BOOK I. XVII. 10-17
"Logic also bears no fruit." Now as for this statement we shall see later; but if one should grant even this, it is enough to say in defence of Logic that it has the power to discriminate and examine everything else, and. as one might say, to measure and weigh them. Who says this? Only Chrysippus and Zeno and Cleanthes? Well, does not Antisthenes say it? And who is it that wrote, "The beginning of education is the examination of terms"? Does not Socrates,[1] too, say the same thing? And of whom does Xenophon write, that he began with the examination of terms, asking about each, "What does it mean?"
Is this, then, your great and admirable achievement—the ability to understand and to interpret Chrysippus? And who says that? What, then, is your admirable achievement? To understand the will of nature. Very well; do you understand it all by yourself? And if that is the case, what more do you need? For if it is true that "all men err involuntarily,"[2] and you have learned the truth, it must needs be that you are doing right already. 15But, so help me Zeus, I do not comprehend the will of nature. Who, then, interprets it? Men say, Chrysippus. I go and try to find out what this interpreter of nature says. I begin not to understand what he says, and look for the man who can interpret him. "Look and consider what this passage means," says the interpreter, "just as if it were in Latin!"[3] What place is there here, then, for pride on the part of the interpreter? Why,
- ↑ See Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV. 6, 1.
- ↑ The famous dictum of Socrates, formulated as, "No man errs voluntarily," in Plato, Protagoras, 345 D.
- ↑ Epictetus seems to be placing himself in the position of one of his Roman pupils, who would understand Chrysippus more easily if translated into Latin.
