Praeparatio evangelica

Anaxarchus had as his pupil Pyrrho, from whom the school of those called Sceptics was established. That these men define nothing at all as comprehensible either by sense or by reason, but suspend judgment in all things, as those who hold opposing views refute them, may be learned from the treatise indicated, which runs as follows in this passage:

18. TO THOSE CALLED SCEPTICS OR EPHEKTICS AFTER PYRRHO, WHO DECLARE THAT NOTHING IS COMPREHENSIBLE. "It is necessary before everything to examine our own knowledge; for if we are by nature unable to know anything, there is no further need to investigate other things. Now there were some among the ancients who uttered this saying, to whom Aristotle replied. Pyrrho of Elis also maintained such things; but he himself left nothing in writing, while his disciple Timon says that he who is going to be happy must look to these three things: first, what things are by nature; second, in what manner we ought to be disposed toward them; and last, what will result for those so disposed. Now he says that Pyrrho declares things themselves to be equally indifferent, unstable, and undecidable, and for this reason neither our senses nor our opinions are true or false. Therefore, he says, we ought not to trust them, but to be without opinions, unbiased, and unwavering, saying of each single thing that it no more is than it is not, or both is and is not, or neither is nor is not. For those disposed in this way, Timon says there will result first speechlessness, then tranquility, but Aenesidemus says pleasure.

These, then, are the main points of what they say; but let us consider whether they speak correctly. Since, then, they say that all things are equally indifferent, and for this reason they bid us to adhere to nothing and to hold no opinion, one might reasonably ask them, I think, whether those who think these things differ are mistaken or not? For certainly, if they are mistaken, they would not be supposing correctly. So that it is necessary for them to say that there are some who hold false opinions about realities; they themselves, then, would be those who speak the truth; and thus there would be something true and false. But if we, the many, are not mistaken in thinking that realities differ, why in the world do they rebuke us? For they themselves would be mistaken in claiming that these things do not differ. And indeed, even if we grant to them that all things are equally indifferent, it is clear that they themselves would not differ from the many. What, then, would their wisdom be? And why does Timon revile all others but praise only Pyrrho? Moreover, if all things are equally indifferent and for this reason one ought to hold no opinion, then not even these things would differ—I mean differing or not differing, and holding an opinion or not holding an opinion. For why are they such rather than not such? Or, as Timon says, why yes and why no, and the why itself why? It is clear, then, that inquiry is abolished; so let them cease troubling us. For as it is, they are raving far from art, at once urging us not to hold an opinion, and at the same time bidding us to do just this, and saying that one ought to make no assertion about anything, and then making assertions; and they demand that we assent to nothing, but bid us to obey them.

Then, by saying that they know nothing, they prove that they know well. It is necessary for those who assert that all things are unclear to do one of two things: either be silent or make some declaration and speak. If, then, they were to keep quiet, it is clear that there would be no argument with such people; but if they make a declaration, they would necessarily and in every way say either that something is or is not, just as, of course, they now say that all things are unknowable and matters of opinion for everyone, but nothing is knowable. Therefore, the one who makes this claim either makes the matter clear and it is possible to understand what is said, or it is not. But if it does not make it clear, then once again there is no argument with such a person. But if it signifies something, it would necessarily say either infinite or finite things; and if infinite, then again there would be no argument with him, for there is no knowledge of the infinite; but if the things signified are finite, or any one thing, the one who says this defines something and judges. How, then, could all things be unknowable and beyond judgment? And if he were to say the same thing both is and is not, first the same thing would be both true and false, and then he would say something and not say something, and by using reason he would destroy reason; and further, while admitting that he lies, he would say that one ought to believe him. It is also worth investigating from where and by what learning they say that all things are unclear. For they must first know what the clear is; only then could they 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, they would not know what the unclear is either.

When, then, Aenesidemus in his Outlines goes through the nine modes—for by that many he attempts to show that things are unclear—should we say that he speaks knowing them or not knowing them? For he says that animals 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 external things impair knowledge, such as distances, magnitudes, and motions; and further, that the young and the old, the waking and the sleeping, the healthy and the sick are not similarly disposed; and that we apprehend nothing simple and pure, for all things are mixed and spoken of in relation to something. Now these things, I say, and such like, when he speaks cleverly, one would gladly ask him whether he says that things are this way knowing well or not knowing. For if he did not know, how could we trust him? But if he knew, he would be quite foolish, on the one hand declaring all things unclear, and on the other hand claiming to know so many things. And indeed, when they go through such things, they say nothing other than a kind of induction, showing what sort of things the phenomena and particulars are; and such a thing both is and is called belief. If, then, they assent to it, it is clear that they hold an opinion; but if they do not believe it, neither would we.

If we should wish to pay attention to them. Moreover, Timon in his *Pytho* relates, having spun out a long discourse, how he met with Pyrrho walking to Pytho by the sanctuary of Amphiaraus and how they conversed with one another. Then would not someone reasonably, standing by him as he writes these things, say: "What, you wretch, do you trouble yourself writing these things 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 did that wonderful Pyrrho himself know why he was walking to see the Pythian games? Or was he wandering along the road like madmen? And when he began to accuse men and their ignorance, shall we say that he speaks truth or not, and that Timon was affected and assented to his words or paid no attention? For if he was not persuaded, how did he become a philosopher instead of a dancer and continue to admire Pyrrho? But if he assented to what was said, he would be absurd, himself philosophizing while hindering us. Simply, one might wonder: what do Timon's *Silloi* and his blasphemies against all men, and the long *Outlines* of Aenesidemus, and all that crowd of such arguments, intend for themselves? For if, thinking to make us better, they have written these things and for this reason think they must refute everyone, so that we might stop talking nonsense, they evidently wish us to know the truth and to suppose that things are just as Pyrrho maintains. So that if we were persuaded by them, we would become better from worse, having judged what is more expedient and having accepted those who speak better.

How then could things be equally indifferent and undecidable? And how could we become non-consenting and opinionless? But if there is no benefit from these arguments, why do they trouble us? Or why does Timon say: "No other mortal would contend with Pyrrho"? For one might no more admire Pyrrho than that Coroebus or that Melitides, who are thought to have excelled in folly. Yet one must also consider this: what kind of citizen or judge or counselor or friend or, simply, human being would such a person be? Or what evil would he not dare to commit who truly believes nothing to be evil or shameful or just or unjust? For one could not even say that such people fear the laws and punishments; for how could they, being impassive and untroubled, as they themselves claim? Indeed, Timon says this about Pyrrho: "But I saw him, the unpretentious and unsubdued by all that subdues mortals—the ineffable and effable, the light tribes of peoples, burdened here and there by passions, opinion, and vain lawmaking." Yet when they say this wise thing—that one should live following nature and customs, while assenting to nothing—they are quite foolish. For if to nothing else, at least to this very statement one must give assent and suppose that it is so. And why should one follow nature and customs rather than not, when one knows nothing and has nothing by which to judge?

That point is utterly foolish, when they say that just as purgative drugs expel themselves along with the waste, so too the argument that all things are non-evident destroys itself along with the others. For if it refutes itself, those who use it would be talking nonsense. It would be better for them to keep quiet and not even open their mouths. But in fact, the purgative drug and their argument have nothing in common. The drug is expelled and does not remain in the bodies, whereas the argument must exist in the souls, being the same and always trusted; for this alone would be what produces non-assent. That it is impossible for a human to be without opinion, one may learn as follows: it is impossible for one who perceives not to perceive. And perceiving was knowing something. And that he trusts his perception is evident to all; for wishing to see more clearly, he wiped his eyes, came closer, and shaded them. And indeed we know when we are pleased or in pain; for it is impossible for one who is burning or being cut to be ignorant. And as for memories and recollections, who would not say that they occur with supposition? And concerning common notions, such as what a human is, and further concerning sciences and arts, what could one say? For none of these would exist if we were not naturally disposed to suppose. But I pass over the rest. However, whether we believe or disbelieve what is said by these people, it is necessarily the case that we opine in every way and on every matter. That it is impossible to philosophize in this manner is therefore evident.

But that this is both contrary to nature and contrary to the laws, we may see as follows: for if things were truly of such a nature, what else would remain but that we live at random and rashly, as in a dream? So that lawgivers, generals, and educators would be talking nonsense. But to me, at least, all other people seem to live according to nature, while only those who prate such nonsense are puffed up with pride, or rather are afflicted with a violent madness. One might learn this not least from the following: Antigonus of Carystus, who lived in the same period and wrote an account of their lives, says that Pyrrho, when chased by a dog, fled up a tree, and when mocked by those present, said that it was hard to strip off the human being. And when Philista, his sister, was sacrificing, and one of his friends promised to provide the things for the sacrifice but did not provide them, and Pyrrho himself bought them and was annoyed, since the friend said that he was not acting in accordance with his own words nor worthily of his apatheia, Pyrrho said that at least in the case of a woman, one must not make a demonstration of it. Yet the friend might justly have said: "O vain man, both in a woman and in a dog and in everything, if indeed any of these arguments of yours is of any use." It is also right to learn who became his emulators and whom he himself emulated. Now Pyrrho was a pupil of a certain Anaxarchus, who was first a painter, not even so successful, and then, having encountered the books of Democritus, found and wrote nothing good, but spoke ill of all, both gods and men.

Later, however, he assumed this arrogance and, calling himself unarrogant, left nothing in writing. His disciple was Timon of Phlius, who at first danced in the theaters, but later, having encountered him, composed harsh parodies and scurrilous verses, in which he blasphemed all who had ever philosophized. For it was he who wrote the Silloi and said: "Wretched men, base reproaches, mere bellies, from such strifes and groans you have been fashioned, and men, empty bags full of vain conceit." And though no one paid them any heed, as if they had never existed at all, just yesterday or the day before in Alexandria in Egypt, a certain Aenesidemus began to revive this nonsense. And nearly all who are considered the best among those who have walked this path are these. Therefore, that no one of sound mind would call such a thing—whether a school or a method of argument or whatever one wishes to call it—correct, is clear. For I myself think it should not even be called philosophy, since it destroys the very foundations of philosophizing." So much, then, against those who are thought to philosophize according to Pyrrho. Related to these would also be the objections against those who follow Aristippus of Cyrene, who say that only the affections are apprehensible. Aristippus was a companion of Socrates, and he founded the so-called Cyrenaic school, from which Epicurus took his starting points for the exposition of the end. Aristippus was quite dissolute in his life and fond of pleasure; but he left nothing in public about the end.

He argued, but in reality he said that the substance of happiness lies in pleasures. For always making arguments about pleasure, he led those who approached him to suspect that the end of life is to live pleasantly. His hearer, along with others, was also his daughter Arete; who, having given birth to a son, named him Aristippus, who, being led by her into philosophical discussions, was called mother-taught; he also clearly defined the end to be living pleasantly, classifying pleasure as that which occurs according to motion. For he said there are three states concerning our constitution: one in which we suffer pain, resembling a storm at sea; another in which we feel pleasure, likened to a smooth wave, for pleasure is a smooth motion, comparable to a fair wind; and the third is a middle state, in which we neither suffer pain nor feel pleasure, being similar to a calm. Of these, he said, we have perception only of these affections. Against these, the following has been argued:

19. AGAINST THOSE PHILOSOPHERS ACCORDING TO ARISTIPPUS WHO SAY THAT ONLY THE AFFECTIONS ARE APPREHENSIBLE, AND THE REST ARE INAPPREHENSIBLE. "Next would be those who say that only the affections are apprehensible; this was said by some of those from Cyrene. These men claimed, as if oppressed by some kind of stupor, that they knew nothing at all, unless someone standing by struck and pricked them; for they said that when burned or cut, they recognized that they were suffering something; but whether the burning thing was fire or the cutting thing was iron, they could not say. Now someone might immediately ask those who say these things, whether they at least know this very thing, that they are suffering something and are perceiving.

For if they do not know, they could not even say that they know only the affection; but if they do know, then the affections would not be the only things apprehensible. For the statement "I am burning" was a statement, not an affection. Yet it is necessary that these three things subsist together: the affection itself, that which produces it, and that which undergoes it. Therefore, the one who apprehends the affection would certainly also perceive that which undergoes it. For it is not the case that, if, for example, he perceives that he is being heated, he will be ignorant whether it is himself or his neighbor, or whether it is now or last year, or at Athens or in Egypt, or whether he is alive or dead, or again whether he is a human or a stone. Therefore, he will also know by what he is affected; for they recognize one another, and roads and cities and food; and craftsmen know their own tools, and doctors and sailors mark future events, and among animals, dogs find tracks. Moreover, the one who undergoes something, in undergoing it, apprehends it either as an affection of something of his own or as of something else. Whence, then, will he be able to say that this is pleasure, this is pain, or that in tasting or seeing or hearing he undergoes something, and that he tastes with the tongue, sees with the eyes, hears with the ears? Or how do they know that this should be chosen, that avoided? If they are not moved by any of these, they will have neither impulse nor desire; thus they would not even be animals. For they are ridiculous when they say that these things happen to them, but they do not know how and in what manner. For thus they could not even say whether they are by nature humans or whether they are alive; therefore, they could not even say whether they say anything and make any assertion. Against such people, what argument could there be?

One might indeed be astonished if they do not know whether they are on the earth or in the sky; but it is far more astonishing if they do not know, and this while claiming to philosophize, whether the four are more than the three, and what the one and the two are. For these people cannot even say how many fingers they have on their hands, nor whether each of them is one or many. So they would not know even their own name, nor their fatherland, nor Aristippus. Therefore they do not know whom they love or hate, nor what they desire; nor, if they laugh or weep, could they say that the one is laughable and the other painful. It is clear, then, that they do not understand what we are now saying. Such people, then, would differ in no way from gnats or flies; and yet even those creatures recognize what is according to nature and contrary to nature. Against those who are in such a state, even if one could say countless things, these suffice. Next it follows to examine also those who have taken the opposite path and have determined that one must trust everything to the perceptions of the body, among whom are Metrodorus of Chios and Protagoras of Abdera. Now Metrodorus was said to have been a hearer of Democritus, and to have declared the full and the void as principles; of which the one is being, the other non-being. Indeed, writing on nature, he used such an introduction: "None of us knows anything, not even this very thing, whether we know or do not know." This introduction gave bad starting points to Pyrrho, who came later. And proceeding, he says that "everything is, whatever one might think." As for Protagoras, the story goes that he was called an atheist. Indeed, writing himself on the gods, he used such an introduction:

Concerning the gods, I know neither that they exist nor what they are like in form; for there are many things that prevent me from knowing each of these." The Athenians punished this man with exile and publicly burned his books in the middle of the agora. Since, then, these men declared that one must trust only the senses, let us examine the arguments against them.

