Preface concerning the subject of the Book
Having gone through in the preceding book all that there was to say and hear about the philosophy of Plato and its agreement with the oracles of the Hebrews, on account of which we have admired the man, and again its disagreement with them, on account of which no one of sound mind would accept him, I now pass on to the remaining schools of those among the Greeks who were renowned for philosophy. And again I shall set their slipping from the truth before the eyes of readers to examine, not myself nor from my own resources, but through the testimony of the Greek writers themselves; not from any hatred of these men, for whom I admit I have great admiration when I compare them with the others, as men with men. But when I compare them with the theologians and prophets of the Hebrews, and with God, who through them made predictions of the future and displays of wonders, and laid down the teaching of godly lessons and true doctrines, I think no one could any longer reasonably blame us if we honor God before men, and truth itself before mortal reasonings and conjectures. The whole argument of the present Preparation has been eager to show this, as an answer and defense at once to those who will ask what good or noble thing we saw in the writings of barbarians that we decided to prefer them to our ancestral and noble philosophy, I mean that of the Greeks. But now let the demonstration proceed by deeds.
On the mutual contradiction and conflict of the philosophers
I think it necessary first of all to begin from the very first foundation of the philosophers among the Greeks, and to learn who those were before Plato who were called natural philosophers, and what kind of leaders of the argument their philosophy had; then to pass on to Plato’s succession, and who these were, and to examine their wordy battles with one another; and also to view the divisions of the other schools and the conflicts of their opinions, in which I shall show the noble gentlemen boxing and brawling ambitiously, as on a stage before spectators. Let us see at once, then, how Plato mocked the first ones before him, and how others mocked Plato’s own associates and successors; and again how Plato’s companions refuted the wisdom of Aristotle’s many-sided intellect; and how those who boasted of Aristotle and the Peripatos showed the opinions of those who held the opposite to be nothing. And again you will see the clever and exact subtleties of the Stoics laughed at by others, and all of them on every side covering themselves with dust against their neighbors and joining combat and wrestling most manfully, so that with hands now and tongue, or rather with pen and ink, they build siege-works in their war against one another, all but striking and being struck with the spears and full armor of words. And the stadium in this naked contest will contain for us, besides those mentioned, men naked of all truth: those who have taken up arms against all the dogmatic philosophers together, I mean the followers of Pyrrho, who declared that nothing can be apprehended by men; and those of Aristippus, who say that only feelings can be apprehended; and again those of Metrodorus and Protagoras, who say that we must trust only the senses of the body. And in opposition to these we shall strip for the contest the followers of Xenophanes and Parmenides, who took the opposite side and did away with the senses. Nor shall we pass over the champions of pleasure, but we shall enroll their chief, Epicurus, with those mentioned. And against all of them together we shall set the refutation of them by their own weapons. And I shall bring into the open both the disagreements in the doctrines of all those called natural philosophers and the uselessness of their study; not that I am a hater of the Greeks or of learning, far from it, but to clear myself of the charge that we have honored the oracles of the Hebrews above Greek learning because we had very little share in Greek education.
On the harmony of the Hebrew writers
The Hebrews, having from a long age past, and, so to say, from the very first creation of man, searched out godliness and true philosophy, have kept it pure for those after them also, son receiving and guarding from father a treasure of true words, so that no one dared to add to or take away from what had once been decided. Neither, then, did the all-wise Moses, who has been shown in the preceding books to be the oldest of all the Greeks, though he was the last in age of the earlier Hebrews, intend to move or change anything of what the ancestors had held concerning doctrinal theology, except to lay down for the people under him legislation for a fitting way of life and a certain intermediate polity; nor have the prophets after him, who shone forth countless periods of years later, dared to utter a word that disagreed either with one another or with what Moses and the men dear to God of old had held. Nor has our own school, which set out from there and by divine power filled all Greece and the barbarian world alike, included anything at variance with what came before; unless one should say that it hands down not only the same doctrines of theology, but also the same way of life as that of the Hebrews dear to God before Moses. Such, then, is our teaching, attested with one mind and one voice by the first and the middle and the last; it seals with every vote the certainty of true godliness and philosophy at once, and fills the whole inhabited world, renewing its youth and blooming day by day, as though it had just reached its first prime; and neither ordinances of laws, nor plots of enemies, nor the swords of enemies so often sharpened, have shown their power to be stronger than the virtue of the words we have followed. But now let us see what strength the teachings of Greek philosophy have shown, having been shaken, sending into the contest first of all those called natural philosophers. How these, who are said to have shone before Plato, quarreled with one another can be learned from Plato himself, who refutes the followers of Protagoras and Heraclitus and their battle with Parmenides and his followers. Protagoras, who had been a companion of Democritus, gained the reputation of an atheist; he is said, at least, to have used this opening in his work On the Gods: “About the gods I do not know either that they are or that they are not, or what they are like in form.” And Democritus said that the principles of the universe are the void and the full, calling the full being and solid, and the void non-being. That is why he also says that being is no more than non-being; and that existing things move continually and swiftly in the void from eternity. Heraclitus said that the principle of all things is fire, from which all things come into being and into which they are dissolved; for all things are an exchange, and a time has been fixed for the dissolution of all things into fire and for their generation from it. These, then, said that all things are in motion; but Parmenides, an Eleatic by race, taught that the universe is one, unborn and unmoved, and spherical in shape. Melissus was a companion of Parmenides, holding the same views as Parmenides. Hear, then, what Plato relates about these in the Theaetetus:
How Plato has accused his predecessors. From the Theaetetus
“From motion and change and mixture with one another all things come to be which we say are, not addressing them correctly; for nothing ever is, but always becomes. And on this all the wise men in succession except Parmenides agree, Protagoras and Heraclitus and Empedocles, and of the poets the chief in each kind of poetry, in comedy Epicharmus, in tragedy Homer, who, saying ‘Oceanus, origin of the gods, and mother Tethys,’ has said that all things are offspring of flux and motion. Or does he not seem to say this? He does to me. Who then could still contend against so great an army, with Homer as general, and not become ridiculous?” Then, proceeding next in his argument, he adds: “We must come closer, then, as the argument on behalf of Protagoras directed, and examine this moving being by striking it, whether it rings sound or cracked. There has been no small battle about it, and among many people. It is far from small; in Ionia it is even growing very great. For the companions of Heraclitus lead the chorus of this doctrine very vigorously. All the more, then, my dear Theodorus, must we examine it, and from the beginning, as they themselves propose it. Entirely so. For indeed, Socrates, about these Heraclitean doctrines, or, as you say, Homeric and still older ones, it is no more possible to discuss them with those around Ephesus themselves, who profess to be experienced, than with madmen. For they are simply carried along, as their writings say; but to dwell on an argument and a question, and quietly answer and ask in turn, is less in them than nothing; or rather, “not even nothing” falls short of the absence of the least rest in these men. If you ask one of them anything, they draw out little enigmatic sayings as from a quiver and shoot them off; and if you try to get an account of what he has said, you will be struck by another newly coined phrase, and you will never get anywhere with any of them, nor do they themselves with one another; but they are very careful to allow nothing to be stable, either in argument or in their own souls, thinking, as it seems to me, that it would be something stationary. This they fight against with all their might, and drive it out on every side as far as they can. Perhaps, Theodorus, you have seen the men fighting but have not been with them at peace; for they are not your friends. But I think they explain such things at leisure to their pupils, whom they want to make like themselves. What pupils, my good man? None of these men becomes a pupil of another; they spring up by themselves, from wherever each happens to have been inspired, and one thinks the other knows nothing. From these, as I was going to say, you would never get an account, willing or unwilling; we must take the matter up ourselves and examine it as a problem. You speak reasonably. And the problem: have we not received it from the ancients, who hid it from the many with poetry, that the origin of all things, Oceanus and Tethys, is a stream and nothing stands still; and from the later ones, who, being wiser, demonstrate it openly, so that even the shoemakers may learn their wisdom on hearing it, and stop foolishly thinking that some things stand still and others move, and, learning that everything moves, may honor them? But I almost forgot, Theodorus, that others have declared the opposite to these: “Such that it is unmoved, whose name is the All,” and all the other things that the Melissuses and Parmenideses maintain against all these, that all things are one and it stands still in itself, having no place in which it moves. What then shall we do with all these, my friend? For advancing little by little we have unawares fallen between both, and unless we somehow defend ourselves and escape, we shall pay the penalty, like those who play across the line in the wrestling schools, when they are caught by both sides and dragged in opposite directions.” So much in the Theaetetus. Passing next to the Sophist, he again says this about the natural philosophers before him: “Parmenides seems to me to have spoken to us carelessly, and everyone who ever set out to judge and determine how many and what kind are the things that are. — Each of them seems to me to tell us a kind of myth, as if we were children. One says that the things that are are three, and some of them sometimes war with one another in some way, and at other times become friends and provide marriages and births and the nurture of offspring; another, saying two, wet and dry or hot and cold, makes them live together and gives them in marriage. And the Eleatic tribe among us, beginning from Xenophanes and still earlier, tells its myths as if what are called all things were one. But certain Ionian and later Sicilian Muses perceived that it is safer to weave both together and to say that being is both many and one, and is held together by enmity and friendship; for in being drawn apart it is always drawn together, say the stricter of the Muses; but the gentler ones relaxed the rule that this is always so, and say that in turn the All is at one time one and friendly by Aphrodite, at another many and at war with itself through some strife. Whether any of these has spoken truly or not in all this, it is hard and offensive to censure such great charges against famous and ancient men.” And a little after he adds: “Those who give a precise account of being and non-being we have not gone through completely, but let it suffice; now we must look at those who speak otherwise, so that we may see from all of them that it is no easier to say what being is than non-being. Then we must go on to these too. And indeed there seems to be among them something like a battle of gods and giants, because of their dispute with one another about being. How? Some drag everything down to earth from heaven and the invisible, literally grasping rocks and oaks with their hands. For laying hold of all such things they maintain that that alone exists which offers resistance and contact, defining body and being as the same; and if anyone says that anything without a body exists, they despise him utterly and will hear nothing else. You speak of terrible men; for I too have met many of them already. Therefore those who dispute with them defend themselves very cautiously from somewhere above, out of the invisible, forcing it that certain intelligible and incorporeal forms are the true being; while the bodies of the others, and what they call truth, they break into small pieces in their arguments and call it a moving becoming instead of being. Between them, Theaetetus, an endless battle about these things has always been joined. True.” In so many words, then, Plato has discredited the natural philosophers before him. And what opinion he himself held on the questions under inquiry we have described before, when we showed that he agreed with the doctrines of the Hebrews and concurred with Moses’ teaching about being. Come, then, and let us consider in our argument the successors of Plato himself as well. They say that Plato, having set up his school in the Academy, was first called an Academic and founded the so-called Academic philosophy; and that after Plato, Speusippus, the son of Plato’s sister Potone, then Xenocrates, then Polemo took over the school. And they say that these, beginning at the very hearth, at once undid Plato’s teachings, twisting what had seemed right to their teacher by introducing foreign doctrines, so that you might expect the strength of those wonderful dialogues to be quenched before long, and the succession of his doctrines to have ended together with the man’s death; strife and faction having begun from them and never ceasing even to this day, those who are devoted to cherishing what was dear to him being none, except perhaps one or two in a whole lifetime, or some others very few in number, and not even they altogether strangers to counterfeit sophistry; since even those who first succeeded Plato have been accused of being such. For they say that Arcesilaus succeeded Polemo, who, the story goes, abandoned Plato’s doctrines and founded a strange and, as they say, a second Academy. For he said that one must suspend judgment on all things, since all things are incomprehensible, and the arguments on either side equal in strength to one another, and that the senses and every argument are untrustworthy. At least he praised this saying of Hesiod: “For the gods keep hidden from men their mind.” And he tried to revive certain paradoxes. After Arcesilaus they say that the followers of Carneades and Clitomachus, turning from the opinion of their predecessors, were the authors of a third Academy. Some add a fourth also, that of Philo and Charmides; and some count a fifth too, that of Antiochus. Such was the succession of Plato himself. And what sort of men these were in character, read in these words of Numenius the Pythagorean, which he set down in the first book of the work he entitled On the Disagreement of the Academics with Plato:
