Chapter IX.—Of the Philosophers, who fell into Mistaken Notions, and Some of them into Danger, by their Desire of Universal Knowledge.—Also of the Doctrines of Plato.
We ought, therefore, to aim at objects which are within our power, and exceed not the capacities of our nature. For the persuasive influence of argument has a tendency to draw most of us away from the truth of things, which has happened to many philosophers, who have employed themselves in reasoning, and the study of natural science, and who, as often as the magnitude of the subject surpasses their powers of investigation, adopt various devices for obscuring the truth. Hence their diversities of judgment, and contentious opposition to each others’ doctrines, and this notwithstanding their pretensions to wisdom. Hence, too, popular commotions have arisen, and severe sentences, passed by those in power, apprehensive of the overthrow of hereditary institutions, have proved destructive to many of the disputants themselves. Socrates, for example, elated by his skill in argumentation, indulging his power of making the worse appear the better reason, 3405
and playing continually with the subtleties of controversy, fell a victim to the slander of his own countrymen and fellow-citizens. Pythagoras, too, who laid special claim to the virtues of silence and self-control, was convicted of falsehood. For he declared to the Italians that the doctrines which he had received during his travels in Egypt, and which had long before been divulged by the priests of that nation, were a personal revelation to himself from God. Lastly, Plato himself, the gentlest and most refined of all, who first essayed to draw men’s thoughts from sensible to intellectual and eternal objects, and taught them to aspire to sublimer speculations, in the first place declared, with truth, a God exalted above every essence, but to him he added also a second, distinguishing them numerically as two, though both possessing one perfection, and the being of the second Deity proceeding from 3406
the first. For he is the creator and controller of the universe, and evidently supreme: while the second, as the obedient agent of his commands, refers the origin of all creation to him as the cause. In accordance, therefore, with the soundest reason, we may say that there is one Being whose care and providence are over all things, even God the Word, who has ordered all things; but the Word being God himself is also the Son of God. For by what name can we designate him except by this title of the Son, without falling into the most grievous error? For the Father of all things is properly considered the Father of his own Word. Thus far, then, Plato’s sentiments were sound; but in what follows he appears to have wandered from the truth, in that he introduces a plurality of gods, to each of whom he assigns specific forms. And this has given occasion to still greater error among the unthinking portion of
This is almost identically the form of what Socrates (Apol. c. 2) declared to be the falsehood circulated by his enemies to his prejudice. “But far more dangerous are those who began when you were children and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man who…made the worse appear the better cause” (λόγον, “reason”), Tr. Jowett, 1 (1874), 316. This example does peculiar discredit either to the learning or the mental honesty of the author.
566:3406Rather “deriving existence from,” “proceeding from,” gives strict idea, but may be confounded with the technical “proceeding from” of the “filioque” controversy, which is quite another phrase.
567:3407 567:3408“The one simple” is not in the text, but is a conjectural addition of Valesius, followed by most translators. “Consisting of bodily structure” seems possibly to be an epexegetical phrase relating to the “all things” which he divides into intellectual and sensible, making the intellectual as well as the sensible to have bodily (somatic) structure. “All things,” or “the universe,” a plural technical term, is regarded as his mind passes to the explanation as “the all.” This psychological probability appears a simpler solution than the various textual conjectures.
567:3409Heinichen suspects that there has been an inversion of words here, and that it should have been, “He further teaches the admirable and profitable doctrine,” and “a doctrine not merely to be admired” omitted.
