Essays and Miscellanies

 Table of Contents

 Philosophical Essays That it is Not Possible to Live Pleasurably According to the Doctrine of Epicurus. PLUTARCH, ZEUXIPPUS, THEON, ARISTODEMUS.

 That a Philosopher Ought Chiefly to Converse with Great Men.

 Abstract of a Discourse Showing that the Stoics Speak Greater Improbabilities than the Poets.

 Common Conceptions Against the Stoics. LAMPRIAS, DIADUMENUS

 Contradictions of the Stoics.

 The Eating of Flesh.

 Tract I.

 Tract II.

 Concerning Fate.

 Against Colotes, the Disciple and Favorite of Epicurus.

 Platonic Questions.

 Question I.

 Question II.

 Question III.

 Question IV.

 Question V.

 Question VI.

 Question VII.

 Question VIII.

 Question IX.

 Question X.

 Literary Essays.

 The Life and Poetry of Homer

 The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men. The Seven - Solon, Dias, Thales, Anacharsis, Cleobulus, Pittacus, Chilo. Niloxenus, Eumetis, Alexidemus Periander,

 Diocles to Nicarchus

 How a Young Man Ought to Hear Poems.

 Abstract of a Comparison Between Aristophane and Menander

 The Malice of Herodotus.

Question II.

Why Does he Call the Supreme God Father and Maker of All Things? (Plato, "Timaeus," p. 28 C.)

Is it because he is (as Homer calls him) of created gods and men the Father, and of brutes and things that have no soul the maker? If Chrysippus may be believed, he is not properly styled the father of the afterbirth who supplied the seed, although it arose from the seed. Or has Plato figuratively called the maker of the world the father of it? In his Convivium he calls Phaedrus the father of the amatorious discourse which he had commenced; and so in his Phaedrus ("Phaedrus," p. 261 A.) he calls him "father of noble children," when he had been the occasion of many pre-eminent discourses about philosophical questions. Or is there any difference between a father and a maker? Or between procreation and making? For as what is procreated is also made, but not the contrary recreated did also make, for the procreation of an animal is the making of it. Now the work of a maker - as of a builder, a weaver, a musical-instrument maker, or a statuary - is altogether apart and separate from its author; but the principle and power of the procreator is implanted in the progeny, and contains his nature, the progeny being a piece pulled off the procreator. Since therefore the world is neither like a piece of potter's work nor joiner's work, but there is a great share of life and divinity in it, which God from himself communicated to and mixed with matter, God may properly be called Father of the world - since it has life in it - and also the maker of it.

And since these things come very near to Plato's opinion, consider, I pray, whether there may not be some probability in them. Whereas the world consists of two parts, body and soul, God indeed made not the body; but matter being at hand, he formed and fitted it, binding up and confirming what was infinite within proper limits and figures. But the soul, partaking of mind, reason, and harmony, was not only the work of God, but part of him not only made by him, but begot by him.