On the first successors of Plato. From Numenius the Pythagorean
“In the time, then, of Speusippus, Plato’s nephew, and Xenocrates, Speusippus’ successor, and Polemo, who took over the school from Xenocrates, the character of the doctrines always remained nearly the same, at least so far as this much-talked-of suspension of judgment, and any other such things, had not yet appeared. For in other respects they departed in many ways, and twisted things, and did not abide by the first succession; but beginning from him they diverged, faster or slower, by choice or by ignorance, and partly perhaps through some other cause not free from ambition. And I do not wish to say anything bad on account of Xenocrates; rather, I wish to speak on behalf of Plato. For it stings me that they did not do and suffer everything to preserve full agreement with Plato in everything in every way. And yet Plato was worthy of it from them, not better than the great Pythagoras, but perhaps not inferior to him either; following and revering whom his disciples became the chief cause of Pythagoras being so highly honored. The Epicureans, who ought not, but did learn this, were never seen in anything to set themselves against Epicurus at all; agreeing that they shared the views of a wise man, they too, for this reason, reasonably enjoyed the title. And it came about from this that among the later Epicureans none ever said anything contrary to one another or to Epicurus in any respect worth mentioning; but innovation is for them a transgression, or rather an impiety, and is condemned. For this reason no one even dares, and their doctrines rest in great peace because of their constant agreement with one another. The school of Epicurus is like a true commonwealth, most free from faction, having one common mind and one judgment; from which they were, and are, and, as it seems, will be faithful followers. But the Stoics have fallen into faction, beginning from their leaders and not yet ending even now. They refute one another gladly with hostile refutation, some of them still abiding by it, others having already changed. The first are like members of an oligarchy, who, having divided, became the cause for those after them of much censure of their predecessors and of one another, some still more Stoic than others; and the more so those who showed themselves petty about technical details; for these, outdoing the others in busy meddling and in their sketches, were quicker to censure. Long before these, however, the same thing happened to those who drew off various doctrines from Socrates: Aristippus on his own, Antisthenes on his own, and elsewhere, on their own, the Megarians and Eretrians, or any others with them. The cause was that Socrates posited three gods and philosophized about them in the rhythms appropriate to each; but his hearers did not know this, and thought he said everything at random and by chance, from whatever fortune happened to prevail at the moment, as the wind blew. But Plato, having become a Pythagorean (and he knew that Socrates had said these things from no other source than that, and had said them knowing them), so he himself also bound things together, neither in the usual way, nor openly; but having conducted each matter as he thought fit, hiding himself between being clear and not clear, he wrote safely, but himself gave cause for the faction after him and the tearing apart of his doctrines, not through envy, nor through ill will; but I do not wish to speak ill-omened words about older men. Having learned this, we must rather direct our attention there; and just as from the beginning we proposed to separate him from Aristotle and Zeno, so now, if God helps us, we shall separate him from the Academy and let him be by himself now a Pythagorean; since now, torn apart more madly than befitted any Pentheus, he suffers limb by limb, but as a whole is in no way changed or changed back from his whole self. How, then, a man standing between Pythagoras and Socrates, bringing down the solemnity of the one to the point of humaneness, and raising the elegance and playfulness of the other from irony to dignity and weight, and mixing this very Pythagoras with Socrates, appeared more popular than the one and more solemn than the other. “But I am not going to arbitrate these matters, since my inquiry is not now about them; but I shall go back to what had been decided before, to which I seem to have run off and gone astray, so that we are not driven off from the road that leads there. Arcesilaus and Zeno were pupils of Polemo; for I shall mention them again at the end. I remember having said that Zeno studied under Xenocrates, then under Polemo, and again became a Cynic under Crates; let it now be counted to his credit that he also partook of Stilpo and of the Heraclitean doctrines. For when, studying together under Polemo, they became rivals of one another, they took into their battle with one another, the one Heraclitus and Stilpo along with Crates, by whom he became a fighter through Stilpo, austere through Heraclitus, and a Cynic through Crates; and Arcesilaus took Theophrastus and Crantor the Platonist and Diodorus, then Pyrrho; by whom he became persuasive through Crantor, a sophist through Diodorus, and through Pyrrho all-sided, reckless, and nothing. Hence a mocking and insulting verse was sung about him: “Plato in front, Pyrrho behind, Diodorus in the middle.” And Timon says that he was also equipped with eristic, taking it from Menedemus, if indeed he says of him: “Having under his breast the lead of Menedemus, he will run either to Pyrrho, all flesh, or to Diodorus.” Interweaving, then, the reasonings of Pyrrho and his skepticism with the subtleties of Diodorus, who was a dialectician, he decked out with the cleverness of Plato’s speech a babbling chatter, and spoke and spoke against, and rolled over this way and that, from either side, wherever it happened, taking back what he said, hard to judge, inconsistent, and reckless at once, knowing nothing, as he himself said, being a noble fellow; then somehow he came out like those who know, appearing all-sided by the shadow-painting of his words.”
On Arcesilaus, the founder of the second Academy. From the same
“As Homer’s son of Tydeus was not known, which side he belonged to, ‘whether he consorted with the Trojans or with the Achaeans,’ no less unknown was Arcesilaus. For to say one and the same argument at any time was not in him, nor did he ever think such a thing at all worthy of a clever man. So he was called ‘a clever sophist, a slayer of the untrained.’ For like the Empusae, in the phantoms of his arguments, by preparation and practice, he bewitched and enchanted; he could neither know anything himself nor let others know; he frightened and confused, and, carrying off the first prizes for sophisms and the theft of arguments, he delighted in the reproach and prided himself wonderfully on knowing neither what is shameful or noble, nor what is good or bad; but whichever came into the minds of his hearers, he said that, and then, changing again, overturned it in more ways than he had built it up. He was, then, a hydra cutting himself and cut by himself, the two hard to tell apart and without regard to what was fitting; yet he pleased his hearers, who at the same time as they listened saw him handsome; he was, then, most pleasant to hear and to see, since they grew used to accepting his arguments, which came from a handsome face and mouth, not without the friendliness in his eyes. But these things must not be heard simply; this is how it was from the beginning. Having met Theophrastus in his boyhood, a gentle man and not unskilled in matters of love, because he was handsome, being still in his bloom, he gained as his lover Crantor the Academic and went over to him; and being not ungifted by nature, he made use of it as it ran easily, hot-headed from love of strife; he shared in Diodorus for these knavish and elegant plausibilities, and associated with Pyrrho (and Pyrrho had set out from Democritus, from somewhere at least); so Arcesilaus, equipped from there, stayed with Pyrrho, except for the name, as in the doing away with everything. Mnaseas, at least, and Philomelus and Timon, the skeptics, call him a skeptic, as they themselves were, since he too did away with the true and the false and the probable. Though he was called a Pyrrhonist because of his Pyrrhonist views, out of respect for his lover he consented still to be called an Academic. He was, then, a Pyrrhonist except in name; but an Academic he was not, except in being called so. For I am not persuaded by Diocles of Cnidus, who says in his so-called Diatribes that Arcesilaus, through fear of the followers of Theodorus and of Bion the sophist, who attacked the philosophers and did not hesitate to refute them from every side, took precautions, so as not to have trouble, never to appear to suggest any doctrine, but put forward suspension of judgment before himself like the ink of the cuttlefish. This, then, I do not believe. Those, then, who set out from there, Arcesilaus and Zeno, with such helpers, arguments fighting on both sides, forget the origin from which they started, from Polemo, and, separating and arraying themselves, “they dashed together shields, together spears and the might of bronze-corsleted men; and the bossed shields clashed against one another, and a great din arose. Shield pressed on shield, helm on helm, man on man. Then there rose together the groaning and the boasting of men slaying and being slain,” of the Stoics: for the Academics were not struck by them, since it was not known where they were most open to being caught. They were caught, however, when their footing was shaken, if they took neither a starting point nor an occasion for fighting. The starting point was to show that the Stoics did not speak Platonically; and their having no occasion, unless they changed one single thing, as I said, taking it away from the definition of the apprehensive impression. This it is not timely for me to explain now; I shall mention it again when I come especially to that point. Having separated, then, they struck at one another openly, not the two, but Arcesilaus at Zeno. For Zeno had in battle something solemn and heavy and no better than Cephisodorus the orator; who, when he saw his teacher Isocrates attacked by Aristotle, was ignorant and inexperienced in Aristotle himself, but seeing that Plato’s doctrines were renowned, and thinking that Aristotle philosophized according to Plato, made war on Aristotle but struck at Plato, and accused him, beginning from the ideas and ending with the other things, which he did not know himself, but guessing at what is supposed about them, as it is said. But he, not fighting the one he was at war with, fought the one he did not wish to war with. Zeno too, however, when he let Arcesilaus go, if he had not made war on Plato either, would have been philosophizing, in my judgment at least, most worthily, for the sake of this peace. But if, not perhaps ignorant of the views of Arcesilaus but ignorant of Plato’s, as he is shown to be from what he wrote against him, he too did the opposite, not striking the one he knew, and most dishonorably and shamefully insulting the one he should not, and this much worse than befits a dog. Yet he showed magnanimity in keeping away from Arcesilaus. For either through ignorance of his views, or through fear of the Stoics, he turned the great mouth of bitter war elsewhere, against Plato. But about Zeno’s innovations against Plato, in no way fair or modest, I shall speak again some time, if I have leisure for philosophy. May I never have so much leisure, at least for this, unless for play. Arcesilaus, then, seeing Zeno to be a rival craftsman and a worthy opponent, tore down the arguments that came from him, and did not hesitate at all. About the other points on which he fought with him I perhaps cannot say, and even if I could, there would be no need to mention them now; but seeing that this doctrine, of which Zeno was the first discoverer, the apprehensive impression, both the thing and its name, was in good repute at Athens, he used every device against it. And Zeno, being in the weaker position, keeping quiet, unable to be wronged, let Arcesilaus alone, though he could have said much, but he did not wish to, or perhaps rather otherwise; but he shadow-boxed against Plato, who was no longer among the living, and threw into confusion all the parade from the wagon, saying that since Plato would not defend himself, and no one else cared to champion him, and even if Arcesilaus should care, he himself would gain by turning Arcesilaus away from himself. He knew that Agathocles of Syracuse had also used this trick against the Carthaginians. The Stoics listened, astounded. For their Muse was not even then a lover of words or a worker of graces, by which Arcesilaus, beating them back on one side, undercutting them on another, tripping them up on another, out-talked them and was persuasive. Therefore, as those whom he contradicted were defeated, and those among whom he spoke were dumbfounded, it seemed somehow proven to the men of that time that there was nothing, whether word, or feeling, or deed, however small, nor would even its opposite, the useless, ever be seen, unless it seemed so to Arcesilaus of Pitane; and to him nothing seemed, and he declared nothing other than that these were little phrases and bugbears.”
