9. What, have you seen with
your eyes, and handled
3455
with your hands, those things which you write yourselves, which you
read from time
to time
on subjects placed beyond human knowledge? Does not each one
trust this author or that? That which any one has persuaded
himself is said with truth by another, does he not defend with a kind
of assent, as it were,
like that
of faith? Does not he who
says that fire
3456
or water is
the origin of all things, pin his faith to Thales or Heraclitus? he who
places the cause
of all
in numbers, to Pythagoras of Samos,
and
to Archytas? he who divides the soul, and sets up bodiless
forms, to Plato, the disciple of Socrates? he who adds a fifth
element
3457
to the primary
causes, to Aristotle, the father of the Peripatetics? he who threatens
the world with
destruction by
fire, and says that when the time
comes it will be
set
on fire, to Panætius, Chrysippus,
Zeno? he who is always fashioning worlds from atoms,
3458
and destroying
them
, to
Epicurus, Democritus, Metrodorus? he who
says
that nothing is
comprehended by man, and that all things are wrapt in dark
obscurity,
3459
to
Archesilas,
3460
to
Carneades?—to some teacher, in fine, of the old and later
Academy?
3455
Lit.,
“with ocular inspection, and held touched.”
3456
“Fire” is wanting in the
ms.
3457
Arnobius here allows himself to be misled by Cicero
(
Tusc.
, i. 10), who explains
ἐντελέχεια
as
a kind of perpetual motion, evidently confusing it with
ἐνδελέχεια
(cf. Donaldson,
New Crat.
, § 339 sqq.), and
represents Aristotle as making it a fifth primary cause. The word
has no such meaning, and Aristotle invariably enumerates only four
primary causes: the material from which, the form in which, the
power by which, and the end for which anything exists (
Physics
,
ii. 3;
Metaph.
, iv. 2, etc.).
3458
Lit., “with indivisible bodies.”
3459
Pl.
3460
So the
ms.
, LB., and Hildebrand,
reading
Archesilæ
, while the others read
Archesilao
, forgetting that Arcesilas is the regular Latin form,
although Archesilaus is found.