarly

acquainted with, and have at hand are grounded on the same imagination

and belief with these furious, absurd, and extravagant fancies. For the

equality which they suppose to be in all apprehensions rather derogates

from the credit of such as are usual and rational, than adds any belief

to those that are unusual and repugnant to reason. Wherefore we know

many philosophers who would rather and more willingly grant that no

imagination is true than that all are so, and that would rather simply

disbelieve all the men they never had conversed with, all the things

they had not experimented, and all the speeches they had not heard

with their own ears, than persuade themselves that any one of these

imaginations, conceived by these frantic, fanatical, and dreaming

persons, is true. Since then there are some imaginations which may,

and others which may not be rejected, it is lawful for us to retain

our assent concerning them, though there were no other cause but this

discordance, which is sufficient to work in us a suspicion of things,

as having nothing certain and assured, but being altogether full of

obscurity and perturbation. For in the disputes about the infinity of

worlds and the nature of atoms and individuums and their inclinations,

although they trouble and disturb very many, there is yet this comfort,

that none of all these things that are in question is near us, but

rather every one of them is far remote from sense. But as to this

diffidence, perplexity, and ignorance concerning sensible things and

imaginations, found even in our eyes, our ears, and our hands, what

opinion does it not shock? What consent does it not turn upside down?

For if men neither drunk, intoxicated, nor otherwise disturbed in their

senses, but sober, sound in mind, and professedly writing of the truth

and of the canons and rules by which to judge it, do in the most evident

passions and motions of the senses set down either that which has no

existence for true, or that which is existent for false, it is not

strange that a man should be silent about all things, but rather that he

assent to anything; nor is it incredible that he should have no judgment

about things which appear, but rather that he should have contrary

judgments. For it is less to be wondered, that a man should neither

affirm the one nor the other but keep himself in a mean between two

opposite things, than that he should set down things repugnant and

contrary to one another. For he that neither affirms nor denies, but

keeps himself quiet, is less repugnant to him who affirms an opinion

than he who denies it, and to him who denies an opinion than he who

affirms it. Now if it is possible to withhold one's assent concerning

these things, it is not impossible also concerning others, at least

according to your opinion, who say that one sense does not exceed

another, nor one imagination another.

The doctrine then of retaining the assent is not, as Colotes thinks,

a fable or an invention of rash and light-headed young men who please

themselves in babbling and prating; but a certain habit and disposition

of men who desire to keep themselves from falling into error, not

leaving the judgment at a venture to such suspected and inconstant

senses, nor suffering themselves to be deceived by those who hold

that in doubtful matters things which do not appear to the senses are

credible and ought to be believed, when they see so great obscurity and

uncertainty in things which do appear. But the infinity you assert is a

fable, and so indeed are the images you dream of: and he breeds in

young men rashness and self-conceitedness who writ of Pythocles, not yet

eighteen years of age, that there was not in all Greece a better or more

excellent nature, that he admirably well expressed his convictions, and

that he was in other respects behaved like a women,--praying that all

these extraordinary endowments of the young man might not work him

hatred and envy. But these are sophists and arrogant, who write so

impudently and proudly against great and excellent personages. I confess

indeed, that Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus and Democritus contradicted

those who went before them; but never durst any man besides Colotes set

forth with such an insolent title as this against all at once.

Whence it comes to pass that, like to such as have offended some

Divinity, confessing his fault, he says thus towards the end of His

book: "Those who have established laws and ordinances and instituted

monarchies and other governments in towns and cities, have placed human

life in great repose and security and delivered it from many troubles;

and if any one should go about to take this away, we should lead the

life of savage beasts, and should be every one ready to eat up one

another as we meet." For these are the very words of Colotes, though

neither justly nor truly spoken. For if any one, taking away the laws,

should leave us nevertheless the doctrines of Parmenides, Socrates,

Plato, and Heraclitus, we should be far from mutually devouring one

another and leading the life of beasts. For we should fear dishonest

things, and should for honesty alone venerate justice, the gods our

superiors, and magistrates, believing that we have spirits and daemons

who are the guardians and superintendents of human life, esteeming

all the gold that is upon and within the earth not to be equivalent to

virtue; and doing that willingly by reason, as Xenocrates says, which

we now do by force and through fear of the law. When then will our life

become savage, uncivilized, and bestial? When, the laws being taken

away, there shall be left doctrines inciting men to pleasure; when the

world shall bethought not to be ruled and governed by Divine Providence;

when those men shall be esteemed wise who spit at honesty if it is not

joined with pleasure; and when such discourses and sentences as these

shall be scoffed at and derided:--

For Justice has an eye which all things sees;

and again:--

God near us stands, and views whate'er we do;

and once more: "God, as antiquity has delivered to holding the

beginning, middle, and end of the universe, makes a direct line, walking

according to Nature. After him follows Justice, a punisher of those who

have been deficient in their duties by transgressing the divine law."

