Having in the preceding book gone through as much as there was to say and to hear concerning the philosophy of Plato, both its agreement with the oracles of the Hebrews, on account of which we have been struck with admiration for the man, and again its disagreement with them, on account of which no one in his right mind would accept him, I now pass on to the remaining schools of those among the Greeks who have been renowned for philosophy.
And their slip away from the truth, in turn, I shall set before the eyes of my readers to consider, not on my own authority nor from myself, but by the testimony once more of the Greek voices themselves; not indeed out of any hostility toward these men, for whom I confess I hold great admiration, whenever I compare them with other men, as men.
But when I compare them to the theologians and prophets of the Hebrews, and to the God who through these has made predictions of things to come and displays of wonders, and moreover has laid down the teaching of pious lessons and true doctrines, I no longer think anyone could reasonably find fault, if we honor God above men, and truth itself above mortal reasonings and conjectures.
All this the present treatise of the Preparation has been eager to demonstrate, as both an answer and a defense to those who will ask what good or dignified thing we have seen in the writings of the barbarians, that we should have determined to prefer them to our ancestral and noble philosophy—I mean that of the Greeks. But let our demonstration now proceed by way of the actual facts.
I think it necessary, first of all, to begin from above, from the very first founding of the philosophers among the Greeks, and to learn about those called physical philosophers who arose before Plato—who they once were, and what sort of champions of reasoned discourse their philosophy happened to have—then to proceed to the succession of Plato, and to learn who these in turn were, and to examine their verbal battles with one another; and also to review the divisions among the other schools, and the opposing positions of their opinions, in which I shall display these noble men boxing and contending ambitiously with one another, as if to spectators upon a stage.
Let us then straightway observe how Plato mocked those who came before him, and how others mocked Plato's own household and successors; and again how Plato's companions refuted the wisdom of Aristotle's much-vaunted intellect; and how those who took pride in Aristotle and the Peripatos showed that the opinions of those who championed the opposite view amounted to nothing.
And you shall also see the formidable and precise subtleties of the Stoics' hair-splitting arguments mocked in turn by others, and all of them, from every side, covering themselves with dust against their neighbors and setting up battle and wrestling most manfully, as if waging war against one another already by hands and tongue, or rather by pen and ink, all but hurling and being pelted with the spears and full panoplies fashioned from their arguments.
Our arena will also contain, in this athletic contest, besides those already mentioned, those stripped of all truth—both those who took up arms in opposition to all the dogmatic philosophers together, I mean the followers of Pyrrho, who declared that nothing among men is comprehensible, and those of the school of Aristippus, who say that only the passions are comprehensible, and again those of the school of Metrodorus and Protagoras, who assert that one must trust only the senses of the body.
And, conversely, alongside these, we shall also strip for the contest the followers of Xenophanes and Parmenides, who arrayed themselves on the opposite side and did away with the senses.
Nor shall we pass over the champions of pleasure, but shall enroll Epicurus, their finest, together with those already named. And against all of them together we shall set our refutation, using their own weapons against them.
And of all those called physical philosophers together, I shall bring into the open both the disagreements of their doctrines and the useless learning of their zeal—being by no means a hater of the Greeks nor a hater of reason, far from it, but rather clearing myself of the slanderous charge that we have preferred the oracles of the Hebrews because we had least share in Greek education.
The Hebrews, then, from of old, from a long age, and, so to speak, from the very first origin of mankind, having searched out piety and true philosophy, have preserved it undefiled down to those who came after, child receiving from father the treasure of true words and guarding it, so that no one has dared either to add to or take away from what was once decided.
Thus neither did the all-wise Moses—shown in the preceding books to be older than all the Greeks, yet in age the last-born of the earlier Hebrews—have any intention of moving or altering anything of what had seemed right to the forefathers concerning the doctrinal theology, except in so far as he laid down legislation for the men under him regarding a manner of life suited to them and a certain intermediate polity.