20. AGAINST THOSE AROUND METRODORUS AND PROTAGORAS WHO SAY THAT ONE MUST TRUST ONLY THE SENSES. "There have been some who maintain that one must trust only sense perception and appearances. Some indeed say that Homer hints at this very thing when he declares Oceanus to be the origin of all things, as if things are in flux. Among those we know, Metrodorus of Chius seems to say the same thing, but Protagoras of Abdera stated it outright. For he said, '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 person, so they are; and concerning other matters we can affirm nothing. Against these one might say what Plato says in the Theaetetus: first, why, if things are indeed such, did they deem man to be the measure of truth, and not a pig or a dog-faced baboon? Next, how could they claim to be wise themselves, if each person is himself the measure of truth? Or how do they refute others, if what appears to each is true, and we are ignorant of some things, even though we often perceive them, as when we hear barbarians? And one who has seen something and then remembers it knows it, but no longer perceives it.

And if one were to close one eye and see with the other, it is clear that the same thing would both be known and not known. In addition to this, if what appears to each person is also true, but to us the things said by them do not appear true, then the statement that man is not the measure of all things would be true. Indeed, craftsmen differ from the unskilled, and the experienced from the inexperienced, and for this reason a helmsman, a physician, and a general foresee the future more; and these people simply abolish the more and the less, the necessary and the contingent, the natural and the unnatural. Thus the same thing would be both existent and non-existent; for nothing prevents the same thing from appearing to some to exist and to others not to exist; and the same thing would be both a man and a piece of wood; for sometimes the same thing appears to one as a man, to another as a piece of wood; and every statement would be true, and for this reason also false; and those who deliberate and judge would have nothing to do. And the most terrible thing,

For the same people will be both virtuous and wicked, and vice and virtue will be the same. And one could say many other such things; but indeed, there is no need of further words for those who do not think they have mind and reason." Then he adds in sequence: "Since even now there are some who say that every sense-perception and every appearance is true, let us say a little about these matters as well. For these people seem to fear that if they were to say that some sense-perceptions are false, they would not have the criterion and the canon secure and trustworthy; but they do not see that in this way they would also be declaring all opinions true; for we are naturally able to judge by these as well; and they no less deem some of them to be true and others false. Then, if one were to examine the matter, one would see that none of the other criteria is always and in every respect free from error—I mean, for example, a balance or a lathe or something of the sort; but each of them, when in one condition, is sound, and when in another, faulty, and when used in one way, it tells the truth, and in another, it errs. And indeed, if every sense-perception were true, they would not differ so greatly. For there are different ones from near and far, from the sick and the healthy, from craftsmen and the unskilled, from the wise and the foolish. And as for those of the mad, it would be utterly absurd to say they are true, and also those of the partially sighted and the hard of hearing; for the statement would be foolish, that the one who sees incorrectly either sees or does not see; for one might say that he sees, but not correctly. However, when they say that sense-perception, being irrational, neither adds nor subtracts anything, they appear not to see what is in front of them.

For in the case of the oar in the water, and of writings, and of countless other things, it is sense-perception that deceives. Hence in such matters we all blame not our mind, but our impression. For reason itself refutes itself when it demands that every impression be true; for it will declare our own impression, on account of which we do not think that every impression is such, to be wholly false. So it turns out that for them every impression is both true and false. In general, they err in claiming that things are as they appear to us. On the contrary, things appear as they naturally are, and we do not make them to be so, but are ourselves somehow affected by them. For it would be ridiculous if, when we conceive, like painters or sculptors, of puppies or chimeras, we were to claim that these immediately exist and that we therefore imagine them as if they were present and ready at hand. So then, that those who assert that every sense-perception and every impression is true are not correct is clear from these considerations. But even with these matters so, again the followers of Epicurus, starting from the conduct of Aristippus, attached everything to pleasure and sense-perception, defining only the affections as apprehensible and pleasure as the end of goods. Epicurus is said by some to have heard no one, but to have encountered the writings of the ancients; by others, that he heard Xenocrates, and later also Nausiphanes, who had been an acquaintance of Pyrrho. Let us then see what has been said in opposition to him.

Against those who define pleasure as the end, according to Epicurus: "Since knowledge is twofold—one of external things, the other of what is choiceworthy and avoidable for us—some say that we have pleasure and pain as the beginning and criterion of choice and avoidance; indeed, even now those around Epicurus say such things. Therefore it is necessary to consider this as well. So far am I from saying that the affection is the beginning and canon of goods and evils, that it seems to me that this very thing needs a criterion. For that it exists, it shows itself; but what sort it is, it needs another to judge it. For if it is proper or alien, sense-perception tells; but whether it is choiceworthy or avoidable, reason tells. For they themselves say that they do not welcome every pleasure and avoid every pain. This happens quite reasonably. For criteria both show themselves and the things judged, but the affection shows only itself. That this is so, they themselves bear witness. For although they deem every pleasure a good and every pain an evil, yet they say that one should not always choose the former and avoid the latter; for these are measured by quantity, if not by quality. It is clear, then, that quantity is judged by nothing other than reason; for 'it is better to endure these certain pains in order that we may enjoy greater pleasures' and 'it is beneficial to abstain from these certain pleasures, lest we suffer more severe pains' and all such things are judged by reason. In general, the senses and the impressions are like mirrors and images of things.

Now, affections, pleasures, and pains are changes and alterations of ourselves. Perceiving and forming images of this, we look outward toward external things, but when we feel pleasure or pain, we turn back to ourselves alone. For external things produce our sensations, and whatever they are, they also produce our impressions accordingly; but affections become of a certain quality through us and according to how we are disposed. Hence these sometimes appear pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, and at times more so, at times less so. Since this is the case, we shall find, if we wish to examine it, that those who adopt both sensations and reason as the principles of knowledge set them down best. Sensation seems like nets and snares and other such hunting tools, while mind and reason are like the hounds that track and pursue. But of these, we must consider that those who neither use sensations at random nor employ affections for discerning the truth are better philosophers. For it would be terrible if human beings, by nature, surrendered themselves to irrational pleasures and pains, abandoning the most divine judge, the mind. These words are from Aristocles.

22. Against Those Who Define the Good as Pleasure: From Plato’s Philebus. “Let us then judge each of the three in relation to pleasure and mind. For we must see to which of the two each of them is more akin, and assign it accordingly. You mean with regard to beauty, truth, and measure? Yes. First, take truth, Protarchus, and having taken it, look at the three—mind, truth, and pleasure—and after a long pause answer yourself whether pleasure is more akin to truth, or mind. But why need time? For they are, I think, very different. Pleasure is the most boastful of all things; as the argument goes, even in the pleasures of love, which are thought to be the greatest, perjury has received pardon from the gods, as if those who are pleased have not even the least mind, like children; but mind is either the same as truth, or most like it and most true. Then after this, will you examine measure in the same way, whether pleasure possesses more of it than wisdom, or wisdom than pleasure? You have set a question that is easy to examine. For I think one could find nothing among existing things more naturally immoderate than pleasure and excessive delight, and nothing more measured than mind and knowledge. Well said. But still tell me the third thing. Has mind partaken of beauty more than the class of pleasure, so that mind is more beautiful than pleasure, or the opposite? Has anyone ever, either waking or dreaming, considered wisdom and mind to be shameful?

He neither saw nor conceived anywhere in any way either coming into being or existing or going to exist? Correct. But pleasures, I suppose, and these almost the greatest, whenever we see someone delighting, either the ridiculous or the most shameful thing following upon them, we ourselves are ashamed and, hiding them away, conceal them as much as possible, consigning all such things to night, as if they ought not to see the light. And you will say, Protarchus, sending by messengers and speaking to those present, that pleasure is not a first possession nor yet a second, but first is something about measure and the measured and the opportune and all such things as must be considered to have chosen the eternal nature. This at least appears from what is now said. Second is about the symmetrical and beautiful and perfect and sufficient and all that belongs to generation itself. So it seems. Then third, as my divination, if you place mind and wisdom, you would not stray far from the truth. Perhaps. Then are not fourth those things we set down as belonging to the soul itself—sciences and arts and right opinions—these being fourth in addition to the three, if they are more akin to the good than to pleasure? Perhaps. Fifth then are the pleasures we set down as painless, defining them as pure, of the soul itself, and the sciences, with the senses following. Perhaps. "In the sixth generation," says Orpheus, "you ceased the cosmos of song," and our argument too seems to have ceased in a sixth judgment. After this nothing remains for us but to give a head, as it were, to what has been said. So it must be. Know then, having borne witness to the same argument for the savior a third time, let us proceed.

What then? Philebus set down for us that the good is every pleasure and the complete pleasure. Third, O Socrates, as you seem, you were just now saying that the argument from the beginning must be taken up again. Yes. Then let us hear what comes after this. For I, having observed what I have now gone through and having been disgusted not only with the argument of Philebus but also with countless others, said that mind is far better and superior to pleasure for the life of human beings. That was so. And suspecting that you had many other things, I said that if something better than both of these should appear, I would contend for mind against pleasure for the second place, and pleasure would be deprived even of the second place. So you said, and after that, concerning these matters, most sufficiently; neither of them appeared sufficient. Most true. Then, in the argument itself, both mind and pleasure were entirely acquitted, neither of them being the good itself, since they were deprived of self-sufficiency and of the power of the sufficient and perfect? Most correctly. And when some other third thing appeared superior to each of these, mind has now appeared more akin and more naturally suited to the form of the victor than pleasure. How not? Then, according to the judgment, as the argument has now declared, the power of pleasure would come in fifth place. It seems so. And first place not even if all oxen and horses and all other beasts should say so, by pursuing enjoyment; trusting in them, as soothsayers trust in birds, the many judge pleasures to be the best for living well, and they think the desires of beasts are more authoritative witnesses than the words of those who are always inspired in philosophical music. Most true, O Socrates, we all now say that you have spoken well. These things Plato.

I will also set before you brief passages from Dionysius, the bishop of the Christian philosophy, from his work On Nature, directed against Epicurus. Take them and read his words which are of this character:

23. AGAINST THOSE WHO DENY PROVIDENCE ACCORDING TO EPICURUS AND ATTRIBUTE THE UNIVERSE TO ATOMIC BODIES

"Whether the universe is one continuous whole, as it appears to us and to the wisest of the Greeks, Plato, Pythagoras, the Stoics, and Heraclitus, or two, as perhaps someone supposed, or many and infinite, as seemed to others, who with many wanderings of the mind and various verbal expressions attempted to fragment the substance of the whole and posited it as infinite, ungenerated, and without providence? For some, calling them atoms—certain indestructible and very small bodies, an innumerable multitude, and a certain empty space of unlimited magnitude—set these forth, and they say that these atoms, carried at random in the void and spontaneously colliding with each other through disorderly motion, and intertwining because they are of many shapes, grasp one another, and thus produce the cosmos and the things in it, or rather infinite worlds. Epicurus and Democritus are of this opinion; and they differed only to the extent that the former supposed all atoms to be very small and therefore imperceptible, while Democritus supposed some atoms to be very large. Both say that atoms exist and are so called because of their indissoluble solidity. And those who renamed the atoms say they are bodies without parts, parts of the whole, from which indivisible things all things are composed and into which they are resolved.

And they say that Diodorus was the coiner of the name for these indivisible bodies; but another name, they say, Heraclides gave them, calling them 'masses', from whom also Asclepiades the physician inherited the name." Having said this, he next refutes the doctrine at length, and also through these words:

24. FROM EXAMPLES AMONG MEN "How can we endure them when they say that the wise and therefore beautiful creations are chance occurrences? Each of them, when it came into being by itself, was seen to be beautiful by the one who ordered it to come into being, and all together likewise. For 'God saw all things that he made, and behold, they were very beautiful.' But they are not even admonished by the small, familiar, and everyday examples, from which they can learn that no useful and beneficial work is produced without skill or by accident, but is fashioned by hand into its proper service; but when it falls into disuse and uselessness, then it is dissolved indefinitely and scattered at random, since wisdom no longer handles or arranges it, whose concern it was that it be constituted. For a garment is not woven without a weaver, the warp threads not coming together nor the woof being interwoven spontaneously; but if it wears out, the torn pieces are cast away as rags. A house is built and a city is constructed, not by some stones spontaneously coming to the foundations and others leaping into the upper courses, but the mason brings suitable stones to their proper place; but when it is demolished, each stone falls away as it may chance, having been dislodged.

And when a ship is being built, it is not the case that one piece of timber submitted itself to be the keel, another raised itself up amidships to be the mast, and each of the other timbers occupied whatever position it chanced to take from itself; nor did the so-called hundred timbers of a wagon each fit together into whatever empty space it found; but the craftsman brought together each piece in its proper place for both. But if the ship were to break up while at sea, or the wagon while being carried over land, the timbers are scattered, some by the waves, others by the violent jolt, wherever it may happen. Thus it would be fitting for them to say also that the atoms, remaining idle and unworked and useless, are borne at random. For let those men see the invisible and conceive the unintelligible, not like him who, this having been revealed to him by God, confesses to him: "My eyes have seen your unfinished work." But when they also say that what they claim are woven fabrics from atoms, these fine textures, are wrought by them without wisdom and without sensation, who will endure hearing atoms called spinners, compared to whom even the spider is wiser, working by its own craft?

25. From the constitution of the universe: Is this great house, composed of heaven and earth, called cosmos because of its magnitude and the abundance of wisdom manifest in it, to have been adorned and to have become a cosmos by atoms carried with no order? And how are orderly motions and paths to be produced from disorderly motion? And how is the perfectly harmonious dance of the heavenly bodies to sing in concord from instruments that are unmusical and discordant? And in what way, when there is one and the same substance of all things and the same indestructible nature except for sizes and shapes, as they say, are some bodies divine and pure and eternal, as they themselves would say, or at least long-lived according to the one who so names them, both visible and invisible—visible such as the sun, moon, stars, earth, and water, invisible such as gods, daemons, and souls? For not even if they wished can they deny that these exist. And the longest-lived animals and plants—animals among birds, as they say, eagles, ravens, and phoenixes; among land animals, stags, elephants, and serpents; among aquatic animals, whales; trees such as palms, oaks, and perseas; and of the trees, some are evergreen, which someone has counted and said to be fourteen, while others bloom and shed leaves seasonally; and most of the things that grow and are born are short-lived and of brief duration, among which is man, as some holy scripture says about him: "Mortal, born of woman, short-lived"? But they will say that the bonds of the atoms, differing, become the cause of the difference in duration.

