1. Heraclitus of Ephesus, Fragments, None (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
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2. Democritus, Fragments, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
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3. Plato, Cratylus, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
| 402a. Socrates. It sounds absurd, but I think there is some probability in it. Hermogenes. What is this probability? Socrates. I seem to have a vision of Heracleitus saying some ancient words of wisdom as old as the reign of Cronus and Rhea, which Homer said too. Hermogenes. What do you mean by that? Socrates. Heracleitus says, you know, that all things move and nothing remains still, and he likens the universe to the current of a river, saying that you cannot step twice into the same stream. Hermogenes. True. |
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4. Plato, Theaetetus, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
| 191c. THEAET. To be sure he can. SOC. Again, then, can he learn one thing after another? THEAET. Why not? SOC. Please assume, then, for the sake of argument, that there is in our souls a block of wax, in one case larger, in another smaller, in one case the wax is purer, in another more impure and harder, in some cases softer |
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5. Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 2.3 (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
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6. Cicero, On The Ends of Good And Evil, 2.2 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 2.2. sed et illum, quem nominavi, et ceteros sophistas, ut e Platone intellegi potest, lusos videmus a Socrate. is enim percontando percontando A 2 percun- tando NV percunctando A 1 BE per cunctando R atque interrogando elicere solebat eorum opiniones, quibuscum disserebat, ut ad ea, ea haec R quae ii ii hi BER hii A hij NV respondissent, si quid videretur, diceret. qui mos cum a posterioribus non esset retentus, Arcesilas archesilas A acesilaos N achesilas V eum revocavit instituitque ut ii, qui se audire vellent, non de se quaererent, sed ipsi dicerent, quid sentirent; quod cum dixissent, ille contra. sed eum eum om. RNV qui audiebant, quoad poterant, defendebant sententiam suam. apud ceteros autem philosophos, qui quaesivit aliquid, tacet; quod quidem iam fit etiam etiam om. BER in Academia. ubi enim is, qui audire vult, ita dixit: 'Voluptas mihi videtur esse summum bonum', perpetua oratione contra disputatur, ut facile intellegi possit eos, qui aliquid sibi videri sibi aliquid (aliquit E) videri BE aliquid videri sibi V dicant, non ipsos in ea sententia esse, sed audire velle contraria. Nos commodius agimus. | 2.2. But we read how Socrates made fun of the aforesaid Gorgias, and the rest of the Sophists also, as we can learn from Plato. His own way was to question his interlocutors and by a process of cross-examination to elicit their opinions, so that he might express his own views by way of rejoinder to their answers. This practice was abandoned by his successors, but was afterwards revived by Arcesilas, who made it a rule that those who wished to hear him should not ask him questions but should state their own opinions; and when they had done so he argued against them. But whereas the pupils of Arcesilas did their best to defend their own position, with the rest of the philosophers the student who has put a question is then silent; and indeed this is nowadays the custom even in the Academy. The wouldâbe learner says, for example, 'The Chief Good in my opinion is pleasure,' and the contrary is then maintained in a formal discourse; so that it is not hard to realize that those who say they are of a certain opinion do not actually hold the view they profess, but want to hear what can be argued against it. |
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7. Cicero, On Invention, 2.21 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 2.21. et hoc eum magno opere consi- derare oportebit, non quid in veritate modo, verum etiam vehementius, quid in opinione eius, quem arguet, fuerit. nihil enim refert non fuisse aut non esse aliquid commodi aut incommodi, si ostendi potest ei visum esse, qui arguatur. nam opinio dupliciter fallit ho- mines, cum aut res alio modo est, ac putatur, aut non is eventus est, quem arbitrati sunt. res alio modo est tum, cum aut id, quod bonum est, malum putant, aut contra, quod malum est, bonum, aut, quod nec malum est nec bonum, malum aut bonum, aut, quod malum aut bonum est, nec malum nec bonum. | |
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8. Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, 1.11 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 1.11. To those again who are surprised at my choice of a system to which to give my allegiance, I think that a sufficient answer has been given in the four books of my Academica. Nor is it the case that I have come forward as the champion of a lost cause and of a position now abandoned. When men die, their doctrines do not perish with them, though perhaps they suffer from the loss of their authoritative exponent. Take for example the philosophical method referred to, that of a purely negative dialectic which refrains from pronouncing any positive judgement. This, after being originated by Socrates, revived by Arcesilas, and reinforced by Carneades, has flourished right down to our own period; though I understand that in Greece itself it is now almost bereft of adherents. But this I ascribe not to the fault of the Academy but to the dullness of mankind. If it is a considerable matter to understand any one of the systems of philosophy singly, how much harder is it to master them all! Yet this is the task that confronts those whose principle is to discover the truth by the method of arguing both for and against all the schools. |