Nor have the prophets who came after him, shining forth in countless cycles of years later, dared to utter with their voice any discordant word, either among themselves or against what had been held by Moses and by those beloved of God of old.
Nor indeed has our own school of instruction, having set out from that same source and, by divine power, having filled together all Greece and the barbarian world, embraced anything discordant with what went before—unless someone should say that it hands down the same manner of life, not only in the doctrines of theology, but also in the mode of living, as that of the Hebrews beloved of God before Moses.
Such, then, are our own affairs, attested with one mind and one voice by the first, the middle, and the last, sealing with every vote the certainty of true piety together with philosophy, and filling the whole inhabited world, growing young and flourishing every day, as though only just now laying down their first bloom; and neither the ordinances of laws, nor the plots of enemies, nor the swords of foes, often sharpened, have shown themselves more powerful than the virtue of the doctrines which we have pursued.
But as for the affairs of Greek philosophy, being ever tossed about, let us now see what strength it has actually shown, sending down into the contest first of all those called the physical philosophers; how those said to have shone forth before Plato waged factional strife against one another can be learned from Plato himself, who indeed exposes the followers of Protagoras and Heraclitus, and the conflict with Parmenides and his circle.
For Protagoras, having become a companion of Democritus, acquired a reputation for atheism; at any rate, he is said to have used the following opening in his treatise On the Gods: 'Concerning the gods, I am not able to know either that they exist or that they do not exist, or what they are like in form.' And Democritus said that the first principles of all things are the void and the full; calling the full 'being' and 'solid,' and the void 'not-being.' Wherefore he also says that being is no more than not-being, and that from eternity the things that exist move continually and swiftly in the void.
And Heraclitus said that the first principle of all things is fire, out of which all things come to be, and into which they are resolved; for all things are an exchange, and a fixed time is appointed both for the resolution of all things into fire and for their coming-to-be out of it.
These men, then, said that all things are in motion; but Parmenides, an Eleatic by descent, held the doctrine that the universe is one, ungenerated and immovable, and spherical in shape. And Melissus became a companion of Parmenides, holding the same opinions as Parmenides. Hear, then, what sort of things Plato relates about these men in the Theaetetus.
From motion, then, and change, and mixture with one another, all things come to be which we say 'are,' though we do not name them correctly; for nothing ever 'is,' but is always 'becoming.' And concerning this all the extraordinary sages agree, except Parmenides—Protagoras and Heraclitus and Empedocles—and among the poets, the foremost of each kind of poetry, Epicharmus of comedy and Homer of tragedy; for when he said 'Ocean, origin of the gods, and Tethys their mother,' he declared all things to be offspring of flux and motion. Or does he not seem to be saying this?
'So it seems to me.' 'Who, then, could still dispute against so great an army, with Homer as its general, and not become ridiculous?' Then, proceeding further in his discourse, he adds, saying:
'We must, then, approach more closely, as the argument on behalf of Protagoras enjoined, and examine, by testing it, this doctrine of flux, whether it rings sound or unsound. In any case, the battle over it has been no trivial one, nor waged by few.' 'It is far from trivial; indeed, in Ionia it is spreading very widely, for the companions of Heraclitus champion this doctrine most vigorously.' 'For that very reason, then, my dear Theodorus, we must examine it all the more, and from the very beginning, just as they themselves propound it.'
By all means. For indeed, Socrates, as regards these followers of Heraclitus—or, as you put it, of Homer and of men still more ancient—it is no more possible to converse with the Ephesians themselves, who profess to be experienced in these matters, than with men stung by gadflies. For they are literally borne along in accordance with their writings, and as for remaining still upon an argument and a question, and answering and asking in turn calmly, there is less of this in them than nothing at all—rather, this 'not even nothing' goes so far beyond that not the smallest particle of stillness is left in these men. But if you ask one of them anything, they draw out, as if from a quiver, little riddling phrases and shoot them off; and if you try to obtain an account of what he has said, you will be struck by another phrase, newly renamed, and you will never come to any conclusion with any of them, nor indeed do they with one another; rather, they guard very carefully against anything being fixed either in argument or in their own souls, holding, as it seems to me, that this would be something stationary. Against this they wage utter war, and drive it out from every side as far as they are able.
