Book 1
17
Would you hear about these, therefore? Well, hear. But then, if you say to me that you cannot tell whether my arguments are true or false, and if I happen to express myself ambiguously, and you bid me make it clearer, I will then at once show you that this is the first essential. Therefore, I suppose, they first establish the art of reasoning,—just as before the measuring of corn, we settle the measure; for, unless we first determine the measure and the weight, how shall we be able to measure or weigh? Thus, in the present case, unless we have first learned and fixed that which is the criterion of other things, and by which other things are learned, how shall we be able accurately to learn anything else? How is it possible? Well, a bushel-measure is only wood, a thing of no value, but it measures corn; and logic is of no value in itself. That we will consider hereafter, but grant it now; it is enough that it distinguishes and examines, and, as one may say, measures and weighs all other things. Who says this? Is it only Chrysippus, and Zeno, and Cleanthes? Does not Antisthenes say it? And who is it, then, who has written that the beginning of a right education is the examination of words? Does not Socrates say it? Of whom, then, does Xenophon write, that he began by the examination of words, what each signified?
17
Is this, then, the great and admirable thing, to understand or interpret Chrysippus?
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Who says that it is? But what, then, is the admirable thing?
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To understand the will of nature.
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Well, then; do you conform to it yourself? In that case, what need have you for any one else? For if it be true that men err but unwillingly, and if you have learnt the truth, you must needs act rightly.
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But, indeed, I do not conform to the will of nature.
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Who, then, shall interpret that?
