But leaving now the Gods, and beseeching them to
give these Stoics common sense and a common understanding, let us look into their doctrines concerning the elements. It is against the common conceptions that one
body should be the place of another, or that a body should
penetrate through a body, neither of them containing any
vacuity, but the full passing into the full, and that which
has no vacuity—but is full and has no place by reason of
its continuity—receiving the mixture. But these men, not
thrusting one thing into one, nor yet two or three or ten
together, but jumbling all the parts of the world, being
cut piecemeal, into any one thing which they shall first
[p. 411]
light on, and saying that the very least which is perceived
by sense will contain the greatest that shall come unto it,
boldly frame a new doctrine, convicting themselves here,
as in many other things, of taking for their suppositions
things repugnant to common sense. And presently upon
this they are forced to admit into their discourse many
monstrous and strange positions, mixing whole bodies with
whole; of which this also is one, that three are four. For
this others put as an example of those things which cannot be conceived even in thought. But to the Stoics it is
a matter of truth, that when one cup of wine is mixed with
two of water, if it is not to be lost but the mixture is to
be equalized, it must be extended through the whole and
be confounded therewith, so as to make that which was
one two by the equalization of the mixture. For the one
remains, but is extended as much as two, and thus is equal
to the double of itself. Now if it happens in the mixture
with two to take the measure of two in the diffusion, this
is together the measure both of three and four,—of three
because one is mixed with two, and of four because, being
mixed with two, it has an equal quantity with those with
which it is mixed. Now this fine subtilty is a consequence
of their putting bodies into a body, and so likewise is the
unintelligibleness of the manner how one is contained in
the other. For it is of necessity that, of bodies passing
one into another by mixture, the one should not contain
and the other be contained, nor the one receive and the
other be received within; for this would not be a mixture,
but a contiguity and touching of the superficies, the one
entering in, and the other enclosing it without, and the
rest of the parts remaining unmixed and pure, and so it
would be merely many different things. But there being
a necessity, according to their axiom of mixture, that the
things which are mixed should be mingled one within the
other, and that the same things should together be contained
[p. 412]
by being within, and by receiving contain the other,
and that neither of them could possibly exist again as it
was before, it comes to pass that both the subjects of the
mixture mutually penetrate each other, and that there is
not any part of either remaining separate, but that they
are necessarily all filled with each other.
Here now that famous leg of Arcesilaus comes in, with
much laughter insulting over their absurdities; for if these
mixtures are through the whole, what should hinder but
that, a leg being cut off and putrefied and cast into the sea
and diffused, not only Antigonus's fleet (as Arcesilaus said)
might sail through it, but also Xerxes's twelve hundred
ships, together with the Grecians' three hundred galleys,
might fight in it? For the progress will not henceforth
fail, nor the lesser cease to be in the greater; or else the
mixture will be at an end, and the extremity of it, touching where it shall end, will not pass through the whole,
but will give over being mingled. But if the mixture is
through the whole, the leg will not indeed of itself afford
the Greeks room for the sea-fight, for to this there is need
of putrefaction and change; but if one glass or but one
drop of wine shall fall from hence into the Aegean or
Cretan Sea, it will pass into the Ocean or main Atlantic
Sea, not lightly touching its superficies, but being spread
quite through it in depth, breadth, and length. And this
Chrysippus admits, saying immediately in his First Book
of Natural Questions, that there is nothing to hinder one
drop of wine from being mixed with the whole sea. And
that we may not wonder at this, he says that this one drop
will by mixtion extend through the whole world; than
which I know not any thing that can appear more absurd.
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