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Moreover, in his Natural Positions having warned
us not to trouble ourselves but to be at quiet about such
things as require experience and investigation, he says:
‘Let us not think after the same manner with Plato, that
liquid nourishment is conveyed to the lungs, and dry to the
stomach; nor let us embrace other errors like to these.’
Now it is my opinion, that to reprehend others, and then
[p. 457]
not to keep one's self from falling into those things which
one has reprehended, is the greatest of contradictions and
shamefullest of errors. But he says, that the connections
made by ten axioms amount to above a million in number,
having neither searched diligently into it by himself nor
attained to the truth by men experienced in it. Yet Plato
had to testify for him the most renowned of the physicians,
Hippocrates, Philistion, and Dioxippus the disciple of Hippocrates; and of the poets, Euripides, Alcaeus, Eupolis,
and Eratosthenes, who all say that the drink passes through
the lungs. But all the arithmeticians refel Chrysippus,
amongst whom also is Hipparchus, demonstrating that the
error of his computation is very great; since the affirmative makes of the ten axioms one hundred and three.
thousand forty and nine connections, and the negative
three hundred and ten thousand nine hundred fifty and
two.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 4.
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