СНАР. XX. Against the School of Metrodorus and Protagoras, who XXI. Against the Epicureans, who define the good as pleasure. p. 766 b p. 768 d. P. 770 h XXII. Further against those who define the good as pleasure. - XXIII. Against the Epicureans, who deny a Providence, and refer the universe to corporeal atoms. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, On Nature From P. 772 d P. 773 d XXIV. From human examples. From the same PREFACE CONCERNING THE SUBJECT OF THE BOOK. HAVING described in the preceding Book all that there was to say and to hear about the philosophy of Plato and his agreement with the Hebrew oracles, for which we are struck with admiration of him, and on the other hand concerning his dissent from them, for which no man of b good sense could approve him, I will now pass on to the remaining sects of those who have been famed for philosophy among the Greeks. And in their case again I shall set their lapse from the truth before the eyes of my readers, not in my own person nor of my own authority, but as before by the testimony of the very words of Greek authors: not indeed from dislike to any of them personally, since I confess that I have a great admiration for them, when I compare the persons with the rest of mankind as men. But when I compare them with the sacred writers and prophets of the Hebrews, and with God who through c them has both uttered predictions of things to come and exhibited marvellous works, nay more, has laid the foundations of instruction in religious learning and true doctrines, I no longer think that any one ought with reason to blame us, if we prefer God before men, and truth itself before human reasonings and conjectures. All this I have striven to prove in the argument of this present Preparation, as at once an answer and a defence against those who shall inquire, what beauty or majesty we have seen in the writings of the Barbarians, d that we have decided to prefer them to our ancestral and noble philosophy, that, I mean, of the Greeks. However, it is time now to let our proof proceed by way of facts. CHAPTER II Now, I think, we ought before all things to begin from p. 718 the first foundation of philosophy among the Greeks, and to learn concerning the so-called physical philosophers before the time of Plato, who they were, and what sort of men their philosophy found as champions of its system; then we must pass on to the successors of Plato, and learn who they also were, and survey their mutual disputations, and review also the dissensions of the other sects, and the oppositions of their opinions, wherein I shall exhibit the noble combatants like boxers eagerly exchanging blows as on a stage before the spectators. b Let us, for instance, at once observe how, on the one hand, Plato used to scoff at the earliest philosophers who preceded him, and how others scoffed at Plato's friends and successors: and again in turn how Plato's disciples used to criticize the wise doctrines of Aristotle's fertile thought and how those who boasted of Aristotle and the Peripatetic School used to prove that the views of those who preferred the opposite sect were nonsense. : You will also see the clever and precise doctrines of the subtlety of the Stoics ridiculed in turn by others, and all the philosophers on all sides struggling against their c neighbours, and most bravely joining in battle and wrestling, so that even with hands and tongue, or rather with pen and ink, they raise strongholds of war against each other, striking, as it were, and being struck by the spears and various weapons of their wordy war. And in this strife of athletes our arena will include, in addition to those already mentioned, men stripped of. all truth, who have taken up arms in opposition to all the dogmatic philosophers alike; I mean the Pyrrhonists, who declared that in man's world there is nothing comprehensible; and those who said with Aristippus that the feelings were the sole objects of perception; and then d again those who with Metrodorus and Protagoras said that we ought to believe only the sensations of the body. Over against these we shall at the same time strip for the combat the schools of Xenophanes and Parmenides, who arrayed themselves on the opposite side and annihilated the senses. Neither shall we omit the champions of pleasure, but shall enroll their leader Epicurus also with those already mentioned. But against all alike we shall use their own weapons to set forth their confutation. Also of all the so-called physicists alike I shall drag p. 719 out to light both the discrepancies of their doctrines and the futility of their eager studies; not at all as a hater of the Greeks or of reason, far from it, but to remove all cause of slanderous accusation, that we have preferred the Hebrew oracles from having forsooth been very little acquainted with Hellenic culture. CHAPTER III THE Hebrews on their part from long time of old and, b so to say, from the very first origin of man, having found the true and religious philosophy have carefully preserved this undefiled to succeeding generations, son from sire having received and guarded a treasure of true doctrines, so that no one dared to take away from or add to what had been once for all determined. So neither has Moses the all-wise, who has been shown c by our former discourse to have been older than all the Greeks, but last in time of all the ancient Hebrews, ever thought of disturbing and changing any of the doctrines held by his forefathers concerning dogmatic theology, except so far as to found for the people under his charge a certain conduct of life towards each other, and a code of laws for a kind of moderate republic. Nor have the prophets after him, who flourished for countless periods of years, ever ventured to utter a word of discord either against each other, or against the opinions held by Moses and the elders beloved of God. d Nay not even has our Christian School, which derives its origin from them, and by a divinely inspired power has filled alike all Greece and Barbarian lands, introduced anything at variance with the earlier doctrines; or perhaps one should rather say that not only in the doctrines of theology but also in the mode of life Christianity prescribes the same course as the godly Hebrews before Moses. Our doctrines then thus described, and testified to by all authors, first middle and last, with one mind and one voice, confirm with unanimous vote the certainty of that which is both the true religion and philosophy, and are p. 720 filling the whole world, and growing afresh and flourishing every day, as if they had but just established their first prime: and neither legal ordinances, nor hostile plots, nor the oft-sharpened weapons of enemies have exhibited a power superior to the excellence of the reasons which we followed. But now let us observe what strength has ever been exhibited by the doctrines of the philosophy of the Greeks, tossed as they were in shallow waters; and first b of them all let us send down into the battle those who are called physicists. As then these are said to have flourished before Plato, we may learn from Plato himself how they were at variance one with another; for he exposes the feud of Protagoras, Heracleitus, and Empedocles against Parmenides and his school. For Protagoras, who had been a disciple of Democritus, incurred the reputation of atheism: he is said, at least, to have used an introduction of the following kind in his book Concerning the gods: As to gods I neither know that they exist, nor that they do not exist, nor of what nature they are.' And Democritus said that the first elements of the c universe were vacuum and plenum,' and the plenum he called 'being' and 'solid,' but the vacuum 'not-being.' Wherefore he also says that 'being' no more exists than 'not-being'; and that the things which partake of "being have from eternity a continuous and swift motion in the vacuum.' But Heracleitus said that fire was the first principle of all things, out of which they all come, and into which they are resolved. For all things are change, and there is a time determined for the resolution of them all into fire, and for their production out of it. These philosophers then said that all things are in d motion; but Parmenides, who was by birth an Eleatic, held the doctrine that the all is one,' and that it subsists without beginning and without motion, and is spherical in shape. And Melissus, who was a disciple of Parmenides, held the same opinions with Parmenides. So now listen to what Plato relates with regard to these men in the Theaetetus: CHAPTER IV 'AND so from drift and motion and mixture of one with PLATO another, all things are "becoming," though we forsooth speak of them as "being," not using a right term. For nothing ever p. 723 720 b 10 Diogenes Laertius, ix. c. 8, § 51 c7 Bywater, Heracl. Rell. Fr. xxii CI Aristotle, Metaphysics, d 9 Plato, Theaetetus, p. 152 D 723 a Viger's edition, from which this notation is taken, passes at once A 4 from 720 to 723 |