to me that there is nothing save this? — Aristotle: Do you know of anything else? — Simmias: I know of the heavens and the earth, the mountains and the plains, the animals, and all else that is on the dry and the moist, which I cannot call knowledge, nor ignorance, nor the recompense of either without proof. — Aristotle: Do you agree with the saying of Hermes, quoted by me in the. book of physics? — Simmias: What is that saying? — Aristotle: Hermes states that no object acquires strength except by union with its like; and that none acquires weakness except by union with what is unlike it. — Simmias: Yes, it is so; there is nothing in which experience does not show the truth of Hermes’ saying. — Aristotle: Then you have acknowledged that nothing exists except knowledge, ignorance, and the recompense of the two. — Simmias: How so? — Aristotle: Of the things which you have enumerated there is none that does not belong to this world. — Simmias: Certainly. — Aristotle: Know you what it is that induces philosophers to abandon this world? — Simmias: Their knowledge, by seeing that these things are detrimental to the intellect, induces them to take this course. — Aristotle: Then have you not learned that whatever harms the intellect is the opposite of the intellect, and the opposite of the intellect is non-intelligence? — Simmias: If what you say, that these things harm the intellect, be true of the earth, it is not true of the heaven. — Aristotle: Nay, the heaven differs not from the earth in this matter. — Simmias: In what respect are the heavens as detrimental to the intellect as the earth? — Aristotle: The least detriment occasioned to knowledge by the heaven is this, that it prevents the sight from penetrating and passing through; now that which is inimical to sight is inimical to intelligence. — Simmias: This tl1eory is true of the present; what of the absent? — Aristotle: The absent must either be like or unlike the present, must it not? — Simmias: Yes. — Aristotle: If it be like it, must it not help its like? if it be unlike, must it not oppose it and thwart it? — Simmias: Now, indeed, I must certainly agree to all that
