Aristotelis Opera (Bekker Edition, Vol. 2): Metaphysica, Ethica, Politica, Rhetorica, Poetica

ON THE CATEGORIES.

...oneself, by arguing that since life resembles a great banquet, it is clear that in as many ways as one dissolves a banquet, in those same ways one may reasonably take one's own life. For, as they say, there are six ways a banquet is dissolved. For instance, because of a lack of food, those eating reasonably dissolve the banquet; so, because of a lack of means, one reasonably takes one's own life, wishing not to be consumed by hunger, as Theognis (175) shows this to a certain Cyrnus, saying:

Fleeing poverty, one must throw oneself
Into the deep-swelling sea, or from high, rugged cliffs, O Cyrnus.

It must be known that he does not mean the poor man must take his own life, but that everywhere one must scatter poverty, whether in inaccessible rocks or in the sea, so to speak, so that one may be freed from hunger. Again, a banquet is dissolved because the food is ill-juiced or poisonous; when the food is like this, those eating reasonably dissolve the banquet; so, when the body is ill-juiced and unfit to receive the virtues of the soul, one reasonably takes his own life, wishing to be rid of the disease. Whence also a certain Cynic philosopher of ours approached Julian the King, saying to him:

Half of me is dead, and the other half sees the dawn;
Pity, O King, a half-cut Cynic.

That is, command that I be put to death. He said to him:

You wrong both, O Plato and Phaethon,
The one by looking at me, the other by being left behind.

Again, a banquet is dissolved because of some personal circumstance; for if the guest suddenly becomes ill or hears of the loss of a friend, those eating reasonably dissolve the banquet; so, when some personal circumstance befalls one, one reasonably takes his own life. Whence a certain Pythagorean woman, the one called Theano, captured by the tyrant in Sicily and asked why the Pythagoreans do not eat beans, said, "I would eat if I could tell." And when he said, "Eat then," she said, "I would tell if I could eat," and thus she bit off her tongue and died. Again, a banquet is dissolved because of drunkenness; for when those eating are drunk, the banquet reasonably dissolves; so, someone reasonably takes his own life when he reaches extreme old age and begins to talk nonsense or lose his mind. Again, a banquet is dissolved when those eating begin to fight each other or commit impious acts among themselves; so, one reasonably takes his own life when, captured by enemies, he is forced to commit impious acts, such as incest or eating forbidden things. Again, a banquet is dissolved because of a common circumstance; for if a common circumstance befalls, such as a fire or an invasion of Barbarians, those eating reasonably dissolve the banquet; so, one reasonably takes his own life because of a common circumstance, when—

when enemies have come to the city, the citizen, overcome by fear, takes his own life. These things are so; but it must be known that others hand down three ways by which one reasonably takes his own life. For they say that life is naturally threefold: the best, the middle, and the worst; when someone is in the best or the middle life and sees himself inclining more toward the worse, he reasonably takes his own life. Again, when someone is in the worst life and sees himself always in the same state, never changing toward the best, he reasonably takes his own life. So much for these matters.

Act 12. The greatest deficiency of the Stoic is the insatiability of appetites. This is considered in the same way in the human being, who is a small world, as in Democritus.

Act 13. It is said that by the first reduplication, "art of arts," he likened philosophy to a king, but by the second, "science of sciences," to God.
Vulgar arts are called all the irrational ones, improperly; properly, however, are those working through fire, from the term bainein to walk/tread around them; the same applies to the furnace, from the steam it emits.

Act 14. Again, as in the riddle that says: "A man and not a man, a man yet so, bird and not a bird, but a bird so, sitting on wood and not wood, hit with a stone and not a stone, he destroys." He says that a eunuch killed a bat sitting on a stalk by hitting it with a piece of pumice... and the wood that is not wood he called a stalk, wood because it is wood-like; and not wood because it is not carried like other wood.

Act 15. Let Pythagoras be our beginning and end; for it is the man's custom to look toward himself and connect the beginning to the end.
One uses many steps to know philosophy; for he wants to know the five cognitive powers; these are sense, imagination, opinion, discursive reason, and intellect.
It must be known that Olympiodorus describes the ascent and the knowledge of philosophy thus: first is sense, second imagination, third opinion, fourth experience, fifth knowledge, sixth science, seventh memory, eighth wisdom, of which philosophy is the pursuit.
There are four differences of the definitions of philosophy for this reason: because the number four was very honorable among the Pythagoreans, as they themselves declare when swearing by Pythagoras, saying: "Yes, by him who handed down to our souls the tetractys, the fountain of perennial nature." He called the number four the fountain of perennial nature, since our bodies consist of the four elements... and since there are four elements... and since there are four virtues of the soul: courage, justice, temperance, and prudence, and since the number four, when added to those before it, makes the number ten.

Act 16. Since in the preceding pages we have said that numerical evidence shows through the number six that there are six definitions of philosophy,