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nydus/The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersPublic
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Table of Contents

BOOK VII.

the due proportions of this book. And the following are the points in which some of them disagreed with the rest.

LIFE OF ARISTON.

I. Ariston the Bald, a native of Chios, surnamed the Siren, said, that the chief good was to live in perfect indifference to all those things which are of an intermediate character between virtue and vice; making not the slightest difference between them, but regarding them all on a footing of equality. For that the wise man resembles a good actor; who, whether he is filling the part of Agamemnon or Thersites, will perform them both equally well.

II. And he discarded altogether the topic of physics, and of logic, saying that the one was above us, and that the other had nothing to do with us; and that the only branch of philosophy with which we had any real concern was ethics.

III. He also said that dialectic reasonings were like cobwebs; which, although they seem to be put together on principles of

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