Kitap 1
8
Well, and was not Hippocrates a physician? Yet you see how he expresses himself. But what has his style to do with his professional qualities? Why do you confound things accidentally united in the same men? If Plato was handsome and well made, must I too set myself to becoming handsome and well made,—as if this was necessary to philosophy, because a certain person happened to be at once handsome and a philosopher? Why will you not perceive and distinguish what are the things that make men philosophers, and what belong to them on other accounts? Pray, if I were a philosopher, would it be necessary that you should be lame too [like me]?
8
What then? Do I reject these special faculties? By no means; neither do I reject the faculty of seeing. But if you ask me what is the good of man, I know not where it lies save in dealing wisely with the phenomena of existence.
How from the doctrine of our relationship to god we are to deduce its consequences.