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9. Philo of Alexandria, Questions On Genesis, 2.4 (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
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10. Philo of Alexandria, That God Is Unchangeable, 36, 35 (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
| 35. for some bodies he has endowed with habit, others with nature, others with soul, and some with rational soul; for instance, he has bound stones and beams, which are torn from their kindred materials, with the most powerful bond of habit; and this habit is the inclination of the spirit to return to itself; for it begins at the middle and proceeds onwards towards the extremities, and then when it has touched the extreme boundary, it turns back again, until it has again arrived at the same place from which it originally started. |
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11. Plutarch, On Common Conceptions Against The Stoics, None (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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12. Plutarch, On Stoic Self-Contradictions, None (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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13. Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum (874D-911C), 4.12 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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14. Seneca The Younger, Letters, 117.13, 121.13 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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15. Galen, On The Movement of Muscles, 4.402-4.403 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
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16. Galen, On The Doctrines of Hippocrates And Plato, 2.5.69-2.5.70 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
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17. Hierocles Stoicus, , 4.38-4.53 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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18. Sextus Empiricus, Against Those In The Disciplines, 7.161-7.163, 7.228-7.231, 7.234, 7.372, 8.400 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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19. Calcidius (Chalcidius), Platonis Timaeus Commentaria, 220 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
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20. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 7.2, 7.31, 7.45, 7.50-7.51, 7.57, 7.63, 7.136, 7.156-7.157 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
| 7.2. He was a pupil of Crates, as stated above. Next they say he attended the lectures of Stilpo and Xenocrates for ten years – so Timocrates says in his Dion – and Polemo as well. It is stated by Hecato and by Apollonius of Tyre in his first book on Zeno that he consulted the oracle to know what he should do to attain the best life, and that the god's response was that he should take on the complexion of the dead. Whereupon, perceiving what this meant, he studied ancient authors. Now the way he came across Crates was this. He was shipwrecked on a voyage from Phoenicia to Peiraeus with a cargo of purple. He went up into Athens and sat down in a bookseller's shop, being then a man of thirty. 7.31. We have ourselves mentioned the manner of Zeno's death in the Pammetros (a collection of poems in various metres):The story goes that Zeno of Citium after enduring many hardships by reason of old age was set free, some say by ceasing to take food; others say that once when he had tripped he beat with his hand upon the earth and cried, I come of my own accord; why then call me?For there are some who hold this to have been the manner of his death.So much then concerning his death.Demetrius the Magnesian, in his work on Men of the Same Name, says of him: his father, Mnaseas, being a merchant often went to Athens and brought away many books about Socrates for Zeno while still a boy. 7.45. The study of syllogisms they declare to be of the greatest service, as showing us what is capable of yielding demonstration; and this contributes much to the formation of correct judgements, and their arrangement and retention in memory give a scientific character to our conception of things.An argument is in itself a whole containing premisses and conclusion, and an inference (or syllogism) is an inferential argument composed of these. Demonstration is an argument inferring by means of what is better apprehended something less clearly apprehended.A presentation (or mental impression) is an imprint on the soul: the name having been appropriately borrowed from the imprint made by the seal upon the wax. 7.50. There is a difference between the process and the outcome of presentation. The latter is a semblance in the mind such as may occur in sleep, while the former is the act of imprinting something on the soul, that is a process of change, as is set forth by Chrysippus in the second book of his treatise of the Soul (De anima). For, says he, we must not take impression in the literal sense of the stamp of a seal, because it is impossible to suppose that a number of such impressions should be in one and the same spot at one and the same time. The presentation meant is that which comes from a real object, agrees with that object, and has been stamped, imprinted and pressed seal-fashion on the soul, as would not be the case if it came from an unreal object. 