Some say that by them the atoms have been compressed and tightened, so that they have become completely inseparable masses, while others have a looser and more relaxed connection of atoms, to a lesser or greater degree, so that they separate either quickly or after a long time from their adhesion, and some are compounded from such and such shaped atoms, others from different ones arranged differently. Who then is the one who discriminates the kinds, gathering and dispersing, and arranging these in such a way to form the sun, and those in such a way to become the moon, and bringing each together according to its affinity for the light of each star? For neither have the solar atoms, so many and of such a kind and united in such a way, ever descended to the production of the moon, nor have the interweavings of the lunar atoms ever become the sun. Nor would Arcturus, even if it is bright, ever boast of having the atoms of the morning star, nor would the Pleiades those of Orion. For Paul rightly distinguished, saying: "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another in glory." And if their aggregation took place without perception, as of inanimate things, they would need an intelligent creator; if their combination was involuntary and by necessity, as of irrational things, some wise herdsman driving them together would have presided; if they have come together voluntarily and willingly, some wonderful architect directing the work would have led them, or like a well-ordered general who did not allow the army to be confused and all mixed together, but placed the cavalry in one part, the hoplites separately, the javelin-throwers by themselves, and the archers apart.

and he stationed the slingers where necessary, so that those with the same equipment might fight together. But if they consider this example a mockery because I compare large bodies to the smallest, we will move to the very small. Then he adds next: "But if neither word nor choice nor order were imposed upon them by a ruler, and they themselves by themselves, guiding themselves out of the great turmoil of the flux and passing through the great din of collisions, the like are not led to the like by God, according to the poet, but run together and herd together recognizing their kindred, then wonderful indeed is the democracy of the atoms, greeting one another and embracing and hastening to settle into one common dwelling, and some being automatically turned into a great luminous sun to make the day, others into many perhaps blazing pyramids of stars to crown the whole sky, others arranged to solidify and vault the ether as a base for the luminaries, and the conspiracies of the common atoms choose for themselves abodes and allot the sky into houses and stations for themselves." Then after other things he says: "But these improvident ones do not even see the visible things, far from it do they perceive the invisible. For they seem not to observe the ordered risings and settings, neither of the others nor the most splendid of the sun, nor to use the aids given to men through them, the day kindled for work, the night overshadowing for rest.

For a man will go out," he says, "to his work and to his labor until evening." But they do not even consider his other revolution, according to which he produces fixed hours, favorable seasons, and unalterable solstices, guided by the atoms of which he is composed. But even if the wretches do not wish it, yet as the righteous believe: "Great is the Lord who made him, and in his words he hastened his course." Do atoms bring you winter, O blind ones, and rains, so that the earth may yield food for you and for all the animals upon it? Do they bring summer, so that you may receive the fruits from trees for enjoyment? And why do you not worship and sacrifice to the atoms for the crops, ungrateful as you are, not even dedicating to them a few firstfruits of the many gifts you receive from them?" And shortly after he says: "The multi-ethnic and thoroughly mixed multitude of the stars, which the wandering and ever-scattered atoms have constituted, have divided territories among themselves by agreement, as if undertaking a colony or a settlement with no founder or householder presiding, and they preserve their neighborly relations with those nearby under oath and in peace, not transgressing the boundaries they originally occupied, as if legislated by the royal atoms. But those atoms do not rule; for how could they, since they do not even exist? But hearken to the divine oracles: 'In the judgment of the Lord are his works; from the beginning and from their creation he separated their portions; he adorned his works for eternity and their beginnings for their generations.'" And shortly after he says:

For what phalanx has ever traversed a plain with such order, with none running ahead, none turning aside, none obstructing, none falling behind those arrayed with it, as the continuous, unbroken, untroubled, and unimpeded army of the stars always advances in equal ranks and with shields locked? Yet by inclinations and sideways deviations some of them undergo invisible turnings. And indeed, those who attend to them always watch for the seasons and foresee the regions from which each one rises. Let the cutters of atoms, the dividers of indivisibles, the gatherers of incomposites, and those who contemplate the infinite tell us, then, whence comes the circular procession of the heavenly bodies, the periodic revolution—not of one single body absurdly slung by a conglomeration of atoms, but of so great a circular chorus moving in rhythm with equal step and whirling together—whence did these countless fellow travelers, without order, without purpose, and unknown to one another, come together? And the prophet rightly placed among the impossible and unprovable the notion that even two strangers should run together: ‘Will two men,’ he says, ‘go to the same place at all, unless they know each other?’” Having said this and added countless other things to these, he then establishes the problem at greater length from the individual elements of the universe, from the various animals in them, and indeed from human nature. To these remarks I will add a few more and then conclude the present discourse.

20. FROM THE NATURE OF MAN: "They see neither themselves nor the things about themselves. For if one of the founders of this doctrine of impiety had reflected on who he is and whence he came, he would have thought what one who is conscious of himself thinks, and he would have said, not to the atoms, but to his own father and maker: 'Your hands formed and made me,' and he would have further elaborated, like that one, the marvelous manner of his own making: 'Did you not milk me like milk, then curdle me like cheese, clothe me in skin and flesh, and set me with bones and sinews? And you placed life and mercy beside me, and your oversight guarded my spirit.' For how many atoms did Epicurus' father pour forth from himself, and of what kind, when he sowed Epicurus? And how, confined in his mother's womb, did they coalesce, take shape, form, move, and grow? And how did the small drop, summoning many of Epicurus' atoms, clothe him with some becoming skin and flesh, while with others, ossified, he was built up, and with others he was stitched together by sinews? And how did it fit together the many other limbs, entrails, internal organs, and sense organs, some within, some without, through which the body was animated? Of these, nothing idle or useless was added, not even the most insignificant things, neither hairs nor nails; but all contribute, some to the benefit of the constitution, others to the beauty of appearance. For Providence is concerned not only with utility but also with comeliness. For hair is a defense and covering for the whole head, and the beard is an ornament for the philosopher.

He fitted together the nature of the whole human body from all necessary parts, and for all the limbs he both bestowed community with one another and measured out the supply from the whole. Among these, the more general functions and their power are obvious even to laymen from experience: the leadership of the head and, around the brain, as if a ruler in an acropolis, the bodyguard of the senses—approaching sights, reporting hearings, taste as if collecting tribute, smell as if tracking and searching, and touch ordering everything subject. For now we will run through a few of the works of all-wise Providence in summary, and later, when God grants, we will treat them more precisely when we address the one who seems more learned: the service of hands, through which all sorts of works and ingenious arts are accomplished, with the parts articulated into one cooperation; the bearing of burdens by shoulders, the holdings of fingers, the bends of elbows, both turning inward toward the body and inclining outward, so as to draw and

they can repel. The service of the feet, through which the whole earthly creation lies beneath us, the land is traversable, the sea navigable, the rivers crossable, and there is intercourse of all with all. The stomach, a storehouse of food, distributing from itself in measure the rations to all the coordinated limbs and expelling the surplus. And the other things through which the administration of human maintenance has been contrived, of which the wise, having the use like the foolish, do not possess the knowledge. For some refer the most scientific and most beneficent economy concerning all things and towards themselves, which they affirm to be the work of a superior and truly divine intelligence and power, to whatever atheism they may imagine; others attribute the most wonderful beautiful work to chance and the collision of atoms, without purpose. But the more evident examination than these, and the arrangement of the internal organs, physicians have accurately investigated and, struck with wonder, have deified nature; we, however, later, as we are able, will review even superficially. In general and collectively, who constructed this whole tent, lofty, upright, well-proportioned, sensitive, mobile, efficient, all-working? The irrational multitude of atoms, they say. But not even a clay image would those atoms, coming together, mold, nor a stone statue would they carve, nor would they cast and produce a silver or gold idol. But arts and handicrafts, the body-working arts, have been invented by humans for these things. And of which likenesses and sketches would not come to be without wisdom, how have the true and original things of these come about spontaneously?

But the soul and mind and reason—whence have they come to be in the philosopher? Did he borrow these from soulless, mindless, and irrational atoms, and did each of those inspire in him some thought and doctrine? And just as Hesiod’s myth says that Pandora was fashioned by the gods, so was this man’s wisdom completed by the atoms? And will the Greeks no longer claim that all poetry, all music, astronomy, geometry, and the other sciences are discoveries and teachings of the gods, but that the only empirical and wise ones in all things are the Atomic Muses? For the theology of Epicurus, derived from atoms, is exiled from infinite worlds and banished into infinite disorder.

27. That it is not burdensome for God to work. “To work, indeed, and to govern, and to benefit, and to care for, and such things—for the idle, foolish, weak, and wicked, among whom Epicurus numbered himself, having thought such things about the gods—these may be burdensome; but for the serious, intelligent, capable, and temperate, as philosophers ought to be, and how much more so the gods, these things are not only not unpleasant and offensive, but are the most delightful and most welcome of all, for whom neglect and putting off doing something good is a reproach, as a poet admonishes those men, advising: ‘Do not put off till tomorrow,’ and threatening further: ‘The man who always puts off work wrestles with ruin.’ And a prophet more solemnly instructs us, saying that works according to virtue are truly befitting to God, and that he who neglects them is accursed.

Cursed, he says, is he who does the works of the Lord carelessly. Then also, for those who are ignorant of any art and less accomplished, because of the unfamiliarity of experience and the lack of practice in works, toil arises in their undertakings; but those who are progressing, and still more those who are perfect, easily accomplishing what they pursue, are delighted, and would rather, by doing what is customary, achieve and complete their work than have all human goods at their disposal. Democritus himself, as they say, used to declare that he would rather discover one causal explanation than become king of the Persians, and this while he was giving explanations vainly and without cause, starting from an empty beginning and a mistaken hypothesis, and not seeing the root and the common necessity of the nature of beings, but considering the greatest wisdom to be the understanding of what happens without wisdom and foolishly, and setting up chance as mistress and queen of the universal and the divine, and declaring that everything comes to be according to it, while banishing it from human life and convicting those who champion it of ignorance. At the beginning of his Maxims he says: "Men have fashioned an image of chance, a pretext for their own folly. For by nature judgment fights against chance; and they have declared that this very thing, the most hostile to wisdom, rules. Rather, they utterly abolish and destroy this and set up that other in its place.

For they do not praise fortune as good luck, but as most prudent. Now the overseers of works useful for life exult in their assistance to their own kind, and they strive for praise and glory for the labors they perform: some by feeding, others by steering, others by healing, others by governing. But the philosophers, who attempt to educate men very strenuously, are puffed up. Will Epicurus or Democritus dare to say that they are distressed while philosophizing? No, they would not prefer any other pleasure to this; for even if they think that the good is pleasure, they will at least be ashamed to say that anything is more pleasant to them than philosophizing. As for the gods, about whom the poets among them sing as "givers of good things," these very philosophers speak of them with mockery: "The gods are neither givers nor partakers of any good things." And by what means do they infer that gods exist, neither seeing them present and doing anything, as those who marveled at the sun and moon and stars called them gods because of their running, nor attributing to them any creation or construction, so that from "thein" (to place), that is, to make, they might deify them? For this reason, in truth, the maker and creator of all things is alone God. Nor do they set forth any administration, judgment, or grace of theirs toward men, so that we might owe them fear or honor and worship them?

Having emerged from the cosmos, Epicurus, and having transcended the heavenly vault, or having gone out through some secret gates which he alone knows, beheld the gods in the void and blessed their great luxury, and from there becoming a desirer of pleasure and an emulator of the diet in the void, he thus exhorts all to partake of this blessedness, to be made like those gods, assembling for them a blessed symposium, not the heaven or Olympus of the poets, but the void, setting before them ambrosia from atoms and toasting them with nectar from those same atoms. And indeed, against those gods who are nothing to us, he inscribes countless oaths and adjurations in his own books, continually swearing "by Zeus" and "by Zeus," and adjuring those he meets and those to whom he speaks "by the gods," not because he himself fears or terrifies them with perjury, but uttering this empty, false, idle, and meaningless appendage to his words, as if he were to clear his throat, spit, turn his face, or move his hand. For such was the thoughtless and vain pretense in him of naming the gods. But this is obvious, that after the death of Socrates, terrified of the Athenians, so as not to appear to be what he was, an atheist, he fabricated and painted empty shadows of non-existent gods. For he did not look up to heaven with intellectual eyes, so as to hear the clear voice from above, which the attentive spectator, having heard, testified that "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament announces the work of his hands.

firmament, nor did he perceive with his mind what was on the ground; for he would have learned that "the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord" and that "the earth and its fullness belong to the Lord," and: "After these things, he says, the Lord looked upon the earth and filled it with his goods; the soul of every living creature covered its face." But if they are not utterly blind, let them consider the variegated multitude of animals—the land-dwelling, the winged, the aquatic—and let them understand how true the testimony of the Master has become in the judgment of all: "And all things have appeared beautiful according to his command." These things have been culled by me from the many works composed against Epicurus by Dionysius, the bishop among us. But it is time to pass on to those concerning Aristotle and the school of the Stoic philosophers, and to survey the remaining matters of the marvelous natural philosophers, so that we may also provide to those fond of accusation our defense for withdrawing from these.

15. The fifteenth book of the Preparation for the Gospel contains the following: 1. Preface concerning the whole subject. 2. Concerning the philosophy according to Aristotle and the things related about the man, from Aristocles the Peripatetic. 3. Concerning the doctrines according to Aristotle, which differ from the Hebrews and Plato. 4. Of Atticus the Platonist against Aristotle, differing from Moses and Plato in the discourse concerning the end. 5. Of the same against the same, differing from Moses and Plato in the discourse concerning providence. 6. Of the same against the same, differing from Moses and Plato in not allowing the cosmos to be generated. 7.