Of Lacydes, the successor of Arcesilaus. From the same
“About Lacydes I want to tell a pleasant story. Lacydes was rather stingy, and in a way what is called a good manager, this man so well thought of by the many; he himself opened the storeroom and himself locked it. And he chose what he needed, and did all other such things by his own hand, not from any praise of self-sufficiency, nor otherwise from poverty or lack of slaves, since he had slaves, however many; the reason may be guessed. I will tell the pleasant story I promised. Keeping his own stores, he did not think he should carry the key about with him, but having locked up he would put it in a hollow writing tablet; and having sealed this with his ring, he rolled the ring in through the keyhole into the room, letting it go; so that later, when he came back and could open with the key, he would take up the ring, lock up again, seal, and then throw the ring back inside through the keyhole. Now the slaves, perceiving this clever device, whenever Lacydes went out for a walk or anywhere else, would themselves open up, and then, as they pleased, eat some things, drink others, carry off others; and then they did this in turn: they locked, they sealed, and, laughing at him a great deal, threw the ring through the keyhole into the room. So Lacydes, leaving the vessels full and finding them empty, at a loss at what was happening, when he heard that inapprehensibility was taught by Arcesilaus, thought that this was just what was happening to him about the storeroom. Beginning from there, he philosophized with Arcesilaus that one neither sees nor hears anything clear or sound; and once, drawing one of his companions into the house, he maintained to him extraordinarily, as it seemed, suspension of judgment, and said: ‘This I can tell you beyond dispute, having learned it myself from my own experience, not by trying another’s.’ And then he began and related the whole thing that had happened to him about the storeroom. ‘What then,’ he said, ‘could Zeno still say against inapprehensibility so evident to me in all these matters? For I who locked up with my own hands, and sealed it myself, and myself threw the ring inside, and coming back and opening it see the ring inside, but not the other things, how shall I not justly distrust things? For I shall not dare to say that someone came and stole these things while the ring was inside.’ And the other, hearing it, being an insolent man, taking in the whole as he heard it, scarcely controlling himself even before, burst out in a very broad laugh, and still laughing and guffawing exposed his vanity at the same time. So that from then on Lacydes no longer threw the ring inside, nor made use of the inapprehensibility of the storeroom, but apprehended what had been let go, and had philosophized in vain. Nevertheless the slaves were rogues and not easily caught, like those of comedy, Getae and Dacians, trained to chatter in Dacian babble; when they heard the sophisms from the Stoics, or else learned them otherwise, they went straight to the daring deed and broke his seal, and sometimes put another in its place, sometimes none at all, thinking that to him at least things would be inapprehensible, and so on in other ways. And he would come in and examine: seeing the tablet unsealed, or sealed but with another seal, he would be indignant; and when they said it had been sealed, for they at least saw his own seal, he would argue minutely and demonstrate; and when they were beaten by the demonstration and said that, if the seal were not on it, perhaps he had forgotten and not sealed it, ‘But I,’ he said, ‘remember having sealed it myself,’ and he would demonstrate, and go round in argument, and harangue them, thinking he was being mocked, and swear besides. And they, taking up his attacks, thought that they themselves were being mocked by him, since it had been decided by Lacydes, being a wise man, to be without opinion and so also without memory; for memory is an opinion; they said, at any rate, that they had heard him say this to his friends only recently. And when he turned their attacks back on them and said these were not Academic arguments, they went to some Stoic and learned what they should say, and starting from there they out-sophisticated him, and were Academic thieves practicing a rival craft; and he would accuse the Stoics; and the slaves would undo his accusations by inapprehensibility, not without some jeering. There were, then, disputations of all of them there, and arguments and counter-arguments; and not a single thing was left in the middle, not a vessel, nor of the things put in a vessel, nor anything else that contributes to the furnishing of a house. And Lacydes was for a time at a loss, neither seeing help for himself in his own doctrines as profitable, nor, if he did not refute them, thinking that he would avoid being overturned in everything; falling into helplessness, he cried out to the neighbors and the gods, and ‘Oh! oh!’ and ‘Alas! alas!’ and ‘By the gods!’ and ‘By the goddesses!’ and all the other artless proofs of those who speak vehemently in cases of disbelief: all these were said with shouting and appeals to be believed. At last, since he had a battle of contradiction in his house, he himself, no doubt, played the Stoic toward the slaves; and as the slaves maintained the Academic positions, so as to have no more trouble he stayed at home as a friend sitting before the storeroom. But gaining nothing at all, suspecting where his wisdom was leading him, he uncovered himself: ‘We say these things one way, slaves,’ he said, ‘in our disputations, but we live another way.’” So much about Lacydes. He had many hearers, of whom one distinguished one was Aristippus of Cyrene. Of all his pupils Evander succeeded to his school, and those after him. After them Carneades took over the school and founded the third Academy. He used the same method of argument as Arcesilaus; for he too practiced arguing on both sides, and demolished everything said by the others; he differed from him only in the argument about suspension of judgment, saying that it is impossible for one who is human to suspend judgment about everything; and that there is a difference between the unclear and the inapprehensible, and that all things are inapprehensible, but not all unclear. He also had a share in the Stoic arguments, standing against which contentiously he grew greater, aiming at what seems probable to the many, not at the truth; from which he caused the Stoics much annoyance. Numenius, then, writes this about him:
Of Carneades, the founder of the third Academy. From the same
“Carneades, having received the school from Hegesinus, neglected him whose doctrines he ought to have guarded, both those left unmoved and those that had been moved, but, referring back to Arcesilaus, whether it was better or worse, he renewed the battle after a long interval.” And next he adds: “He too, then, carried off and brought away, and brought together contradictions and subtle twists, embroidering the battle; he was given to denial and affirmation and to contradiction on both sides; and if anywhere there was need of arguments with something wonderful in them, he rose up violent like a rushing river, flooding everything here and there, and fell upon his hearers and swept them along with a roar. So, leading others away, he himself remained undeceived, which was not the case with Arcesilaus. For he, going round with his sorcery, deceived his fellow revelers, but first, without noticing it, deceived himself, persuaded that what he said was true by the doing away with absolutely everything. It would have been evil on top of evil, Carneades on Arcesilaus, had he not relaxed a little, by which they were not going to be inactive, according to the affirmative and negative impressions he spoke of as derived from the probable, that this is a living being or is not a living being. Relaxing this, then, as beasts that draw back rush more violently onto the spears, so he too, by giving way, attacked more powerfully. And when he had made a stand and succeeded, then he willingly neglected and did not remember what he had granted before. For granting that the true and the false are in things, as if cooperating in the manner of inquiry, giving a hold like a clever wrestler, he won from there. For, presenting each according to the leaning of probability, he said that neither is firmly apprehended. He was, at any rate, a robber and juggler cleverer still. For, taking a falsehood like the truth, and an apprehensible thing like the apprehensive impression, and bringing them to equality, he allowed neither the true nor the false to be, or the one no more than the other, or the more by probability. It was, then, dreams in place of dreams, because false impressions are like true ones, as a wax egg is to the real egg. So the evils happened, and more of them. And indeed Carneades, when he spoke, beguiled souls and enslaved them. He was a thief unseen, but a robber openly, taking by both guile and force even those very well prepared. Every thought of Carneades, at any rate, prevailed, and no other at all, since those he fought against were less able to speak. Antipater, at least, who lived in his time, was going to write something in contest, but against the arguments carried off daily from Carneades he never published anything, not in the lecture rooms, nor in the walks; he neither spoke nor uttered a sound, nor did anyone hear from him, they say, so much as a grunt; but he threatened written replies, and taking a corner he left books written for those after him, which are powerless now and were more powerless then against a man who appeared so very great and was reputed so by the men of that time, Carneades. Yet nevertheless, though he too stirred things up in public out of Stoic rivalry, to his own companions in secret he agreed and spoke the truth and declared what any ordinary person would.” Then next he says: “Carneades’ pupil was first Mentor, not, however, his successor; but Carneades, while still alive, finding him an adulterer with his concubine, not by a probable impression, nor as one who had not apprehended, but trusting his sight above all and having apprehended, dismissed him from the school. And he, having withdrawn, out-sophisticated him and was a rival craftsman, refuting his inapprehensibility in arguments.” And again he goes on to say: “But Carneades, philosophizing as it were inside out, adorned himself with falsehoods and hid the truths under them. He used the falsehoods, then, as screens, and spoke the truth within, hidden, more like a huckster. He suffered, then, the fate of pulses, of which the empty ones float on the water and stay on top, while the good ones are below and out of sight.” This too is said about Carneades. Clitomachus becomes his successor in the school, and after him Philo, of whom Numenius makes this mention:
Of Philo, who succeeded Cleitomachus, the successor of Carneades. From the same
“This Philo, having taken over the school, was overwhelmed with joy, and paying his gratitude he served it, and increased the doctrines of Clitomachus, and armed himself against the Stoics ‘with gleaming bronze.’ But as time went on, and their suspension of judgment had grown faint through habit, he no longer thought the same as himself in anything, but the clearness and agreement of his experiences turned him round. Having by now, then, great discernment, he longed exceedingly, you may be sure, to meet with those who would refute him, so that he might not seem to turn his back and flee of his own accord. Antiochus became a hearer of Philo, who began another Academy. Having studied under Mnesarchus the Stoic, he took the opposite view to Philo his teacher, and attached countless strange things to the Academy.” These and countless similar things are recorded about the succession of Plato. It is time, then, taking up the argument again from the beginning, to examine the false opinions and contrary opinions of the natural philosophers, who wandered over much of the earth, and made the discovery of the truth their chief concern, and associated with the opinions of all the ancients, and had made a precise study of the theology of all the Phoenicians and Egyptians and of the Greeks themselves long before; what fruit of their labors they found worth hearing from them, so that we may learn whether anything worthy of God came down to them from their elders. For formerly, from an ancient age, polytheistic superstition prevailed among the nations, and temples and shrines and mysteries of the gods were kept by custom among all, city by city and land by land. There was, then, no need of human philosophy, if the wisdom about God had already been grasped; nor was there any need for the wise to innovate, if the teachings of their ancestors were sound; nor for the noble philosophers to quarrel and disagree, if the ancestral opinion about the gods had been proved to be consistent and true. Why need they make war on one another and fight, or run up and down the long road and wander and rob the barbarians, when they should have stayed at home and learned from the gods, if there were any gods, or from the theologians, the true and unerring accounts of the questions sought in philosophy, about which, after countless labors, they disagreed, falling far short of the discovery of the truth? And why must they dare to seek newer things about the gods, or quarrel and box with one another, if a secure and firm discovery of the gods and a true knowledge of godliness was contained in the rites and mysteries and the rest of the theology of the most ancient, when they could have cherished that very thing unmoved and agreed upon in harmony? But if they should be shown to have learned nothing true about God from their predecessors, but to have applied themselves to the examination of nature by their own notions, using conjectures rather than apprehension, what remains but to admit that the ancient theology of the nations contains nothing more than the history set out in the previous books? That Greek philosophy arose from human conjectures and much wrangling and error, and not from any exact apprehension, you may learn from the letter of Porphyry to Anebo the Egyptian, hearing him confess this very thing in these words:
That among the Greek philosophers there are conjectures, and logomachies, and much error. From Porphyry's Epistle to Nectenabo and other sources
