Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editorIamblichus
Philosophy
Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editor
Iamblichus
Ethics, Ancient; Philosophers -- Greece -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient; Pythagoras; Pythagoras and Pythagorean school
The prudent [i. e. the wise] man will especially become so as follows:
In the first place, being naturally sagacious, possessing a good memory,
and being a lover of labor, he should exercise his dianoetic power
immediately from his youth in reasonings and disciplines, and in
accurate theories, and adhere to genuine philosophy. But after this he
should acquire knowledge and experience in what pertains to the Gods,
the laws, and human lives. For there are two things from which the
disposition of prudence is produced; one of which consists in obtaining
a mathematical and gnostic habit; but the other, in a man perceiving by
himself many theorems and things, and understanding other things through
a certain different mode. For neither is he sufficient to the possession
of prudence, who immediately from his youth has exercised his dianoetic
power in reasonings and disciplines; nor he who being destitute of
these, has heard and has been conversant with a multitude of things. But
the latter will have his dianoetic power blind, through judging of
particulars; and the former through always surveying universals. For as
in computations the amount of the whole is obtained by the addition of
the parts, thus also in things, reason is able to delineate the theory
of universals; but experience has the power of forming a judgment of
particulars.
FROM
ARCHYTAS,
IN HIS TREATISE
ON DISCIPLINES.
It is necessary that you should become scientific, either by learning
from another person, or by discovering yourself the things of which you
have a scientific knowledge. If, therefore, you learn from another
person, that which you learn is foreign; but what you discover yourself
is through yourself, and is your own. Moreover, if you investigate,
discovery will be easy, and soon obtained; but if you do not know how to
investigate, discovery will be to you impossible. And [right] reasoning
indeed, when discovered, causes sedition to cease, and increases
concord. For through this the inexhaustible desire of possessing is
suppressed, and equality prevails; since by this we obtain what is just
in contracts. Hence, on account of this, the poor receive from those who
are able to give; and the rich give to those that are in want, both of
them believing that through this they shall obtain the equal. This
however will be a rule and an impediment to those that act unjustly,
viz. that men who possess scientific knowledge will appease their anger,
prior to the commission of an injury, being persuaded that the
perpetrators of it will not be concealed when it is committed; but that
those who do not possess scientific knowledge, becoming manifest in the
commission of an injury, will be restrained from acting unjustly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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