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LAMPRIAS. You, O Diadumenus, seem not much to
care, if any one thinks that you philosophize against the
common notions; since you confess that you contemn also
the senses, from whence the most part of these notions in
a manner proceed, having for their seat and foundation the
belief of such things as appear to us. But I beseech you,
with what speed you can, either by reasons, incantations,
or some other manner of discourse, to cure me, who come
to you full, as I seem to myself, of great and strange perturbations; so much have I been shaken, and into such a
perplexity of mind have I been brought, by certain Stoics,
in other things indeed very good men and my familiar
friends, but most bitterly and hostilely bent against the
Academy. These, for some few words modestly spoken by
me, have (for I will tell you no lie) rudely and unkindly
reprehended me; angrily reputing and branding the ancient
philosophers as sophisters and corrupters of students of
philosophy, and subverters of regular doctrines; and saying things yet more absurd than these, they fell at last
upon the conceptions, into which (they maintained) the
Academics had brought a certain confusion and disturbance. At length one of them said, that he thought it was
not by fortune, but by the providence of the Gods, that
Chrysippus came into the world after Arcesilaus and before
Carneades; of which the one was the author of the contumelies
[p. 373]
and injuries done to custom, and the other flourished most of all the Academics. Chrysippus then, coming
between them, by his writings against Arcesilaus, stopped
also the way against the eloquence of Carneades, leaving
indeed many things to the senses, as provisions against a
siege, but wholly taking away the trouble about anticipations and conceptions, directing every one of them and
putting it in its proper place; so that they who will again
embroil and disquiet matters should accomplish nothing,
but be convinced of being malicious and deceitful sophisters. I, having been this morning set on fire by these discourses, want some cooling remedies to extinguish and
take away this doubting, as an inflammation, out of my
mind.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 4.
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