Perhaps, Theodorus, you have seen these men when they are fighting, but you have not been present with them at peace; for they are not your companions. But I think they say such things to their disciples in private lessons—those whom they wish to make like themselves. 'What disciples, my good man? None of these ever becomes a disciple of another; rather they spring up spontaneously, each wherever he happens to be inspired, and each thinks nothing of the other.' From these men, then, as I was about to say, you could never obtain an account, whether they are willing or unwilling; we must ourselves take up the matter as a problem and examine it.
And you speak fairly. But have we not received this very problem, in another form, from the ancients, who hid it from the multitude beneath the veil of poetry—saying that the origin of all things is Oceanus and Tethys, a flowing stream, and that nothing stands still—while from the later ones, being wiser, it is demonstrated openly, so that even the cobblers among their hearers might learn their wisdom and cease foolishly supposing that some things stand still and others of the things that are move, and, having learned that all things move, might honor them? But I nearly forgot, Theodorus, that others in turn have declared the opposite of this—such as, 'Unmoved is the name given to the totality of things,' and all the other things that the Melissuses and Parmenideses maintain in opposition to all these, insisting that all things are one and that it stands still in itself, having no room in which to move.
What then, my friend, shall we make of all these? For advancing little by little, we have found ourselves, without noticing it, fallen into the middle between both parties; and unless we somehow defend ourselves and escape, we shall pay the penalty just like those who play at the line in the wrestling-schools, when, caught by both sides at once, they are dragged in opposite directions.
These things are in the Theaetetus. Passing on next to the Sophist, he again says the following about the natural philosophers who lived before him: 'Parmenides, it seems to me, has conversed with us all too casually—as has everyone who has ever set out to determine, by way of judgment, how many the things that are, are, and of what sort. Each of them seems to me to be relating some sort of tale, as though we were children. One says that the things that are, are three, and that certain of them at times wage a kind of war with one another, but at other times, becoming friends, provide marriages and births and the nurture of their offspring; another, speaking of two—moist and dry, or hot and cold—makes them cohabit and gives them in marriage. But the whole Eleatic tribe among us, beginning from Xenophanes and even earlier, proceeds through its tales on the assumption that what is called 'all things' is one. Certain Ionian, and later Sicilian, Muses perceived that it is safer to interweave both and to say that being is both many and one, and is held together by enmity and friendship; for, say the more strenuous of the Muses, it is ever being drawn apart and yet is ever drawn together; but the gentler ones relaxed the requirement that things always be so, and say that in turn, at one time the all is one and friendly through Aphrodite, and at another time it is many and hostile to itself through a certain strife. Whether any of these has spoken the truth in all this or not, it would be a difficult and unseemly thing to find fault with men so great, so famous, and so ancient.'
And shortly afterward he adds: 'As for those who have spoken with precision about being and not-being, we have not gone through all of them, but let this suffice. But we must also look at those who speak of it in a different way, so that from all of them we may see that it is no easier to say what being is than what not-being is.' 'Then we must proceed to these as well.' 'Indeed, among them there seems to be a kind of battle of the giants, on account of their dispute with one another over being.'
'How so?' 'Some drag everything down from heaven and the invisible to earth, literally grasping rocks and oaks with their hands. For laying hold of all such things, they insist stoutly that only that exists which offers resistance and some kind of contact, defining body and being as one and the same; and if anyone else says that something exists which does not have body, they utterly despise him and are willing to hear nothing else.' 'You have indeed spoken of formidable men; for I too have already met with quite a number of these.'