For they who contemn these things as if they were fables, and think that

the sovereign good of man consists about the belly, and in those other

passages by which pleasure is admitted, are such as stand in need of the

law, and fear, and stripes, and some king, prince, or magistrate, having

in his hand the sword of justice; to the end that they may not devour

their neighbors through their gluttony, rendered confident by their

atheistical impiety. For this is the life of brutes, because brute

beasts know nothing better nor more honest than pleasure, understand not

the justice of the gods, nor revere the beauty of virtue; but if Nature

has bestowed on them any point of courage, subtlety, or activity, they

make use of it for the satisfaction of their fleshly pleasure and the

accomplishment of their lusts. And the sapient Metrodorus believes that

this should be so, for he says: "All the fine, subtle, and ingenious

inventions of the soul have been found out for the pleasure and delight

of the flesh, or for the hopes of attaining to it and enjoying it, and

every act which tends not to this end is vain and unprofitable." The

laws being by such discourses and philosophical reasons as these taken

away, there wants nothing to a beast-like life but lions' paws, wolves'

teeth, oxen's paunches, and camels' necks; and these passions and

doctrines do the beasts themselves, for want of speech and letters,

express by their bellowings, neighings, and brayings, all their voice

being for their belly and the pleasure of their flesh, which they

embrace and rejoice in either present or future; unless it be perhaps

some animal which naturally takes delight in chattering and garrulity.

No sufficient praise therefore or equivalent to their deserts can be

given those who, for the restraining of such bestial passions, have

set down laws, established policy and government of state, instituted

magistrates and ordained good and wholesome laws. But who are they

that utterly confound and abolish this? Are they not those who withdraw

themselves and their followers from all part in the government? Are they

not those who say that the garland of tranquillity and a reposed life

are far more valuable than all the kingdoms and principalities in the

world? Are they not those who declare that reigning and being a king is

a mistaking the path and straying from the right way of felicity? And

they write in express terms: "We are to treat how a man may best keep

and preserve the end of Nature, and how he may from the very beginning

avoid entering of his own free will and voluntarily upon offices of

magistracy, and government over the people." And yet again, these other

words are theirs: "There is no need at all that a man should tire out

his mind and body to preserve the Greeks, and to obtain from them

a crown of wisdom; but to eat and drink well, O Timocrates, without

prejudicing, but rather pleasing the flesh." And yet in the constitution

of laws and policy, which Colotes so much praises, the first and most

important article is the belief and persuasion of the gods. Wherefore

also Lycurgus heretofore consecrated the Lacedaemonians, Numa the

Romans, the ancient Ion the Athenians, and Deucalion universally all the

Greeks, through prayers, oaths, oracles, and omens, making them devout

and affectionate to the gods by means of hopes and fears at once. And if

you will take the pains to travel through the world, you may find

towns and cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without

houses, without wealth, without money, without theatres and places of

exercise; but there was never seen nor shall be seen by man any city

without temples and gods, or without making use of prayers, oaths,

auguries, and sacrifices for the obtaining of blessings and benefits,

and the averting of curses and calamities. Nay, I am of opinion, that

a city might sooner be built without any ground to fix it on, than a

commonweal be constituted altogether void of any religion and opinion

of the gods,--or being constituted, be preserved. But this, which is the

foundation and ground of all laws, do these men, not going circularly

about, nor secretly and by enigmatical speeches, but attacking it

with the first of their most principal opinions directly subvert and

overthrow; and then afterwards, as if they were haunted by the Furies,

they come and confess that they have grievously offended in thus taking

away the laws, and confounding the ordinances of justice and policy,

that they may not be capable of pardon. For to err in opinion, though it

be not the part of wise men, is at least human; but to impute to others

the errors and offences they commit themselves, how can any one declare

what it is, if he forbears to give it the name it deserves?

For if, in writing against Antidorus or Bion the sophister, he had made

mention of laws, policy, order, and justice, might not either of them

have said to him, as Electra did to her mad brother Orestes:--

Lie still at ease, poor wretch; keep in thy bed,

(Euripides, "Orestes," 258.)

and there cherish thy bit of body, leaving those to expostulate and

find fault with me who have themselves lived the life of a citizen and

householder? Now such are all those whom Colotes has reviled and railed

at in his book. Amongst whom, Democritus in his writings advises

and exhorts to the learning of the science of politics, as being the

greatest of all, and to the accustoming one's self to bear fatigues, by

which men attain to great wealth and honor. And as for Parmenides, he

beautified and adorned his native country with most excellent laws which

he there established, so that even to this day the officers every year,

when they enter first on the exercise of their charges, are obliged

to swear that they will observe the laws and ordinances of Parmenides.

Empedocles brought to justice some of the principal of his city, and

caused them to be condemned for their insolent behavior and embezzling

of the public treasure, and also delivered his country from sterility

and the plague--to which calamities it was before subject--by immuring

and stopping up the holes of certain mountains, whence there issued an

hot south wind, which overspread all the plain country and blasted it.

