[107]
52. "Now let us come to the argument of
that most worthy gentleman, our intimate friend,
Cratippus:1
"'Though without eyes,' he says,' it is impossible
to perform the act and function of sight, and though
the eyes sometimes cannot perform their appointed
function, yet when a person has once so employed
his eyes as to see things as they are, he has a realization of what correct vision is. Likewise, too, although
without the power of divination it is impossible for
the act and function of divining to exist, and though
one with that power may be mistaken and may make
erroneous prophecies, yet to establish the existence
of divination it is enough that a single event has
been so clearly foretold as to exclude the hypothesis
of chance. But there are many such instances; therefore the existence of divination must be conceded.'
"Delightfully and briefly put; but after he has
[p. 493]
twice made gratuitous assumptions, even though
he has found us quite generous in making concessions, yet his further assumption cannot possibly be
conceded.
1 Cf. i. 32. 71.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.