9. What, have you seen with
your eyes, and handled3455
| 3455 Lit.,
“with ocular inspection, and held touched.” |
with your
hands, those things which you
write yourselves, which you
read from time to time
on subjects placed beyond human
knowledge? Does not each one
trust this
author or that? That which any one has
persuaded
himself is said with
truth by another, does he not
defend with a
kind
of assent, as it were,
like that of
faith? Does not he who
says that
fire3456
| 3456
“Fire” is wanting in the ms. |
or
water is
the origin of all things, pin his
faith to Thales or Heraclitus? he who
places the cause
of all in numbers, to Pythagoras of Samos,
and to Archytas? he who divides the
soul, and sets up bodiless
forms, to Plato, the
disciple of Socrates? he who adds a fifth
element
3457
| 3457
Arnobius here allows himself to be misled by Cicero
(Tusc., i. 10), who explains ἐντελέχεια as
a kind of perpetual motion, evidently confusing it with ἐνδελέχεια
(cf. Donaldson, New Crat., § 339 sqq.), and
represents Aristotle as making it a fifth primary cause. The word
has no such meaning, and Aristotle invariably enumerates only four
primary causes: the material from which, the form in which, the
power by which, and the end for which anything exists (Physics,
ii. 3; Metaph., iv. 2, etc.). |
to the primary
causes, to Aristotle, the
father of the Peripatetics? he who threatens
the
world with
destruction by fire, and says that when the time
comes it will be
set on fire, to Panætius, Chrysippus,
Zeno? he who is always fashioning worlds from atoms,
3458
| 3458
Lit., “with indivisible bodies.” |
and destroying
them, to
Epicurus, Democritus, Metrodorus? he who
says that nothing is
comprehended by man, and that all things are wrapt in dark
obscurity,
3459
to
Archesilas,
3460
| 3460
So the ms., LB., and Hildebrand,
reading Archesilæ, while the others read
Archesilao, forgetting that Arcesilas is the regular Latin form,
although Archesilaus is found. |
to
Carneades?—to some teacher, in fine, of the old and later
Academy?
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