“I will begin my friendship with you from the gods and good daimones and the philosophical inquiries akin to them, about which a great deal has been said also by the philosophers of the Greeks, but said for the most part with its grounds of belief resting on conjecture.” And a little further on he adds: “For among us there is much wrangling about words, since the good is guessed at from human reasonings; but for those who have contrived converse with the higher being, if this part is left out of the examination, their wisdom has been practiced in vain.” And also in what he wrote against Boethus on the soul the same author admits, writing thus word for word: “That the common notions and history establish beyond dispute that the soul is immortal; but the arguments brought forward by the philosophers for its proof seem easy to overturn, because of the ingenuity of the eristics in everything. For what argument in philosophy is not disputable for those of other opinions, when even about what seems evident some of them thought fit to suspend judgment?” And in the work he entitled On the Philosophy from Oracles he expressly admits that the Greeks went astray, calling his own god to witness, as Apollo too declared this through oracles and bore witness that the discovery of the truth belonged to barbarians rather than to Greeks, and mentioned the Hebrews too among those he bore witness to. After setting out the oracle, at any rate, he uses these concluding words: “You have heard how great the toil is, that one may offer the cleansing sacrifices for the body, not to speak of finding the salvation of the soul. For the way to the gods is bound with bronze, steep and rough; and of it the barbarians found many paths, but the Greeks went astray, and those who held power even destroyed it. The discovery the god attributed to the Egyptians, the Phoenicians and Chaldeans (for these are Assyrians), the Lydians and the Hebrews.” So says the philosopher, or rather his god. Is it right, then, after this to blame us because, abandoning the Greeks who went astray, we have chosen the teachings of the Hebrews, who are attested to have apprehended the truth? What should one expect to learn from philosophers? Or what hope is there of benefit from them, if what is said among them has its grounds of belief mostly in conjectures and guesses? And what is the fruit of wrangling about words, if all the arguments of the philosophers are easily overturned because of the ingenuity in everything? For these things were heard said not by us just now, but by themselves. Therefore we seem to me to have done well, and with a judgment well examined, not irrationally, in despising such things and loving those among the Hebrews; not because they have been attested by the daimon, but because they are shown to share in divine virtue and power. In order, then, that you may learn by the facts themselves the wranglings of the wonderful philosophers, and their disagreements about first principles, about gods, and about the constitution of the universe, I shall set out their own words to you a little later. But first, since they carry them about up and down and talk incessantly of the mathematical sciences, saying that those who are to make trial of the apprehension of truth must by all means pursue astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, music, the very things shown to have come to them from the barbarians (for without these, they say, one cannot become a learned man and a philosopher, nor even touch the truth of things, unless the knowledge of these has first been impressed on the soul); and then, puffed up by the learning of these things, they think they walk lifted up almost on the ether itself, as if carrying God himself about in their numbers; and they think that we, because we do not pursue the same, differ in no way from cattle, and say that in this way we can know neither God nor anything else of the holy things: come, let us first set right this mistaken view, bringing true reason to them instead of light. And this will show countless Greeks and countless races of barbarians, some who with the sciences mentioned recognized neither God nor a temperate life nor anything at all of what is best and profitable, and others who without any of the sciences became most godly and most philosophical. At any rate, how Socrates, who is celebrated among them all, thought about these things you may learn by trusting Xenophon, who relates in the Memorabilia somewhat thus:
Concerning geometry, and astronomy, and syllogisms. From Xenophon's Memorabilia
“He taught also how far a properly educated man ought to be acquainted with each subject. Geometry, for example, he said one should learn up to the point of being able, if ever necessary, to receive or hand over or divide land correctly by measure, or to show the work done. And this was so easy to learn that one who paid attention to measuring would go away knowing both how large the land was and how it is measured. But he disapproved of learning geometry as far as the diagrams that are hard to understand; for he said he did not see what use they were, though he was not unacquainted with them himself. He said they were enough to wear away a man’s life and keep him from many other useful studies. He also told them to become acquainted with astronomy, but only so far as to be able to know the time of night and month and year, for the sake of journeys by land and sea and the setting of watches, and to have signs for whatever else is done by night or month or year, recognizing the times of these. And these things too are easy to learn from night hunters and pilots and many others whose concern it is to know them. But learning astronomy so far as to know also the bodies that are not in the same revolution, and the planets and wandering stars, and their distances from the earth, and their periods, and wearing oneself out seeking their causes, he strongly discouraged. For he said he saw no benefit in these either, though he was not ignorant of them. He said these too were enough to wear away a man’s life and keep him from many useful things. In general, he discouraged anyone from becoming a student of the heavenly things, of how God contrives each of them; for he did not think them discoverable by men, nor did he think one who sought out what the gods did not wish to make clear would please them. He said that one who troubled himself about these things would run the risk of going mad, no less than Anaxagoras went mad, who thought most highly of himself for explaining the contrivances of the gods. For in saying that fire and the sun are the same, he did not know that men easily look at fire but cannot look straight at the sun; and that those lit by the sun have darker skin, but not those lit by fire. He did not know either that of the things that grow from the earth none can grow well without the sun’s light, but all perish when heated by fire. And in saying that the sun is a fiery stone, he did not know this either, that a stone in fire neither shines nor lasts long, while the sun remains for all time the brightest of all. He also told them to learn calculation, and in this, as in the others, he told them to beware of vain labor; but as far as was useful, he himself examined and went through everything with his companions.” So Xenophon in the Memorabilia. And in the letter to Aeschines about Plato and those who boast of the study of nature of the universe, the same writes thus:
Concerning the professors of Natural Science. From the same, in the Epistle to Aeschines
“That divine things are beyond us is clear to everyone; it is enough to revere them for the superiority of their power; but what they are like is neither easy to find nor lawful to seek. For it does not befit slaves to know the nature or conduct of their masters beyond their service. And, what is greatest, as much as we should admire those who labor at human things, so much do those who covet reputation from many untimely and empty things bring annoyance. For when, Aeschines, did anyone hear Socrates speaking about the heavenly bodies, or urging people to learn lines for correction? Music we know he understood as far as the ears; but he continually said to them each time what is noble, and what courage, justice, and the other virtues are. These, at least, he called human goods; the other things he said were either impossible for men to grasp, or akin to myths, sophists’ toys gone through with raised eyebrows. And he did not say these things and not do them. To write what was done to you who know it, though it would not be unpleasant, takes time; and I have written it elsewhere. Let those, then, whom Socrates did not please, stop being refuted, or turn to what is reasonable; to him, while he lived, the god bore witness to wisdom, and those who killed him found no cleansing by repentance. But the fine fellows, then, fell in love with Egypt and the marvel-mongering wisdom of Pythagoras, the excess and inconstancy of which, as compared with Socrates, was proved by their love of tyranny and, instead of a simple diet, the Sicilian table of an immoderate belly.” So Xenophon, hinting at Plato. And Plato in the Republic relates that Socrates said this about gymnastics and music:
On gymnastic and music. From Plato's Republic
“What study, then, Glaucon, would draw the soul from becoming to being? And I think of this as I speak: did we not say that these men must be athletes of war when young? We did. Then the study we seek must have this in addition. What? Not to be useless to men of war. It must, he said, if possible. In gymnastics and music, then, they were educated by us before. That was so, he said. And gymnastics is concerned with what becomes and perishes; for it presides over the growth and decay of the body. It seems so. Then this would not be the study we seek. No. But is it music, as much as we went through before? But that, he said, was the counterpart of gymnastics, if you remember, educating the guardians by habits, imparting by harmony a certain harmoniousness, not knowledge, and by rhythm good rhythm, and having in its words other habits akin to these, both in the words that were mythical and in those that were truer; but a study leading to such a thing as you are now seeking there was none in it. You remind me most precisely, I said; for in fact it had nothing of the kind. But, my excellent Glaucon, what would be of this kind? For the arts all seemed to be base. Of course.” Then, proceeding next, he adds: “So that those whom we shall raise do not try to learn some part of them imperfectly, which does not always come out where all must arrive, as we were saying just now about astronomy. Or do you not know that they do the same thing about harmony too? For measuring against one another the concords and sounds that are heard, they labor in vain, as the astronomers do. By the gods, he said, and ridiculously too, naming certain “close intervals” and putting their ears to them, as if hunting a voice from the neighbors; some say they still hear a sound in between, and that this is the smallest interval by which to measure, while others dispute that the notes are now sounding alike, both putting their ears before their mind. You mean, I said, those good men who give the strings trouble and torture them, twisting them on the pegs. But so that the image may not become too long, with blows of the plectrum, and accusation and denial and boastfulness of the strings, I stop the image, and say I do not mean these, but those whom we said just now we would ask about harmony. For they do the same as those in astronomy. They seek the numbers in these concords that are heard, but do not ascend to problems, to examine which numbers are concordant and which not, and why each.” But let these things too be set before us as a preface, in defense that it was not without right thought that we have disregarded the useless learning of such things. Let us now examine, beginning from the beginning, the doctrinal contradictions of the natural philosophers mentioned against one another. Plutarch writes them all together, having collected the opinions of the Platonists and Pythagoreans alike, and of the still older so-called natural philosophers, and again of the younger Peripatetics and Stoics and Epicureans, in the work he entitled On the Natural Doctrines Approved by the Philosophers; from which I shall set out the following:
Opinions of philosophers on First Principles. From Plutarch
“Thales of Miletus, one of the seven wise men, declared that the principle of existing things is water. This man seems to have begun philosophy, and from him the Ionian school was named; there were very many successions. Having studied philosophy in Egypt, he came to Miletus when older. He says that all things are from water and all are dissolved into water. He conjectures this, first, from the fact that the seed of all living things is their principle, being moist; so it is likely that all things have their principle from the moist. Second, that all plants are nourished and bear fruit by moisture, and wither when deprived of it. Third, that the very fire of the sun and stars is nourished by the exhalations of the waters, and so is the world itself. For this reason Homer too supposes this view about water: ‘Oceanus, who is the origin of all.’ So much for Thales.” “Anaximander of Miletus says that the principle of existing things is the infinite; for from it all things come to be and into it all perish; that is why infinite worlds are generated and perish again into that from which they come. He says, then, why it is unlimited: so that the generation that subsists may in no way fail. But he too errs in not saying what the infinite is, whether it is air or water or earth or some other bodies. He errs, then, in declaring the matter but doing away with the efficient cause. For the infinite is nothing other than matter; and matter cannot be in act unless the efficient cause is supposed.” “Anaximenes of Miletus declared air to be the principle of existing things; for from it all things come to be and into it they are dissolved again. As our soul, he says, is air and holds us together, so breath and air encompass the whole world; air and breath are used as synonyms. He too errs in thinking that living beings are composed of simple and uniform air and breath. For it is impossible for matter alone to be the one principle of things; the efficient cause must also be posited. For example, silver is not enough for a cup to come to be, unless there is the maker, that is, the silversmith; and likewise with bronze and wood and other matter.” “Heraclitus and Hippasus of Metapontum: the principle of all things is fire. For they say that all things come from fire and all end in fire; and as it is quenched, all things are formed into a world. For first the densest part of it, contracting into itself, becomes earth; then the earth, loosened by fire, naturally produces water, and this, evaporating, becomes air. And again the world and all bodies are consumed by fire in a conflagration. Fire, then, is the principle, because all things come from it, and the end, inasmuch as all things are dissolved into it.” “Democritus, whom Epicurus followed long after, held that the principles of existing things are atomic bodies, contemplated by reason, without share in the void, ungenerated, everlasting, imperishable, unable either to be broken or to receive formation from parts or to be altered; that they are contemplated by reason, and move in the void and through the void; and that the void itself is infinite and the bodies infinite. Three things belong to the bodies: shape, size, weight. Democritus said two, size and shape; Epicurus added to these a third, weight. For bodies must be moved, he says, by the impulse of weight, since otherwise they will not move. The shapes of the atoms are limited, not infinite; for there are none hook-shaped, nor trident-shaped, nor ring-shaped; for these shapes are easily broken, but the atoms are impassible and unbreakable; and they have their own shapes contemplated by reason. And it is called atom not because it is smallest, but because it cannot be cut, being impassible and without share in the void; so that when he says ‘atom,’ he means unbreakable, impassible, without share in the void. That there is an atom is clear; for there are elements, and living beings, and the void, and the monad.” “Empedocles son of Meton, of Acragas: four elements, fire, air, water, earth, and two principles and powers, Love and Strife, of which the one unites and the other divides. He speaks thus: ‘Hear first the four roots of all things: shining Zeus, life-bearing Hera, and Aidoneus, and Nestis, who with her tears wets the mortal spring.’ By Zeus he means the boiling and the ether, by life-bearing Hera the air, by Aidoneus the earth, and by Nestis and the mortal spring, as it were, the seed and water.” So great is the disagreement of the first natural philosophers, and such their opinion about first principles, positing in the principles not God, not a Maker, not a Creator, nor any cause of the universe, nor gods, nor incorporeal powers, nor intellectual natures, nor rational beings, nor anything at all beyond the senses. Only Anaxagoras is recorded as the first of the Greeks to declare, in his discussions of first principles, that mind is the cause of all things. They say, at least, that he admired the study of nature more than those before him; he let his own land go to pasture for sheep because of it, and he was the first of the Greeks to articulate the account of first principles. For he declared not only about the substance of all things, as those before him did, but also about the cause that moves it. “For in the beginning,” he says, “things were mixed together, but mind came in and brought them from disorder into order.” It is remarkable how this man, the first among the Greeks to speak of God in this way, seemed to the Athenians to be an atheist, because he did not deify the sun but the Maker of the sun, and almost died by stoning. But it is said that he too did not keep his doctrine intact. For he set mind over all things, but no longer gave his account of nature in accordance with mind and reason. Hear, then, how Socrates in Plato’s On the Soul accuses the man in these words:
