Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​There are also certain puzzling arguments (paradoxes): the Veiled, the Latent, the Sorites (Heap), the Horned, and the Nobody. The Veiled argument is such as the following:... "Are not two few? And are not three also few? And while these are, are not four also? And so on up to ten; but two are few; therefore ten are also few." ... The Nobody argument is a conclusive argument compounded of an indefinite and a definite proposition, having an additional premise and a conclusion, for example: "If someone is here, that person is not in Rhodes; but indeed someone is here; therefore no one is in Rhodes." ...

​Such, then, are the Stoics in logical matters, in order especially to establish that only the wise man is a dialectician. For all things, both as many as belong to the topic of physics and again as many as belong to that of ethics, are observed through the contemplation in words and arguments. For as regards the logical branch, what need is there to speak, since one could not say that there is nothing to say concerning the correctness of names, as the laws have appointed them over actions? And there being two customs falling under virtue, the one examines what each of existing things is, and the other what it is called. Such, then, is logic among them.

​They divide the ethical part of philosophy into the topic concerning impulse, that concerning goods and evils, that concerning passions, that concerning virtue, that concerning the end, and that concerning primary value and actions, and concerning appropriate actions (duties), exhortations, and dissuasions. Thus Chrysippus, Archedemus, Zeno of Tarsus, Apollodorus, Diogenes, Antipater, and Posidonius subdivide it; for Zeno of Citium and Cleanthes, as being older, treated the subjects more simply. These thinkers subdivided the logical and physical parts as well.

​And they say that an animal has its primary impulse toward preserving itself, nature having from the beginning endeared it to itself, just as Chrysippus says in the first book of On Ends, stating that the primary dear thing to every animal is its own constitution and the consciousness of this; for it was not likely that nature should alienate the animal from itself, nor, having made it, should make it neither alienated nor endeared. It remains, therefore, to say that, having constituted it, nature endeared it to itself; for in this way it repels what is harmful and pursues what is dear to it. As for what some say, that the primary impulse in animals is toward pleasure, they declare this to be false.

​For they say that pleasure, if it exists at all, is a byproduct, occurring whenever nature itself, by itself, having sought out the things suitable to its constitution, receives them; in the way that animals become cheerful and plants bloom. And nature, they say, made no difference between plants and animals, in that it administers those things as well without impulse and sensation, and in us some processes take place after the manner of plants. But since impulse has supervened upon animals as an addition, employing which they proceed toward what is dear to them, for them what is according to nature is to be governed according to impulse; but since reason has been given to rational beings by way of a more complete superintendence, for them to live according to reason becomes properly to live according to nature; for reason supervenes as the craftsman of impulse.