From the same author to the same addressee, concerning the fifth substance of bodies which he posits, which neither Moses nor Plato knows. 8. From the same author to the same addressee, also concerning the things in the heavens in which he differed from Plato, which Moses does not investigate. 9. From the same author to the same addressee, also concerning the immortality of the soul, in which he differed from Plato and from the teachings of the Hebrews. 10. From Plotinus, from the second book on the immortality of the soul, against Aristotle, who asserted that the soul is an entelechy. 11. From Porphyry on the same subject. From the letters to Boethus on the soul. 12. To the same addressee, concerning the points in which he differed from Plato also in the discourse on the universal soul. 13. To the same addressee, who also mocked the ideas in Plato, which the teachings of the Hebrews had already previously established. 14. Concerning the philosophy of the Stoics, and how Zeno expounded the doctrine of principles. 15. What opinion the Stoics introduce concerning God and concerning the constitution of the universe. 16. From Porphyry against the Stoic opinion concerning God. 17. That being cannot be a body according to the Stoics. 18. How the Stoics hold opinions concerning the conflagration of the universe. 19. How the Stoics hold opinions concerning the palingenesis of the universe. 20. How the same hold opinions concerning the soul. 21. From Longinus, a refutation of the Stoic opinion concerning the soul. 22. Against the Stoics, that the soul cannot be corporeal. 23. Opinions of the natural philosophers from Plutarch: concerning the sun. 24. Concerning the size of the sun. 25. Concerning the shape of the sun. 26. Concerning the moon. 27. Concerning the size of the moon. 28. Concerning the shape of the moon. 29. Concerning the illuminations of the moon. 30.

What is the substance of the planets and fixed stars. 31. On the shapes of the stars. 32. How the cosmos is constituted. 33. Whether the all is one. 34. Whether the cosmos is ensouled and governed by providence. 35. Whether the cosmos is indestructible. 36. From what the cosmos is nourished. 37. From what first principle God began to make the cosmos. 38. On the order of the cosmos. 39. What is the cause of the cosmos being inclined. 40. On the outside. 41. What are the right and what are the left of the cosmos. 42. On the heaven. 43. On daimons and heroes. 44. On matter. 45. On the idea. 46. On the order of the stars. 47. On the motion and movement of the stars. 48. From where the stars are illuminated. 49. On the so-called Dioscuri. 50. On the eclipse of the sun. 51. On the eclipse of the moon. 52. On its phase, and why it appears earthy. 53. On the distances of the moon. 54. On years. 55. On earth. 56. On the shape of the earth. 57. On the position of the earth. 59. On the sea, how it came to be and how it is bitter. 60. On the parts of the soul. 61. On the ruling part. 62. That even the wisest of the Greeks, Socrates, showed that those who boast greatly about the natural philosophy of the aforementioned matters are foolish, as they waste their time on things useless for life and incomprehensible.

15. Prooemium concerning the whole subject. Having long ago set myself to refute the polytheistic error of all the nations at the beginning of the Evangelical Preparation, for the establishment and defense of our withdrawal from them, which we have made with reasonable judgment, I have not only examined the myths which the children of their own theologians and poets have ridiculed concerning their own gods, but also their solemn and secret physical theories, transferred up to heaven and the parts of the cosmos by noble philosophy, in the first three books first of all, although the theologians themselves declared that nothing at all in these matters should be spoken of solemnly. It must be observed, then, that the most ancient of their theologians, knowing nothing more than history, and attending only to the myths, were testified to; whence it is reasonable that in all cities and villages, according to the ancient narratives, rites and mysteries of the gods have been handed down in agreement with the mythical accounts of the earlier writers, so that even now marriages and childbearings of the gods, lamentations and drunkennesses, wanderings of some, loves of others, angers of others, and other various misfortunes and circumstances, in accordance with what is recorded by the most ancient, are taken up in the rites and in the hymns and songs composed to their gods. Nevertheless, out of abundance I have also brought to light their much-vaunted bombast in physical interpretations and the ingenious arguments of the sophists and philosophers.

Furthermore, I laid bare the discourse concerning the celebrated oracles and the false opinion about fate, which is bandied about among the many, in three subsequent treatises after the first ones, with clear refutations, employing not only arguments from within but especially the very voices of the philosophers among the Greeks themselves for the refutation against them. Then, passing from there to the oracles of the Hebrews, I set forth in an equal number of treatises again by what reasoning we accepted the dogmatic theology contained in them and the entire history according to these, which is also attested by the Greeks themselves. Next, having refuted the Greek manner, how they derived everything from the barbarians and bring forward no dignified learning of their own, and having brought to light the comparison of the times in which the celebrated Greeks and the Hebrew prophets lived, I then, through the three subsequent treatises, pointed out the convergence of the esteemed philosophers among the Greeks with the doctrines of the Hebrews, again making the very words of these men witnesses. Furthermore, I also [refuted] those who hold heterodox opinions among us.

I have exposed in the preceding treatise that the philosophers among the Greeks are at variance not only with us but also with their own people, having been overturned by their own disciples, and through all this I have shown to readers the impartial criterion of our judgment, providing proofs, so to speak, by deeds and actual facts that we have not without reason, but with deliberate and sound reasoning, chosen the ancient and true philosophy and piety of the Hebrews over that of the Greeks before the latter; this was also established through the juxtaposition of Greek expressions. Since we are still now holding the final discourse of this, the fifteenth of the present work, we will supply what is lacking in what has been traversed, even now drawing the venerable aspects of the noble philosophy of the Greeks into the light and laying bare before all the useless learning in them, and first of all demonstrating that it is not from ignorance of what is admired among them, but from disregard for their unprofitable pursuit, that we have least of all concerned ourselves with them, having devoted our souls to the practice of better things. Now that this has been sealed for us, with God's help, by truth itself, the Preparation will be concluded by me here; and passing on to the more complete subject of the Demonstration of the Gospel, I will join the beginning of the second treatise from the point that remains in the accusations against us. This was the charge brought against us, that having preferred the oracles of the Hebrews over our ancestral traditions, we did not choose to emulate a life similar to that of the Jews.

To this, after the completion of the present discourse, with God’s cooperation, I will attempt to respond. For I consider that the second topics are bound to the first as if by a single bond, so as to complete the single overall meaning of the entire discourse. As for the present, since in the treatises before this it has been shown that Platonic philosophy sometimes agrees with the teachings of the Hebrews, sometimes stands in opposition to them, and in some points has been refuted as disagreeing even with its own tenets, while the views of the other so-called natural philosophers—those of the Platonic succession, those of Xenophanes and Parmenides, and further of Pyrrho and the advocates of suspension of judgment, and all the others in order, whose opinions the preceding discourse has refuted—stand opposed both to the teachings of the Hebrews and to those of Plato, and to truth itself, and have even been refuted by their own weapons: it is now time to survey from above, as from a stage, the other vanity of the philosophers from Aristotle and the Stoics, and to examine all the remaining natural philosophy of those who raise their brows, so that we may learn both what is solemnly proclaimed by these men and what is contradicted in turn by their own followers. For in this way the withdrawal from them, which we have judged reasonable, would be freed from any charge, namely that it is not from ignorance of what is solemn among them, but from an examined and tested judgment that we have preferred the truth and piety found among those considered barbarians over all Greek teachings. I will begin with Aristotle.

Others have slandered the man’s life, and these were philosophers and otherwise not obscure men. But it is not my pleasure to endure the man being ill spoken of by his own people, even in my hearing. Therefore I will rather set forth the apologies on his behalf from Aristocles the Peripatetic, who in the seventh book of his *On Philosophy* writes the following about him.

2. ON THE PHILOSOPHY ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE AND THE THINGS REPORTED ABOUT THE MAN, FROM THE SEVENTH BOOK OF THE *ON PHILOSOPHY* OF ARISTOCLES THE PERIPATETIC

“For how is it possible, as Epicurus says in his *Letter on Practices*, that when he was young he consumed his patrimony, then forced himself into military service, and, faring badly in these, turned to selling drugs, and then, when Plato’s walk was open to all, he presented himself? Or how could one accept what Timaeus of Tauromenium says in his *Histories*, that he closed the door of a disreputable medical shop and ordinary ones late in life? And who would be persuaded by what Aristoxenus the musician says in his *Life of Plato*? For in the wanderings and the sojourn, he says, some foreigners rose up and built a rival Peripatos against him. Some think, then, that he says these things about Aristotle, since Aristoxenus always speaks well of Aristotle. And one might reasonably say that the *Memorabilia* of Alexinus the Eristic are also ridiculous. For he represents Alexander as a boy conversing with his father Philip, spurning the words of Aristotle and accepting Nicagoras, surnamed Hermes.

And Eubulides manifestly lies in his book against him, first by presenting frigid poems as if written by others concerning the marriage and his intimacy with Hermias, then by claiming that he offended Philip, that he was not present at Plato’s death, and that he corrupted his books. For what need is there to mention Demochares’ accusation against the philosophers? For he spoke ill not only of Aristotle but also of the others. Moreover, if one examines the slanders themselves, he would say that he is raving. For he says that letters of Aristotle were seized against the city of the Athenians and that he betrayed his homeland Stagira to the Macedonians, and further that when Olynthus was destroyed, he pointed out to Philip at the booty market the wealthiest of the Olynthians. Cephisodorus, the student of Isocrates, has also slandered him foolishly, calling him luxurious, gluttonous, and other such things. But all that has been said by Lycon, who claims to be a Pythagorean, surpasses all in folly. For he says that Aristotle offered a sacrifice to his deceased wife of the same kind as the Athenians offer to Demeter, and that he bathed in warm oil and then sold it; and that when he went to Chalcis, the customs officers found in his ship seventy-four bronze dishes. And such, for the most part, were those who first slandered Aristotle; some were contemporary with him, others arose a little later; all were sophists, eristics, and rhetoricians, whose names and books are more dead than their bodies.

those who came after these events, and then those who report what was said by them, must be dismissed entirely, especially those who have not even read their books but improvise, such as those who say he had three hundred dishes. For no one among those who lived at that time would be found to have said anything of the sort about him except Lycon. This man, however, as I said, stated that seventy-five small dishes were found. Not only from the times and from those who slandered him could one infer that all that has been said is false, but also from the fact that not all accuse him of the same things, but each says something different; if any one of these were true, he would surely have perished countless times, not just once, at the hands of his contemporaries. It is therefore clear that, as happened to many others, so also to Aristotle, on account of his friendships with kings and his superiority in argument, he was envied by the sophists of that time. Those who are right-minded must look not only at his accusers but also at those who praise and emulate him; for

These would be found to be more numerous and better. Now the other things are obviously fabricated. But these two things seem to be believed, for which some censure him: one, that he married the sister of Hermias by nature, but adopted daughter of Pythias, flattering him; at any rate, Theocritus of Chios composed an epigram of this sort: "A vain man, Aristotle, placed this empty monument for the eunuch Hermias, slave of Eubulus; who, because of the intemperate nature of his belly, chose to dwell at the mouth of the Borborus instead of the Academy." The other, that he was ungrateful to Plato. Now concerning Hermias and Aristotle's friendship with him, many others have written, and indeed also Apellicon, in whose books anyone who reads will cease to blaspheme them. Concerning the marriage to Pythias, he has sufficiently defended himself in his letters to Antipater. For after the death of Hermias, because of his goodwill towards him, he married her, she being otherwise chaste and good, but unfortunate because of the calamities that befell her brother." Then he says next: "After the death of Pythias, the wife of Hermias, Aristotle married Herpyllis of Stagira, by whom his son Nicomachus was born. They say that this son, being orphaned, was raised by Theophrastus and died as a youth in war." But let these things be set forth from the indicated writing of Aristocles; now it is time to examine the doctrinal philosophy of Aristotle.

3. Concerning the teachings of Aristotle. Moses and the prophets among the Hebrews set forth as the end of living blessedly the knowledge and friendship of the God of the universe, accomplished through piety, and taught that piety is true, that is, pleasing God through every virtue—for this is the cause of goods, since everything depends on God alone and all things are supplied by him to those who are dear to God. And Plato, defining things in harmony with these, declares virtue to be the end of happiness. But Aristotle, taking the other path, says that no one will be happy except through the well-being of the body and the possession of external goods, without which virtue itself is of no benefit. How the followers of Plato stood against him, refuting his false supposition, may be learned from these words:

4. From Atticus the Platonist, against Aristotle, who differed from Moses and Plato in his discourse on the end. "Since the whole of philosophy, by the common opinion of those who have philosophized, promises human happiness, and is divided threefold according to the creative distribution of the universe, the Peripatetic will be seen to fall so short of teaching anything of Plato's in these matters that, although there are many who differ from Plato, he himself will appear to be most opposed to him.

And first, from the common and greatest and most authoritative point, he made his divergence from Plato, not preserving the measure of happiness nor conceding that virtue is sufficient for this, but slipping from the power that resides in virtue and deeming that it needs the additions of fortune, so that he would choose happiness together with these, but if it were taken by itself, he faulted it as impossible and not attainable of happiness. Now, the ignoble and erroneous character of this opinion, both in this and in other matters, is not the time to demonstrate here. But this, I think, is clear: that since the goal and happiness are not equal nor the same according to Plato and according to Aristotle, but while the one continually cries out and proclaims that the most just is the most happy, the other does not allow happiness to follow virtue unless one also has good birth and beauty, and also gold—"who, having gold, goes to war like a maiden"—it is necessary that, according to the difference of the end, the philosophy that leads to it is also different. For one who walks on a single path, which naturally leads to something small and lowly, cannot come to the greater things that lie on high. "Do you see where that high crag is, rough and hostile, on which he sits, lightening your battle?" It is impossible for that sharp and crafty beast to ascend to this high crag.

so that the fox might come to the same place as the offspring of the eagle, either by some chance they must use, those men, falling badly to the earth when their own are destroyed, or she herself, blowing what she is not naturally able to blow, must swiftly circle wings and thus, lifted from the earth, fly up to the high crag. As long as each remains in its own order, there is no communion between the creatures of the earth and those of the heavens." And after other remarks he adds: "These things being so, and Plato attempting to draw the souls of the young upward somewhere toward the divine and in this way attaching them to virtue and the good, while persuading them to despise all other things, tell us, O Peripatetic, how will you teach these things? How will you guide the lovers of Plato to them? Where in your school is there such a height of discourse as to acquire the ambition of the Aloadae and to seek the road to heaven, which they thought could be made by the piling up of mountains, but which in fact is made by the removal of human concerns, as Plato says? What then is the help from you for the young in these matters? And from where comes the discourse that is the ally of virtue? From which of Aristotle's treatises? From which of his successors? From which unwritten teachings? I grant you, even if you wish to lie, only something bold. But indeed you have nothing to say, nor would any of the leaders of your school permit you. For Aristotle's treatises on these matters, those entitled Eudemian, Nicomachean, and the Great Ethics, think something small and low and common about virtue, and only as much as any layman, uneducated person, youth, or woman might.