On the doctrine of Anaxagoras. From Plato
“But having once heard someone reading from a book, as he said, of Anaxagoras, and saying that it is mind that orders and is the cause of all things, I was pleased with this cause, and it seemed to me in a way good that mind should be the cause of all things; and I thought that, if this is so, mind in ordering all things orders them and places each where it is best. If, then, anyone wished to find the cause of each thing, how it comes to be or perishes or is, he must find this about it: how it is best for it to be, or to undergo or do anything else. From this argument, then, it befits a man to consider nothing else, both about himself and about other things, but what is best and most excellent. And this same man must necessarily also know the worse; for the knowledge of them is the same. Reckoning these things, I was glad to think I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher after my own mind of the cause of things; and that he would tell me first whether the earth is flat or round, and when he had told me, would explain further the cause and the necessity, saying what is better, and that it was better for it to be such; and if he said it was in the middle, he would explain further that it was better for it to be in the middle; and if he showed me these things, I was prepared no longer to long for another kind of cause. And so I was prepared to inquire likewise about the sun, and the moon, and the other stars, about their speeds relative to one another and their turnings and other experiences, how it is better for each of them to do and undergo what it undergoes. For I never thought that he, saying that they had been ordered by mind, would bring any other cause for them than that it is best for them to be as they are. So, assigning the cause to each and to all in common, I thought he would further explain what is best for each and the good common to all. And I would not have sold my hopes for much, but taking up the books very eagerly I read them as quickly as I could, so that I might know as quickly as possible the best and the worse. From this wonderful hope, my friend, I was swept away. For as I went on reading, I saw a man making no use of mind, nor assigning any causes for the ordering of things, but assigning airs and ethers and waters and many other strange things. And he seemed to me to be in a position most like that of one who said that Socrates does all that he does by mind, and then, attempting to give the causes of each of the things I do, said first that I am sitting here now because my body is composed of bones and sinews, and the bones are hard and have joints separating them from one another, and the sinews are such as to tighten and relax, enveloping the bones together with the flesh and skin which holds them together. So, as the bones swing in their sockets, the sinews, relaxing and tightening, make me able now to bend my limbs, and for this cause I am sitting here bent. And again, about my conversing with you, he would give other such causes, alleging voices and airs and hearings and countless other such things, neglecting to give the true causes: that since the Athenians thought it better to condemn me, for this reason I too have thought it better to sit here, and more just to stay and undergo the penalty they order. For, by the dog, I think these sinews and bones would long ago have been near Megara or among the Boeotians, carried by an opinion of what is best, if I had not thought it more just and nobler, rather than fleeing and running away, to undergo whatever penalty the city appoints. But to call such things causes is very absurd; if someone were to say that without having such things, bones and sinews and whatever else I have, I would not be able to do what I decided, he would speak truly; but to say that I do what I do because of these, and that I act by mind but not by choice of the best, would be a great and long carelessness of speech.” Then he adds: “So one man, putting a vortex round the earth, makes the earth stay in place under the heaven, while another props up the air under it as a base, as under a flat kneading trough; but the power by which they are now placed as well as they could be placed, this they neither seek nor think to have any divine strength, but they think they will someday find an Atlas stronger and more immortal than this and holding all things together more; and they think that the good and binding does not truly bind and hold anything together.” So much Socrates on the opinion of Anaxagoras. Archelaus was Anaxagoras’ successor both in the school and in his opinion, and Socrates is said to have been a hearer of Archelaus. However, other natural philosophers too, Xenophanes and Pythagoras, who flourished at the same time as Anaxagoras, taught the imperishability of God and the immortality of the soul; and from these and after them the schools of Greek philosophy arose, some following these, others others, and some devising their own opinions. Again, then, Plutarch writes the suppositions of the same men about the gods in this way:
Opinions of philosophers concerning gods. From Plutarch
“Some of the philosophers, such as Diagoras of Melos and Theodorus of Cyrene and Euhemerus of Tegea, say outright that there are no gods. Callimachus of Cyrene hints at Euhemerus in his Iambi. And Euripides the tragedian did not wish to unveil himself, fearing the Areopagus, but showed it in this way: he brought in Sisyphus as champion of this opinion and pleaded for his view.” After these he brings in Anaxagoras again, saying that he was the first to think rightly about God. He speaks thus: “Anaxagoras says that in the beginning the bodies stood still, but the mind of God ordered them and made the generations of the universe. Plato supposed that the first bodies did not stand still but moved in disorder; therefore, he says, God, judging that order is better than disorder, ordered them.” To which he adds: “Both err, because they made God attentive to human affairs and making the world for this reason. For the blessed and imperishable living being, filled with all good things and receptive of no evil, being wholly occupied with the maintenance of its own happiness and imperishability, is unconcerned with human affairs. He would be wretched if, like a laborer and carpenter, he bore burdens and took anxious thought for the making of the world. And again, the God they speak of either did not exist in the former age, when the bodies were unmoved, or when they moved in disorder; or he slept, or was awake, or neither of these. The first cannot be accepted, for every god is eternal; nor the second, for if God slept from eternity he was dead, for eternal sleep is death. But God is incapable of sleep; for the immortal and what is near to death are separated. But if God was awake, either he fell short of happiness, or he was filled with blessedness. And neither on the first is God blessed, for what falls short of happiness is not blessed; nor on the second, for, lacking nothing, he would have undertaken empty actions. And how, if there is a God and human affairs are managed by his care, does the counterfeit prosper while the good suffers the opposite? For Agamemnon, ‘both a good king and a mighty spearman,’ was overcome by an adulterer and an adulteress and treacherously murdered; and his kinsman Heracles, having cleansed away many of the things that ravage human life, was poisoned by Deianeira and treacherously murdered.” “Thales held that God is the world. Anaximander, that the stars are heavenly gods. Democritus, that God is the spherical soul of the world in fire. Pythagoras, that of the principles the monad is God, and the good, which is the nature of the One, is mind itself; and the indefinite dyad is a daimon and evil, around which is the material multitude.” After these, hear how those younger in time thought: “Socrates and Plato: the One, the single-natured and self-existent, the monadic, the truly existing good. All these names hasten to mind. God, then, is mind, a separate form, that is, what is unmixed with all matter and entangled with nothing passible. Aristotle: the highest God is a separate form, mounted upon the sphere of the universe, which is an ethereal body, the fifth so called by him; and this being divided into spheres connected in nature but separated in reason, he thinks each of the spheres a living being composed of body and soul, of which the body is ethereal, moving in a circle, and the soul is unmoved reason, the cause of the motion in act. The Stoics declare God to be intelligent, a craftsmanlike fire proceeding methodically to the generation of the world, comprising all the seminal principles according to which each thing comes to be by fate; and a spirit pervading the whole world, taking different names according to the matter through which it has passed. And they call God the world and the stars and the earth, and the highest mind of all in the ether. Epicurus: the gods are human in form, all to be contemplated by reason because of the fineness of the nature of their images. The same posits four other natures imperishable in kind: the atoms, the void, the infinite, the likenesses; and these are called homoeomeries, and the elements.” Such, then, are the disagreements and blasphemies of the natural philosophers about God, of whom the account shows Pythagoras and Anaxagoras, Plato and Socrates and their followers to have been the first to set mind and God over the world. These are shown to be mere children in time, compared with the times in which the latest events of the Hebrews’ antiquity are recorded. The knowledge of the God of the universe, then, was not most ancient among all the Greeks and those who long ago introduced polytheistic superstition among the Phoenicians and Egyptians; the first of the Greeks to bring it out were Anaxagoras and his followers. Yet the teachings of polytheistic superstition prevailed over all nations; but they did not, as it seems, contain the true theology, but that which the Egyptians and Phoenicians are attested to have first of all established. And this was a theology that deified not gods at all, nor any divine powers, but men long since lying among the dead, as the account of the truth has shown before. Come, then, let us take up the argument again. Since of the natural philosophers some reduced everything to the senses, while others pulled the opposite way, like Xenophanes of Colophon and Parmenides of Elea and their followers, who did away with the senses, saying that nothing perceived by the senses can be apprehended, and therefore that reason alone is to be trusted, let us examine what has been said against them.
Against the School of Xenophanes and Parmenides, who rejected the senses. From the eighth Book of Aristocles On philosophy
“There were others who uttered the opposite view to these. For they think one must reject the senses and impressions and trust only reason itself. Such things were said earlier by Xenophanes and Parmenides and Zeno and Melissus, and later by Stilpo and the Megarians. Hence these held that being is one, and the other is not, and that nothing comes to be or perishes or moves at all. The fuller argument against them we shall know when we philosophize; but for now this much must be said: we would say that reason is the most divine thing in us; nevertheless we need sense too, as indeed we need a body. That sense is by nature truthful is clear; for one who perceives cannot fail to undergo something, and undergoing it, he would know the experience; so sense is a kind of knowledge. But if perceiving is undergoing something, and everything that undergoes undergoes it from something, then what acts and what undergoes would be different. So first, what is spoken of would be other, such as color and sound; and then being will not be one; nor indeed unmoved, for perception is a motion. For this reason everyone wishes to have his senses in their natural state, trusting, I think, healthy ones rather than diseased. Fittingly, then, a fierce love of them is ingrained in us. No one, at least, unless mad, would ever choose to lose one sense so that all other goods might be his. Those who disparage them, then, being persuaded that they had them in vain, ought to have said what Pandarus says in Homer about his own bow, “May some stranger cut off my head immediately, if I do not put this bow into the shining fire, breaking it with my hands; for it goes with me as useless as wind,” and then to have destroyed all their own senses; for so one would have believed them, teaching by deed that they needed none of them. But as it is, this is the most absurd thing of all: declaring them useless in argument, they go on using them above all in their actions. Melissus, at least, wishing to show that none of the things that appear and are in sight really exists, proves it through the very things that appear. He says, at least: “If there are water and air and fire and iron and gold, and one thing living and another dead, and black and white and all the other things that men say are true, and if we see and hear correctly, then being ought to be such as it first seemed to us, and not change nor become other, but each should be like what it is. But now we say that we see and hear and understand correctly; yet it seems to us that the hot becomes cold and the cold hot, and the hard soft and the soft hard.” When he says these and many other such things, one might very reasonably ask him: “Did you not know by perceiving that what is hot then becomes cold?” And likewise about the others. For, as I said, he would be found doing nothing but doing away with and refuting the senses by trusting them most of all. But such arguments have given sufficient account of themselves already; they have faded away as if they had never been spoken at all. Let us now say with confidence that those philosophize rightly who take both the senses and reason for the knowledge of things.” Such, then, were the followers of Xenophanes, who is said to have flourished at the same time as Pythagoras and Anaxagoras and their followers. Parmenides was a hearer of Xenophanes; Melissus of him; Zeno of Melissus; Leucippus of Zeno; Democritus of Leucippus; Protagoras and Nessas of Democritus; Metrodorus of Nessas; Diogenes of Metrodorus; Anaxarchus of Diogenes. Pyrrho was a pupil of Anaxarchus, from whom the school of those called Skeptics arose; how those of the opposite opinion refuted them, who define that nothing at all is apprehensible either in sense or in reason, and suspend judgment in everything, may be learned from the work mentioned, which runs thus word for word:
Against the followers of Pyrrhon, called Sceptics or Ephectics, who declared that nothing can be clearly apprehended. From Aristocles
