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Rh to me that there is nothing save this? — : Do you know of anything else? — : I know of the heavens and the earth, the mountains and the plains, the animals, and all else that is on the dry and the moist, which I cannot call knowledge, nor ignorance, nor the recompense of either without proof. — : Do you agree with the saying of, quoted by me in the. book of physics? — : What is that saying? — except by union with its like; and that none acquires weakness except by union with what is unlike it. — experience does not show the truth of Hermes’ saying. — exists except knowledge, ignorance, and the recompense of the two. — : How so? — : Of the things which you have enumerated there is none that does not belong to this world. — : Certainly. — : Know you what it is that induces philosophers to abandon this world? — : Their knowledge, by seeing that these things are detrimental to the intellect, induces them to take this course. — : Then have you not learned that whatever harms the intellect is the opposite of the intellect, and the opposite of the intellect is non-intelligence? — intellect, be true of the earth, it is not true of the heaven. — : Nay, the heaven differs not from the earth in this matter. — : In what respect are the heavens as detrimental to the intellect as the earth? — : The least detriment occasioned to knowledge by the heaven is this, that it prevents the sight from penetrating and passing through; now that which is inimical to sight is inimical to intelligence. — : This tl1eory is true of the present; what of the absent? — : The absent must either be like or unlike the present, must it not? — : Yes. — : If it be like it, must it not help its like? if it be unlike, must it not oppose it and thwart it? —
 * states that no object acquires strength
 * Yes, it is so; there is nothing in which
 * Then you have acknowledged that nothing
 * If what you say, that these things harm the
 * Now, indeed, I must certainly agree to all that