What now is, and in future shall be, and has been of aforetime.3Very excellently did Homer place first in order the present, then the future and the past, for the syllogism based on hypothesis has its source in what is ; for example, ‘if this is, then that has preceded,’ and again, ‘if this is, then that shall be.’ The technical and rational element here, as has been stated, is the knowledge of consequences ; but the senses provide the argument with its premise. Therefore, even if it be a poor thing to say, I shall not be turned aside from saying it, that this is the tripod of truth, namely, argument, which lays down the consequent relation of the conclusion to the antecedent, and then, premising the existent condition, induces the completion of the demonstration. Therefore, if the Pythian god [p. 215] plainly finds pleasure in music and the songs of swans and the sound of lyres, what wonder is it that, because of his fondness for logical reasoning, he should welcome and love that portion of discourse of which he observes philosophers making the most particular and the most constant use ? ‘Heracles, before he had released Prometheus or had conversed with the sophists that were associated with Cheiron and Atlas, when he was young and a thorough Boeotian,4 would do away with logical reasoning ;. he ridiculed the ‘if the first, then the second,’ and resolved to carry off the tripod by force5 and fight it out with the god over his art; since, at any rate, as he advanced in years, he also appears to have become most skilled in prophecy and in logic.’
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When Nicander had expounded all this, my
friend Theon, whom I presume you know, asked
[p. 211]
Ammonius if Logical Reason had any rights in free
speech, after being spoken of in such a very insulting
manner. And when Ammonius urged him to speak
and come to her assistance, he said, “That the god
is a most logical reasoner the great majority of his
oracles show clearly ; for surely it is the function of
the same person both to solve and to invent ambiguities. Moreover, as Plato said, when an oracle was
given that they should double the size of the altar at
Delos1 (a task requiring the highest skill in geometry), it was not this that the god was enjoining,
but he was urging the Greeks to study geometry.
And so, in the same way, when the god gives out
ambiguous oracles, he is promoting and organizing
logical reasoning as indispensable for those who are
to apprehend his meaning aright. Certainly in logic
this copulative conjunction has the greatest force,
inasmuch as it clearly gives us our most logical form,
the syllogism. Must not the character of the hypothetical syllogism be of this sort: granted that even
wild animals have apperception of the existence of
things, yet to man alone has Nature given the power
to observe and judge the consequences ? That ‘it is
day’ and that ‘it is light’ assuredly wolves and dogs
and birds perceive by their senses ; but ‘if it is day,
then it is light,’ no creature other than man apprehends,2 for he alone has a concept of antecedent and
consequent, of apparent implication and connexion of
these things one with another, and their relations and
differences, from which our demonstrations derive
their most authoritative inception. Since, then, philosophy is concerned with truth, and the illumination
[p. 213]
of truth is demonstration, and the inception of
demonstration is the hypothetical syllogism, then with
good reason the potent element that effects the connexion and produces this was consecrated by wise
men to the god who is, above all, a lover of the truth.
“The god, moreover, is a prophet, and the prophetic
art concerns the future that is to result from things
present and past. For there is nothing of which
either the origin is without cause or the foreknowledge thereof without reason ; but since all present
events follow in close conjunction with past events,
and all future events follow in close conjunction with
present events, in accordance with a regular procedure which brings them to fulfilment from beginning to end, he who understands, in consonance
with Nature, how to fathom the connexions and
interrelations of the causes one with another knows
and can declare
1 Cf. Moralia, 579 b-d; and on the doubling of the cube, T. L. Heath, A Manual of Greek Mathematics (Oxford, 1931), pp. 154-170.
2 Cf. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ii. 216 (p. 70) and 239 (p. 78).
3 Homer, Il. i. 70.
4 The Greek equivalent of ‘Philistine.’
5 Cf. Moralia, 413 a, 557 c, 560 d; Pausanias, x. 13. 4; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, ii. 6. 2 (with Frazer's note in L.C.L. edition); Roscher, Lexikon der gr. und röm. Mythologie, i. p. 2213; Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums, i. p. 463 ff. The attempt of Heracles to carry off the tripod is represented on the treasury of the Siphnians in the Museum at Delphi.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 5.
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