“Before everything it is necessary to examine our own knowledge; for if we are by nature able to know nothing, there is no further need to inquire about other things. There were also some of the ancients who uttered this view, whom Aristotle answered. Pyrrho of Elis was also strong in saying such things; but he himself left nothing in writing, while his pupil Timon says that one who is to be happy must look to these three things: first, what things are like by nature; second, in what way we must be disposed toward them; and last, what will result for those so disposed. Things, he says, Pyrrho declares to be equally indifferent and unstable and undecidable; for this reason neither our perceptions nor our opinions are true or false. For this reason, then, we must not trust them, but be without opinions, without inclination, and unshaken, saying about each single thing that it no more is than is not, or both is and is not, or neither is nor is not. For those so disposed, Timon says, the result will be first speechlessness, then freedom from disturbance; and Aenesidemus says pleasure.” “These, then, are the heads of what they say; let us consider whether they speak rightly. Since, then, they say that all things are equally indifferent, and for this reason bid us assent to nothing nor form opinions, one might reasonably, I think, ask them whether those who think things differ are mistaken or not. For if they are mistaken, they would not suppose rightly; so they must say that there are some who hold false opinions about things; they themselves, then, would be those who speak the truth; and so there would be something true and false. But if we, the many, are not mistaken in thinking things differ, what ails them that they rebuke us? For they themselves would be mistaken in holding that they do not differ. And indeed, if we granted them that all things are equally indifferent, clearly they themselves would not differ from the many. What, then, would their wisdom be? And why does Timon revile all others and praise Pyrrho alone? Further, if all things are equally indifferent and for this reason one must form no opinion, these things too would not differ: I mean differing and not differing, and opining and not opining. For why are they such rather than not? Or, as Timon says, why yes and why no, and why the very “why”? Clearly, then, inquiry is done away with; so let them stop troubling us. For now they are raving beyond all art, at once bidding us not to opine and telling us to do this very thing, saying that one must declare oneself about nothing and then declaring themselves; and they think it right to assent to nothing, yet bid us be persuaded by them; then, saying they know nothing, they refute everyone as if they knew well. And those who say that all things are unclear must do one of two things: either keep silent, or declare and say something. If they keep quiet, clearly there would be no argument with such people; but if they declare themselves, they would in every way and altogether say either that something is or that it is not, just as indeed they now say that all things are unknowable and matters of opinion to all. Then he who maintains this either makes the matter clear, and it is possible to understand what is said, or it is not. If he does not make it clear, in that case too there could be no argument with such a man. But if he signifies something, he would say either infinite things or limited ones; and if infinite, in that case too there could be no argument with him, for there is no knowledge of the infinite; but if the things made clear are limited, or any one thing, the one who says this defines and judges something. How then could all things be unknowable and undecidable? And if he says that the same thing both is and is not, first the same thing will be both true and false; then he will both say something and not say it, and using speech he will do away with speech; and further, admitting that he lies, he says one should trust him. It is worth asking from where they learned to say that all things are unclear. For they must first know what the clear is; for so they could say that things are not such. For one must first know the affirmation, then the negation. But if they do not know what the clear is like, they would not know what the unclear is either. Again, when Aenesidemus in his Outline goes through the nine modes (for in so many he has tried to show that things are unclear), shall we say that he speaks of them knowing or not knowing? For he says that living beings differ, and we ourselves, and cities, and ways of life, and customs, and laws; and he says that our senses are weak, and that many things from outside spoil knowledge: distances, sizes, and motions; and further that the young and the older are not similarly disposed, nor the waking and sleeping, nor the healthy and sick; and that we grasp nothing simple and pure. For all things are confused and spoken of in relation to something. One would gladly ask him, as he says these and such things so cleverly, whether he says them knowing well that things are so, or not knowing. For if he did not know, how should we believe him? But if he knew, he was utterly foolish, at once declaring all things unclear and saying that he knew so many things. And indeed, when they go through such things, they are stating nothing but an induction, showing what the appearances and particulars are like; and such a thing both is and is called a proof. If, then, they assent to it, clearly they hold opinions; but if they do not believe it, neither would we wish to pay attention to them. Timon, at least, in his Python relates at great length how he met Pyrrho walking to Pytho by the temple of Amphiaraus, and what they said to one another. Would not someone reasonably stand by him as he wrote this and say: “Why, you wretch, do you trouble yourself writing this and relating what you do not know? For why did you meet him rather than not meet him, and converse rather than not converse?” And that wonderful Pyrrho himself, did he know why he was walking to see the Pythian games? Or did he wander along the road like madmen? And when he began to accuse men and their ignorance, shall we say that he spoke the truth or not, and that Timon was moved and assented to his words or paid no attention? For if he was not persuaded, how did he become a philosopher instead of a chorus dancer and go on admiring Pyrrho? But if he assented to what was said, he would be absurd, philosophizing himself but preventing us. In short, one might wonder what Timon’s Silloi and his blasphemies against all men, and the long elementary treatises addressed to Aenesidemus, and the whole crowd of such writings mean for them. For if they have written these thinking to make us better, and for this reason think they must refute everyone so that we may stop talking nonsense, they clearly want us to know the truth and to suppose that things are such as Pyrrho holds. So if we were persuaded by them, we would become better from worse, having judged what is more profitable and accepted those who speak better. How then could things be equally indifferent and undecidable? And how could we be without assent and without opinion? But if the arguments are of no use, why do they trouble us? Or why does Timon say, “No other mortal could contend with Pyrrho”? For one would no more admire Pyrrho than that famous Coroebus or Meletides, who are thought to have excelled in folly. One must also consider this. What kind of citizen, or judge, or counselor, or friend, or, in a word, human being would such a man be? Or what evil would he not dare, who thinks that nothing is truly evil or shameful or just or unjust? Nor could one say that such men fear the laws and punishments; for how could they, being without passion and undisturbed, as they themselves say? Timon, at least, says this too about Pyrrho: “But such a man, free from vanity, I saw, and unsubdued by all that subdue the speechless and the speaking tribes of mortals, light peoples, weighed down here and there by passions, opinion, and random lawmaking.” When, however, they say that this wise thing, that one must live following nature and customs but assent to nothing, they are very simple-minded. For if to nothing else, at least to this very thing one must assent and suppose that it is so. And why must one follow nature and customs rather than not, if we know nothing and have nothing by which we shall judge? That is altogether foolish, when they say that, just as purgative drugs expel themselves along with the waste, in the same way the argument that holds all things to be unclear does away with itself along with the others. For if it refutes itself, those who use it would be talking nonsense. Better, then, for them to keep quiet and not even open their mouths. But the purgative drug and their argument have nothing alike. For the drug is expelled and does not remain in the body, whereas the argument must remain in souls the same and always believed; for this alone would make them without assent. That they do not think man is without opinion one might learn in this way too. For it is impossible for one who perceives not to perceive; and perceiving was knowing something. And that he trusts perception is plain to all; for wishing to see more accurately he wiped his eyes, came nearer, and shaded them. And indeed we know when we feel pleasure and pain; for it is impossible for one being burned or cut not to know it. And who would not say that memories and recollections occur with some supposition? And about the common notions, that such a thing is a man, and further about the sciences and arts, what could one say? For none of these would exist if we were not by nature able to suppose. But I let the rest go: whether we believe what is said by these men or disbelieve it, we must necessarily form opinions in every way and altogether.” “That it is impossible to philosophize in this way is plain; and that it is also against nature and against the laws we might see thus. For if things really were such, what would remain but for us to live as in sleep, at random and senselessly? So lawgivers and generals and educators would be talking nonsense. But it seems to me that all other men live according to nature, and only those who talk this nonsense are deluded, or rather mad with a violent madness. Not least might one learn this from the following. Antigonus of Carystus, at least, who lived in the same times and wrote their lives, says that Pyrrho, chased by a dog, fled up a tree, and when mocked by those present said that it was hard to strip off the man. And when his sister Philista was sacrificing, and one of their friends promised the things for the sacrifice and did not provide them, Pyrrho bought them and was angry; and when the friend said that he had not acted in agreement with his words nor worthily of his impassivity, he said, ‘In the case of a woman, at least, one should not make a display of it.’ Yet the friend might justly have said: ‘You fool, both in the case of a woman and a dog and in all things, if your arguments are of any use.’” “It is right to learn also who they were who admired him and whom he himself admired. Pyrrho, then, was a pupil of one Anaxarchus, and was at first a painter, and not a very successful one; then, coming upon the books of Democritus, he neither found nor wrote anything useful, but spoke ill of all, both gods and men. Later, wrapping himself in this vanity and calling himself free from vanity, he left nothing in writing. His pupil was Timon of Phlius, who at first danced in the theaters, then, meeting him, wrote troublesome and buffoonish parodies, in which he has blasphemed all who ever philosophized. For he it was who wrote the Silloi and said: ‘Wretched men, base reproaches, mere bellies, from such strifes and groans are you formed,’ and, ‘Men, wineskins full of empty conceit.’ When none paid any attention to them, as if they had never existed at all, yesterday or the day before in Alexandria in Egypt a certain Aenesidemus began to rekindle this nonsense. And these, more or less, are those who seem the strongest of those who have walked this road. That no one in his right mind would say that such a school, or method of argument, or whatever and however one wishes to call it, is right, is clear. For my part I do not think it should even be called philosophy, since it does away with the very principles of philosophizing.” So much, then, against those thought to philosophize according to Pyrrho. Akin to them would be the arguments against the followers of Aristippus of Cyrene, who say that only feelings can be apprehended. Aristippus was a companion of Socrates, who founded the so-called Cyrenaic school, from which Epicurus took his starting points for his account of the end. Aristippus was very soft in his life and fond of pleasure; he said nothing openly about the end, but in effect said that the substance of happiness lies in pleasures. For by always talking about pleasure he led those who came to him to suspect that he said the end is to live pleasantly. Among others, his daughter Arete was his hearer; she bore a son and named him Aristippus, who, introduced by her to the study of philosophy, was called “mother-taught”; he plainly defined the end as living pleasantly, ranking pleasure as a matter of motion. For he said there are three states concerning our constitution: one in which we feel pain, like a storm at sea; another in which we feel pleasure, likened to a smooth wave, for pleasure is a smooth motion, compared to a favorable wind; and the third a middle state, in which we feel neither pain nor pleasure, like a calm. And of these feelings alone, he said, we have perception; against whom this has been said:
Against the philosophers of the School of Aristippus, who say that only feelings can be apprehended, and that of other things there is no apprehension. From the same
“Next would be those who say that only feelings can be apprehended; some of those from Cyrene said this. These held, as if pressed down by some torpor, that they knew nothing at all, unless someone standing by struck and pricked them; for when burned or cut, they said, they knew that they were undergoing something, but whether what burned was fire or what cut was iron, they could not say. One might at once ask those who say this whether they themselves know at least this, that they undergo and perceive. For if they did not know, they could not even say that they know only the feeling; but if they do know, feelings would not be the only things apprehended. For “I am being burned” was a statement and not a feeling. Moreover, these three must necessarily exist together: the feeling itself, and what acts, and what undergoes. So one who grasps the feeling would surely perceive also the one undergoing it. For he will not know that he is, say, being warmed, but not know whether it is himself or his neighbor; and now or last year, and in Athens or in Egypt, and living or dead, and further whether he is a man or a stone. Then he will also know by what he is affected; for indeed they know one another, and roads and cities and their food; and craftsmen know their own tools, and doctors and sailors foretell what is to come, and among beasts dogs find tracks. Further, one who undergoes something surely grasps the feeling as either his own or alien. How, then, will he be able to say that this is pleasure and that pain? Or that he undergoes something by tasting or seeing or hearing? And tasting with the tongue, seeing with the eyes, hearing with the ears? Or how do they know that this is to be chosen and that avoided? If they knew none of these things, they would have no impulse nor desire; and so they would not even be living beings. For they are ridiculous when they say that these things have happened to them, but they do not know how or in what way. For these men could not say whether they are men by nature or whether they live; nor, therefore, whether they say or declare anything. What argument could there be against such people? One might wonder if they do not know whether they are on earth or in heaven; and much more wonderful if they do not know, while claiming to philosophize, whether four are more than three, and how many one and two are. For these men cannot even say how many fingers they have on their hands, nor whether each of them is one or more. So they would not even know their own name, nor their country, nor Aristippus. Nor, then, whom they love or hate, nor what they desire; nor, if they laughed or wept, would they be able to say that this was laughable and that painful. Clearly, then, they do not understand what we are now saying either. Such men, then, would differ in no way from gnats or flies, though even these know what is according to nature and what is against it.” Though one could say countless things against those so disposed, these suffice. It follows to examine together with these those who took the opposite road and defined that one must trust all things to the senses of the body, among whom are Metrodorus of Chios and Protagoras of Abdera. They said that Metrodorus had heard Democritus, and declared the principles to be the full and the void, of which the one is being and the other non-being. Writing On Nature, at least, he used such an opening: “None of us knows anything, not even this very thing, whether we know or do not know.” This opening gave bad starting points to Pyrrho who came after. Going on, he says that all things are whatever one might think. The story has it that Protagoras was called an atheist. Writing about the gods, at any rate, he too used such an opening: “About the gods I do not know either that they are or what they are like in form; for many are the things that hinder me from knowing each of these.” The Athenians punished him with exile and burned his books publicly in the middle of the marketplace. Since, then, these said that one must trust the senses alone, let us view the objections to them.”
