ey come to know how great is
the power and wisdom, and what the will is also, of the supreme ruler and
master of the world, whose reason, in accordance with nature, is called by
philosophers the true and supreme law. There is in the same study of
nature, an insatiable kind of pleasure derived from the knowledge of
things; the only pleasure in which, when all our necessary actions are
performed, and when we are free from business, we can live honourably, and
as becomes free men. Therefore, in the whole of this ratiocination on
subjects of the very highest importance, the Stoics have for the most part
followed the Peripatetics; so far at all events as to admit that there are
gods, and to assert that everything consists of one of four elements. But
when an exceedingly difficult question was proposed, namely, whether there
did not seem to be a sort of fifth nature from which reason and
intelligence sprang; (in which question another was involved respecting
the mind, as to what class that belonged to;) Zeno said that it was fire;
and then he said a few more things--very few, in a novel manner; but
concerning the most important point of all, he spoke in the same way,
asserting that the universal world, and all its most important parts, were
regulated by the divine intellect and nature of the gods. But as for the
matter and richness of facts, we shall find the Stoics very poorly off,
but the Peripatetics very rich.

What numbers of facts have been investigated and accumulated by them with
respect to the genus, and birth, and limbs, and age of all kinds of
animals! and in like manner with respect to those things which are
produced out of the earth! How many causes have they developed, and in
what numerous cases, why everything is done, and what numerous
demonstrations have they laid open how everything is done! And from this
copiousness of theirs most abundant and undeniable arguments are derived
for the explanation of the nature of everything. Therefore, as far as I
understand, there is no necessity at all for any change of name. For it
does not follow that, though he may have differed from the Peripatetics in
some points, he did not arise out of them. And I, indeed, consider
Epicurus, as far as his natural philosophy is concerned, as only another
Democritus: he alters very few of his doctrines; and I should think him so
even if he had changed more: but in numerous instances, and certainly on
all the most important points, he c