57. While, then, this is the
case, and it cannot but be that only one of all these opinions is true,
they all nevertheless make use of arguments in striving with each
other,—and not one of them is without something plausible to say,
whether in affirming his own views, or objecting to the opinions of
others. In exactly the same way is the condition of souls
discussed. For this one thinks that they both are immortal, and
survive the end of our earthly life; that one believes that they do not
survive, but perish with the bodies themselves: the opinion of
another, however, is that they suffer nothing immediately, but that,
after the form of man has been laid aside, they are allowed to
live a little longer,3801
| 3801
Lit., “something is given to them to life.” So the
Stoics taught, although Chrysippus (cf. n. 9, ch. 31, p. 446) held that
only the souls of the wise remained at all after death. |
and then come under the
power of
death. And while all these opinions cannot be alike true, yet all
who hold them so support their case by
strong and very weighty
arguments, that you cannot find out anything which seems false to you,
although on every side you see that things are being said altogether at
variance with each other, and inconsistent from their opposition to
each other;
3802
| 3802
The ms., first four edd., and Oehler
read et rerum contrarietatibus dissonare—“and
that they disagree from the oppositions of things.” Hild.
reads dissonora, a word not met with elsewhere, while the other
edd. merely drop the last two letters, -re, as above; a reading
suggested in the margin of Ursinus. |
which
assuredly would not happen, if man s curiosity could reach any
certainty, or if that which seemed
to one to have been
really
discovered, was
attested by the approval of all the others. It is therefore
wholly
3803
| 3803
Lit., “a most vain thing,” etc. |
vain, a
useless task, to bring forward something as though you knew it, or to
wish to assert that you know that which, although it should be true,
you see can be refuted; or to receive that as true which it may be is
not, and is brought forward as if by men raving. And it is
rightly so, for we do not weigh and guess at
3804
| 3804
So the ms., LB., Elmenh., Hild., and
Oehler, reading conjectamus, the other edd. reading
commetamur or -imur—“measure,” except
Gelenius and Canterus, who read commentamur—“muse
upon.” |
divine things by divine, but by human
methods; and just as we think that anything should have been made, so
we assert that it must be.
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