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Book 8, Historical editorial footnote
Complete historical editorial footnotes. These notes retain the original edition’s wording; individual note authors are unspecified.
English translation and editorial credits: William Wilson (Edinburgh translation); A. Cleveland Coxe (American revision and editorial material).
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It is necessary to read λόγον here, though not in the text, on account of ἐκπορίζοντα which follows; and as εὔλογον εἷναι λόγον occurs afterwards, it seems better to retain δὔλογον than to substitute λόγον for it.
Editorial footnote · The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Book 8, Historical editorial footnote, editorial note cite_note-3 · Original source
Similarly, also, all men will admit that demonstration is discourse, agreeable to reason, producing belief in points disputed, from points admitted.
[We begin, that is, with axioms: and he ingeniously identifies faith with axiomatic truth. Hence the faith not esoteric.]
Editorial footnote · The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Book 8, Historical editorial footnote, editorial note cite_note-4 · Original source
Consequently all demonstration is traced up to indemonstrable faith.
Ἐπιθυμητικοῦ, which accords with what Plato says in the Timæus, p. 1078. Lowth, however, reads φυτικοῦ.
Editorial footnote · The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Book 8, Historical editorial footnote, editorial note cite_note-5 · Original source
For Plato calls plants animals, as partaking of the third species of life alone, that of appetency. But Aristotle, while he thinks that plants are possessed of a life of vegetation and nutrition, does not consider it proper to call them animals; for that alone, which possesses the other life—that of sensation—he considers warrantable to be called an animal. The Stoics do not call the power of vegetation, life.
[The young student must be on his guard as to the philosophical scepticism here treated, which is not the habit of unbelief commonly so called.]
Editorial footnote · The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Book 8, Historical editorial footnote, editorial note cite_note-6 · Original source
And, in fine, if it is true, it will make a beginning with itself, and not be scepticism of anything else but of itself first. Then if [such a man] apprehends that he is a man, or that he is sceptical, it is evident that he is not sceptical. And how shall he reply to the interrogation? For he is evidently no sceptic in respect to this. Nay, he affirms even that he does doubt.
[The Alexandrians must have recognised this as an ad hominem remark. But see Eccles. xii. 12.]
Editorial footnote · The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Book 8, Historical editorial footnote, editorial note cite_note-7 · Original source
But among the principal causes of scepticism is the instability of the mind, which is productive of dissent. And dissent is the proximate cause of doubt. Whence life is full of tribunals and councils; and, in fine, of selection in what is said to be good and bad; which are the signs of a mind in doubt, and halting through feebleness on account of conflicting matters. And there are libraries full of books, and compilations and treatises of those who differ in dogmas, and are confident that they themselves know the truth that there is in things.
[The book reaches no conclusion, and is evidently a fragment, merely. See Elucidation II.; also Kaye, p. 224.]
Editorial footnote · The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Book 8, Historical editorial footnote, editorial note cite_note-8 · Original source
The Co-operating cause further aids the Synectic, in the way of intensifying what is produced by it. But the Joint-cause does not fall under the same notion. For a thing may be a Joint-cause, though it be not a Synectic cause. For the Joint-cause is conceived in conjunction with another, which is not capable of producing the effect by itself, being a cause along with a cause. And the Co-operating cause differs from the Joint-cause in this particular, that the Joint-cause produces the effect in that which by itself does not act. But the Co-operating cause, while effecting nothing by itself, yet by its accession to that which acts by itself, co-operates with it, in order to the production of the effect in the intensest degree. But especially is that which becomes co-operating from being Procatarctic, effective in intensifying the force of the cause.