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SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

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EPISTLE LXXXIII.<br />

many, but one will be '<br />

enough No one entrusts a<br />

:<br />

secret to a man when he is asleep but one entrusts a<br />

;<br />

secret to a good man ; therefore, the good man does<br />

not go to sleep." a Posidonius pleads the cause <strong>of</strong> our<br />

master Zeno in the only possible way ;<br />

but it cannot,<br />

I hold, be pleaded even in this way. For Posidonius<br />

maintains that the word "drunken" is used in two<br />

ways, in the one case <strong>of</strong> a man who is loaded with<br />

wine and has no control over himself; in the other,<br />

<strong>of</strong> a man who is accustomed to get drunk, and is a<br />

slave to the habit.<br />

Zeno, he says,<br />

meant the latter,<br />

the man who is accustomed to get drunk, not the<br />

man who is drunk ;<br />

and no one would entrust to this<br />

person any secret, for it might be blabbed out when<br />

the man was in his cups. This is a fallacy. For the<br />

first syllogism refers to him who is actually drunk and<br />

not to him who is about to get drunk. You will<br />

surely admit that there is a great difference between a<br />

man who is drunk and a drunkard. He who is<br />

drunk actually<br />

may be in this state for the first time and may<br />

not have the habit, while the drunkard is <strong>of</strong>ten free<br />

from drunkenness. I therefore interpret the word in<br />

its usual meaning, especially since the syllogism is set<br />

up by a man who makes a business <strong>of</strong> the careful use <strong>of</strong><br />

words, and who weighs his language. Moreover, if this<br />

is what Zeno meant, and what he wished it to mean<br />

to us, he was trying to avail himself <strong>of</strong> an equivocal<br />

word in order to work in a fallacy and no man<br />

;<br />

ought<br />

to do this when truth is the object <strong>of</strong> inquiry.<br />

But let us admit, indeed, that he meant what<br />

Posidonius says<br />

;<br />

even so, the conclusion is false,<br />

that secrets are not entrusted to an habitual drunkard.<br />

Think how many soldiers who are not always sober<br />

have been entrusted by a general or a captain or a<br />

centurion with messages which might not be divulged<br />

!<br />

265

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