Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/45

 giving no accurate definitions, making no divisions, drawing no inferences by well-directed questions, and who appear to think that there is no such thing as any art of speaking or disputing. But we, in obedience to the precepts of the logicians and of orators also, as if they were positive laws, (since our countrymen consider skill in each of these branches to be a virtue,) are compelled to use words although they may be new ones; which learned men, as I have said before, will prefer taking from the Greeks, and which unlearned men will not receive even from us; so that all our labour may be undertaken in vain. But now, if I approved of the doctrines of Epicurus, that is to say, of Democritus, I could write of natural philosophy in as plain a style as Amafanius. For what is the great difficulty when you have put an end to all efficient causes, in speaking of the fortuitous concourse of corpuscules, for this is the name he gives to atoms. You know our system of natural philosophy, which depends upon the two principles, the efficient cause, and the subject matter out of which the efficient cause forms and produces what it does produce. For we must have recourse to geometry, since, if we do not, in what words will any one be able to enunciate the principles he wishes, or whom will he be able to cause to comprehend those assertions about life, and manners, and desiring and avoiding such and such things?

For those men are so simple as to think the good of a sheep and of a man the same thing. While you know the character and extent of the accuracy which philosophers of our school profess. Again, if you follow Zeno, it is a hard thing to make any one understand what that genuine and simple good is which cannot be separated from honesty; while Epicurus asserts that he is wholly unable to comprehend what the character of that good may be which is unconnected with pleasures which affect the senses. But if we follow the doctrines of the Old Academy which, as you know, we prefer, then with what accuracy must we apply ourselves to explain it; with what shrewdness and even with what obscurity must we argue against the Stoics! The whole, therefore, of that eagerness for philosophy I claim for myself, both for the purpose of strengthening my firmness of conduct as far as I can, and also for the delight of my mind. Nor do I think, as Plato says, that any more important or more valuable gift has been given to men by the gods. But I send all my friends who