Tremble about your poor slaves lest they steal, lest they run away, lest they die. So live, and continue to live, you who in name only have approached philosophy, and have disgraced its theorems as far as you can by showing them to be useless and unprofitable to those who take them up; you who have never sought constancy, freedom from perturbation, and from passions: you who have not sought any person for the sake of this object, but many for the sake of syllogisms; you who have never thoroughly examined any of these appearances by yourself, Am I able to bear, or am I not able to bear? What remains for me to do? But as if all your affairs were well and secure, you have been resting on the third topic,[1] that of things being unchanged, in order that you may possess unchanged—what? cowardice, mean spirit, the admiration of the rich, desire without attaining any end, and avoidance (ἔκκλισιν) which fails in the attempt? About security in these things you have been anxious.
Ought you not to have gained something in addition from reason, and then to have protected this with security? And whom did you ever see building a battlement all round and not encircling it with a wall?[2] And what door-keeper is placed with no door to watch? But you practise in order to be able to prove—what? You practise that you may not be tossed as on the sea through sophisms,[3] and tossed about from what? Shew me first what you hold, what you measure, or what you weigh; and shew me the scales or the medimnus (the measure); or how long will you go on measuring the dust[4]? Ought you not to demonstrate those things which make men happy, which make things go on for them in the way as they wish, and why we ought to blame no man, accuse no man, and acquiesce in the administration of the universe? Shew me these. 'See, I
- ↑ See iii. c. 2.
- ↑ 'Plato using the same simile teaches that last of all disciplines dialectic ought to be learned.' Schweighaeuser.
- ↑ ἀποσαλεύεσθαι. Paul, Ep. to the Thessalonians (ii. 2. 2) has εἰς τὸ μὴ ταχέως σαλευθῆναι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ νοός. Upton.
- ↑ This is good advice. When you propose to measure, to estimate things, you should first tell us what the things are before you attempt to fix their value; and what is the measure or scales that you use.