For the diadem, so to speak, and the royal scepter, which virtue has received from Zeus as inalienable—since "what he has once nodded in assent is not revocable"—this they dare to take away from her. For they do not permit her to make people happy, but they make her similar to wealth, fame, birth, health, beauty, and all other things common to vice. For just as any one of these present without virtue is not sufficient to render its possessor happy, so too virtue, in the same way, without these is not capable of making its possessor happy. How then has the dignity of virtue not been overthrown and cast down? Yes, but they say that virtue far surpasses the other goods. What is this? For health surpasses wealth, but the fact that they are insufficient for happiness without each other is common to all. So whenever someone from these doctrines and this school teaches one who seeks the whole human good in the soul itself, he says that happiness does not mount a wheel, nor could one constrained by the fortunes of Priam be happy and blessed. But it is not unlikely that one who possesses virtue might fall into such circumstances. From this it follows that happiness neither accompanies in every case those who possess virtue, nor, if it does occur, does it always remain. "Some leaves the wind scatters on the ground, but others the flourishing wood puts forth; so the generation of men: one grows, another ceases." Further

The example you give is small and timid, O poet; but the season of spring comes on; the intervening time is long and such as does not occur. If you wish to accurately compare the perishable and rotten nature of the human race, compare the happiness of Aristotle. It is more easily than leaves both born and lost, not awaiting the revolving year, nor the same year, nor the same month, but on the same day, the same hour it both comes to be and perishes. Many are the things that destroy it, and all from fortune. For the afflictions of the body, which are countless, and poverty and dishonor and all such things; and the resources of dear virtue are sufficient for nothing, not capable for help; it is weak to ward off ill-fortune and to preserve happiness. Therefore, if someone is nurtured on these and pleased with these arguments, how will he either himself agree with the doctrines of Plato or ever encourage others towards them? For it is not possible that anyone starting from these would accept those Heraclean and divine doctrines, that virtue is something strong and altogether beautiful, and never lacking for happiness nor ever deprived of it, but even if poverty, even if disease, even if ill-repute, even if tortures and pitch and cross, even if all the things from tragedy together flow in, still the just man is happy and blessed. At any rate, he proclaims with the loudest herald, as if a victorious athlete, the most just man, that this one is most happy, who reaps the fruit of happiness from justice itself. Therefore, if you wish, divide and variegate, distinguishing goods threefold, fourfold, and manyfold.

For these things have nothing to do with the matter at hand. You will never bring us to Plato through them. For what if, as you say, among goods some are honorable, like the gods, some are praiseworthy, like the virtues, some are powers, like wealth and strength, and some are useful, like therapies? And what if, distinguishing these by a lesser division, you were to say that among goods some are ends, others not ends—calling ends those for the sake of which other things exist, and not ends those taken for the sake of others? And what if one were to learn that some goods are simple, others not for all; or that some are goods of the soul, others of the body, others external; or again that among goods some are powers, others dispositions and states, others activities, others ends, others materials, others instruments? And if, according to the ten categories, one were to learn from you to divide the good tenfold, what have these teachings to do with Plato’s opinion? For as long as you, whether homonymously or however you wish, call the things of virtue goods, but also take up other things as necessary for happiness, thus removing the self-sufficiency of virtue, while Plato, from an abundance, inquires about other things, having the full measure for happiness from virtue itself, we would have nothing in common in this regard. You need other arguments, and those of Plato need others. For just as there are no trustworthy oaths between lions and men, nor do wolves and lambs have like-minded spirit, so there is no friendship between Plato and Aristotle concerning the most supreme and most authoritative doctrine of happiness. For throughout, if they do not actually think ill of each other, at least they appear to say opposite things about the matters that bear on this.

Again, with Moses and the prophets among the Hebrews, and indeed also with Plato, having clearly set forth the account concerning providence over all things in agreement on these matters, Aristotle, having halted the divine as far as the moon, circumscribes the remaining parts of the cosmos from the governance of God; for which he is refuted by the aforementioned author, who proceeds somewhat as follows:

"Since there is still the greatest and most authoritative of the things contributing to happiness, namely the conviction concerning providence, which indeed most of all sets human life straight, if we are not going to be ignorant whether the race of earth-born men ascends to a high wall by justice or by crooked deceits, Plato refers everything to God and from God. For he says that he, having the beginning, middle, and end of all beings, proceeds straight on, going around. And again he says that he is good, and that no envy arises in the good concerning anything. And that, being outside of this, he makes everything as good as possible, bringing it into order from disorder. And that, caring for all things and ordering everything according to ability, he has taken thought also for human beings." And shortly after: "And Plato speaks thus. But the one who removes this divine nature from the scene, and cuts off the future hope of the soul, and takes away the reverence for higher beings in the present, what community does he have with Plato? Or how could he summon and confirm what is said to what Plato intends? For quite the opposite, this one would appear as a co-worker and fellow combatant for those who wish to do injustice.

Every man, being human and constrained by human appetites, if he despises the gods and considers that nothing pertains to him, since he is far removed from them in life, and after death no longer exists, would be ready to indulge his desires. For it is not impossible to gain assurance of escaping notice when doing wrong, at least if it is necessary to escape the notice of men; nor is it necessary to seek to escape notice entirely, where one is able to overpower those who have detected him. So despair of providence is a thing ready for injustice. For that man is indeed very good who, after offering us pleasure as a good and providing impunity from the gods, still thinks to devise a means against doing wrong, acting like a physician who neglects the help of the patient while still alive, but after death tries to contrive some devices for the salvation of the dead. Similarly to this is the Peripatetic. For it is not so much zeal for pleasure as disbelief that the divine cares for us that strengthens injustice. What then, someone might say, do you class Aristotle with Epicurus? Yes indeed, as far as the present matter is concerned. For what difference does it make to us whether the divine is removed from the world and leaves us no communion with it, or whether, having confined the gods within the world, it withdraws them from earthly affairs? For in both cases equally there is neglect of men by the gods, and equal impunity from the gods for those who do wrong.

But while they remain in heaven and we derive some benefit from them, this is common to both irrational and inanimate things, and even according to Epicurus this is a benefit to humans from the gods. For they say that the better emanations from them become causes of great goods for those who partake of them. But neither this nor that is justly to be counted as providence in the proper sense. For if, according to Epicurus, the concept of providence is destroyed, even though the gods according to him exercise every care for the preservation of their own goods, so too according to Aristotle the concept of providence would be destroyed, even if the things in heaven are administered in some order and arrangement. For we seek a providence that concerns us, of which there is no part for one who has conceded that neither daemons nor heroes nor souls in general can persist. And this, in my judgment, Epicurus seems to have done more shamefully: as if despairing of the gods' ability to refrain from caring for humans, he settled them in the same place as if in a foreign land and established them outside the cosmos, excusing their inhumanity by their separation and their lack of communion with all things. But this superfluous inventor of nature and of divine matters

having placed human affairs under the direct observation of the gods as an exact judge, he left them neglected and uncared for, governed by some nature and not by divine reason. Hence he would naturally not escape that charge which some divine against Epicurus, that he assigned a place to the gods in the universe not according to their will, but because of fear of humans, as if in a theater for a spectacle. And they make this a proof of the man's opinion, that he removed from them their activity towards us, from which alone the existence of the gods would have just credibility. For Aristotle does the same thing: having removed and entrusted belief to sight alone, he judges with weak reasoning things from such a distance, and perhaps out of reverence he would seem to say that the gods are here. For not leaving anything outside the cosmos, nor bringing the gods near to those on earth, he was compelled either to confess that he was altogether atheist or to preserve the opinion of seeming to leave the gods, having colonized the gods somewhere here. But he who declines the precision of the higher beings seems, by his aloofness, to disbelieve the gods with decorum." Thus Atticus against Aristotle, who was defaulting on the doctrine of providence. And the same author adds still these things to what has been said, addressing the same one who does not wish the cosmos to be generated.

1. Of the same author, against the same man who contended with Moses and Plato and in not allowing the cosmos to be generated. Moses defined the cosmos as generated and set God as maker and craftsman of the whole, and Plato philosophized the same as Moses. Aristotle, taking the opposite path even in this, is refuted by the aforementioned writer, who writes verbatim as follows: "First, then, considering the generation of the cosmos and deeming it necessary to investigate this great and beneficial doctrine of providence in everything, and reasoning that for that which is ungenerated there is need neither of any maker nor of any guardian for it to come to be well, he removed its ungeneratedness so as not to deprive the cosmos of providence. But we now beg off, lest those from the same hearth be an obstacle to us, to whom it is pleasing that the cosmos is ungenerated even according to Plato. For they are just to grant us pardon if we believe concerning what seems to Plato what he himself, being Greek, spoke to us Greeks with clear and distinct mouth. 'For,' he says, 'taking over all that was visible, not at rest but moving disorderly and irregularly, the god brought it into order from disorder, deeming this altogether better than that.' And even more, that he did not admit generation through riddles or for the sake of clarity, he makes clear through what the father of all spoke to him about this after the creation of the whole.

For," he says, "you have come into being" — he speaks to the gods — "you are not immortal nor entirely indissoluble, yet you will not be dissolved, having obtained my will." But, as I said, with those who whisper among us, being friends, we might have debated in a friendly and gentle manner with mild refutations. For it seems that Aristotle also changed these things, being unable to withstand the accusation of the doctrine, and not wishing to attribute to Plato the opinion that was caught as false. But according to our hearing, Plato deems the cosmos to have come into being as the most beautiful work by the most beautiful of craftsmen, and he attributes to the maker of the whole a power through which he made the cosmos, which previously did not exist, and having made it, he wishes to preserve it safe forever. And with the cosmos thus being both generated and imperishable according to him, which of the Peripatetics confirms these things for us? But one must console the fellow combatant of these men, that not everything that has come into being must necessarily be destroyed, nor, again, if something will not be destroyed, must it necessarily be ungenerated. For one must neither concede a single cause for imperishability from the ungenerated, nor leave the change to destruction unassisted for that which has come into being.

From where, then, shall we obtain help from Aristotle for these matters—a man who does not casually or on his own account complete the argument concerning them, but who, in direct opposition to Plato, both places what has come into being under the necessity of perishing and asserts that what does not perish is strengthened in its indestructibility solely from not having come into being, and who does not even leave any power in God himself, by using which he might do something good? For what has not yet come into being, he says, would not come into being either. And he is so far from assisting Plato's argument through these points that he has already frightened some of those who have been zealous about Plato's doctrines by what he said and turned them away from the doctrine, since they were unable to see that, according to the nature of things themselves, one could conceive of something without God's will and power—neither that what has come into being is indestructible, nor that what will not be destroyed is generated. But when one posits the best cause, that from God, one must take this as the leader of all things and declare it inferior to none of the other causes. For it is absurd that because something has come into being, it should therefore perish, but if God wills it, it should not perish; and that because something is ungenerated, it has the power not to perish, while the will from God is insufficient to preserve something that has come into being as indestructible.

And the builder is able to construct a house that does not exist, and someone is able to make a statue that was not there before, and another, having fashioned a ship from inert material, provides it to those in need, and each of the other craftsmen, as many as pursue the productive arts, have this power, to bring something from non-being into being. But will the universal king and master craftsman not partake even of the power of a human craftsman, and be for us devoid of all generation? No, not if we are able to grasp, even to a small extent, the reasoning of divine causation. But is he able to make and to will the good—"for he is good, and in the good there is no envy concerning anything"—yet unable to preserve and guard what has come to be? Yet even the other craftsmen are capable of both. The builder and the shipwright, for instance, not only construct new ships and houses, but are also able to assist those being destroyed by time, replacing the worn parts with others. So that at least this much must be conceded to God. For if someone is able to make a whole, how could he be unable to make a part? Therefore, something new must come to be, if indeed there is to be a maker at all, and the beautiful work must be preserved in its entirety; for to wish to destroy what has come to be well is the mark of a base thing. And there is no other bond greater for the preservation of what has come to be than the will of God.

or having partaken of human zeal and will, many nations and cities and works remain for an inconceivable time after their creator has ceased to exist, while those that have partaken of the will of God and have come into being through him and by him—will these, then, when their maker is present, pass away and not endure? What cause could compel the will of God? Is it the necessity arising from the things themselves? But that very necessity, by consenting to be ordered, has already acknowledged its defeat by God. Or is it some external cause contending against God? But there is none, nor, in the things over which God has already prevailed and which he has ordered, is it fitting that he should be inferior to anything, if indeed we are not entirely deceiving ourselves when we discourse about the greatest and most divine power. But we seem to be carried away by eagerness into the argument concerning truth. What we set out to prove is clear: that those who do not even allow a beginning of generation to the cosmos could not be teachers concerning its generation. And indeed, concerning the fifth substance of bodies, which Aristotle introduced, the following must be added.

7. FROM THE SAME AUTHOR TO THE SAME, ON THE FIFTH BODY, A SUBSTANCE WHICH NEITHER MOSES NOR PLATO KNEW. "Concerning the so-called elements, the primary bodies from which all other bodies are composed, Plato, following the evidence concerning them, just as those before him, declared that these are four in number, agreed upon: fire, earth, air, and water, and that from these, by combination and transformation, all other things are generated. Aristotle, however, as it seems, hoping to appear more exceptional in wisdom, if he were to add some body from an excess, added to the four visible bodies a fifth substance, treating nature very brilliantly and generously, but not perceiving that one who studies nature must not legislate, but rather investigate the things of nature itself. So, for the demonstration that the primary natures of bodies are four, which is necessary for the Platonists, the Peripatetic would not only contribute nothing, but would almost alone oppose it. For when we say that every body is either hot or cold, either dry or wet, either soft or hard, either light or heavy, either rare or dense, and find that there could not be anything else partaking of any of these besides the four—for if hot, either fire or air; if cold, water or earth; and if dry, fire or earth; if wet, water or air; and if soft, air or fire; if hard, water or earth; and light and rare, such as fire and air; heavy and dense, water and earth; and from all the other simple powers understanding that there could not be any other body besides these—

This one alone stands in opposition, claiming that a body can exist without any share of these—a body neither heavy nor light, neither soft nor hard, neither wet nor, for that matter, dry—all but saying a body that is not a body. For he has left it the name, but has stripped away all the powers through which a body naturally comes to be. Either, then, by persuading us of what he himself says, he will remove us from Plato's opinion, or, if Plato's views are confirmed, he will abandon his own positions; so that he is in no way useful for Plato's doctrines. Moreover, Plato holds that all bodies, when considered as resting upon a single, uniform matter, are subject to change and transformation into one another; whereas this other, in the case of the rest, posits a substance that is entirely impassible, indestructible, and immutable, evidently so that he may not seem to be the generator of something contemptible—saying nothing that is superfluous or entirely peculiar, but transferring what Plato had rightly observed in other contexts to matters where it does not belong, like certain sculptors of later times. For those, too, by imitating the head of one statue, the chest of another, and the girdle of yet another, and combining them into one, have sometimes convinced themselves that they have produced something original, though the parts do not belong together; and indeed the whole, which one might fault for lacking proportion, is theirs, while the elements gathered within it that possess any beauty are not their own.

