48 1-15
mind would be moved in such a way that it would be compelled by the
motion of atoms. Democritus, the founder of atomism, preferred to accept
that all things happened by necessity than to tear from the atomic bodies
their natural motions.
Carneades was even more acute and showed that the Epicureans could
defend their case without this fictitious swerve. For since they taught
that there could be a voluntary motion of the mind, it was better to
defend that claim than to introduce the swerve, especially since they
could not find a cause for it. And if they defended this [the possibility
of a voluntary motion of the mind] they could easily resist Chrysippus'
attack. For although they conceded that there was no motion without a
cause, they did not concede that everything which occurred occurred by
antecedent causes. For there are no external and antecedent causes for
our will. 24. Thus we [merely] exploit the common linguistic convention
when we say that someone wills or does not will something without
cause. For we say "without cause" in order to indicate "without external
and antecedent cause," not "without any cause at all"; just as when we
refer to an "empty jar" we do not speak as the physicists do, who do
not believe that there is a genuinely empty space, but to indicate that
the jar is without water or wine or oil, for example. Thus when we say
that the mind is moved without cause, we say that it is moved without
an external and antecedent cause, not without any cause at all. It can
even be said of the atom itself that it moves without a cause when it
moves through the void because of weight and heaviness, since there is
no external cause.
- But again, to avoid being mocked by the physicists if we say that
anything occurs without a cause, one must make a distinction and say
that the nature of the atom itself is such that it moves because of weight
and heaviness and that exactly this is the cause of its moving the way it
does. Similarly, no external cause is needed for the voluntary motions
of the mind; for voluntary motion itself contains within it a nature such
that it is in our power and obeys us, but not without a cause. Its very
nature is the cause of this fact.
37 .... But from all eternity this proposition was true: "Philoctetes
will be abandoned on the island", and this was not able to change from
being true to being false. For it is necessary, when you have two contradic-
tories-and here I call contradictories statements one of which affirms
something and the other of which denies it-of these, then, it is necessary
that one be true and the other false, though Epicurus disagrees. For
example, "Philoctetes will be wounded" was true during all previous
ages, and "he will not be wounded" was false. Unless, perhaps, we want