And Socrates, after he was condemned, when his friends offered him, if

he pleased, an opportunity of making his escape, absolutely refused

to make use of it, that he might maintain the authority of the laws,

choosing rather to die unjustly than to save himself by disobeying the

laws of his country. Melissus, being captain general of his country,

vanquished the Athenians in a battle at sea. Plato left in his writings

excellent discourses concerning the laws, government, and policy of a

commonweal; and yet he imprinted much better in the hearts and minds of

his disciples and familiars, which caused Sicily to be freed by Dion,

and Thrace to be set at liberty by Pytho and Heraclides, who slew Cotys.

Chabrias also and Phocion, those two great generals of the Athenians,

came out of the Academy.

As for Epicurus, he indeed sent certain persons into Asia to chide

Timocrates, and caused him to be removed out of the king's palace,

because he had offended his brother Metrodorus; and this is written

in their own books. But Plato sent of his disciples and friends,

Aristonymus to the Arcadians, to set in order their commonweal, Phormio

to the Eleans, and Menedemus to the Pyrrhaeans. Eudoxus gave laws to

the Cnidians, and Aristotle to the Stagirites, who were both of them the

intimates of Plato. And Alexander the Great demanded of Xenocrates

rules and precepts for reigning well. And he who was sent to the same

Alexander by the Grecians dwelling in Asia, and who most of all

inflamed and stimulated him to embrace and undertake the war against

the barbarian king of Persia, was Delius the Ephesian, one of Plato's

familiars. Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides, having attempted to kill

the tyrant Demylus, and failing in his design, maintained the doctrine

of Parmenides, like pure and fine gold tried in the fire, that there is

nothing which a magnanimous man ought to dread but dishonor, and that

there are none but children and women, or effeminate and women-hearted

men, who fear pain. For, having with his own teeth bitten off his

tongue, he spit it in the tyrant's face.

But out of the school of Epicurus, and from among those who follow his

doctrine, I will not ask what tyrant-killer has proceeded, nor yet what

man valiant and victorious in feats of arms, what lawgiver, what prince,

what counsellor, or what governor of the people; neither will I demand,

who of them has been tormented or has died for supporting right and

justice. But which of all these sages has for the benefit and service of

his country undertaken so much as one voyage at sea, gone of an embassy,

or expended a sum of money? What record is there extant of one civil

action in matter of government, performed by any of you? And yet,

because Metrodorus went down one day from the city as far as the haven

of Piraeus, taking a journey of forty stadia to assist Mithres a Syrian,

one of the king of Persia's court who had been arrested and taken

prisoner, he writ of it to every one and in all his letters, Epicurus

also highly magnifying and extolling this wonderful voyage. What value

then, think you, would they have put upon it, if they had done such an

act as Aristotle did, who procured the restoration and rebuilding of

Stagira, the town of his nativity, after it had been destroyed by King

Philip? Or as Theophrastus, who twice delivered his city, when possessed

and held by tyrants? Would not the river Nile sooner have given over to

bear the paper-reed, than they have been weary of writing their brave

exploits?

And it is not the greatest dishonor, that, of so many sects of

philosophers as have existed, they alone should enjoy the benefits that

are in cities, without having ever contributed to them anything of

their own; but far more serious is it that, while there are not even any

tragical or comical poets who do not always endeavor to do or say some

good thing or other in defence of the laws and policy these men, if

peradventure they write, write of policy, that we may not concern

ourselves in the government of the commonweal,--of rhetoric, that we may

not perform an act of eloquence,--and of royalty, that we may shun the

living and conversing with kings. Nor do they ever name any of those

great personages who have intermeddled in civil affairs, but only to

scoff at them and abolish their glory. Thus they say that Epaminondas

had something of good, but that infinitesimal, or [Greek omitted], for

that is the very word they use. They moreover call him iron-hearted,

and ask what ailed him that he went marching his army through all

Peloponnesus, and why he did not rather keep himself quiet at home with

a garland on his head, employed only in cherishing and making much of

his body. But methinks I ought not in this place to omit what Metrodorus

writ in his book of Philosophy, when, utterly abjuring all meddling in

the management of the state, he said thus: "Some, through an excess of

vanity and arrogance, have so deep a comprehension into the business of

it, that in discussing the precepts of good life and virtue, they

allow themselves to be carried away with the very same desires as were

Lycurgus and Solon." What is this? Was it then vanity and abundance of

vanity, to set free the city of Athens, to render Sparta well-policied

and governed by wholesome laws, that young men might do nothing

licentiously, nor get children upon common courtesans and whores, and

that riches, delights, intemperance, and dissolution might no longer

bear sway and have command in cities, but law and justice? For these

were the desires of Solon. To this Metrodorus, by way of scorn and

contumely, adds this conclusion: "It is then very well beseeming a

native born gentleman to laugh heartily, as at other men, so especially

at these Solons and Lycurguses." But such a one, O Metrodorus, is not

a gentleman, but a servile and dissolute person, and deserves to be

scourged, not with that whip which is for free-born persons, but with

that scourge made with ankle-bones, with which those eunuch sacrificers

called Galli were wont to be chastised, when they failed of performing

their duty in the ceremonies and sacrifices of the Goddess Cybele, the

great Mother of the Gods.