7.51. According to them some presentations are data of sense and others are not: the former are the impressions conveyed through one or more sense-organs; while the latter, which are not data of sense, are those received through the mind itself, as is the case with incorporeal things and all the other presentations which are received by reason. of sensuous impressions some are from real objects and are accompanied by yielding and assent on our part. But there are also presentations that are appearances and no more, purporting, as it were, to come from real objects.Another division of presentations is into rational and irrational, the former being those of rational creatures, the latter those of the irrational. Those which are rational are processes of thought, while those which are irrational have no name. Again, some of our impressions are scientific, others unscientific: at all events a statue is viewed in a totally different way by the trained eye of a sculptor and by an ordinary man. 7.57. Seven of the letters are vowels, a, e, ē i, o, u, ō, and six are mutes, b, g, d, k, p, t. There is a difference between voice and speech; because, while voice may include mere noise, speech is always articulate. Speech again differs from a sentence or statement, because the latter always signifies something, whereas a spoken word, as for example βλίτυρι, may be unintelligible – which a sentence never is. And to frame a sentence is more than mere utterance, for while vocal sounds are uttered, things are meant, that is, are matters of discourse. 7.63. To the department dealing with things as such and things signified is assigned the doctrine of expressions, including those which are complete in themselves, as well as judgements and syllogisms and that of defective expressions comprising predicates both direct and reversed.By verbal expression they mean that of which the content corresponds to some rational presentation. of such expressions the Stoics say that some are complete in themselves and others defective. Those are defective the enunciation of which is unfinished, as e.g. writes, for we inquire Who? Whereas in those that are complete in themselves the enunciation is finished, as Socrates writes. And so under the head of defective expressions are ranged all predicates, while under those complete in themselves fall judgements, syllogisms, questions, and inquiries. 7.136. In the beginning he was by himself; he transformed the whole of substance through air into water, and just as in animal generation the seed has a moist vehicle, so in cosmic moisture God, who is the seminal reason of the universe, remains behind in the moisture as such an agent, adapting matter to himself with a view to the next stage of creation. Thereupon he created first of all the four elements, fire, water, air, earth. They are discussed by Zeno in his treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, and by Archedemus in a work On Elements. An element is defined as that from which particular things first come to be at their birth and into which they are finally resolved. 7.156. And there are five terrestrial zones: first, the northern zone which is beyond the arctic circle, uninhabitable because of the cold; second, a temperate zone; a third, uninhabitable because of great heats, called the torrid zone; fourth, a counter-temperate zone; fifth, the southern zone, uninhabitable because of its cold.Nature in their view is an artistically working fire, going on its way to create; which is equivalent to a fiery, creative, or fashioning breath. And the soul is a nature capable of perception. And they regard it as the breath of life, congenital with us; from which they infer first that it is a body and secondly that it survives death. Yet it is perishable, though the soul of the universe, of which the individual souls of animals are parts, is indestructible. 7.157. Zeno of Citium and Antipater, in their treatises De anima, and Posidonius define the soul as a warm breath; for by this we become animate and this enables us to move. Cleanthes indeed holds that all souls continue to exist until the general conflagration; but Chrysippus says that only the souls of the wise do so.They count eight parts of the soul: the five senses, the generative power in us, our power of speech, and that of reasoning. They hold that we see when the light between the visual organ and the object stretches in the form of a cone: so Chrysippus in the second book of his Physics and Apollodorus. The apex of the cone in the air is at the eye, the base at the object seen. Thus the thing seen is reported to us by the medium of the air stretching out towards it, as if by a stick. |
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21. Eusebius of Caesarea, Preparation For The Gospel, 15.14.2, 15.20.6 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
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22. Origen, Against Celsus, 4.48 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
