CHAPTER XXI.
against those who wish to be admired.
When a man holds his proper station in life, he does not gape after things beyond it. Man, what do you wish to happen to you? I am satisfied if I desire and avoid conformably to nature, if I employ movements towards and from an object as I am by nature formed to do, and purpose and design and assent. Why then do you strut before us as if you had swallowed a spit? My wish has always been that those who meet me should admire me, and those who follow me should exclaim O the great philosopher. Who are they by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not those of whom you are used to say, that they are mad? Well then do you wish to be admired by madmen?
CHAPTER XXII.
on praecognitions.[1]
Praecognitions are common to all men, and praecognition is not contradictory to praecognition. For who of us does not assume that Good is useful and eligible, and in all circumstances that we ought to follow and pursue it? And
- ↑ Praecognitions (προλήψεις) is translated Praecognita by John Smith, Select Discourses, p. 4. Cicero says (Topica, 7): "Notionem appello quod Graeci tum ἔννοιαν, tum πρόληψιν dicunt. Ea est insita et ante percepta cujusque formae cognitio, enodationis indigens." In the De Natura Deorum (i. 16) he says: "Quae est enim gens aut quod genus hominum, quod non habeat sine doctrina anticipationem quandam deorum, quam appellat πρόληψιν Epicurus? id est, anteceptam animo rei quandam informationem, sine qua nec intelligi quidquam nec quaeri nec disputari potest." Epicurus, as Cicero says in the following chapter (17), was the first who used πρόληψις in this sense, which Cicero applies to what he calls the ingrafted or rather innate cognitions of the existence of gods, and these cognitions he supposes to be universal; but whether this is so or not, I do not know. See i. c. 2; Tuscul. i. 24; De Fin. iii. 6, and πρόληψις in iv. 8. 6.