But that they made war not against the lawgivers but against the laws

themselves, one may hear and understand from Epicurus. For in his

questions, he asks himself, whether a wise man, being assured that it

will not be known, will do anything that the laws forbid. To which he

answers: "That is not so easy to settle simply,"--that is "I will do

it indeed, but I am not willing to confess it." And again, I suppose

writing to Idomeneus, he exorts him not to make his life a slave to the

laws or to the options of men, unless it be to avoid the trouble they

prepare, by the scourge and chastisement, so near at hand. If those who

abolish laws, governments, and polices of men subvert and destroy

human life, and if Metrodorus and Epicurus do this, by dehorting and

withdrawing their friends from concerning themselves in public affairs,

by hating those who intermeddle in them, by reviling the first most wise

lawgivers, and by advising contempt of the laws provided there is no

fear and danger of the whip punishment. I do not see that Colotes has

brought so many false accusations against the other philosophers as he

has alleged and advanced true ones against the writings and doctrines of

Epicurus.

END OF TEN------------

PLATONIC QUESTIONS.

QUESTION I. WHY DID GOD COMMAND SOCRATES TO ACT THE MIDWIFE'S PART

TO OTHERS, BUT CHARGED HIMSELF NOT TO GENERATE; AS HE AFFIRMS IN

THEAETETUS? (See Plato, "Theaetetus," p. 149 B.)

For he would never have used the name of God in such a merry, jesting

manner, though Plato in that book makes Socrates several times to talk

with great boasting and arrogance, as he does now. "There are many, dear

friend, so affected towards me, that they are ready even to snap at me,

when I offer to cure them of the least madness. For they will not be

persuaded that I do it out of goodwill, because they are ignorant that

no god bears ill-will to man, and that therefore I wish ill to no man;

but I cannot allow myself either to stand in a lie or to stifle the

truth." (Ibid. p. 151 C.) Whether therefore did he style his own nature,

which was of a very strong and pregnant wit, by the name of God,--as

Menander says, "For our mind is God," and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius

is a Deity"? Or did some divine cause or some daemon or other impart

this way of philosophizing to Socrates, whereby constantly interrogating

others, he cleared them of pride, error, and ignorance, and of being

troublesome both to themselves and to others? For about that time there

happened to be in Greece several sophists; to these some young men

paid great sums of money, for which they purchased a strong opinion of

learning and wisdom, and of being stout disputants; but this sort of

disputation spent much time in trifling squabblings, which were of no

credit or profit. Now Socrates, using an argumentative discourse by way

of a purgative remedy procured belief and authority to what he said,

because in refuting others he himself affirmed nothing; and he the

sooner gained upon people, because he seemed rather to be inquisitive

after the truth as well as they, than to maintain his own opinion.

Now, however useful a thing judgment is, it is mightily infected By

the begetting of a man's own fancies. For the lover is blinded with the

thing loved; and nothing of a man's own is so beloved as is the opinion

and discourse he has begotten. And the distribution of children said to

be the justest, in respect of discourses is the unjustest; for there a

man must take his own, but here a man must choose the best, though it

be another man's. Therefore he that has children of his own, is a worse

judge of other men's; it being true, as the sophister said well, "The

Eleans would be the most proper judges of the Olympic games, were no

Eleans gamesters." So he that would judge of disputations cannot be

just, if he either seeks the bays for himself, or is himself antagonist

to either of the antagonists. For as the Grecian captains, when they

were to settle by their suffrages who had behaved himself the best,

every man of them voted for himself; so there is not a philosopher of

them all but would do the like, besides those that acknowledge, like

Socrates, that they can say nothing that is their own; and these only

are the pure uncorrupt judges of the truth. For as the air in the ears,

unless it be still and void of noise in itself, without any sound or

humming, does not exactly take sounds so the philosophical judgment

in disputations, if it be disturbed and obstreperous within, is hardly

comprehensive of what is said without. For our familiar and inbred

opinion will not allow that which disagrees with itself, as the number

of sects and parties shows, of which philosophy--if she deals with them

in the best manner--must maintain one to be right, and all the others to

be contrary to the truth in their positions.

