A. What is it that you mean, for I do not exactly comprehend you?
V. M. Because, Chrysippus and the Stoics, when they discuss the perturbations of the mind, make great part of their debate to consist in definitions and distinctions; while they employ but few words on the subject of curing the mind, and preventing it from being disordered. Whereas the Peripatetics bring a great many things to promote the cure of it, but have no regard to their thorny partitions and definitions. My question, then, was, whether I should instantly unfold the sails of my eloquence, or be content for a while to make less way with the oars of logic?
A. Let it be so; for by the employment of both these means the subject of our inquiry will be more thoroughly discussed,
M. It is certainly the better way; and should anything be too obscure, you may examine that afterward.
A. I will do so; but those very obscure points you will, as usual, deliver with more clearness than the Greeks.
M. I will, indeed, endeavor to do so; but it well requires great attention, lest, by losing one word, the whole should escape you. What the Greeks call πάΘη we choose to name perturbations (or disorders) rather than diseases; in explaining which, I shall follow, first, that very old description of Pythagoras, and afterward that of Plato; for they both divide the mind into two parts, and make one of these partake of reason, and the other they represent without it. In that which partakes of reason they place tranquillity, that is to say, a placid and undisturbed constancy; to the other they assign the turbid motions of anger and desire, which are contrary and opposite to reason. Let this, then, be our principle, the spring of all our reasonings. But notwithstanding, I shall use the partitions and definitions of the Stoics in describing these perturbations; who seem to me to have shown very great acuteness on this question.
VI. Zeno's definition, then, is this: "A perturbation" (which he calls a πάΘος) "is a commotion of the mind repugnant to reason, and against nature." Some of them define it even more briefly, saying that a perturbation is a somewhat too vehement appetite; but by too vehement
