give us, and how dissimilar are
they to captious questions! What shall we say of their denouncing, as it
were, in many places, that we ought neither entirely to trust our senses
when unsupported by reason, nor reason when unsupported by our senses; but
that, at the same time, we ought to keep the line between the two clearly
marked? What shall I say more? Were not all the precepts which the
dialecticians now deliver and teach, originally discovered and established
by them? And although they were very much elaborated by Chrysippus, still
they were much less practised by Zeno than by the ancients. And there were
several things in which he did not improve on the ancients; and some which
he never touched at all. And as there are two arts by which reason and
oratory are brought to complete perfection, one that of discovering, the
other that of arguing,--both the Stoics and Peripatetics have handed us
down this latter, but the Peripatetics alone have given us rules for the
former, while the Stoics have altogether avoided it. For the men of your
school never even suspected the places from which arguments might be drawn
as out of magazines; but the Peripatetics taught a regular system and
method.

And the consequence is, that it is not necessary for one now to be always
repeating a sort of dictated lesson on the same subject, or to be afraid
to go beyond one's note-books: for he who knows where everything is
placed, and how he can arrive at it, even if anything be completely
buried, will be able to dig it up, and will always have his wits about him
in every discussion. And although men who are endowed with great
abilities, attain to a certain copiousness of eloquence without any
definite principles of oratory, still art is a surer guide than nature.
For it is one thing to pour out words after the fashion of poets, and
another to distinguish on settled principles and rules all that you say.

V. Similar things may be said about the explanation of natural philosophy,
which both the Peripatetics and Stoics apply themselves to; and that not
on two accounts only, as Epicurus thinks, namely, to get rid of the fears
of death and of religion; but besides this, the knowledge of heavenly
things imparts some degree of modesty to those who see what great
moderation and what admirable order there is likewise among the gods: it
inspires them also with magnanimity when they contemplate the arts and
works of the gods; and justice, too, when th