Furthermore, if men can comprehend and know nothing, God did justly

interdict Socrates the procreation of false and unstable discourses,

which are like wind-eggs, and did him convince others who were of any

other opinion. And reasoning, which rids us of the greatest of evils,

error and vanity of mind, is none of the least benefit to us; "For God

has not granted this to the Esculapians." (Theognis, vs. 432,) Nor did

Socrates give physic to the body; indeed he purged the mind of secret

corruption. But if there be any knowledge of the truth, and if the truth

be one, he has as much that learns it of him that invented it, as the

inventor himself. Now he the most easily attains the truth, that is

persuaded he has it not; and he chooses best, just as he that has

no children of his own adopts the best. Mark this well, that poetry,

mathematics, oratory, and sophistry, which are the things the Deity

forbade Socrates to generate, are of no value; and that of the sole

wisdom about what is divine and intelligible (which Socrates called

amiable and eligible for itself), there is neither generation nor

invention by man, but reminiscence. Wherefore Socrates taught nothing,

but suggesting principles of doubt, as birth-pains, to young men, he

excited and at the same time confirmed the innate notions. This he

called his Art of Midwifery, which did not (as others professed)

extrinsically confer intelligence upon his auditors; but demonstrated it

to be innate, yet imperfect and confused, and in want of a nurse to feed

and fortify it.

QUESTION II. WHY DOES HE CALL THE SUPREME GOD FATHER AND MAKER OF ALL

THINGS? (Plato, "Timaeus," p. 28 C.)

Is it because he is (as Homer calls him) of created gods and men

the Father, and of brutes and things that have no soul the maker? If

Chrysippus may be believed, he is not properly styled the father of the

afterbirth who supplied the seed, although it arose from the seed. Or

has Plato figuratively called the maker of the world the father of

it? In his Convivium he calls Phaedrus the father of the amatorious

discourse which he had commenced; and so in his Phaedrus ("Phaedrus,"

p. 261 A.) he calls him "father of noble children," when he had been the

occasion of many pre-eminent discourses about philosophical questions.

Or is there any difference between a father and a maker? Or between

procreation and making? For as what is procreated is also made, but not

the contrary recreated did also make, for the procreation of an animal

is the making of it. Now the work of a maker--as of a builder, a weaver,

a musical-instrument maker, or a statuary--is altogether apart and

separate from its author; but the principle and power of the procreator

is implanted in the progeny, and contains his nature, the progeny being

a piece pulled off the procreator. Since therefore the world is neither

like a piece of potter's work nor joiner's work, but there is a great

share of life and divinity in it, which God from himself communicated

to and mixed with matter, God may properly be called Father of the

world--since it has life in it--and also the maker of it.

And since these things come very near to Plato's opinion, consider, I

pray, whether there may not be some probability in them. Whereas the

world consists of two parts, body and soul, God indeed made not the

body; but matter being at hand, he formed and fitted it, binding up and

confirming what was infinite within proper limits and figures. But the

soul, partaking of mind, reason, and harmony, was not only the work of

God, but part of him not only made by him, but begot by him.

QUESTION III. In the Republic, ("Republic," vi. pp. 509 D-511 E.) he

assumes the universe, as one line to be cut into two unequal parts;

again he cuts each of these parts in two after the same manner, and

supposes the two sections first made to form the two genera of things

sensible and things intelligible. The first stands for the genus of

intelligibles, comprehending in the first subdivision the primitive

forms, in the second the mathematics. Of sensibles, the first

subdivision comprehends solid bodies, the second comprehends the images

and representations of them. Moreover, to every one of these four he has

assigned its proper criterion;--to the first reason; to the mathematics,

the understanding; to sensibles, belief; to images and likenesses,

conjecture.

BUT WHAT DOES HE MEAN BY DIVIDING THE UNIVERSE INTO UNEQUAL PARTS? AND

WHICH OF THE SECTIONS, THE INTELLIGIBLE OR THE SENSIBLE, IS THE GREATER?

FOR IN THIS HE HAS NOT EXPLAINED HIMSELF.

At first glance it will appear that the sensible is the greater portion.

For the essence of intelligibles being indivisible, and in the same

respect ever the same, is contracted into a little, and pure; but an

essence divisible and running through bodies constitutes the sensible

part. Now what is immaterial is limited; but body in respect of matter

is infinite and unlimited, and it becomes sensible only when it is

limited by partaking of the intelligible. Besides, as every sensible

has many images, shadows, and representations, and from one and the

same original several copies may be taken both by nature and art; so the

latter must surpass the former in number, according to Plato, who makes

things of the intellect to be patterns or ideas of things sensible,

as if the last were images and reflections. Further, Plato derives the

knowledge of ideas by abstraction and cutting away of body, leading

us by mathematical discipline from arithmetic to geometry, thence

to astronomy, and placing harmony above them all. For things become

geometrical by the accession of magnitude to quantity; solid, by the

accession of profundity to magnitude; astronomical, by the accession

of motion to solidity; harmonical, by the accession of sound to motion.

