Vitae philosophorum

There are also certain insoluble arguments[*](Cf. supra, § 44.): the Veiled Men, the Concealed, Sorites, Horned Folk, the Nobodies. The Veiled is as follows[*](Here Laertius, as the text stands, gives examples of the Sorites and the Nobody, but none of the other three fallacies, the Veiled, Concealed, Horned.): . . . It cannot be that if two is few, three is not so likewise, nor that if two or three are few, four is not so; and so on up to ten. But two is few, therefore so also is ten. . . . The Nobody argument is an argument whose major premiss consists of an indefinite and a definite clause, followed by a minor premiss and conclusion; for example, If anyone is here, he is not in Rhodes; but there is some one here, therefore there is not anyone in Rhodes. . . .

Such, then, is the logic of the Stoics, by which they seek to establish their point that the wise man is the true dialectician. For all things, they say, are discerned by means of logical study, including whatever falls within the province of Physics, and again whatever belongs to that of Ethics. For else, say they, as regards statement and reasoning Physics and Ethics could not tell how to express themselves, or again concerning the proper use of terms, how the laws have defined various actions.[*](The vulgate, in which I have made no change, has been regarded with suspicion. Von Arnim conjectures: For if the logician ought to have something to say about the correct use of terms, how could he fail to lay down the proper names for actions?) Moreover, of the two kinds of common-sense inquiry included under Virtue one considers the nature of each

The ethical branch of philosophy they divide as follows: (1) the topic of impulse; (2) the topic of things good and evil; (3) that of the passions; (4) that of virtue; (5) that of the end; (6) that of primary value and of actions; (7) that of duties or the befitting; and (8) of inducements to act or refrain from acting. The foregoing is the subdivision adopted by Chrysippus, Archedemus, Zeno of Tarsus, Apollodorus, Diogenes, Antipater, and Posidonius, and their disciples. Zeno of Citium and Cleanthes treated the subject somewhat less elaborately, as might be expected in an older generation. They, however, did subdivide Logic and Physics as well as Ethics.

An animal’s first impulse, say the Stoics, is to selfpreservation, because nature from the outset endears it to itself, as Chrysippus affirms in the first book of his work On Ends: his words are, The dearest thing to every animal is its own constitution and its consciousness thereof; for it was not likely that nature should estrange the living thing from itself or that she should leave the creature she has made without either estrangement from or affection for its own constitution. We are forced then to conclude that nature in constituting the animal made it near and dear to itself; for so it comes to repel all that is injurious and give free access to all that is serviceable or akin to it.

As for the assertion made by some people that pleasure is the object to which the first impulse of animals is directed, it is shown by the Stoics to be false. For pleasure, if it is really felt, they declare