Likewise, Aristotle, hearing from Plato that there is some intelligible substance, in itself incorporeal, colorless, and intangible, neither coming to be nor perishing nor changing nor altering, but always remaining the same and in the same state, and again hearing about the heavenly bodies, that they are divine, imperishable, and impassible bodies, compounded and glued together from both things that do not harmonize: for from some he took being a body, from others being impassible, and contrived an impassible body. Now in the case of statues, even if it is not beautiful to make them from disparate elements, it is not impossible. Homer, at any rate, teaches such things: for he says, eyes and head like Zeus who delights in thunder, the girdle like Ares, the chest like Poseidon. But an impassible body could never come to be. For bound as it is to a passible and changeable nature, it must necessarily sympathize with that to which it is yoked. And if something were impassible, it must be released and free from that which suffers; so that it would be separate from matter, and being separate, it would necessarily be acknowledged as incorporeal. Let us also attend to these points, in how many other matters he shows Aristotle to differ from Plato.

same, in his work On the Heavens, differing from Plato: "Next, there are many points of disagreement that follow from these. For one says that the heavenly bodies consist for the most part of the form of fire, while the other says that fire has no share in the heavens. And one says that the god kindled a light in the second orbit from the earth, so that it might shine as much as possible over the whole heaven, declaring this about the sun; the other, because he does not wish the sun to be fire, and knows that light is either pure fire or something of fire, does not allow a light to be kindled around it. Further, one, assigning indestructibility in form to all the heavenly bodies, says that certain departures and approaches of them occur proportionally; he is compelled to say these things, the separations being the rays and heats of the sun produced by its effluence, and the approaches being the equal illumination of its size, for it would not wish to appear equal without receiving something in return for what it emits. But Aristotle wishes them all to remain in the same substance entirely, with nothing departing from them or approaching them. Further, one, in addition to the common motion of the stars, according to which all stars, both fixed and wandering, move bound in their spheres, also assigns them another motion, which happens to be the most beautiful and appropriate to the nature of their body; for being spherical, each would naturally move with a spherical motion, revolving.

other says that he deprives them even of this motion, by which they move as animate beings, and leaves only the motion that comes from one another of the surrounding bodies, as happens to inanimate things. And indeed he says that the appearance we have from the stars as if they are moving is an affection of our sight, which is unable and, as it were, quivers, and is not truth; as if Plato derived his belief about motion from this appearance, and not from the argument that teaches that it is necessary that each of these, being a living being and having a soul and a body, moves with its own motion: "For every body that is moved from without is inanimate, but that which is moved from within itself is animate," and that, being divine, it moves with the best motion; and since the best motion is circular motion, it moves with this. Perception would bear witness to the things from the argument as being true, but it did not itself provide the belief in the motion. Concerning the motion of the universe, as it does not occur in some circle, he was unable to contradict Plato, being overcome by the evidence, but he introduced a difference here too, this fine discovery of the body. For Plato, since there are four bodies and all naturally move with a simple and straight motion—fire upward, earth toward the center, and the others toward the intermediate places—assigned circular motion to the soul; but the other, just as one body has one motion and another another, so

and also the circular motion, as if it were a kind of bodily motion, he assigned to the fifth body, having thoroughly deceived himself. For in the case of bodies moving in a straight line, heaviness and lightness provided the origin of motion, but the fifth body, partaking of neither heaviness nor lightness, has a cause rather of immobility than of circular motion. For if in the case of bodies moving in a straight line it is not the shape that is the cause of motion, but the inclination, a body placed not only in the middle of something similar will have no direction in which to incline, but also placed in a circle of any kind will have no cause of inclination toward anything, whether to the right toward the dawn and the sun, or to the left, or forward, or backward. Moreover, for the other bodies, when they are thrust out of their proper places, their reference to these places provides them with the ability to move again by themselves; but for that fifth body, which never departs from its own places, it would be fitting to remain. And concerning the other bodies, with the fifth excluded, Aristotle appears to be contentious in not saying the same things as Plato. For Plato inquired whether there is a body heavy by nature or light by nature, and since these appeared to be spoken of in relation to the up and down, he considered whether there is something naturally down and up or not, and demonstrated precisely that down is said for each in relation to the affinities of bodies to places, toward which they are borne, and up for each is the alien from which they recede, and according to the same relation he distributed the heavy and the light, and in addition to these demonstrated that it is not reasonable to call either the middle or the surrounding region up or down.

He sets himself against this from every side, thinking it necessary to overthrow his doctrines, and he forces himself to call that which is borne toward the middle heavy, and that which is borne toward the periphery light, and he calls the place in the middle down, and the periphery up. But concerning the cosmos and of what it consists and the things in the heavens, they stand so far apart from each other. These things he knows. But Moses and the oracles of the Hebrews busy themselves with none of these things; and reasonably so, because it was thought that preoccupation with such matters is of no benefit for the right conduct of life.

9. OF THE SAME AUTHOR AGAINST THE SAME, ALSO IN THE TREATISE ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL, IN DISAGREEMENT WITH PLATO AND THE ORACLES OF THE HEBREWS: "But concerning the soul, what should we say? For these things are clear not only to those who philosophize, but already to nearly all laymen as well: that Plato leaves the soul immortal and has composed many arguments on this subject, demonstrating in various and manifold ways that the soul is immortal. And there has been great ambition among those who have devoted themselves to Plato's works, contending for both the doctrine and for Plato. For this is almost the central point of the entire school of that man. For the foundation of the ethical doctrines followed from the immortality of the soul, since the great, brilliant, and vigorous character of virtue was able to be preserved because of the divine nature of the soul, and all the things of nature, through the governance of the soul, were able to be well governed. 'For every soul,' he says, 'cares for all that is soulless, and it ranges over the whole heaven, becoming in different forms at different times.' Moreover, the matters of knowledge and wisdom are also attached by Plato to the immortality of the soul.

For all acts of learning are recollections, and he does not think it possible otherwise to preserve both inquiry and learning, from which knowledge arises. But if the soul is not immortal, then there is no recollection; and if there is no recollection, then there is no learning. Therefore, since all of Plato's doctrines are entirely dependent on and hang from the divinity and immortality of the soul, he who does not grant this overturns the whole of Plato's philosophy. Who, then, was the first to set himself in opposition with proofs and to strip the soul of its immortality and of all its other power? And who else before Aristotle? For among the others, some conceded that it persists, while others, even if not that, at least assigned to the soul some power in the body, some motion, some works and actions. But he, to the same degree that Plato exalted the matter of the soul—declaring it a beginning of generation, a training ground of God, and the overseer of all things—so eagerly did he strive to destroy and dishonor it, and all but to declare the soul nothing. For it is neither breath nor fire nor any body at all, nor yet an incorporeal thing such as to exist by itself and to be moved; nor, for that matter, is it motionless in the body and, so to speak, soulless. For what a thing he dared, or was compelled to do, as to deprive the soul even of its primary motions: deliberation, thought, expectation, memory, reasoning. For these motions, he says, are not of the soul—this man who is, as they say, the secretary of nature. Indeed, he is so trustworthy in understanding something about external things, having so greatly erred about his own soul that he does not even perceive that he is thinking.

For it is not the soul, he says, but the human being that performs each of these actions, while the soul is thus unmoved. Following this, Dicaearchus, being capable of perceiving the logical consequence, has abolished the entire substance of the soul. That the soul is something invisible and unseen is clear, so that we would not grant the existence of the soul on the basis of the evidence from the senses; but its movements, though it is unseen, seem to compel us to admit that the soul is something. For everyone appears to understand that these belong to the soul: deliberating, considering, and thinking in whatever manner. For when we see the body and its faculties, and then reflect that such activities are not of the body, we grant that there is something else in us that deliberates, and that this is the soul. For from what other source did we come to believe in the soul? If, then, someone were to remove these things, by which the soul is most manifest, and attach them to some other entity, he would leave behind neither the source from which it appears to exist nor any usefulness it might seem to have. What help, then, is there for one who wishes the soul to be immortal from one who destroys the soul? And what teaching about the mode of motion, according to which we say it is self-moving, from those who assign it no motion at all? Yes, but someone might say that, at least regarding the immortality of the intellect, he shares common ground with Plato; for even if he does not wish the entire soul to be immortal, he does agree that the intellect is divine and imperishable.

What then the substance and nature of the mind is, whence it exists and from where it is introduced into human beings and where again it departs, the mind itself would know, if indeed it understands anything of what it says concerning the mind and does not, by veiling the difficulty of the matter with the obscurity of the argument, evade refutation, like cuttlefish procuring elusiveness from darkness. But in these matters too he certainly disagrees with Plato. For Plato says that it is impossible for mind to exist without soul, but he separates mind from soul. And as for immortality, Plato grants it to the soul together with the mind, as otherwise impossible, but he says that this belongs to the mind alone when separated from the soul. And he did not deem the soul worthy to depart from the body, because this pleased Plato, but he forced the mind to be torn away from the soul, because Plato judged such a thing impossible. So says Atticus. I will join to these also the words of Plotinus, which run as follows:

10. PLOTINUS, FROM THE SECOND TREATISE ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL, AGAINST ARISTOTLE WHO SAID THAT THE SOUL IS AN ENTELECHY

As for entelecheia, one might consider how it is said concerning the soul. They say that in the composite, the soul holds the rank of form relative to matter, the ensouled body, but not the form of every body nor of body as such, but of an organic body having life potentially. If, then, it is compared and likened as the shape of a statue to bronze, then when the body is divided, the soul would be divided along with it, and when some part is cut off, a portion of the soul would be with the severed part, and the withdrawal in sleep would not occur, since entelecheia must be inherent in that of which it is the entelecheia; and in truth, not even sleep would occur. And if entelecheia exists, there would be no opposition of reason to desires; the whole would be affected as one and the same throughout, not in discord with itself. Sensations perhaps could occur, but intellections would be impossible. Hence they themselves introduce another soul or mind, which they posit as immortal. Therefore the reasoning soul must be entelecheia in another way or in this manner, if one must use this term. Nor is the sensitive soul such, since even when the objects of sensation are absent it retains their impressions; it will not, then, hold them along with the body; but if not, they will be present as shapes and images; but it is impossible to receive others if they were present in this way. Therefore it is not as an inseparable entelecheia. And indeed, neither is the desiring part, which desires not foods nor drinks but other things beyond those of the body, itself an inseparable entelecheia. The remaining part would be the vegetative, which might seem to admit of dispute, whether it is in this manner an inseparable entelecheia. But not even this appears to be so.

For if the principle of every plant is around the root, and when the rest of the body withers, the soul in many plants is around the root and the lower parts, it is clear that, having abandoned the other parts, it has contracted into some one thing; therefore it was not in the whole as an inseparable entelecheia. And again, before the plant has grown, it is in the small bulk. If, then, it comes from a larger plant into a small one, and from a small one into the whole, what prevents it from being separated entirely? And how, being partless, could it become the entelecheia of a body that is divisible? And the same soul becomes that of another animal from another; how, then, could the soul of the former become that of the latter, if it were the entelecheia of one? This is evident from animals that change into other animals. Therefore it does not have its being by being the form of something, but it is a substance, not receiving its being from being established in a body, but being, even before becoming that of a particular thing, as, for example, the body of an animal does not generate the soul. What, then, is its substance? But if it is neither body nor affection of body, but action and production, and many things both in it and from it, being a substance apart from bodies, of what sort is it? Or is it clear that it is what we say truly is substance? For everything corporeal might be said to be generation, but not substance, coming to be and perishing, but never truly being, preserved by participation in being, insofar as it partakes of it. Since we have also gone through the views of Plotinus, it is not out of place to consider also what has been said by Porphyry in his *Against Boethus* concerning the soul.

11. PORPHYRY ON THE SAME SUBJECT: "To the one who says the soul is an entelechy and supposes that, being completely unmoved, it moves, one must reply: whence come the enthusiasms of the living being, which understands nothing of what it sees and says, while the soul sees both the future and what is not present and is moved in the same way? And whence, in the constitution of the living being, come the deliberations, considerations, and volitions of the soul as that of a living being, which are inclinations of the soul and not of the body?" Then he adds next: "But to liken the soul to heaviness or to uniform and unmoved bodily qualities, according to which the underlying subject is either moved or qualified, was the mark of one who has completely fallen away, whether willingly or unwillingly, from the dignity of the soul, and who has in no way observed that by the presence of the soul the body of the living being has become vital, just as by the presence of fire the adjacent water, cold in itself, becomes hot, and by the rising of the sun the air is illuminated, being dark without its radiance. But neither was the heat of the water the heat of the fire nor the fire itself, nor was the light in the air the light innate to the sun; likewise, neither is the ensoulment of the body, which resembles heaviness and a quality about the body, the soul that has been stationed in the body, through which the body partakes of some vital breath." Then after other things he adds next: "Now the other things that others have said about it bring shame upon us. For how is the account that posits the soul as an entelechy of a natural organic body not shameful?

How is it not full of shame, the one who renders the soul as somehow a breath, or as an intellectual fire, kindled or tempered, as it were, by the cooling and dipping of the air, or who posits it as an aggregation of atoms, or who declares outright that it is generated from body? Which argument he declared in the Laws to be impious and the argument of the impious. All these arguments, then, are full of shame. But concerning the one who says it is a self-moving substance, one would not, he says, be ashamed.

