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Then, again, as far as regards the doctrine which treats of that
which they call logic, that is, rational philosophy, far be it from
us to compare them with those who attributed to the bodily senses the
faculty of discriminating truth, and thought, that all we learn is to
be measured by their untrustworthy and fallacious rules. Such were the
Epicureans, and all of the same school. Such also were the Stoics,
who ascribed to the bodily senses that expertness in disputation which
they so ardently love, called by them dialectic, asserting that from
the senses the mind conceives the notions (ennoiai) of those things
which they explicate by definition. And hence is developed the whole
plan and connection of their learning and teaching. I often wonder,
with respect to this, how they can say that none are beautiful but the
wise; for by what bodily sense have they perceived that beauty, by
what eyes of the flesh have they seen wisdom's comeliness of form?
Those, however, whom we justly rank before all others, have
distinguished those things which are conceived by the mind from those
which are perceived by the senses, neither taking away from the senses
anything to which they are competent, nor attributing to them anything
beyond their competency. And the light of our understandings, by
which all things are learned by us, they have affirmed to be that
selfsame God by whom all things were made.
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