I, if, O Cato, you can establish that, I will allow you to carry me over, body and soul, to your school. I did think, said he, that I had said enough on that point; wherefore answer me on that head first, if you please; and afterwards you can advance what arguments you please. I do not think it too much, said I, if I claim to answer you on that topic as I myself please. As you will, said he; for although the other way would have been more common, yet it is only fair to allow every one to adopt his own method.
II. I think, then, said I, O Cato, that those ancient pupils of Plato, Speusippus, Aristotle and Xenocrates, and afterwards their pupils, Polemo and Theophrastus, had a system laid down with sufficient richness and eloquence of language; so that Zeno had no reason, after having been a pupil of Polemo, for deserting him and his predecessors who had established this school. And in this school I should like you to observe what you think ought to be changed, and not to wait while I am replying to everything which has been said by you. For I think that I must contend with the whole of their system, against the whole of yours.
And as these men said that we are born with the view of being generally well adapted to those virtues which are well known and conspicuous, I mean justice and temperance, and others of the same kind, all which resemble the other arts, and differ only for the better in their subject matter and way of handling;—and as they saw that we desired those very virtues in a somewhat magnificent and ardent spirit; and that we had also a certain instruction, or, I should rather say, innate desire of knowledge; and that we were born for companionship with men, and for society and communion with the human race, and that these qualities are most conspicuous in the greatest geniuses;—they divided all philosophy into three parts; and we see that this same division was retained by Zeno: and as one of these parts is that by which the manners are thought to be formed, I postpone the consideration of that part, which is, as it were, the foundation of this question. For what is the chief good I will discuss presently; but at this moment I only say that that topic which I think we shall be right in calling the civil one, and which the Greeks call πολιτικὸς, has been treated of in a dignified and copious manner by the ancient Peripatetics and Academicians