Accordingly, those who dispute against them defend themselves very cautiously from somewhere on high, forcefully maintaining that certain intelligible and bodiless forms are the true being; but the bodies of those others, and what is called truth by them, they shatter into small pieces in argument, and call it, instead of being, a kind of becoming that is carried along in flux. In the middle of these matters, Theaetetus, an immense battle between the two sides is forever being waged. 'True.'
By means of all this, then, Plato has taken issue with the natural philosophers who came before him. As for what opinion he himself held concerning the matters investigated, we have already set it forth in what preceded, when we showed that he agrees with the doctrines of the Hebrews and concurs with the teaching of Moses concerning Being.
Come, let us also examine in our discourse Plato's own successors. They say that Plato, having established his school in the Academy, was the first to be called an 'Academic,' and established what was named the Academic philosophy. After Plato, Speusippus, the son of Plato's sister Potone, received the school; then Xenocrates; then Polemo took it up.
They say that these men, right from the very outset, immediately began to loosen the bonds of Plato's doctrines, distorting what had appeared true to their teacher by introducing foreign doctrines, so that you must not hope that it would be long before the force of those wonderful dialogues would be extinguished; rather, together with the man's death, the succession of his doctrines came to an end at the same time. From this point a battle and a factional strife began which has never yet ceased even to this day, so that those who zealously embraced what was dear to him were, one might say, none at all—except perhaps one or two in the whole course of life, or a few others quite small in number, who themselves were not altogether free from counterfeit sophistry either; for even those who succeeded Plato earliest have been accused of being of this sort.
For they say that Arcesilaus succeeded Polemo—a man of whom a persistent report says that, having abandoned the doctrines of Plato, he established a certain foreign, and as they say, second Academy. For he said that one must suspend judgment about everything, since all things are incomprehensible, the arguments on either side are equally balanced against one another, and both the senses and every argument are untrustworthy. He used, at any rate, to praise this saying of Hesiod: 'For the gods keep hidden from men their purpose.' He also tried to revive certain paradoxes.
After Arcesilaus, they say that the circle of Carneades and Clitomachus, having turned away from the opinion of their predecessors, became the founders of a third Academy. Some add also a fourth, that of Philo and Charmides; and some list even a fifth, that of Antiochus and his circle. Such, then, was the succession from Plato himself. But as for the character these men turned out to have, read the following words of Numenius the Pythagorean, which he set down in the first book of the work he entitled 'On the Divergence of the Academics from Plato.'
Down to Speusippus, then, Plato's nephew, and Xenocrates, the successor of Speusippus, and Polemo, who received the school from Xenocrates, the character of the doctrines was always stretched out, so to speak, as much the same—at least regarding this much-talked-of 'suspension of judgment' not yet existing, and any other such things. For in other respects, loosening many things in many places and distorting others, they did not remain firm in the first succession; but beginning from him they departed, some sooner and some later, whether by choice or by ignorance, and in some cases perhaps for some other cause, not without a certain love of distinction.
And I do not wish to say anything base for Xenocrates' sake; rather I wish to speak on behalf of Plato. For indeed it grieves me that they did not endure and do everything in order to preserve for Plato, in every respect and in every way, complete agreement of opinion. And yet Plato deserved this of them—being, indeed, no better than the great Pythagoras, yet perhaps also no worse than he, whose followers, attending him with reverence, became the very ones most responsible for Pythagoras being held in high honor.
This the Epicureans, though under no such obligation, nevertheless learned to do, and were seen in no instance ever setting themselves against Epicurus, but rather agreeing that he was a wise man; and being of one mind on this, they themselves accordingly and rightly enjoyed the appellation. And it came about that, among the later Epicureans, none of them ever yet said anything contrary, either to one another or to Epicurus, in any matter whatsoever worth mentioning; rather, any innovation was condemned as a transgression—or rather, as an impiety. And for this reason no one even dares attempt it, but their doctrines remain at rest in great tranquility, on account of the ever-continuing harmony among themselves. And the school of Epicurus resembles a true commonwealth, most free of faction, having as it were a common mind and a single opinion—from which they were, and are, and, it seems, will continue to be, faithful followers.