12. AGAINST THE ONE WHO DISAGREED WITH PLATO ON THE SUBJECT OF THE SOUL IN GENERAL: "Furthermore, when Plato says that the soul, pervading all things, orders the universe, and that it is that by which all other things would agree to be governed, and that nature is nothing other than soul, and clearly not irrational soul, and from these he concludes that everything happens according to providence, if indeed also according to nature—Aristotle agrees with none of this. For he says that nature is not soul, and that things on earth are governed by nature, but not governed by soul. For there are other causes for each thing. For of the heavenly things, which are always in the same state and alike, he posits fate as the cause; of things under the moon, nature; of human things, prudence, providence, and soul, providing the elegant in such divisions, but not seeing the necessary. For if there were not one ensouled power pervading the whole and binding and holding everything together, the whole could not be reasonably or beautifully governed.

It was surely the same blindness to expect that a city could ever be well ordered without unity, and to suppose that this universe is perfectly beautiful as it appears, while preserving it by discourse, without binding and harmonizing it through the communion of some single like thing. And it says that such a thing as governs each thing is something like a principle of motion, but it does not wish this to be soul, although Plato shows that for all things that are moved, the soul is the principle and source of motion. And what would be the work of a rational and prudent soul—to do nothing in vain—this it attributes to nature, but it does not give it the name of soul, as if names, and not the powers of things, were the basis of understanding.

13. AGAINST THE SAME ONE WHO ALSO MOCKED THE PLATONIC IDEAS, WHICH THE WORDS OF THE HEBREWS HAD ALREADY ESTABLISHED EARLIER, THOUGH HE DID NOT KNOW IT

"The capital and the authority of Plato's school, the arrangement concerning the intelligibles, has been dishonored, trampled upon, and in every way, so far as Aristotle could, outrageously insulted. For, being unable to comprehend that great, divine, and extraordinary things require a similar power for their recognition, and trusting in his own subtle and lowly acuteness, which was able to penetrate the things on earth and see the truth in them, but was not capable of surveying the plain of true reality, he used himself as the rule and judge of things above him, and denied that there are any such natures as Plato recognized, and dared to call the highest of beings nonsense, twaddle, and drivel.

Now the ultimate and final point of Plato's philosophical teachings is that concerning this intelligible and eternal substance of the Ideas, "where indeed the greatest toil and contest lies before the soul." For he who has partaken of it and attained it is altogether blessed, while he who has fallen short and been unable to become a spectator is left entirely without a share of blessedness. And for this reason Plato everywhere contends, demonstrating the power of these natures; for he says that it is not possible to give a proper account of any cause whatsoever without partaking of them, nor to have knowledge of anything true without reference to them, nor even to have a share in reason unless one acknowledges the substance of these things. And those who have undertaken to uphold Plato's doctrines very necessarily place the greatest struggle of their arguments in this point. For nothing of the Platonic system remains if one does not grant them these first and most fundamental natures on behalf of Plato. For it is by these that he most excels over others.

For having conceived God as father and creator and master and guardian of all things, and recognizing the craftsman from his works, he first conceived that which he was about to create, and then afterward applied the likeness to the actual things in accordance with what had been conceived. So then, the thoughts of God are prior to the things, the incorporeal and intelligible paradigms of generated things, always existing in the same and identical manner, being themselves primarily and principally beings, and being secondary causes for other things of each being such as it is, according to their likeness to them. Plato, seeing that these are not easily seen, nor can they be clearly expressed in speech, himself, as far as possible, spoke and thought about them and prepared those who would follow, having worked out these matters and arranged his entire philosophy toward this end. He says that the understanding of these, and wisdom, and knowledge, through which the human end and the blessed life are attained, are concerned with these things. So much from Atticus. And there was still more from the same author's writing that could have been cited, but being satisfied with what has been set forth, we shall move on to the Stoic school. Now, a hearer of Socrates was Antisthenes, a man of Heraclean spirit, who said that madness is better than pleasure; therefore he advised his acquaintances never to stretch out a finger for the sake of pleasure. A hearer of his was Diogenes the Cynic, who, having himself seemed to think in a most beastly manner, attracted many followers. He was succeeded by Crates.

From Crates came Zeno of Citium, who became the founder of the school of the Stoic philosophers. Zeno was succeeded by Cleanthes, Cleanthes by Chrysippus, and he by another Zeno and those thereafter. All these are said to have devoted themselves especially to a rigorous life and to dialectic. The doctrines of their philosophy are roughly as follows:

14. ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE STOICS AND HOW ZENO SET FORTH THE ACCOUNT OF PRINCIPLES, FROM THE SEVENTH BOOK ON PHILOSOPHY BY ARISTOCLES: "They say that the element of existing things is fire, as Heraclitus held, but that the principles of this are matter and god, as Plato held. However, this man says that both are bodies, both the active and the passive, whereas the other says that the first active cause is incorporeal. Then, at certain fated times, the whole cosmos is consumed by fire, and then again is ordered anew. The primary fire is, as it were, a seed, containing the rational principles and causes of all things that have happened, are happening, and will happen. The interweaving and sequence of these is fate, knowledge, truth, and law, being something inescapable and unavoidable. By this, all things in the cosmos are governed, as in a most well-ordered polity.

15. What opinion the Stoics hold concerning God and the constitution of the universe, from the Epitome of Arius Didymus: "They call the whole cosmos together with its own parts God; this they say is one only, and finite, and a living being, and eternal, and God. For in it all bodies are contained, and there is no void in it. For that which is qualified from the whole substance is called cosmos, and that which has such an ordering and arrangement. Therefore, according to the former account, they say the cosmos is eternal, but according to the ordering, it is generated and changeable in infinite cycles that have occurred and will occur. And that which is qualified from the whole substance is eternal and God; but cosmos is also said to be a system consisting of heaven, air, earth, sea, and the natures in them; and cosmos is also said to be the dwelling place of gods and men, and that which is composed of gods and men and the things that have come to be for their sake. For just as a city is spoken of in two ways—both the dwelling place and the system consisting of the inhabitants together with the citizens—so also the cosmos is like a city composed of gods and men, the gods holding the ruling principle, and men being subordinate. And there is a community among them because they partake of reason, which is law by nature; and all other things have come to be for their sake. In accordance with this, one must suppose that the god who administers the whole exercises providence for men, being beneficent, good, philanthropic, just, and possessing all the virtues. For this reason the cosmos is also called Zeus, because he is the cause of life for us.

insofar as it administers all things by a continuous reason unalterably from eternity, it is called Fate; and Adrasteia, because nothing can escape it; and Providence, because it arranges each thing for utility. Cleanthes held that the ruling part of the cosmos is the sun, because it is the greatest of the stars and contributes most to the administration of the whole, producing day and year and the other seasons. Some of the school thought that the earth is the ruling part of the cosmos, but Chrysippus held that it is the purest and most unmixed aether, since it is the most mobile of all and carries around the entire motion of the cosmos." Let these passages from the Epitome of Arius Didymus be set before us. For the Stoic opinion concerning God, it suffices to cite the words of Porphyry in his work Against Boethus, On the Soul, which run as follows:

10. Porphyry against the Stoic opinion concerning God: "They do not shrink from calling God an intelligent fire, eternal, and yet they leave him to destroy and consume everything, as being a fire of the sort familiar to us, and they contradict Aristotle, who refuses to say that the aether is such a fire. When asked how such a fire persists, they do not say that it is a different kind of fire, but having said this and demanded that we believe them on irrational faith, they add that it is also eternal, even though they hold that the aetherial part is extinguished and kindled in part.

But as for their blindness toward their own matters, and their laziness and contempt toward those of the ancients, why should one prolong the discourse further?

17. That Being is not body according to the Stoics, from the First On the Good of Numenius: "But what then is Being? Are these four elements, earth and fire and the other two intermediate natures? Are these then the beings, either collectively or individually? And how, since they are both generated and reversible, if indeed one can see them coming into being from each other and interchanging, and neither existing as elements nor as compounds? Body in this way would not be Being. But are these not, then, and can matter be Being? But that is even more impossible, due to its weakness in remaining; for matter is a flowing and swift-moving river, indefinite and unending in depth, breadth, and length." And shortly after he adds: "So the argument has rightly said that if matter is infinite, it is indefinite; if indefinite, irrational; if irrational, unknowable. And being unknowable, it must necessarily be disorderly, since orderly things would presumably be quite easy to know; but the disorderly does not stand, and what does not stand would not be Being. This is what we agreed among ourselves earlier, that it is unlawful for all these to be brought together with Being. Let it be believed by all, if possible, but if not, at least by me. Therefore I say that neither matter itself nor bodies are Being. What then? Do we have something else besides these in the nature of the whole? Yes. This is nothing complicated to say, if we first try to examine it in ourselves while conversing.

Since bodies are by nature dead and lifeless and carried about and not even remaining in the same state, would they not need something to hold them together? Most certainly. And if they did not obtain this, would they remain? Least of all. What then is it that will hold them together? If indeed this too were a body, it would seem to me to need a Zeus Soter, itself being dissolved and scattered. But if it must be free from the affection of bodies, so that it may be able to ward off corruption for those bodies when they are in turmoil and hold them together, it seems to me that it is nothing other than the incorporeal alone; for this alone of all natures stands fixed and is firmly established and has nothing bodily. It neither comes to be nor grows nor is moved with any other motion, and for these reasons it rightly appeared just to give precedence to the incorporeal.

18. How the Stoics opine concerning the conflagration of the universe

"It is the opinion of the most ancient members of this sect that everything is resolved into aether, at certain greatest periods, all things being dissolved into ethereal fire." And he continues: "From these things it is clear that Chrysippus did not adopt this confusion with regard to substance; for that is impossible; but rather the one spoken of in place of change. For those who dogmatize the resolution of all things into fire, which they call conflagration, do not properly adopt corruption with regard to the destruction of the cosmos occurring at the greatest periods, but they use the term corruption in place of natural change. For it is the opinion of the Stoic philosophers that the whole substance changes into fire, as into a seed, and that from this the same ordering as before is again produced.

And this doctrine the first and most ancient members of the school adopted, Zeno and Cleanthes and Chrysippus. For they say that Zeno, his disciple and successor of the school, hesitated concerning the conflagration of the universe.

19. How the Stoics think concerning the regeneration of the universe. "Having advanced to such a point, the common reason and common nature, having become greater and more abundant, finally dries up everything and takes it back into itself, becoming in the whole substance, returning to the first-mentioned reason and to that resurrection which makes the greatest year, in which the restoration occurs from itself alone back to itself. And having returned through order, from which it began to order similarly, it again conducts the same course according to reason, such cycles occurring unceasingly from eternity. For it is not possible for the cause to have a beginning or an end, nor for that which governs them. For there must be a substance underlying the things that come to be, which is naturally able to receive all changes, and that which creates from it, just as in us there is a nature that creates, so of necessity there is something of this kind in the cosmos, ungenerated. For it is not possible for there to be a beginning of generation for this nature; just as it is ungenerated and impossible for it to be destroyed, neither from itself nor from anything external that would destroy it.

20. How the Stoics Think about the Soul. "Zeno says that the seed which a man emits is a breath with moisture, a part and offshoot of the soul, a blend and mixture of the parts of the soul of the ancestors gathered together; for this, having the same principles as the whole, when it is released into the womb, being conceived by another breath, a part of the soul of the female, and becoming united, hidden, it grows, moving and being fanned by that, always taking in moisture and increasing from itself." And shortly after he adds: "Concerning the soul, Cleanthes, setting forth the doctrines of Zeno for comparison with the other natural philosophers, says that Zeno calls the soul a sentient exhalation, just as Heraclitus does. For wishing to show that souls, when exhaled, always become intelligent, he likened them to rivers, speaking thus: 'Into the same rivers different waters flow; and souls are exhaled from the moistures.' So Zeno declares the soul to be an exhalation, like Heraclitus, and he says it is sentient for this reason, because its ruling part can be impressed by existing and subsisting things through the sense organs and can receive these impressions. For these are properties of the soul." And after other things: "They say that soul exists in the whole, which they call aether, and air around the earth and sea, and exhalations from these; and the other souls, both those in animals and those in the surrounding environment, are attached to this; for the souls of the dead still persist.

Some say that the soul of the whole is eternal, but the rest are blended into it at the end. Every soul has in itself a ruling part, which is life and perception and impulse." And a little later: "They say that the soul is both generated and perishable; but it is not immediately destroyed when separated from the body, but persists for some time on its own—the soul of the wise until the resolution of all things into fire, and that of the foolish for certain periods. They say that souls persist in this way, because we ourselves persist as souls when separated from the body and changed into a lesser substance, that of the soul. The souls of the foolish and of irrational animals perish together with their bodies." Such are the doctrines of Stoic philosophy collected from the Epitomes of Arius Didymus. Against the absurd opinion of these men concerning the soul, the brief refutation by Longinus, our contemporary, suffices, in these words:

21. Longinus's Refutation of the Stoic Opinion on the Soul. "To speak concisely, it seems to me that all who have declared the soul to be a body are far from reasoning correctly. For how is it at all possible to posit that it is similar to any of the elements, or to refer it to mixtures and blends? These, occurring in many ways, are naturally able to generate ideas of countless other bodies, in which, even if not continuously, one can still see from afar the cause of the elements and the starting point from the first principles to the second and third.

of the soul there is found no trace or evidence in the bodies, even if one were ambitious, like Epicurus and Chrysippus, to move every stone and to search out every power of the body for the generation of the actions of the soul. For what would the fineness of our breath avail for the production of images and reasonings? And what? The shape of atoms has such power and change beyond others that it generates intelligence, when it is mixed into the formation of another body? I think that not even if one were to chance upon the tripods of Hephaestus and the handmaidens of which Homer speaks, which go by themselves to the contest, and which work together with their master and lack none of the advantages that living beings have, would they, I say, be able to do anything more than the spontaneous particles. And they resemble the stones on the seashore in their ability to do anything more in regard to perception. For one might justly be indignant with Zeno and Cleanthes, who have discoursed so insultingly about it and have both declared the soul to be the same exhalation of the solid body. For what, in the name of the gods, is there in common at all between an exhalation and a soul? And how is it possible, having supposed that our own substance and that of other animals resembles this, to preserve on the one hand images and memories, and on the other

impulses and volitions toward the comprehension of advantageous matters? Or shall we then also set down the gods and the power that extends through all things, both earthly and heavenly, as exhalation and smoke and such nonsense, and not even feel shame before the poets, who, although they do not have precise understanding of the gods, have nevertheless said more reverent things about them, partly from common human conception, partly from the inspiration of the Muses, which naturally moves them to these things, and not exhalations or airs or breaths and drivel?» These things Longinus says to you; but also listen to Plotinus speaking in this way against the same people:

22. Against the Stoics, that the soul cannot be corporeal. From Plotinus, On the Soul, I: «But if each of us is immortal, or if every part perishes, or if some parts of him go off into dispersion and destruction while others remain forever, which are what he himself is, one might learn this by examining according to nature. Man would not be something simple, but there is in him a soul, and he also has a body, whether it is an instrument for us or attached in some other way. But let it be distinguished in this way, and let the nature and essence of each be contemplated. The body, then, being itself composite, can neither remain by reason, nor does perception see it as anything but dissolved and melted and subject to all kinds of destruction, each of its constituent parts being borne toward its own, destroying one another, changing into something else and perishing, and especially when the soul that makes them friendly is not present to the masses.

