which (they contend) the Academics had brought a
certain confusion and disturbance. At length one of them said, that he
thought it was not by fortune, but by the providence of the gods, that
Chrysippus came into the world after Arcesilaus and before Carneades;
of which the one was the author of the contumelies and injuries done to
custom, and the other flourished most of all the Academics. Chrysippus
then, coming between them, by his writings against Arcesilaus, stopped
also the way against the eloquence of Carneades, leaving indeed many
things to the senses, as provisions against a siege, but wholly taking
away the trouble about anticipations and conceptions, directing every
one of them and putting it in its proper place; so that they who will
again embroil and disquiet matters should gain nothing, but be convinced
of being malicious and deceitful Sophists. I, having been this
morning set on fire by these discourses, want some cooling remedies to
extinguish and take away this doubting, as an inflammation, out of my
mind.

DIADUMENUS. You perhaps have suffered the same things with some of the
vulgar. But if you believe the poets, who say that the ancient city
Sipylus was overthrown by the providence of the gods when they punished
Tantalus, believe also the companions of the Stoa saying that Nature,
not by chance but by divine providence, brought forth Chrysippus, when
she had a mind to turn things upside down and alter the course of life;
for which purpose never any man was fitter than he. But as Cato said of
Caesar, that never any but he came to the management of public affairs
sober and considerately resolved on the ruin of the state; so does this
man seem to me with the greatest diligence and eloquence to overturn and
demolish custom, as those who magnify the man testify, when they dispute
against him concerning the sophism called Pseudomenos (or the Liar). For
to say, my best friend, that a conclusion drawn from contrary positions
is not manifestly false, and again to say that some arguments having
true premises and true inductions may yet moreover have the contrary
to their conclusions true, what conception of demonstration or what
assumption of confidence does it not overthrow? They say, that the
polypus in the winter gnaws his own claws; but the logic of Chrysippus,
taking away and cutting off its own chiefest parts and principles,--what
other notion has it left unsuspected of falsehood? For the
superstructures