ether, if they were collected into one body,
are not comparable to what Chrysippus has writ in disparagement of the
senses. Which is an evident sign of the ignorance or self-love of the
speakers; but this indeed is true, that being afterwards desirous to
defend custom and the senses, he was inferior to himself, and the
latter treatise was much weaker than the former. So that he contradicts
himself; for having always directed the proposing of an adversary's
opinions not with approbation, but with a demonstration of their
falsity, he has showed himself more acute in opposing than defending
his own doctrines; and having admonished others to take heed of contrary
arguments, as withdrawing comprehension, he has been more sedulous in
framing such proofs as take away comprehension, than such as confirm it.
And yet he plainly shows that he himself feared this, writing thus in
his Fourth Book of Lives: "Repugnant arguments and probabilities on the
contrary side are not rashly to be proposed, but with caution, lest the
hearers distracted by them should let go their conceptions, not being
able sufficiently to apprehend the solutions, but so weakly that their
comprehensions may easily be shaken. For even those who have, according
to custom, preconceived both sensible phenomena and other things
depending on the senses quickly forego them, being distracted by
Megarian interrogatories and by others more numerous and forcible."
I would willingly therefore ask the Stoics, whether they think these
Megarian interrogatories to be more forcible than those which Chrysippus
has written in six books against custom; or rather this should be
asked of Chrysippus himself. For observe what he has written about the
Megarian reason, in his book concerning the Use of Speech, thus: "Some
such things fell out in the discourse of Stilpo and Menedemus; for,
whereas they were renowned for wisdom, their disputing has turned to
their reproach, their arguments being part clumsy, and the rest plainly
sophistical." And yet, good sir, you fear lest those arguments which you
deride and term the disgrace of their proposers, as having a manifest
faultiness, should divert some from comprehension. And did not you
yourself, writing so many books against custom, in which you have added
whatever you could invent, ambitiously striving to exceed Arcesilaus,
expect that you should perplex some of your readers? For neither does
he use slender arguments against custom; but as