Take then sound from moving bodies, motion from solids, profundity from

superficies, magnitude from quantity, we then reach pure intelligible

ideas, which have no difference among themselves as regards the one

single intelligible essence. For unity makes no number unless joined by

the infinite binary; then it makes a number. And thence we proceed

to points, thence to lines, from them to superficies, and solids, and

bodies, and to the qualities of the bodies so and so affected. Now the

reason is the only criterion of intelligibles; and the understanding

is the reason in the mathematics, where intelligibles appear as if in

mirrors. But as to the knowledge of bodies, because of their multitude,

Nature has given us five powers or distinctions of senses; nor are

all bodies discerned by them, many escaping sense by reason of their

smallness. And though every one of us consists of a body and soul, yet

the hegemonic and intellectual faculty is small, being hid in the huge

mass of flesh. And the case is the same in the universe, as to sensible

and intelligible. For intelligibles are the principles of bodily things,

but everything is greater than the principle whence it came.

Yet, on the contrary, some will say that, by comparing sensibles with

intelligibles, we match things mortal with divine, in some measure; for

God is in intelligibles. Besides, the thing contained is ever less than

the containing, and the nature of the universe contains the sensible in

the intelligible. For God, having placed the soul in the middle, hath

extended it through all, and hath covered it all round with bodies.

The soul is invisible, and cannot be perceived by any of the senses, as

Plato says in his Book of Laws; therefore every man must die, but the

world shall never die. For mortality and dissolution surround every one

of our vital faculties. The case is quite otherwise in the world;

for the corporeal part, contained in the middle by the more noble and

unalterable principle, is ever preserved. And a body is said to

be without parts and indivisible for its minuteness; but what is

incorporeal and intelligible is so, as being simple and sincere, and

void of all firmness and difference. Besides, it were folly to think to

judge of incorporeal things by corporeal. The present, or now, is said

to be without parts and indivisible, since it is everywhere and no part

of the world is void of it. But all affections and actions, and all

corruptions and generations in the world, are contained by this same

now. But the mind is judge only of what is intelligible, as the sight is

of light, by reason of its simplicity and similitude. But bodies, having

several differences and diversities, are comprehended, some by one

judicatory function, others by another, as by several organs. Yet they

do not well who despise the discriminative faculty in us; for being

great, it comprehends all sensibles, and attains to things divine. The

chief thing he himself teaches in his Banquet, where he shows us how we

should use amatorious matters, turning our minds from sensible goods to

things discernible only by the mind, that we ought not to be enslaved

by the beauty of any body, study, or learning, but laying aside

such weakness, should turn to the vast ocean of beauty. (See Plato's

"Symposium," p. 210 D.)

QUESTION IV. WHAT IS THE REASON THAT, THOUGH PLATO ALWAYS SAYS THAT THE

SOUL IS ANCIENTER THAN THE BODY, AND THAT IT IS THE CAUSE AND PRINCIPLE

OF ITS RISE, YET HE LIKEWISE SAYS, THAT NEITHER COULD THE SOUL EXIST

WITHOUT THE BODY, NOR THE REASON WITHOUT THE SOUL, BUT THE SOUL IN THE

BODY AND THE REASON IN THE SOUL? FOR 80 THE BODY WILL SEEM TO BE AND NOT

TO BE, BECAUSE IT BOTH EXISTS WITH THE SOUL, AND IS BEGOT BY THE SOUL.

Perhaps what we have often said is true; viz., that the soul without

reason and the body without form did mutually ever coexist, and neither

of them had generation or beginning. But after the soul did partake of

reason and harmony, and being through consent made wise, it wrought a

change in matter, and being stronger than the other's motions, it drew

and converted these motions to itself. So the body of the world drew its

original from the soul, and became conformable and like to it. For

the soul did not make the nature of the body out of itself, or out

of nothing; but it wrought an orderly and pliable body out of one

disorderly and formless. Just as if a man should say that the virtue

of the seed is with the body, and yet that the body of the fig-tree or

olive-tree was made of the seed, he would not be much out; for the body,

its innate motion and mutation proceeding from the seed, grew up and

became what it is. So, when formless and indefinite matter was once

formed by the inbeing soul, it received such a form and disposition.

QUESTION V. WHY, SINCE BODIES AND FIGURES ARE CONTAINED PARTLY BY

RECTILINEARS AND PARTLY BY CIRCLES, DOES HE MAKE ISOSCELES TRIANGLES AND

TRIANGLES OF UNEQUAL SIDES THE PRINCIPLES OF RECTILINEARS; OF WHICH THE

ISOSCELES TRIANGLE CONSTITUTES THE CUBE, THE ELEMENT OF THE EARTH; AND A

SCALENE TRIANGLE FORMS THE PYRAMID, THE OCTAHEDRON THE SEED OF FIRE,

AIR AND WATER RESPECTIVELY, AND THE ICOSAHEDRON;--WHILE HE PASSES OVER

CIRCULARS, THOUGH HE DOES MENTION THE GLOBE, WHERE HE SAYS THAT EACH OF

THE AFORE-RECKONED FIGURES DIVIDES A ROUND BODY THAT CIRCUMSCRIBES IT

INTO EQUAL PARTS. (See "Timaeus," pp. 53-56.)