| 4.48. In the next place, as if he had devoted himself solely to the manifestation of his hatred and dislike of the Jewish and Christian doctrine, he says: The more modest of Jewish and Christian writers give all these things an allegorical meaning; and, Because they are ashamed of these things, they take refuge in allegory. Now one might say to him, that if we must admit fables and fictions, whether written with a concealed meaning or with any other object, to be shameful narratives when taken in their literal acceptation, of what histories can this be said more truly than of the Grecian? In these histories, gods who are sons castrate the gods who are their fathers, and gods who are parents devour their own children, and a goddess-mother gives to the father of gods and men a stone to swallow instead of his own son, and a father has intercourse with his daughter, and a wife binds her own husband, having as her allies in the work the brother of the fettered god and his own daughter! But why should I enumerate these absurd stories of the Greeks regarding their gods, which are most shameful in themselves, even though invested with an allegorical meaning? (Take the instance) where Chrysippus of Soli, who is considered to be an ornament of the Stoic sect, on account of his numerous and learned treatises, explains a picture at Samos, in which Juno was represented as committing unspeakable abominations with Jupiter. This reverend philosopher says in his treatises, that matter receives the spermatic words of the god, and retains them within herself, in order to ornament the universe. For in the picture at Samos Juno represents matter, and Jupiter god. Now it is on account of these, and of countless other similar fables, that we would not even in word call the God of all things Jupiter, or the sun Apollo, or the moon Diana. But we offer to the Creator a worship which is pure, and speak with religious respect of His noble works of creation, not contaminating even in word the things of God; approving of the language of Plato in the Philebus, who would not admit that pleasure was a goddess, so great is my reverence, Protarchus, he says, for the very names of the gods. We verily entertain such reverence for the name of God, and for His noble works of creation, that we would not, even under pretext of an allegorical meaning, admit any fable which might do injury to the young. |
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23. Origen, On First Principles, 3.1.3 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
| 3.1.3. But since a rational animal not only has within itself these natural movements, but has moreover, to a greater extent than other animals, the power of reason, by which it can judge and determine regarding natural movements, and disapprove and reject some, while approving and adopting others, so by the judgment of this reason may the movements of men be governed and directed towards a commendable life. And from this it follows that, since the nature of this reason which is in man has within itself the power of distinguishing between good and evil, and while distinguishing possesses the faculty of selecting what it has approved, it may justly be deemed worthy of praise in choosing what is good, and deserving of censure in following that which is base or wicked. This indeed must by no means escape our notice, that in some dumb animals there is found a more regular movement than in others, as in hunting-dogs or war-horses, so that they may appear to some to be moved by a kind of rational sense. But we must believe this to be the result not so much of reason as of some natural instinct, largely bestowed for purposes of that kind. Now, as we had begun to remark, seeing that such is the nature of a rational animal, some things may happen to us human beings from without; and these, coming in contact with our sense of sight, or hearing, or any other of our senses, may incite and arouse us to good movements, or the contrary; and seeing they come to us from an external source, it is not within our own power to prevent their coming. But to determine and approve what use we ought to make of those things which thus happen, is the duty of no other than of that reason within us, i.e., of our own judgment; by the decision of which reason we use the incitement, which comes to us from without for that purpose, which reason approves, our natural movements being determined by its authority either to good actions or the reverse. 3.1.3. The rational animal, however, has, in addition to its phantasial nature, also reason, which judges the phantasies, and disapproves of some and accepts others, in order that the animal may be led according to them. Therefore, since there are in the nature of reason aids towards the contemplation of virtue and vice, by following which, after beholding good and evil, we select the one and avoid the other, we are deserving of praise when we give ourselves to the practice of virtue, and censurable when we do the reverse. We must not, however, be ignorant that the greater part of the nature assigned to all things is a varying quantity among animals, both in a greater and a less degree; so that the instinct in hunting-dogs and in war-horses approaches somehow, so to speak, to the faculty of reason. Now, to fall under some one of those external causes which stir up within us this phantasy or that, is confessedly not one of those things that are dependent upon ourselves; but to determine that we shall use the occurrence in this way or differently, is the prerogative of nothing else than of the reason within us, which, as occasion offers, arouses us towards efforts inciting to what is virtuous and becoming, or turns us aside to what is the reverse. |
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24. Stoic School, Stoicor. Veter. Fragm., 1.6, 1.135, 1.141, 2.53, 2.56
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