Chapter II. Atticus on the Threefold Division, of Plato’s Philosophy

[ATTICUS] [1] ‘SINCE therefore the entire system of philosophy is divided into three parts, the so-called Ethical topic, and the Physical,and also the Logical; and whereas the aim of the first is to make each one of us honourable and virtuous, and to bring entire households to the highest state of improvement, and finally to furnish the whole commonalty with the most excellent civil polity and the most exact laws; while the second pertains to the knowledge of things divine, and the actual first principles and causes, and all the other things that result from them, which part Plato has named Natural Science;the third is adopted to help in determining and discovering what concerns both the former. Now that Plato before and beyond all others collected into one body all the parts of philosophy, which had till then been scattered and dispersed, like the limbs of Pentheus, as some one said, and exhibited philosophy as an organized body and a living thing complete in all its members, is manifestly asserted by every one.

‘For it is not unknown that Thales, and Anaximenes, and Anaxagoras, and as many as were contemporary with them spent their time solely on the inquiry concerning the nature of existing things. Nor moreover is any one unaware that Pittacus, and Periander, and Solon, and Lycurgus, and those like them, applied their philosophy to statemanship. Zeno too, and all this Eleatic School, are also well known to have studied especially the dialectic art. But after these came Plato, a man newly initiated in the mysteries of nature and of surpassing excellence, as one verily sent down from heaven in order that the philosophy taught by him might be seen in its full proportions; for he omitted nothing, and perfected everything, neither falling short in regard to what was necessary, nor carried away to what was useless.

‘Since therefore we asserted that the Platonist partakes of all three, as studying Nature, and discussing Morals, and practising Dialectic, let us now examine each point separately.’

So speaks Atticus, And the Peripatetic Aristocles also adds his testimony to the same effect, in the seventh Book of the treatise which he composed Of Philosophy,speaking thus word for word: