Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book II/Chapter IX

by Arnobius

9. What, have you seen with your eyes, and handled^[1] 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^[2] 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^[3] 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,^[4] 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,^[5] to Archesilas,^[6] to Carneades?—to some teacher, in fine, of the old and later Academy?

Footnotes

1. Lit., “with ocular inspection, and held touched.”
2. “Fire” is wanting in the ms.
3. 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.).
4. Lit., “with indivisible bodies.”
5. Pl.
6. 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.