58. What, then, are we alone
ignorant? do we alone not know who is the creator, who the former of
souls, what cause fashioned man, whence ills have broken forth, or why
the Supreme Ruler allows them both to exist and be perpetrated, and
does not drive them from the world? have you, indeed, ascertained and
learned any of these things with certainty? If you chose to lay
aside audacious3805
| 3805
Lit., “audacity of.” |
conjectures,
can you unfold and disclose whether this
world in which we
dwell
3806
| 3806
Lit., “world which holds us.” |
was
created or
founded at some time? if it was founded and made, by what
kind of
work,
pray, or for what purpose? Can you bring forward and disclose the
reason why it does not remain
fixed and immoveable, but is ever being
carried round in a circular motion? whether it revolves of its own will
and choice, or is turned by the influence of some
power? what the
place, too, and space is in which it is set and revolves, boundless,
bounded, hollow, or
3807
| 3807
The first five edd. insert the mark of interrogation after
“hollow:” “Whether does a solid axis,”
etc. |
solid? whether it is supported by an
axis resting on sockets at its extremities, or rather itself sustains
by its own
power, and by the spirit within it upholds itself? Can
you, if asked, make it clear, and show most skilfully,
3808
| 3808
So the edd. except. Hild., who retains the ms. reading in scientissime—“most
unskilfully” (the others omitting in-), and Oehler, who
changes e into i—“and being most witless
show,” etc. |
what opens
out the
snow into feathery flakes? what was the reason and cause that
day did not, in dawning, arise in the west, and
veil its
light in the
east? how the sun, too, by one and the same influence,
3809
produces
results so different, nay, even so opposite? what the
moon is, what the
stars? why, on the one
hand, it does not remain of the same shape, or
why it was right and necessary that these particles of fire should be
set all over the world? why some
3810
| 3810 So
the later edd., reading from the margin of Ursinus figi? cur
alia, for the ms.
figuralia, except LB., which reads
figurari—“be formed.” |
of them are small, others large and
greater,—these have a dim light, those a more vivid and shining
brightness?
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