Is their opinion true who think that he ascribed a dodecahedron to the

globe, when he says that God made use of it in delineating the universe?

For upon account of the multitude of its bases and the obtuseness of its

angles, avoiding all rectitude, it is flexible, and by circumtension,

like globes made of twelve skins, it becomes circular and comprehensive.

For it has twenty solid angles, each of which is contained by three

obtuse planes, and each of these contains one and the fifth part of

a right angle. Now it is made up of twelve equilateral and equangular

quinquangles (or pentagons), each of which consists of thirty of the

first scalene triangles. Therefore it seems to resemble both the Zodiac

and the year, it being divided into the same number of parts as these.

Or is a right line in Nature prior to circumference; or is circumference

but an accident of rectilinear? For a right line is said to bend; and

a circle is described by a centre and distance, which is the place of a

right line from which a circumference is measured, this being everywhere

equally distant from the middle. And a cone and a cylinder are made

by rectilinears; a cone by keeping one side of a triangle fixed and

carrying another round with the base,--a cylinder, by doing the like

with a parallelogram. Further, that is nearest to principle which is

less; but a right is the least of all lines, as it is simple; whereas

in a circumference one part is convex without, another concave within.

Besides, numbers are before figures, as unity is before a point,

which is unity in position. But indeed unity is triangular; for every

triangular number (Triangular numbers are those of which equilateral

triangles can be formed in this way:

.

. ..

. .. ...

. .. ... .... ..............

Such are: 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, etc.; that is, numbers formed by

adding the digits in regular order. (G.)) taken eight times, by adding

unity, becomes quadrate; and this happens to unity. Therefore a triangle

is before a circle, whence a right line is before a circumference.

Besides, no element is divided into things compounded of itself; indeed

there is a dissolution of all other things into the elements. Now a

triangle is divided into no circumference, but two diameters cut a

circle into four triangles; therefore a rectilinear figure is before a

circular, and has more of the nature of an element. And Plato himself

shows that a rectilinear is in the first place, and a circular is only

consequential and accidental. For when he says the earth consists of

cubes, each of which is contained with rectilinear superficies, he says

the earth is spherical and round. Therefore there was no need of making

a peculiar element for round things, since rectilinears, fitted after a

certain manner among themselves, do make up this figure.

Besides, a right line, whether great or little, preserves the same

rectitude; but as to the circumference of a circle, the less it is,

the crookeder it is; the larger, the straighter. Therefore if a convex

surface stands on a plane, it sometimes touches the under plane in

a point, sometimes in a line. So that a man may imagine that a

circumference is made up of little right lines.

But observe whether this be not true, that no circle or sphere in this

world is exactly drawn; but since by the tension and circumtension of

the straight lines, or by the minuteness of the parts, the difference

is hidden, the figure seems circular and round. Therefore no corruptible

body moves circularly, but altogether in a right line. To be truly

spherical is not in a sensible body, but is the element of the soul and

mind, to which he has given circular motion, as being agreeable to their

nature.

QUESTION VI. HOW COMES IT TO PASS THAT IN PHAEDRUS IT IS SAID, THAT THE

NATURE OF A WING, BY WHICH ANYTHING THAT IS HEAVY IS CARRIED UPWARDS,

PARTICIPATES MOST OF THE BODY OF GOD? (See "Phaedrus," p. 246 D.)

Is it because the discourse is of love, and love is of beauty inherent

in a body? Now beauty, by similitude to things divine, moves and reminds

the soul. Or it may be (without too much curiosity) he may be understood

in plain meaning, to wit, that the several faculties of the soul being

employed about bodies, the power of reasoning and understanding partakes

most about divine and heavenly things; which he did not improperly call

a wing, it raising the soul from mean and mortal things to things above.

QUESTION VII. IN WHAT SENSE DOES PLATO SAY, THAT THE ANTIPERISTASIS (OR

REACTION) OF MOTION--BY REASON THERE IS NO VACUUM--IS THE CAUSE OF THE

PHENOMENA IN PHYSICIANS' CUPPING-GLASSES, IN SWALLOWING, IN CASTING

WEIGHTS, IN THE RUNNING OF WATER, IN THUNDER, IN THE ATTRACTION OF THE

LOADSTONE, AND IN THE HARMONY OF SOUNDS? (See "Timaeus," pp. 79-81.)

For it seems unreasonable to ascribe the reason of such different

effects to the selfsame cause.

How respiration is made by the reaction of the air, he has sufficiently

shown. But the others, he says, seem to be effected miraculously, but

really the bodies force each other aside and change places with one

another; while he has left for us to discover how each is particularly

done.

As to cupping-glasses, the case is thus: the air next to the flesh being

comprehended and inflamed by the heat, and being made more rare than

the pores of the brass, does not go into a vacuum (for there is no such

thing), but into the air that is without the cupping-glass, and has an

impulse upon it. This air drives that before it; and each, as it gives

way, strives to succeed into the place which was vacuated by the cession

of the first. And so the air approaching the flesh comprehended by

the cupping-glass, and attracting it, draws the humors into the

cupping-glass.

