על השיכרות מ״חOn Drunkenness 48
א׳
1[197] In view of these facts, who is so senseless and deranged as to assert positively that any particular thing is just or prudent or honourable or profitable? For what one determines to be such, will be repudiated by another who has practised the opposite from childhood.
ב׳
2[198] Now I for my part do not wonder that the chaotic and promiscuous multitude who are bound in inglorious slavery to usages and customs introduced anyhow, and who are indoctrinated from the cradle with the lesson of obedience to them, as to masters and despots, with their souls buffeted into subjection and incapable of entertaining any high or generous feeling, should give credence to traditions delivered once for all, and leaving their minds unexercised, should give vent to affirmations and negations with out inquiry or examination. But I do wonder that the multitude of so-called philosophers, who feign to be seeking for exact and absolute certainty in things, are divided into troops and companies and propound dogmatic conclusions widely different and often diametrically opposite not on some single chance point, but on practically all points great or small, which constitute the problems which they seek to solve.
ג׳
3[199] When some assert that the universe is infinite, others that it is finite, and some declare it to be created, others uncreated; when some refuse to connect it with any ruler or governor, but make it dependent on the automatic action of an unreasoning force, while others postulate a marvellous providence, caring for the whole and each part, exerted by a deity who guides and steers it and makes safe its steps, it is impossible that the substance of things should be apprehended by them in the same form.
ד׳
4[200] Again, when the nature of the good is the subject of inquiry, do not the ideas which present themselves compel us to withhold judgement rather than give assent? For some hold that the morally beautiful is the only good and make the soul its repository, while others split up the good into subdivisions and extend it to include the body and things outside the body.
ה׳
5[201] These persons say that fortunate circumstances are the guards and attendants of the body, and that health and strength and soundness and exactness of perception in the sense-organs and all other things of the kind serve the same purpose to the sovereign soul. The nature of the good, they hold, divides itself into three classes, of which the third and outermost protects the weakness of the second, which again proves to be a strong bulwark and safeguard of the first.
ו׳
6[202] And with regard to these, as well as to the relative value of different ways of living, and the ends to which all our actions should be referred, and numberless other points, which are included in the study of logic, ethics and physics, a host of questions have arisen on none of which hitherto have the inquirers arrived at unanimity.
