Sextus on Religion #4: Against the Ethicists

Excerpts from the Loeb Classical Library translation by R. G. Bury.

20

"... but as regards the appearance of each of these things we are in the habit of designating it good or evil or indifferent, even as Timon seems to make plain in his “Images,” when he says—

Verily I will relate each fact as to me it appeareth,

Standard exact of truth having in this my speech,

How that the nature of God and of Goodness abideth for ever,

Whence proceedeth for man Life that is equal and just.

So then, the division mentioned above having been laid down in the form described, let us see what view we should take of the terms contained in it, beginning our discussion with the conception <implied by those terms>."

49

"Now that health is a good, and the prime good, has been asserted by not a few of the poets and writers and generally by all ordinary folk. Thus Simonides the lyric poet declares that “Even fair Wisdom lacks grace unless a man possesses august Health.” And Licymnius, after first uttering this prelude—

Mother sublime, with eyes bright-shining,

Lov’d queen of the holy throne of Apollo,

Gently-smiling Lady of Health—

adds this lofty strain—

Where is the joy of wealth or of kindred,

Or of kingly dominion that maketh man god-like?

Nay, parted from thee can no one be blessed."

69-71

"If, then, there exists anything good by nature or anything evil by nature, this thing ought to be common to all men and be good or evil for all. For just as fire which is warmth-giving by nature warms all men, and does not warm some but chill others,—and like as snow which chills <by nature> does not chill some and warm others, but chills all alike,—so what is good by nature ought to be good for all, and not good for some but not good for others. Wherefore also Plato, in establishing that God is good by nature, argued on similar lines. For, he says, as it is the special property of heat to make hot and the property of cold to chill, so also it is the special property of good to do good; but the Good is God; therefore it is the property of God to do good. So that if there exists anything good by nature, this is good in relation to all men, and if there exists anything evil by nature, that is evil in relation to all. But there is nothing good or evil which is common to all, as we shall establish; therefore there does not exist anything good or evil by nature."

192-194

"And [the Stoics'] recommendations concerning cannibalism may serve as an example of their piety (hosiotêtos) towards the departed; for they deem it right to eat not only the dead but even their own flesh, if ever any part of their body should happen to be cut off. This is what is stated by Chrysippus in his treatise On Justice:—“And if any part of the limbs be cut off that is good for food, we should neither bury it nor otherwise get rid of it, but consume it, so that from our parts a new part may arise.” And in his book On Duty, when discoursing about the burial of parents, he says expressly: “When our parents decease we should use the simplest forms of burial, as though the body—like nails or hair—were nothing to us, and we need bestow on it no care or attention of that kind. Hence, also, when their flesh is good for food, men shall make use of it, just as also of their own parts,—when, for instance, a foot is cut off it is proper for them to use it, and things like it; but when the flesh is not good, either they shall bury it and lay the mound upon it, or burn it up and scatter the ashes, or cast it far away and pay no more regard to it than to nails or hair.”"

199f

"[T]here is no work peculiar to the wise man whereby he shall differ from the not wise. And if this is so, neither will wisdom be an art of life, as it has no artistic work peculiar to itself.

But in reply to this they say that although all the works are common to all men, yet they are distinguished by their proceeding either from an artistic or from a non-artistic disposition. For the work of the virtuous man is not that of caring for his parents and generally honouring his parents, but doing this because of wisdom is the act of the virtuous."

250f

"the apprehension of every object, whether sensible or intelligible, comes about either empirically by way of sense-evidence or by way of analogical inference from things which have appeared empirically, this latter being either through resemblance (as when Socrates, not being present, is recognized from the likeness of Socrates), or through composition (as when from a man and a horse we form by compounding them the conception of the non-existent hippocentaur), or by way of analogy (as when from the ordinary man there is conceived by magnification the Cyclops who was

Less like a corn-eating man than a forest-clad peak of the mountains,

and by diminution the pygmy)."