The Polemic of Plutarch 67
experience, but that different people have different experiences according
to the differing qualities and powers of it.
So is it time to consider which men do more to inflict 'no more [this
than that]' on things than those who proclaim that every sensible object
is a blend of all sorts of qualities-'mixed like new wine in the filter'^29 -
and who agree that their canons [of truth] would perish and their criterion
would completely vanish if they left any object of perception whatsoever
pure [and simple] and they did not leave each and every one of them
a plurality?
Notice, then, what Epicurus has had Polyaenus (in the Symposium)
say to him about the heating power of wine. (1109f) For when he said,
"Epicurus, do you deny that there are heating properties in wine?" he
answered, "What need is there to show that wine has heating properties?"
And a bit further on: "For wine seems in general not to have heating
properties, but a given quantity could be said to have a heating effect
on this individual person."
And again, suggesting the cause [for this], he attributed it to (lllOa)
compactions and dispersions of atoms and to commixtures of and linkages
with other atoms in the mixture of wine with the body; and then he
adds: "that is why one must not say that wine has heating properties in
general, but that a given quantity has a heating effect on a nature of this
type which is in this sort of condition, or that a given amount could have a
cooling effect on this [other] nature. For in such an aggregate [as wine]
there are also the sort of natures from which coolness might be produced,
or which being linked appropriately with other natures, would produce the
nature of coolness. Hence, people are deceived, some into saying that wine
in general has cooling properties, others that it has heating properties."
But he who says that the majority are deceived when they suppose
that what heats things has heating properties, or that what cools things
has cooling properties, is himself deceived, (lllOb) unless he believes
that it follows from what he says that each thing is no more like this
than like that. And he adds that wine often does not enter the body with
heating or cooling properties, but that when the mass has been set in
motion and the rearrangement of bodies has occurred, sometimes the
atoms which produce heat assemble in one place and by their numbers
produce heat and fever in the body, and sometimes they are expelled
and [so] chill it.
It is obvious that these arguments can be used against everything which
is generally said or believed to be bitter, sweet, purgative, soporific, or
- A fragment from an unknown Greek tragedy, 420 Nauck.