Book 1
8
What then was not Plato a philosopher?Plato was eloquent, and the adversary asks, if that is a reason for not allowing him to be a philosopher. To which the rejoinder is that Hippocrates was a physician, and eloquent too, but not as a physician. I reply, and was not Hippocrates a physician? but you see how Hippocrates speaks. Does Hippocrates then speak thus in respect of being a physician? Why do you mingle things which have been accidentally united in the same men? And if Plato was handsome and strong, ought I also to set to work and endeavour to become handsome or strong, as if this was necessary for philosophy, because a certain philosopher was at the same time handsome and a philosopher? Will you not choose to see and to distinguish in respect to what men become philosophers, and what things belong to them in other respects? And if I were a philosopher, ought you also to be made lame?Epictetus was lame. What then? Do I take away these faculties which you possess? By no means; for neither do I take away the faculty of seeing. But if you ask me what is the good of man, I cannot mention to you anything else than that it is a certain disposition of the will with respect to appearances.In i. 20, 15. Epictetus defines the being (οὐσία) or nature of good to be a proper use of appearances; and he also says, i. 29, 1, that the nature of the good is a kind of will (προαίρεσις ποιά), and the nature of evil is a kind of will. But Schweighaeuser cannot understand how the good of man can be a certain will with regard to appearances; and he suggests that Arrian may have written, a certain will which makes use of appearances.
How from the fact that we are akin to God a man may proceed to the consequences.
