I pass by many absurdities of theirs, touching only
such as are against sense. The dispute concerning increase is indeed ancient; for the question, as Chrysippus
says, was put by Epicharmus. Now, whereas those of
the Academy think that the doubt is not very easy and
ready all of a sudden to be cleared, these men have mightily exclaimed against them, and accused them of taking
away the presumptions, and yet themselves are so far from
preserving the common notions, that they pervert even
sense itself. For the discourse is simple, and these men
grant the suppositions,—that all particular substances
flow and are carried, some of them emitting forth somewhat from themselves, and others receiving things coming
from elsewhere; and that the things to which there is
made an accession or from which there is a decession by
numbers and multitudes, do not remain the same, but become others by the said accessions, the substance receiving
a change; and that these changes are not rightly called
by custom increasings or diminutions, but it is fitter they
should be styled generations and corruptions, because they
drive by force from one state to another, whereas to increase and be diminished are passions of a body that is
subject and permanent. These things being thus in a manner said and delivered, what would these defenders of
evidence and canonical regulators of common conceptions
have? Every one of us (they say) is double, twin-like,
and composed of a double nature; not as the poets feigned
of the Molionidae, that they in some parts grow together
[p. 422]
and in some parts are separated,—but every one of us
has two bodies, having the same color, the same figure, the
same weight and place. ... These things were never
before seen by any man; but these men alone have discerned this composition, doubleness, and ambiguity, how
every one of us is two subjects, the one substance, the
other quality; and the one is in perpetual flux and motion, neither increasing nor being diminished nor remaining
altogether; the other remains and increases and is diminished, and suffers all things contrary to the former, with
which it is so concorporated, conjoined, and confounded,
that it exhibits not any difference to be perceived by sense.
Indeed, Lynceus is said to have penetrated stones and oaks
with his sight; and a certain man sitting on a watch-tower
in Sicily beheld the ships of the Carthaginians setting
forth from their harbor, which was a day and a night's
sail from thence. Callicrates and Myrmecides are said to
have made chariots that might be covered with the wings
of a fly, and to have engraved verses of Homer on a sesame seed. But none ever discerned or discovered this
diversity in us; nor have we perceived ourselves to be
double, in one part always flowing, and in the other remaining the same from our birth even to our death. But
I make the discourse more simple, since they make four
subjects in every one, or rather every one of us to be four.
But two are sufficient to show their absurdity. For if,
when we hear Pentheus in the tragedy affirm that he
sees two suns and two cities of Thebes,1 we say that
he does not see, but that his sight is dazzled, he being
transported and troubled in his mind; why do we not
bid those farewell, who assert not one city alone, but
all men and animals, and all trees, vessels, instruments,
and clothes, to be double and composed of two, as men
who constrain us to dote rather than to understand? But
[p. 423]
this feigning other natures of subjects must perhaps be
pardoned them; for there appears no other invention by
which they can maintain and uphold the augmentations of
which they are so fond.
1 Eurip. Bacch. 918.
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