Hellenistic Philosophy Introductory

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

68 /-29


bright, on the grounds that nothing (lllOc) has its own independent
quality or power when it is in bodies, nor is it active rather than passive,
but rather takes on different features and mixtures in various bodies.
For Epicurus himself, in book two of his Against Theophrastus, says
that colours are not natural properties of bodies, but are produced by
certain orderings and positions [of the atoms] relative to our vision; yet
he says that, by this argument, body is no more colourless than it is
coloured. And earlier he had written this, word for word: "but even
without this part [of my theory] I do not know how one can say that
those things which are in the dark have colour. And yet, when there is
a dark cloud of air [i.e., fog] evenly wrapped around things, (lllOd) it
is often the case that some men perceive differences in colours while
others do not because of the dullness of their vision; again, when we go
into a dark house we do not see colours, but after we have stayed for a
while we do." Therefore, no body will be said to have colour rather than
not to have it.
And if colour is relative, so too will white and blue be relative, and if
these, so too sweet and bitter; consequently it will be true to predicate
of every quality that it no more exists than does not exist: for the object
will be like this for people in one condition, but not for those who are
not. (lllOe) So Colotes ends up pouring over himself and his master
the very mud and confusion in which he says those people wallow who
assert that things are 'no more this than that'.
So is this the only place where this fine fellow shows that he "teems
with sores though he tries to heal others"?^30 Not at all. In his second
accusation [Colotes] fails even more miserably to notice how he drives
Epicurus, along with Democritus, outside the pale of normal life. For
he claims that Democritus' dicta, "colour is by convention and sweet is
by convention" and compounds are by convention and so forth, but "in
truth there are void and atoms," are opposed to sense perception; and
that anyone who clings to and uses this theory could not even think of
himself as human or as alive.
I have no criticism to make of this argument, and I claim that these
[Democritean] views are as inseparable from Epicurus' opinions as they
themselves say the shape and weight are from the atom. For what does
Democritus say? that substances infinite in number, indivisible and inde-
structible and, moreover, qualitiless and impassible, are scattered about
and move in the void; (lllla) and when they approach one another or
collide or get tangled up with each other they appear, because they are



  1. Euripides fr. 1086 Nauck.

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