But the affairs of the Stoics have been full of faction, beginning from the very founders and not yet coming to an end even now. They refute one another—affectionately, yet with a kind of hostile refutation—some still remaining faithful to him, others having already changed their position. The first, then, resembled a rather oligarchic sort, who, having split off, became for those who came after the cause of much reproach both toward their predecessors and toward one another—some being still more 'Stoic' than others; and this was especially true of those who showed themselves more given to petty hair-splitting in technical matters; for these very men, surpassing the others in officious meddling and in scratching over trifles, were quicker to find fault.
Yet long before these, those who, deriving from Socrates, drew off divergent lines of teaching suffered the very same thing—Aristippus on his own, Antisthenes on his own, and elsewhere on their own the Megarians and the Eretrians, or whoever else besides these there may have been.
The cause was this: Socrates posited three gods, and philosophized to them each in the manner appropriate to each; but those who heard him did not understand this, and thought instead that he said everything at random and haphazardly, according to whatever chance fortune happened at the time to prevail, however the wind might blow.
But Plato, having pythagorized, and knowing that Socrates had spoken from no other source than this, and had spoken with full knowledge for these same reasons, likewise bound his own subject matter together in this way—neither in the customary manner, nor yet openly; but conducting each point as he thought fit, concealing it midway between being clear and not clear, he wrote in safety; yet he himself provided the cause of the strife and the tearing apart of the doctrines that came after him—not out of envy, nor indeed out of ill will. But I do not wish to speak unseemly words against men of an older generation.
Having come to know this, we ought rather to direct our attention there; and just as we proposed from the start to separate him from Aristotle and from Zeno, so now, God helping, separating him also from the Academy, we shall let him stand henceforth on his own, a Pythagorean; for as things now stand, being torn apart more madly than would have befitted even some Pentheus, he suffers limb by limb, and yet as a whole he is in no way at all shifted or counter-shifted out of his whole self.
Thus, being a man intermediate between Pythagoras and Socrates, having brought down the solemn dignity of the one to the level of humaneness, and having raised up this refined and playful quality of the other from irony to dignity and weight, and having in this very way blended Pythagoras together with Socrates, he showed himself more popular than the one, and more solemn than the other.
But—but it is not my present inquiry to arbitrate these matters; let me return to what had already been determined, and go there, for I already seem to myself to have wandered off, lest we somehow be knocked off the road that leads onward.
Now Arcesilaus and Zeno became disciples of Polemo; for I shall make mention of them again at the end. As for Zeno, I recall having said that he attended first Xenocrates, then Polemo, and afterward played the Cynic under Crates; but let it now also be reckoned to his account that he had a share both in Stilpo's teaching and in the doctrines of Heraclitus.
For since, studying together under Polemo, they became rivals of one another in ambition, each took allies into their contest with one another: the one, Zeno, took up Heraclitus and Stilpo together with Crates as well—by Stilpo he became a fighter, by Heraclitus austere, and by Crates a Cynic; while Arcesilaus, on the other hand, has recourse to Theophrastus, and to Crantor the Platonist, and to Diodorus, and then to Pyrrho—by Crantor he became persuasive, by Diodorus a sophist, and by Pyrrho he became a man of every sort, reckless, and nothing at all.
For which reason a certain mocking and insulting verse used to be sung about him: 'In front, Plato; behind, Pyrrho; in the middle, Diodorus.' Timon, moreover, says that he was also fitted out with eristic skill received from Menedemus, if indeed he says of him: 'Bearing under his breast the lead of Menedemus, he will run—either to Pyrrho, all flesh, or to Diodorus.'
