I would not have
given up my hopes for a good deal; but, having taken up his books with
great eagerness, I read through them as quickly as I could, that I might
as soon as possible know the best and the worst."

108. "From this wonderful hope, however, my friend, I was speedily
thrown down, when, as I advance and read over his works, I meet with a
man who makes no use of intelligence, nor assigns any causes for the
ordering of all things, but makes the causes to consist of air, ether,
and water, and many other things equally absurd. And he appeared to me
to be very like one who should say that whatever Socrates does he does
by intelligence, and then, attempting to describe the causes of each
particular action, should say, first of all, that for this reason I am
now sitting here, because my body is composed of bones and sinews and
that the bones are hard, and have joints separate from each other, but
that the sinews, being capable of tension and contraction, cover the
bones, together with the flesh and skin which contain them. The bones,
therefore, being suspended in their sockets, the nerves, relaxing and
tightening, enable me to bend my limbs as I now do, and from this cause
I sit here bent up. 109. And if, again, he should assign other similar
causes for my conversing with you, assigning as causes voice, and air,
and hearing, and ten thousand other things of the kind, omitting to
mention the real causes, that since it appeared better to the Athenians
to condemn me, I therefore thought it better to sit here, and more just
to remain and submit to the punishment which they have ordered; for, by
the dog! I think these sinews and bones would have been long ago either
in Megara or Boeotia, borne thither by an opinion of that which is best,
if I had not thought it more just and honorable to submit to whatever
sentence the city might order than to flee and run stealthily away. But
to call such things causes is too absurd. But if any one should say that
without possessing such things as bones and sinews, and whatever else I
have, I could not do what I pleased, he would speak the truth; but to
say that I do as I do through them, and that I act thus by intelligence,
and not from the choice of what is best, would be a great and extreme
disregard of reason. 110. For this would be not to be able to
distinguish that the real cause is one thing, and that another, without
which a cause could not be a cause; which, indeed, the generali