um.' M. Bayle observes (_Dictionary_, article
'Epicurus', let. T, p. 1141) 'that neither of these two great philosophers
[Epicurus and Chrysippus] understood that the truth of this maxim, every
proposition is true or false, is independent of what is called _fatum_: it
could not therefore serve as proof of the existence of the _fatum_, as
Chrysippus maintained and as Epicurus feared. Chrysippus could not have
conceded, without damaging his own position, that there are propositions
which are neither true nor false. But he gained nothing by asserting the
contrary: for, whether there be free causes or not, it is equally true that
this proposition, The Grand Mogul will go hunting to-morrow, is true or
false. Men rightly regarded as ridiculous this speech of Tiresias: All that
I shall say will happen or not, for great Apollo confers on me the faculty
of prophesying. If, assuming the impossible, there were no God, it would
yet be certain that everything the greatest fool in the world should
predict would happen or would not happen. That is what neither Chrysippus
nor Epicurus has taken into consideration.' Cicero, lib. I, _De Nat.
Deorum_, with regard to the evasions of the Epicureans expressed the sound
opinion (as M. Bayle observes towards the end of the same page) that it
would be much less shameful to admit that one cannot answer one's opponent,
than to have recourse to such answers. Yet we shall see that M. Bayle
himself confused the certain with the necessary, when he maintained that
the choice of the best rendered things necessary.

170. Let us come now to the possibility of things that do not happen, and I
will give the very words of M. Bayle, albeit they are somewhat discursive.
This is what he says on the matter in his _Dictionary_ (article
'Chrysippus', let. S, p. 929): 'The celebrated dispute on things possible
and things impossible owed its origin to the doctrine of the Stoics
concerning fate. The question was to know whether, among the things which
have never been and never will be, there are some possible; or whether all
that is not, all that has never been, all that will never be, was
impossible. A famous dialectician of the Megaric Sect, named Diodorus, gave
a negative answer to the first of these two questions and an affirmative to
the second; but Chrysippus vehemently opposed him. Here are two passages of
Cicero (epist. 4, lib. 9, _Ad Familiar._): "[Greek: peri dynaton] me scito
[Greek: kata Diodoron krinein].