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as the proverb has it. Now this must of necessity fall out, if things move according to
prius
and
posterius, and the intervals through which they pass are (as these men’s tenet is) divisible
in infinitum; for if the tortoise is but a furlong before the horse, they who divide this furlong
in infinitum, and move them both according to
prius and
posterius, will never bring the swiftest to the slowest; the slower always adding some interval divisible into infinite spaces. Now to affirm that, water being poured from a bowl or cup, it will never be all poured out, is it not both against common sense, and a consequence of what these men say? For no man can understand the motion according to
prius of things infinitely divisible to be consummated; but leaving always somewhat divisible, it will make all the effusion, all the running and flux of a liquid, motion of a solid, and fall of an heavy thing imperfect.
DIADUMENUS.
Now they indeed say, that Epicurus does intolerable things and violates the conceptions, in moving all bodies with equal celerity, and admitting none of them to be swifter than another. And yet it is much more intolerable and farther remote from sense, that nothing can be overtaken by another:Not though Adrastus’s swift-footed steed
Should chase the tortoise slow,
De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos. Plutarch. Boston. 1874.
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