Swallowing takes place in the same way. For the cavities about the mouth

and stomach are full of air; when therefore the meat is squeezed down by

the tongue and tonsils, the elided air follows what gives way, and also

forces down the meat.

Weights also thrown cleave the air and dissipate it, as they fall with

force; the air recoiling back, according to its proper tendency to rush

in and fill the vacuum, follows the impulse, and accelerates the motion.

The fall also of thunderbolts is like to darting anything. For by the

blow in the cloud, the fiery matter exploded breaks into the air; and it

being broken gives way, and again being contracted above, by main force

it presses the thunderbolt downwards contrary to Nature.

And neither amber nor the loadstone draws anything to it which is near,

nor does anything spontaneously approach them. But this stone emits

strong exhalations, by which the surrounding air being impelled forceth

that which is before it; and this being drawn round in the circle, and

returning into the vacuated place, forcibly draws the iron in the same

movement. In amber there is a flammeous and spirituous nature, and this

by rubbing on the surface is emitted by recluse passages, and does the

same that the loadstone does. It also draws the lightest and driest of

adjacent bodies, by reason of their tenuity and weakness; for it is not

so strong nor so endued with weight and strength as to force much air

and to act with violence and to have power over great bodies, as the

magnet has. But what is the reason the air never draws a stone, nor

wood, but iron only, to the loadstone? This is a common question both by

those who think the coition of these bodies is made by the attraction

of the loadstone, and by such as think it done by the incitement of the

iron. Iron is neither so rare as wood, nor altogether so solid as

gold or a stone; but has certain pores and asperities, which as far as

inequality is concerned are proportionable to the air; and the air being

received in certain positions, and having (as it were) certain stays to

hang to, does not slip off; but when it is carried up to the stone and

is forced against it, it draws the iron by force along with it to the

stone. Such then may be the reason of this.

But the manner of the waters running over the earth is not so evident.

But it is observable that the waters of lakes and ponds stand immovable,

because the air about them stagnates immovable and admits of no

vacuity. For the water on the surface of lakes and seas is troubled and

fluctuates as the air is moved, it following the motion of the air, and

moving as it is moved. For the force from below causes the hollowness of

the wave, and from above the swelling thereof; until the air ambient

and containing the water is still. Therefore the flux of such waters as

follow the motion of the receding air, and are impelled by that which

presses behind, is continued without end. And this is the reason that

the stream increases with the waters, and is slow where the water is

weak, the air not giving way, and therefore enduring less reaction.

So the water of fountains must needs go upwards, the extrinsic air

succeeding into the vacuity and throwing the water out. In a close

house, that keeps in the air and wind, the floor sprinkled with water

causes an air or wind, because, as the sprinkled water falls, the air

gives way. For it is so provided by Nature that air and water force

one another and give way to one another; because there is no vacuity in

which one can be fixed without experiencing the change and alteration in

the other.

Concerning symphony, he shows how sounds harmonize. A quick sound is

acute, a slow is grave. Therefore acute sounds move the senses the

quicker; and these dying and grave sounds supervening, what arises from

the contemperation of one with the other causes pleasure to the ear,

which we call harmony. And by what has been said, it may easily be

understood that air is the instrument of these things. For sound is

the stroke upon the sense of the hearer, caused by the air; and the air

strikes as it is struck by the thing moving,--if violent, acutely,--if

languid, softly. The violent stroke comes quick to the ear; then the

circumambient air receiving a slower, it affects and carries the sense

along with it.

QUESTION VIII. WHAT MEANS TIMAEUS (See "Timaeus," p. 42 D.) WHEN HE

SAYS THAT SOULS ARE DISPERSED INTO THE EARTH, THE MOON, AND INTO OTHER

INSTRUMENTS OF TIME?

Does the earth move like the sun, moon, and five planets, which for

their motions he calls organs or instruments of time? Or is the earth

fixed to the axis of the universe; yet not so built as to remain

immovable, but to turn and wheel about, as Aristarchus and Seleucus

have shown since; Aristarchus only supposing it, Seleucus positively

asserting it? Theophrastus writes how that Plato, when he grew old,

repented him that he had placed the earth in the middle of the universe,

which was not its place.

Or is this contradictory to Plato's opinion elsewhere, and in the Greek

instead of [Greek omitted] should it be written [Greek omitted], taking

the dative case instead of the genitive, so that the stars will not

be said to be instruments, but the bodies of animals? So Aristotle has

defined the soul to be "the actualization of a natural organic body,

having the power of life." The sense then must be this, that souls are

dispersed into meet organical bodies in time. But this is far besides

his opinion. For it is not once, but several times, that he calls the

stars instruments of time; as when he says, the sun was made, as well

as other planets, for the distinction and conservation of the numbers of

time.