Against the School of Metrodorus and Protagoras, who say that the senses alone are to be trusted. From the same
“There have been some who held that one must trust only sense perception and impressions. Some say that Homer too hints at such a view in declaring Oceanus the principle of all things, as if things were in flux; of those we know, Metrodorus of Chios seems to say this same thing, but Protagoras of Abdera does so outright. For he said that man is the measure of all things, of those that are, that they are, and of those that are not, that they are not; for as things appear to each, so they also are; and about other things we can affirm nothing firmly. Against them one might say what Plato also says in the Theaetetus: first, why, if things are such, they held man to be the measure of truth, and not a pig or a dog-headed baboon; then how they said they themselves were wise, if each one is himself the measure of truth for himself; or how they refute others, if what appears to each is true. And we are ignorant of some things, though often perceiving them, as when we hear barbarians speak. And one who has seen anything and then remembers it knows it, but no longer perceives it. And if he shut one eye and saw with the other, clearly he will both know and not know the same thing. Besides, if what appears to each is also true, and what they say does not appear true to us, it would be true also that man is not the measure of all things. And indeed craftsmen differ from those without craft, and the experienced from the inexperienced, and for this reason the pilot and the doctor and the general foresee better what will be. In short, these men do away with the more and the less, and the necessary and the possible, and the natural and the unnatural. So the same thing would both be and not be; for nothing prevents the same thing from appearing to some to be and to others not to be; and the same thing would be both a man and a piece of wood; for sometimes the same thing appears to one a man and to another wood. And every statement would be true, and for this reason also false; and those who deliberate and judge could do nothing. And, most terrible, the same men will be good and wicked, and vice and virtue the same. One could say many other such things; but there is no need of more words against those who do not think they have mind and reason.” Then next: “But since there are still some now who say that each and every impression is true, let us say a little about them too. For they seem to be afraid that, if they said some perceptions are false, they would not have a firm and reliable criterion and rule; but they do not see that by the same reasoning they would soon be declaring all opinions true; for we judge many things by these too; and they think none the less that some of them are true and some false. Then, on consideration, one would see that none of the other criteria either is always and in every case free from error, such as a balance, or a lathe, or anything of the kind; but each of them in one state is sound, in another faulty; and used in this way it gives the truth, in that way falsehood. And indeed, if every perception were true, they ought not to differ so much. For they are different from near and from far, of the sick and of the healthy, of the skilled and the unskilled, of the wise and the foolish. And it would be altogether absurd to say that those of madmen are true, and those of people who see or hear wrongly; for it would be simple-minded to say that one who sees wrongly either sees or does not see; for one would say that he sees, but not rightly. When, however, they say that sense, being irrational, neither adds nor takes away anything, they seem not to see what is in the way; for in the case of the oar in the water, and of paintings and countless other things, it is perception that deceives. That is why in such cases we all blame not our mind but our impression. And the argument that holds every impression to be true refutes itself. For it declares ours, by which we think that not every impression is such, to be altogether false. It follows, then, that they say every impression is both true and false. In general they err in holding that things are such as they appear to us. On the contrary, they appear such as they are by nature; and we do not make them be so, but are ourselves affected in some way by them. For it would be ridiculous if, when we imagine, like painters and sculptors, puppies or chimaeras, we should hold that these at once exist, and for this reason are pictured as if standing ready before us.” That those who say every perception and every impression is true do not speak rightly is clear from this. But, these things being so, the followers of Epicurus, setting out from the succession of Aristippus, again made everything depend on pleasure and perception, defining that only feelings are apprehensible and that the end of goods is pleasure. Epicurus is said by some to have heard no one, but to have read the writings of the ancients; by others, that he heard Xenocrates, and later Nausiphanes, who had been a pupil of Pyrrho. Let us see, then, what has been said against him.
Against the Epicureans, who define the good as pleasure. From the same
“Since knowledge is twofold, one of things and the other of what is to be chosen and avoided by us, some say that we have pleasure and pain as the principle and criterion of choice and avoidance; and the followers of Epicurus say such things even now. It is necessary, then, to examine this too. I am so far from saying that feeling is the principle and rule of goods and evils that it seems to me that it itself needs a criterion. For that it exists it shows of itself, but what it is like needs something else to judge it. For whether it is akin or alien, sense says; but whether it is to be chosen or avoided, reason. They themselves, at least, say that they do not welcome every pleasure and avoid every pain. And this happens very reasonably. For criteria show both themselves and the things judged, but feeling shows only itself. That it is so they themselves bear witness. For though they hold every pleasure to be good and every pain evil, they say that one must not always choose the one and avoid the other; for they are measured by quantity and not by quality. Clearly, then, it is nothing but reason that judges quantity; for “it is better to endure these pains so as to enjoy greater pleasures,” and “it is advantageous to abstain from these pleasures so as not to suffer harder pains,” and all such things: reason is the judge. On the whole, perceptions and impressions seem to be like mirrors and images of things; but feelings, pleasures and pains, are turnings and alterations of ourselves. So in perceiving and imagining we look to things outside, but in feeling pleasure and pain we turn back on ourselves alone. For external things make our perceptions, and whatever they are like, such they make our impressions; but feelings become of a certain kind because of us and according as we are disposed. That is why these appear at one time pleasant, at another unpleasant, and sometimes more, sometimes less. This being so, we shall find, if we are willing to consider, that those lay down the principles of knowledge best who take both the senses and the mind. Sense is like snares and nets and other such hunting gear, while mind and reason are like the dogs that track and give chase. One must think, then, that those philosophize better than these who neither use the senses at random nor take feelings for the discernment of the truth. Or it would be terrible for those who are men by nature to entrust themselves to irrational pleasures and pains, letting go mind, the most divine judge.” So much from Aristocles.
Further against those who define the good as pleasure. From the Philebus of Plato
“Let us judge, then, each of the three in turn in relation to pleasure and mind; for we must see to which of the two we shall assign each as more akin. You speak of beauty and truth and measure? Yes. First take truth, Protarchus, and having taken it, look at three things, mind and truth and pleasure, and after pausing a long time answer yourself whether pleasure or mind is more akin to truth. What need of time? For they differ greatly, I think. Pleasure is the greatest impostor of all; and, as the saying goes, in the pleasures of love, which seem to be the greatest, even perjury has received pardon from the gods, as if pleasures, like children, possessed not even the least bit of mind; but mind is either the same as truth, or of all things most like it and most true. Next, then, will you consider measure in the same way, whether pleasure has more of it than wisdom, or wisdom than pleasure? This too is an easy inquiry you have proposed. For I think one could find nothing by nature more measureless than pleasure and great joy, nor anything ever more measured than mind and knowledge. Well said. But still tell the third. Has mind a greater share of beauty than the race of pleasure, so that mind is more beautiful than pleasure, or the reverse? Is it not true, Socrates, that no one ever, awake or dreaming, saw or imagined wisdom and mind to be ugly anywhere in any way, whether coming to be, or being, or about to be? Right. But pleasures, and those almost the greatest, when we see anyone enjoying them, seeing either the ridiculous attending them or the most shameful of all, we ourselves are ashamed and hide them away as much as possible, giving all such things to the night, as if the light ought not to see them. In every way, then, Protarchus, you will declare, sending it by messengers and telling it to those present, that pleasure is not the first possession nor even the second, but that the first is somehow about measure and the measured and the timely, and all such things that we must think have taken on the eternal nature. So it appears from what is now said. Second is about the proportioned and beautiful and the complete and sufficient, and all that belongs to this kind. So it seems. The third, then, as I divine, if you put mind and wisdom, you would not stray far from the truth. Perhaps. Fourth, then, are not the things we assigned to the soul itself, sciences and arts and what were called right opinions, these being fourth with the three, if indeed they are more akin to the good than to pleasure? Perhaps. Fifth, then, the pleasures that we set down, defining them as painless, calling them pure sciences of the soul itself, following on perceptions. Perhaps. “But in the sixth generation,” says Orpheus, “end the order of your song”; and our argument too seems to have come to an end at the sixth judgment. What remains for us after this is nothing but to put a head, as it were, on what has been said. So we must. Come, then, let us go through the same argument a third time, calling the Savior to witness. What argument? Philebus set down for us that the good is all and complete pleasure. The third time, Socrates, as it seems, you meant just now that we must take up the argument from the beginning. Yes. But let us hear what follows. For I, seeing what I have now gone through, and annoyed at the argument not only of Philebus but often of countless others, said that mind was far better and more excellent than pleasure for human life. That was so. And suspecting that there are also many other things, I said that if anything appeared better than both of these, I would contend on the side of mind against pleasure for the second prize, and pleasure would be deprived even of the second prize. You said so. And after this it appeared most sufficiently that neither of these two was sufficient. Most true. Then in this argument both mind and pleasure were set aside entirely, neither of them being the good itself, since they lacked self-sufficiency and the power of the sufficient and complete? Most right. And when something else better than either of them appeared, mind has now appeared ten thousand times more akin and closer than pleasure to the form of the victor. Of course. Then the power of pleasure would be fifth in the judgment, as the argument has now declared. So it seems. And not first, not even if all the oxen and horses and all the other beasts together should say so by pursuing enjoyment; trusting them, as seers trust birds, the many judge pleasures to be most powerful for our living well, and think the loves of beasts more authoritative witnesses than the loves of arguments divined each time in the philosophic Muse. That you have now spoken most truly, Socrates, we all say.” So Plato. And I shall set before you also a few of the arguments against Epicurus from the work On Nature of Dionysius, a bishop of the philosophy according to Christ. Take and read his words, which run thus:
Against the Epicureans, who deny a Providence, and refer the universe to corporeal atoms. From Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, On Nature
“Is the universe one connected whole, as it seems to us and to the wisest of the Greeks, Plato and Pythagoras and the Stoics and Heraclitus, or two, as perhaps someone supposed, or even many and infinite, as some others have thought, who, with many derangements of thought and varied coinages of words, have tried to fragment the substance of the universe, and suppose it infinite and ungenerated and without providence? For some, calling them atoms, some imperishable and very small bodies, countless in number, and positing a certain empty space of unlimited size, say that these atoms, carried at random in the void and colliding with one another spontaneously through a disorderly rush, and becoming entangled because, having many shapes, they take hold of one another, so produce the world and the things in it, or rather infinite worlds. Of this opinion were Epicurus and Democritus; they differed only so far as the one supposed all atoms to be very small and therefore imperceptible, while Democritus supposed that some atoms are even very large. Both say that they are atoms, and so called because of their indissoluble solidity. Others, renaming the atoms, say they are partless bodies, parts of the universe, from which, being indivisible, all things are composed and into which they are dissolved. And they say that Diodorus was the coiner of the name of these partless bodies; but Heraclides, they say, gave them another name and called them ‘masses,’ from whom Asclepiades the physician also inherited the name.” Having said this, he next refutes the doctrine at length, and among other ways by the following:
From human examples. From the same
“How can we bear them saying that wise and therefore beautiful works are chance coincidences? Each of these, as it came into being by itself, was seen by him who commanded it to come into being to be good, and likewise all of them together. For ‘God saw,’ it says, ‘all things that he had made, and they were very good.’ But they are not admonished even by small, familiar, and everyday examples, from which they could learn that no work that is useful and beneficial is produced without design or by chance, but is fitted by handiwork for its proper service; and when it falls into uselessness and unprofitableness, then it breaks up without order and is scattered as it may happen, since the wisdom that cared for its holding together no longer handles and arranges it. For a cloak is not woven without a weaver, the warp threads standing by themselves and the woof weaving itself in spontaneously; and if it is worn out, the torn rags are thrown away. And a house is built, and a city, not by receiving some stones that desert of their own accord into the foundations and others that leap up into the courses, but the builder brings the well-fitted stones into place; and when it is thrown down, each stone falls and is dislodged as it happens. And when a ship is being built, the keel did not lay itself down, nor did the mast set itself upright in the middle, and each of the other timbers take whatever position it happened to of itself; nor were the so-called hundred timbers of a wagon each fixed in whatever empty place it found, but the carpenter brought each together at the right time. But if a ship breaks up at sea, or a wagon on its way on land, the timbers are scattered wherever it happens, some by the waves, others by the violent rush. So it would suit them to say that the atoms too, remaining idle and unwrought and useless, are carried at random. Let them see the invisible atoms and think of the unthinkable ones, not like him who confesses to God what was revealed to him by God: ‘Your eyes saw my unwrought substance.’” And when they say that the well-woven fabrics they claim come from atoms are worked by them without wisdom and without perception, who will bear hearing of atoms as weavers, when even the spider, working with its own hands from itself, is wiser than they?
