f these branches to be a virtue,) are
compelled to use words although they may be new ones; which learned men,
as I have said before, will prefer taking from the Greeks, and which
unlearned men will not receive even from us; so that all our labour may be
undertaken in vain. But now, if I approved of the doctrines of Epicurus,
that is to say, of Democritus, I could write of natural philosophy in as
plain a style as Amafanius. For what is the great difficulty when you have
put an end to all efficient causes, in speaking of the fortuitous
concourse of corpuscules, for this is the name he gives to atoms. You know
our system of natural philosophy, which depends upon the two principles,
the efficient cause, and the subject matter out of which the efficient
cause forms and produces what it does produce. For we must have recourse
to geometry, since, if we do not, in what words will any one be able to
enunciate the principles he wishes, or whom will he be able to cause to
comprehend those assertions about life, and manners, and desiring and
avoiding such and such things?

For those men are so simple as to think the good of a sheep and of a man
the same thing. While you know the character and extent of the accuracy
which philosophers of our school profess. Again, if you follow Zeno, it is
a hard thing to make any one understand what that genuine and simple good
is which cannot be separated from honesty; while Epicurus asserts that he
is wholly unable to comprehend what the character of that good may be
which is unconnected with pleasures which affect the senses. But if we
follow the doctrines of the Old Academy which, as you know, we prefer,
then with what accuracy must we apply ourselves to explain it; with what
shrewdness and even with what obscurity must we argue against the Stoics!
The whole, therefore, of that eagerness for philosophy I claim for myself,
both for the purpose of strengthening my firmness of conduct as far as I
can, and also for the delight of my mind. Nor do I think, as Plato says,
that any more important or more valuable gift has been given to men by the
gods. But I send all my friends who have any zeal for philosophy into
Greece; that is to say, I bid them study the Greek writers, in order to
draw their precepts from the fountain-head, rather than follow little
streams. But those things which no one had previously taught, and which
could not be learnt in any quarter by those who were eager on the subject,
I