SOCLARUS. They will be as good as their words, I assure you, Autobulus, and will be here presently; for I saw them both early this morning preparing for the combat. In the mean time, if you please, before they begin, let us resume something of what was yesterday not so fully discoursed of for want of time, or not so carefully argued in our wine, as it ought to have been. For there seemed a dispute to resound in my ears from the Stoics’ portico, that, as immortal is opposite to mortal, incorruptible to corruptible, incorporeal to corporeal, in like manner things void of reason ought to be opposed to those beings that are endued with reason, lest among so many pairs of contraries this alone should be found maimed and imperfect. 3. AUTOBULUS. Good now, friend Soclarus, who was he that maintained that, because there are certain beings endued with reason, therefore there is nothing void of reason? For we abound with examples in all things that are destitute of a soul; nor do we want any other antithesis to irrational, but only to oppose whatever is deprived of a soul—as being void of reason and understanding—to that which is endued with reason and understanding together with a soul. But if any one will assert, that Nature is not defective, and that therefore animated Nature is partly rational, partly without reason; another may at the same time allege, that animated Nature is partly endued with imagination, partly deprived of it; partly sensible, partly insensible; to the end that Nature may not want these opposite habits and privations, as it were, equally balanced in the same kind. For, as it would be absurd to expect to find some living creatures sensible and others without sense, and equally ridiculous to grant imagination to some living creatures and not allow it to others,—since there is no living creature that comes into the world but what is presently endued with sense and imagination,—thus would he be as much out of the way, who should require one living creature to be rational and another void of reason, and that too when he is disputing with men who hold that nothing whatever can partake of sense which does not also partake of understanding, and that there is no animal not endued by Nature with opinion and ratiocination, as well as with sense and instinct. For Nature, which, as they truly say, made all things for the sake of something and to some end, did not make a sensible creature to be merely sensible of barely suffering something; but since there are many things familiar and agreeable, and other things as baneful and pernicious, no one of them could survive for a moment, did they not learn to avoid some things and covet the use and benefit of others. Sense it is, therefore, that affords to every creature the knowledge both of useful and hurtful; but the discretion which accompanies the said sense, choosing and seizing upon things profitable, and discerning and avoiding things pernicious or troublesome, can never be thought to