If each generated thing were isolated, it is not one, since it admits dissolution into form and matter, from which even the simple bodies must have their composition. And indeed, having magnitude, since they are bodies, they are divisible and break into small parts, and in this way would undergo destruction. So if this is a part of us, we are not wholly immortal; if it is an instrument, it would have to be given for a certain time and be of such a nature. The most important point is that the human being himself, whether according to form, as body is to matter, or according to that which uses, as instrument, in either way the soul is the human being himself. What nature, then, does this have? If it is a body, it must be dissolved entirely, for every body is composite. But if it is not a body, but of another nature, that nature must be examined either in the same way or in another. First, we must examine into what this body, which they call soul, must be dissolved. Since life is necessarily present in the soul, it is necessary that this body, the soul, if it consists of two or more bodies, either each of them or each one has innate life, or one has it and the other does not, or neither has it, or none has it. If life belongs to one of them, this very thing would be the soul. What body, then, would have life from itself? For fire, air, water, and earth are inanimate by themselves, and whatever of these has a soul uses life as something adventitious. There are no other bodies besides these; and even for those who think there are elements other than these, they were said to be bodies, not souls, and not having life. But if, when none of them has life, their combination produces life, that is absurd. And if each has life, one suffices.

But rather it is impossible for a conglomeration of bodies to produce life and for senseless things to generate mind. And indeed they will not claim that these things come to be by just any kind of mixture. Therefore there must be that which orders and is the cause of the mixture; so that this would have the order of soul. For not only would a composite body not be among existing things without soul being present in the universe, but not even a simple body would, since reason approaching matter makes a body, and reason would approach from nowhere else than from soul. But if someone should say, not in this way, but that atoms or indivisible parts coming together produce soul, they would be refuted by the union and common affection and by juxtaposition, since a single whole does not come to be throughout, nor does something sympathetic come from impassive bodies that cannot be united; but soul is sympathetic to itself. And from indivisible parts neither a body nor magnitude would come to be. And indeed, if the body is simple, they will not claim that the material aspect by itself has life—for matter is without quality—but that the aspect ordered according to form brings life. If they say that this form is a substance, not the compound, then the soul will be one of these two; which will not be a body, for it is not itself from matter, or we will analyze it in the same way again. But if they say it is an affection of matter, not a substance, they must state from what the affection and life have come into matter. For matter does not form itself nor implant soul in itself. Therefore there must be something that supplies life, whether the supply is to matter or to any of the bodies, being outside and beyond bodily nature, since no body would exist at all if no psychic power existed.

For its nature flows and is in motion, and it would perish very quickly if everything were bodies, even if one were to give the name of soul to one of them. For it would suffer the same as the other bodies, since they share a single matter. Rather, not even would it come to be, but everything would stand still in matter, there being nothing to give it form. Perhaps matter itself would not exist at all; and this entire universe would be dissolved if one were to trust it to a conglomeration of body, granting it the rank of soul only in name, to air and to the most dispersible breath, which does not possess its unity from itself. For how, when all things are divided into bodies, could anyone, by attributing this universe to some one of them, avoid making it mindless and carried about at random? What order is there in a breath that requires order from soul, or reason, or mind? But if soul exists, all these things serve it for the constitution of the cosmos and of each living being, with a different power from another contributing to the whole; but if this power is not present in the whole, these things would be nothing, not to mention in order. And they themselves bear witness, led by the truth, that there must be something prior to bodies, a form of soul superior to them, positing intelligent breath and intellectual fire, as if the superior portion among beings could not exist without fire or breath, but seeks a place in which to be established, whereas they ought to seek where bodies will be established, since these must be established in the powers of soul. But if they posit nothing besides breath as life and soul, then their much-talked-about "how it is" — how is it? — to which they flee, when compelled to posit another active nature besides bodies?

If, then, not every breath is soul, because there are countless breathless spirits, they will say that it is breath "in a certain state," and this "in a certain state" and this relation will they say is something among beings or nothing. But if it is nothing, it would be only breath, and the "in a certain state" a name; and thus it will turn out for them that they say nothing else exists except matter, and soul and god, and that everything is name, and that alone is. But if the relation is among beings and something other than the underlying subject and matter, being in matter but itself immaterial in that it is not again composed of matter, it would be some reason and not body and a different nature. Moreover, from the following it is no less evident that it is impossible for the soul to be any body whatsoever. For it is either hot or cold, or hard or soft, liquid or solid, black or white, and all such qualities of bodies as are different in different things. And if it is hot, it will only heat; if cold, it will only cool; and the light will make things light when it is present and added, and the heavy will make heavy, and the black will blacken, and the white will make white. For it is not the property of fire to cool, nor of the cold to make things hot. But the soul, in different animals, does different things, and in the same animal does opposite things, congealing some, melting others, making some dense and others rare, black and white, light and heavy; yet it ought to do one thing according to its

of the body, and other quality and color, but now many. And how are the motions different, and not one, if there is one motion of every body? If they will attribute some to choices and others to reasons, this is correct, but choice is not of the body, nor are reasons, since they are different, while the body is one and simple and does not partake of such a reason, except as much as is given to it by its maker to be hot or cold. And to increase in time and up to a certain measure, how could this come to the body itself? To which it belongs to increase, but it itself has no share in increasing, except as much as it might be taken up in the mass of matter serving that which works the increase through it. For if the soul, being a body, were to cause increase, it would necessarily itself increase, by the addition of a similar body, evidently, if it is to keep pace with that which is increased by it. And either the soul will be that which is added, or an inanimate body. And if it is soul, from where and how does it enter and how is it added? But if that which is added is inanimate, how will it become ensouled and agree with the former and be one and partake of the same opinions as the first? But this soul will not be like a foreign soul in ignorance of what the other knows. And if, as the other mass of us, some part of it flows away and some part is added, nothing remains the same. How then do we have memories? How do we have knowledge of our own, never using the same soul?

And indeed, if it is a body, and the nature of body is to be divided into more parts, each not being the same as the whole, then if the soul is a magnitude of such a size, whatever is smaller will not be soul, just as every quantity, by subtraction, has changed its former state. But if something among things having magnitude, when its bulk is diminished, remains the same in quality, then insofar as it is body, it is different, and insofar as it is quantity, but in quality, which is different from quantity, it can preserve sameness. What then will those who say the soul is a body affirm? First, concerning each part of the soul in the same body, whether each part is soul, of the same kind as the whole? And again, the part of the part? Therefore magnitude contributed nothing to its essence; yet it should have, since it is a quantity; and the whole is in many places, which is impossible for a body, that the same whole be in many places and that the part be what the whole is. But if they will say that each of the parts is not soul, then soul will consist for them of soulless parts. And further, if the magnitude of each soul is determined in either direction, either toward the smaller or toward the larger, it will not be soul. Therefore, when from the union of one and the same seed twin offspring are born, or even, as in other animals, many, when the seed is divided into many places, each of which is the whole, how does this not teach those willing to learn that where the part is the same as the whole, this has transcended quantity in its own essence, and it must necessarily be without quantity? For in this way it would remain the same, when quantity is subtracted, since quantity and bulk do not matter to it, as its essence is something else.

The soul, therefore, is without magnitude, and so are its rational principles. That if the soul were a body, neither perception nor intellection nor knowledge nor virtues nor any of the noble things would exist, is clear from the following: if something is to perceive something, it must be one and the same thing that apprehends everything, even if through many sense-organs more things enter or many qualities are present about one thing, or even if through one organ a complex thing, such as a face. For it is not one part that perceives the nose, another the eye, but the same thing perceives all together. And if one thing comes through the eyes, another through hearing, there must be some one thing into which both enter; otherwise, how could it say that these are different, unless the sense-impressions come together into the same thing? This must therefore be like a center, with lines from the circumference of a circle, the senses from all sides, terminating at this point, and that which apprehends must be truly one. But if this were divided, and the senses were to impinge upon it like the two ends of a line, either they will converge again into one and the same thing, such as the middle, or into different things; and each different thing will have perception of its own, just as if I perceived one thing and you another. And if the sense-impression, such as a face, were one, it will be contracted into one, which is indeed what appears; for it is contracted even in the pupils themselves—or how else could the largest things be seen by them?—so that, even more, when they go to the ruling part, they become like indivisible thoughts. And this will be indivisible, or if it has magnitude, it would be divided along with it, so that one part would perceive one part of the object and another another, and none of us would have apprehension of the whole sense-object. But in fact the whole is one; for how could it be divided?

For the equal will not be fitted to the equal, because that which rules is not equal to every perceptible thing. According to what magnitudes, then, will the division occur? Or will it be divided into as many parts as the entering perception has number for variety? And will each of those parts of the soul then perceive with its own parts, or will the parts of the parts be insensible? But that is impossible. But if any part perceives everything, since magnitude is naturally divisible to infinity, it will result that there are infinite perceptions for each perceptible thing in each case, for example, infinite images of the same thing in that which rules in us. And indeed, if that which perceives is a body, perception could occur in no other way than as seals impressed on wax from rings, whether the perceptions are impressed into blood or into air. If as in fluid bodies, which is plausible, as into water, they will be confused, and there will be no memory; but if the impressions persist, either it is not possible for others to be impressed while those occupy the place, so that other perceptions will not occur, or when others occur, those earlier ones will be destroyed, so that there will be nothing to remember. But if remembering exists and other perceptions occur in addition to others, the former not hindering, it is impossible for the soul to be a body. One might also see this same thing from the perception of pain. When a man is said to have a pain in his finger, the pain is presumably around the finger, but the perception of pain clearly they will agree occurs in the ruling part. Since the part that suffers is different, the ruling part of the spirit perceives, and the whole soul experiences the same thing.

How then does this happen? By transmission, they will say, the psychic pneuma around the finger being first affected, and then transmitting to the next, and this to another, until it reaches the commanding part. It is necessary, therefore, that if the first perceived pain, the perception of the second is different, and if perception is by transmission, then the perception of the third is also different, and many perceptions, even infinite, arise concerning a single pain, and the commanding part perceives all these later, and its own perception after them. But the truth is that each of those perceptions is not of the pain in the finger, but the one next to the finger perceives that the tarsus is in pain, the third that something else higher up is in pain, and there are many pains; and the commanding part does not perceive the pain near the finger, but only the pain near itself, and knows only this, letting the others go, not knowing that the finger is in pain. If, therefore, perception by transmission cannot occur in such a way, nor can it occur for a body, since it is a mass, and the knowledge of one part when another is affected is impossible—for in every magnitude one part is different from another—it is necessary to posit that which perceives as being such that it is everywhere the same as itself. This belongs to something other than a body. That it is not possible to think either, if the soul is any kind of body, must be shown from the following: for if perceiving is the soul apprehending perceptibles by using the body, then thinking would not be comprehending through the body, or it would be the same as perceiving. If, then, thinking is

of the body to apprehend, much earlier it is necessary that that which thinks not be a body, since perception is of sensibles, intellection of intelligibles. But if they do not wish this, still there will be intellections of some intelligibles and apprehensions of things without magnitude. How then will that which is magnitude think that which is not magnitude, and how will the divisible think the indivisible? Or by some indivisible part of itself? If this is so, that which thinks will not be a body. For there is no need of the whole to touch; one part suffices. If, then, they will concede that the primary intellections, which is true, are of the things most pure of body, of the absolute each, it is necessary that that which thinks, being or becoming pure of body, know them. But if they say that the intellections are of the forms in matter, still they occur when the bodies are separated, the intellect separating them. For the separation of circle and triangle and line and point is not with flesh or with matter at all. Therefore the soul too must separate itself from body in such a case. Therefore it must not itself be a body. And I think that the beautiful and the just are without magnitude, and so the intellection of them is without magnitude, so that their parts will be received in it and lie indivisibly in it. How could virtues of the soul, such as temperance and justice and courage and others, exist if the soul is a body? For temperance or justice or courage would be some pneuma or some blood, unless courage is the impassibility of the pneuma, and temperance its good mixture, and beauty some good form in shapes, according to which we say when we see people that they are handsome and beautiful in body. To a strong and beautiful pneuma in shapes it would be fitting, but why should a pneuma be temperate?

But not the opposite, to fare well in embraces and touches, where it will either be heated or moderately yearn for coolness or come into contact with some soft, tender, and smooth things. And what concern would it have to assign what is fitting? And does the soul apprehend the theorems of virtue and the other intelligibles as eternal, or does virtue come to be for someone and benefit and then perish? But who makes it and from where? For in that way that thing would again remain. So it is necessary that they be eternal and abiding, like those in geometry. And if they are eternal and abiding, they are not bodies. So it is necessary that that in which they will be is also such; so it is necessary that it not be a body. For the nature of every body does not abide but flows. And if, seeing the actions of bodies—heating, cooling, pushing, weighing down—they place the soul here, as if establishing it in a place of activity, first they are ignorant that even here bodies accomplish these things by the incorporeal powers in them; next, that we do not claim these powers are in the soul, but rather thinking, perceiving, reasoning, desiring, caring intelligently and well, all of which seek another substance. So transferring the powers of incorporeals to bodies, they leave none to those. And that bodies are able to do what they do by incorporeal powers is clear from the following: for they will agree that quality and quantity are different, and that every body is a quantity, and further that not every body is a quality, like matter. And agreeing to these, they will agree that quality, being other than quantity, is other than body. For how, not being a quantity, will it be a body, if every body is a quantity?