506 CRITICAL NOTES, 



Stoics. (Locke's "innate ideas.") In cliap. ix. § 27, tlie words 

 " inchoata intelligentia" are employed in tlie same sense ; and I tliink 

 that Cicero is here referring to that passage. Some commentators 

 have proposed to read . . . eas quas ... as if the " ideas" were im- 

 planted by the ''communis intelligentia ;" but it has been justly 

 objected that throughout this book the origia of these " inchoatse 

 intelligentise," (" imperfect rudimentary ideas" or " notions," which 

 gradually become strengthened and perfected), is attributed to God 

 or Nature, and nowhere to the " intelligentia" itself. If I am right 

 in my conjecture, the corrupt readings in the MSS. would arise from 

 the confusion of the relative pronoun qum with the enclitic que; 

 since, in MSS^, both are sometimes indicated by the same compendium. 

 The reading inchoat found in several MSS. points out a way of 

 accounting for the further change. It Would seem as if the participle, 

 perhaps Written in a contracted form, had been mistaken for the 

 verb ; and this mistake will not seem so improbable, if we consider 

 how largely contractions were employed in MSS. For instance, in 

 the fac-simile of only a small portion of one, given in. " Silvestre's 

 Palaeography," (a book, for reference to which I have to thank the 

 learned President of IJniversity College), I found many instances of 

 words merely indicated by their first syllables, or by consonants alone^ 

 the vowels being omitted. 



Ibid : I. xis, 50. The MSS. exhibit a perfect farrago of readings ; 

 "acme nimis istorum philosophorum pudet, qui ullum (v. 1. nullum) 

 vitium (v. 1. judicium) vitare nisi vitio (v. 1. judicio) ipso notatum 

 (v. 1. mutatum or mutato) putant f nor are the emendations, proposed 

 by different editors, less at variance. Madvig's conjecture, vitandum 

 for mutatum, and Klotz's vitato point the way to what I consider to 

 be the true reading, viz. : qui ullum vitium vitari nisi vitio ipso 

 vitato putant. Cicero says that he is " excessively ashamed of those 

 philosophers who think that a fault is avoided at all unless the 

 actual fault is avoided." This is directed against those (the Epicu- 

 reans) who held that things were not in themselves turpia oxhonesta, 

 but only so with reference to the standard of convention ; whereas^ 

 he says, tha.t it is the fault itself which is disgraceful, and not the 

 infamy arising from, it, and that, accordingly, we do not at all avoid 

 a fault by merely guarding against its consequences. 



Ibid : I. xxii, 59. " Intelliget, quemadmodum a natiira subornatus 

 in vitam venerit, quantaque instrumenta habeat ad ohtinendam 