From the constitution of the universe. From the same
Or that this great house, composed of heaven and earth, and called kosmos, “order,” because of the greatness and abundance of the wisdom shown in it, was ordered by atoms moving without any order, and that disorder became order? And how are orderly motions and courses produced from a disorderly rush? And how does the all-harmonious dance of the heavenly bodies sing in concert from unmusical and unharmonious instruments?” “And in what way, since the substance of all is one and the same, and the same imperishable nature, except for sizes, as they say, and shapes, are some bodies divine and pure and eternal, as they themselves would say, or at least long-lived, according to him who so named them, both visible and invisible: visible, the sun and moon and stars and earth and water; invisible, gods and daimones and souls? For these they cannot deny exist, even if they wished. And the longest-lived living things and plants: of living things among birds, as they say, eagles and ravens and phoenixes; among land animals, deer and elephants and serpents; among water creatures, whales; of trees, palms and oaks and persea trees; and of trees some are evergreen, which someone counted and said were fourteen; others flower and shed their leaves in season; but most of the things that grow and are born are short-lived and soon ended, of which man too is one, as a holy Scripture said about him: ‘Man, born of woman, is short-lived.’ But they will say that differing bonds of the atoms are the cause of the difference in duration. For some, they say, are packed close and squeezed together by them, so that they have become felts altogether hard to separate; others have a looser and slacker connection of atoms, to a lesser or greater degree, so that they part from their cohesion either quickly or not long after; and some are compounded of atoms of such a kind and shaped in such a way, others of other atoms differently disposed. “Who, then, is the one who sorts them by kinds, gathers and pours them out, and arranges these thus into the sun, and those so, that the moon may come to be, and brings each together according to its affinity for the light of each star? For neither would the solar atoms, so many and such and united in such a way, have come down to the making of the moon, nor have the coils of lunar atoms ever become a sun; nor would Arcturus, bright as he is, ever boast of having the atoms of the morning star, nor the Pleiades those of Orion. For Paul distinguished well when he said, ‘There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.’ And if their compacting happened without perception, as being soulless, they needed a knowing craftsman; and if their coming together was without choice and by necessity, as being irrational, some wise herdsman driving them together presided over them; and if they have been shut in together to work willingly, some wonderful master builder assigning their work led them; or, like a well-ordered general, he did not leave the army confused and all mixed together, but arranged the cavalry in one part, the heavy infantry by themselves, the javelin men by themselves, the archers apart, and the slingers where they were needed, so that those equipped alike might fight together. But if they think this example a joke because I make a comparison of large bodies with the smallest, we shall pass over to the smallest.” Then next he adds: “But if neither word, nor choice, nor order of a ruler were laid upon them, but they themselves of their own accord directed themselves out of the great turmoil in their flow, and passed through the great uproar of collisions, and like were led to like not by God, as the poet says, but ran together and herded together recognizing their kin, wonderful indeed is the democracy of the atoms, friends greeting and embracing one another and hastening to settle in one dwelling together; some of their own accord turned into the sun, a great light, to make the day; others perhaps blazed up into many pyramids of stars, to crown the whole heaven; others ranged round to make the ether firm and vault it at random as a base for the lights; and the confederacies of the common atoms chose dwellings for themselves and divided heaven by lot into houses and stations for themselves.” Then after other things he says: “But these men do not see even what is visible, much less perceive what is invisible. For they seem not to observe the ordered risings and settings either of the others or the most conspicuous ones of the sun, nor to use the help given through them to men, the day kindled for work and the night overshadowing for rest. For ‘man shall go out,’ it says, ‘to his work and to his labor until evening.’ Nor do they observe its other revolution, by which it brings about fixed seasons and timely times and unswerving turnings, guided by the atoms of which it consists. But even if the wretches do not wish it, as the righteous believe, ‘great is the Lord who made it, and at his words it hastened its course.’ Do the atoms, you blind men, bring you rains too, that the earth may send up food for you and for all living things upon it? And do they bring summer, that you may take the fruits from the trees for enjoyment? And why do you not worship the atoms and sacrifice to the fruit-bearing ones? Ungrateful, not dedicating to them even a few first fruits of the many gifts you have from them!” And a little after he says: “And the many-nationed and mixed people of the stars, whom the much-wandering and ever-scattered atoms put together, divided territories among themselves by agreement, as if taking up a colony or settlement, with no founder or master of the house presiding; and they keep their neighborly relations with those next to them under oath and in peace, not overstepping the boundaries they took at the beginning, as if legislated by royal atoms. But those do not rule; how could those that do not even exist? But listen to the divine oracles: ‘By the judgment of the Lord are his works. From the beginning and from their making he distinguished their portions; he ordered his works forever, and their beginnings to their generations.’ And a little after he says: “Or what phalanx so well ordered ever marched across a level plain, with none running ahead, none turning aside, none blocking the way, none falling behind those ranged with him, as the continuous and unbroken, untroubled and unhindered army of the stars advances always in even ranks with locked shields? But by inclinations and deviations to the side some unseen turnings of them occur. And yet they always keep their times and foresee the places from which each comes, those who have attended to these things say. Let the cutters of the atoms, then, and the dividers of the partless, and the compounders of the uncompounded, and the comprehenders of the infinite tell us where the circular motion and revolution of the heavenly bodies comes from, not of one compact of atoms flung irrationally like this, but of so great a circular dance stepping in measure and whirling round together; where so countless a throng of fellow travelers, unordered, without choice, and unknown to one another, came to turn together. Well did the prophet put among things impossible and incapable of proof that even two strangers should run together: ‘Will two walk together,’ he says, ‘unless they know one another?’” Having said this, and having added countless other things to these, he next establishes the point at length from the particular elements of the universe, from the living beings of every kind in them, and especially from the nature of man. Of these I shall add a few more to what has been said and so end the present book.
From the nature of man. From the same
“And they see neither themselves nor what concerns themselves. For if any of the founders of this impious doctrine had considered who he himself is and where he comes from, he would have thought as one aware of himself, and would have said not to the atoms but to his Father and Maker, ‘Your hands formed me and made me’; and he would have gone on to describe the wonderful manner of his making: ‘Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews; you granted me life and mercy, and your care has preserved my spirit.’ For how many atoms, and of what kind, did Epicurus’ father pour out of himself when he begot Epicurus? And how, cast into his mother’s womb, were they compacted, shaped, formed, moved, increased? And how many atoms of Epicurus did the little drop call to itself, clothing some with skin and flesh, being set upright by others that became bone, and being bound together by others, stitched with sinews? And it fitted the many other members and inward parts and entrails and organs of sense, some within, others without, by which the body was brought to life? Of these nothing idle or useless was added, not even the meanest, neither hair nor nails; but all contribute, some to the benefit of the structure, others to the beauty of its appearance. For providence takes care not only of need but also of beauty. The hair is a defense and covering of the head for all, and the beard an ornament for the philosopher. And it fitted together the nature of the whole human body from all necessary parts, and threw round all the members their fellowship with one another, and measured out the supply from the whole. Of these, the general functions are plain from experience even to ordinary people, what power each has: the sovereignty of the head, and around the brain, as round a ruler in a citadel, the bodyguard of the senses: the eyes coming forward, the ears reporting, taste like a tax gatherer, smell like one tracking and searching out, and touch arranging all that is subject. (For we shall now run over in summary a few of the works of the all-wise providence, and shortly, God granting, work them out more precisely, when we address the one who is thought more learned.) The service of the hands, by which work of every kind and arts of many devices are accomplished, their particular powers jointed into one cooperation; the burden-bearing of the shoulders, the grip of the fingers, the bending of the elbows, turning inward to the body and outward away from it, so that they can draw toward and push away; the service of the feet, by which the whole creation on earth lies subject to us, the earth walkable, the sea navigable, the rivers passable, and the intercourse of all with all; the belly, a storehouse of food, distributing from itself in measure their ration to all the members arranged with it and putting out the excess; and the other things by which the management of man’s continuance has been clearly devised, of which the wise have the use like the foolish but do not have the knowledge. For some refer the management that is most knowing about all things and most beneficent toward themselves to whatever deity they suppose, trusting it to be the work of a higher and truly divine wisdom and power; others attribute the most wonderful craftsmanship aimlessly to the chance meeting and collision of atoms. The still more effective examination of these, and the arrangement of the inward parts, physicians, having searched out precisely and been astonished, have deified nature; we shall later, as far as we are able, look at them even if only superficially. In general and in sum, who built this whole tent, such as it is, tall, upright, well proportioned, keen of sense, nimble, active, able to do all things? The irrational multitude of atoms, they say. But those, coming together, could not mold even a clay image, nor carve a stone statue, nor cast and bring forth an idol of silver or gold; but the arts and handicrafts for these, which shape the likeness of bodies, have been found by men. And if likenesses and sketches of these could not come about without wisdom, how did their true originals happen of themselves? And from where did soul and mind and reason come to be in the philosopher? Did he collect them from soulless and mindless and unreasoning atoms, and did each of them breathe into him some thought and doctrine? And as Hesiod’s myth says Pandora was completed by the gods, so was the man’s wisdom completed by the atoms? And will the Greeks no longer say that all poetry and all music, astronomy and geometry and the other sciences, are discoveries and teachings of the gods, but that the atom-Muses alone have become skilled and wise in all things? For the theogony of Epicurus out of the atoms is banished from the infinite worlds and exiled into the infinite disorder.”
That to God there is no toil in working. From the same
“Working and governing and doing good and taking forethought and such things are perhaps burdensome to the idle and foolish and weak and wicked, among whom Epicurus enrolled himself by thinking such things of the gods; but to the earnest and able and intelligent and temperate, such as philosophers must be (how much more the gods?), these things are not only not unpleasant and irksome, but most delightful and most welcome of all; to them neglect and delay in doing any good thing is a reproach, as the poet admonishes them, advising, ‘Do not put off till tomorrow’; and threatening besides, ‘The man who puts off work always wrestles with ruin.’ And a prophet teaches us more solemnly, saying that the works of virtue are truly worthy of God, and that he who neglects them is accursed: ‘For cursed,’ he says, ‘is he who does the works of the Lord carelessly.’ And to those ignorant of any art, and less perfect, through the unaccustomedness of the experience and unpracticed work, weariness comes in their attempts; but those advancing, and still more the perfect, rejoice in easily accomplishing what they pursue, and would rather choose to complete and perfect their accustomed tasks than have all human goods. Democritus himself, at any rate, as they say, used to say that he would rather find a single causal explanation than become king of the Persians; and that while giving causes vainly and without cause, starting from an empty principle and a wandering hypothesis, not seeing the root and the common necessity of the nature of things, but thinking the understanding of things happening without wisdom and foolishly to be the greatest wisdom, and setting chance as mistress and queen over things universal and divine, and declaring that all things come about according to it, while banishing it from the life of men and refuting those who honor it as foolish. Beginning his Precepts, at least, he says: “Men fashioned an image of chance as an excuse for their own folly. For by nature judgment fights against chance; and this very thing, most hostile to wisdom, they said rules it; or rather, doing away with wisdom altogether and abolishing it, they set chance up in its place. For they do not praise wisdom as fortunate, but chance as most wise.” Those in charge of works useful to life take pride in their help to their fellow men, and long for praise and glory for the things in which they toil for them, some by feeding, others by piloting, others by healing, others by governing; and philosophers are especially proud of attempting to educate men. Or will Epicurus or Democritus dare to say that they are vexed when they philosophize? They would set no other delight above this. For even if they think the good is pleasure, they will be ashamed not to say that philosophizing is pleasanter to them. But the gods, whom their poets sing as ‘givers of good things,’ these philosophers praise with mockery as ‘gods neither givers of any good things nor sharers in them.’ And in what way do they prove that there are gods, when they neither see them present and doing something (as those who admired the sun and moon and stars said they were called gods from their running, theein), nor assign them any creation or construction, so as to make them gods from tithenai, that is, ‘to make’ (for in this sense in truth the Maker and Creator of all is alone God), nor set forth any government or judgment or favor of theirs toward men, so that, owing them fear or honor, we might worship them? “Or did Epicurus, peeping out of the world and passing beyond the heavenly enclosure, or going out through some secret gates which he alone knows, see the gods in the void and bless their great luxury; and from there, becoming desirous of pleasure and an emulator of life in the void, does he so invite all to share in this blessedness, to be made like those gods, getting up for them a blessed banquet, not in heaven or Olympus, as the poets do, but in the void, setting before them ambrosia from the atoms and drinking to them nectar from them? And indeed, by those gods who are nothing to us he writes countless oaths and adjurations in his books, continually swearing ‘No, by Zeus’ and ‘Yes, by Zeus,’ and adjuring his readers and those he talked with ‘by the gods,’ not at all fearing perjury himself or for them, but adding this as an empty, false, idle, and meaningless appendage to his words, as if he cleared his throat and spat, or turned his face or moved his hand. Such a thoughtless and vain pretense was his naming of the gods. But this is plain, that after the death of Socrates, cowering before the Athenians for fear of seeming to be what he was, an atheist, he painted for them empty shadows of nonexistent gods, telling marvels. For he did not look up to heaven with the eyes of the mind to hear the clear voice from above, which the attentive beholder heard and bore witness that ‘the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands’; nor did he look down in thought to the ground; for he would have learned that ‘the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord,’ and that ‘the earth is the Lord’s and its fullness.’ For after this it says, ‘The Lord looked upon the earth and filled it with his good things; with the soul of every living thing he covered its face.’ If they are not blind, let them consider the many-colored multitude of living things, those on land, those that fly, those in the water, and understand that the testimony of the Master at the judgment of all things was true, and that all things appeared good according to his command.” These I have culled from the very many things written against Epicurus by Dionysius, our bishop. It is time to pass on to the followers of Aristotle and the school of the Stoic philosophers, and to examine the rest of the wonderful natural philosophers’ views, so that we may give those fond of finding fault our defense of our withdrawal from these too.
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Preparation for the Gospel, Book 14
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