NOVUM ORQANUM 4-7 



of Greek invention, But the wisdom of the Greeks was 

 professional and disputatious, and thus most adverse to the 

 investigation of truth. The name, therefore, of sophists, 

 which the contemptuous spirit of those who deemed them 

 selves philosophers, rejected and transferred to the rhetori 

 cians Gorgias, 35 Protagoras, Hippias, Polus might well suit 

 the whole tribe, such as Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, 

 Theophrastus, and their successors Chrysippus, Carneades, 

 and the rest. There was only this difference between them 

 the former were mercenary vagabonds, travelling about 

 to different states, making a show of their wisdom, and re 

 quiring pay; the latter more dignified and noble, in pos 

 session of fixed habitations, opening schools, and teaching 

 philosophy gratuitously. Both, however (though differing 

 in other respects), were professorial, and reduced every sub 

 ject to controversy, establishing and defending certain sects 

 and dogmas of philosophy, so that their doctrines were 

 nearly (what Dionysius not unaptly objected to Plato) the 

 talk of idle old men to ignorant youths. But the more 

 ancient Greeks, as Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, De- 

 mocritus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Philolaus, 

 and the rest 36 (for I omit Pythagoras as being superstitious), 



35 Gorgias of Leontium went to Athens in 424 B.C. He and Polus were 

 disciples of Empedocles, whom we have already noticed (Aphorism 63), where he 

 sustained the three famous propositions, that nothing exists, that nothing can be 

 known, and that it is out of the power of man to transmit or communicate intel 

 ligence. He is reckoned one of the earliest writers on the art of rhetoric, and 

 for that reason, Plato called his elegant dialogue on that subject after his name. 



36 Chrysippus, a stoic philosopher of Soli in Cilicia, Campestris, born in 280, 

 died in the 143d Olympiad, 208 B.C. He was equally distinguished for natural 

 ^ilities and industry, seldom suffering a day to elapse without writing 500 

 hues. He wrote several hundred volumes, of which three hundred were on 

 K-.gical subjects; but in all, borrowed largely from others. He was very fond 

 oi the sorites in argument, which is hence called by Persius the heap of Chry- 



