Discourses - Book II   

now it is only trifling words, and nothing more.
This is the true athlete, the man who exercises himself against such
appearances. Stay, wretch, do not be carried away. Great is the
combat, divine is the work; it is for kingship, for freedom, for
happiness, for freedom from perturbation. Remember God: call on him as
a helper and protector, as men at sea call on the Dioscuri in a storm.
For what is a greater storm than that which comes from appearances
which are violent and drive away the reason? For the storm itself,
what else is it but an appearance? For take away the fear of death,
and suppose as many thunders and lightnings as you please, and you
will know what calm and serenity there is in the ruling faculty. But
if you have once been defeated and say that you will conquer
hereafter, then say the same again, be assured that you at last be
in so wretched a condition and so weak that you will not even know
afterward that you are doing wrong, but you will even begin to make
apologies for your wrongdoing, and then you will confirm the saying of
Hesiod to be true,

With constant ills the dilatory strives.

CHAPTER 19

Against those who embrace, philosophical opinions only in words

The argument called the "ruling argument" appears to have been
proposed from such principles as these: there is in fact a common
contradiction between one another in these three positions, each two
being in contradiction to the third. The propositions are, that
everything past must of necessity be true; that an impossibility
does not follow a possibility; and that thing is possible which
neither is nor t at a t will be true. Diodorus observing this
contradiction employed the probative force of the first two for the
demonstration of this proposition, "That nothing is possible which
is not true and never will be." Now another will hold these two: "That
something is possible, which is neither true nor ever will be": and
"That an impossibility does not follow a possibility," But he will not
allow that everything which is past is necessarily true, as the
followers of Cleanthes seem to think, and Antipater copiously defended
them. But others maintain the other two propositions, "That a thing is
possible which is neither true nor will he true": and "That everything
which is past is necessarily true"; but then they will maintain that
an impossibility can follow a possibility. But it is impossible to
maintain these three propositions, because of their common
contradiction.
If then any man should ask me which of these propositions do I
maintain? I will answer him that I do not know; but I have received
this story, that Diodorus maintained one opinion, the followers of
Panthoides, I think, and Cleanthes maintained another opinion, and
those of Chrysippus a third. "What then is your opinion?" I was not
made for this purpose, to examine the appearances that occur to me and