So then, weaving together with the subtle refinements of Diodorus, who was a dialectician, the reasonings of Pyrrho and his skeptical method, he dressed up, with Plato's rhetorical skill, a kind of nonsense thoroughly talked through; and he would speak for and speak against, and would roll about now this way and now that, from either side, wherever it happened to fall—ever shifting back and forth, hard to pin down, changeable, and at the same time reckless in argument, knowing nothing at all, as he himself said, while claiming to be 'noble'; and then he would somehow come out resembling those who do know, having, through the shading of his arguments, taken on the appearance of every sort of thing.
Just as it is unknown, in the case of Homer's son of Tydeus, to which side he belonged—whether he consorted with the Trojans or with the Achaeans—so, no less than that, was Arcesilaus unknown. For to say one and the same account at any time was not in him, nor did he think it fitting at all for a truly skillful man to do any such thing. He was accordingly named a formidable sophist, a slayer of the unpracticed.
For just as the phantom-monsters work their spells in the apparitions they conjure, so he, through preparation and practice, cast spells and bewitched, and had it in him neither to know anything himself nor to allow others to know; he terrified and threw people into confusion, and, being carried along as foremost in sophistries and the theft of arguments, he rejoiced in the reproach and prided himself wonderfully upon it—that he knew nothing of what was shameful or noble, nor again of what was good or bad; but whatever thought chanced to fall into people's souls, once he had voiced it, he would then turn about and overturn it by more numerous devices than those by which he had constructed it.
He was, then, like a hydra, both cutting himself and being cut by himself—both things indistinguishable from one another, and without regard for what was fitting; nevertheless he pleased his hearers, who, together with hearing him, beheld him as a man handsome of face. He was, then, most delightful both to hear and to see, since people had grown accustomed to receiving favorably his words as they issued from a beautiful face and mouth, not without the charm that was in his eyes.
But one must not hear these things at face value; rather, it happened as follows from the beginning. Coming together as a boy with Theophrastus—a gentle man, and not unskilled in matters of love, because he was handsome—being himself still in his youthful prime, and having gained as a lover Crantor the Academic, he attached himself to this man; and being by nature not without gifts, making easy use of a facile disposition, and hot-tempered through love of contention, he took a share in these clever, cunningly wrought, persuasive devices, having also consorted with Pyrrho (Pyrrho himself having derived, from wherever exactly, from Democritus). This man, then, having been shaped from this source, remained—except for the appellation—a follower of Pyrrho, as regards the rejection of everything.
Mnaseas, at any rate, and Philomelus and Timon, the Skeptics, call him also a Skeptic, just as they themselves were, since he too rejected the true, the false, and the plausible.
Having been called, then, on this account, a Pyrrhonist by the Pyrrhonists, out of reverence for his lover he still endured to be called an Academic. He was, then, a Pyrrhonist except in name; he was not an Academic, except in being so called. For I am not persuaded by Diocles of Cnidus, who says in the work entitled 'Discourses' that Arcesilaus, out of fear of the followers of Theodorus and of Bion the sophist, who attacked those who philosophized and did not hesitate to refute anything from any quarter, being on his guard so as not to have trouble, put forward no dogma that was apparent, but rather, like the ink of the cuttlefish, thrust his 'suspension of judgment' in front of himself as a screen. Of this, then, I am not persuaded.
Those, then, who set out from this point—both Arcesilaus and Zeno—aided by such allied arguments fighting on both sides, forgot the origin from which they had set out, namely from Polemo; and having parted ways and armed themselves, 'together they clashed their shields of hide, together their spears, and the might of bronze-corseleted men; and their bossed shields struck against one another, and a great din arose. Shield pressed against shield, helm against helm, and man against man; and there arose at once the groaning and the boasting of men slaying and being slain'—that is, of the Stoics.
For the Academics were not struck down by them, since it was unknown at what point they were more easily captured. But they were captured whenever their footing was shaken, if they had neither a starting-point nor a basis from which to fight. Now the starting-point was this: to refute them for not speaking in accordance with Plato's teachings; and as for their having no basis at all—it was the one thing I mentioned, which they merely altered by removing it from the definition concerning the 'cognitive impression.'