Solemn Dissertation on the Philosophy of Silence

the Emperor, dared to defend the Christian faith from the Pythagorean philosophy of silence.

§. IX.

And although it was said in §. I and III that the philosophy of silence is in obligation when the opportunity to speak is lacking, there are nevertheless those who object: that to speak is human, and allowed to man for the sake of conversation. I respond: The philosophy of silence opportunely inhibits speech as often as it is better to be silent than to speak. Therefore, it is so far from abolishing speech that it rather tempers it with opportune silence. For the philosophy of silence does not fight with εὐλαλείᾳ good speaking but with untimely πολυλογίᾳ loquacity. Hence the silence intended by it, as Hippocrates testifies in Plutarch in the Treatise on Garrulity at the end, as far as conversation is concerned, is οὐ μόνον ἄδιψον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἄλυπον καὶ ἀνώδυνον not only thirstless, but also painless and without grief. There is indeed a time when one must speak; there is also a time when a philosopher must be silent in conversation. There, this saying holds true: Speak, that I may see you. Here, this one: Restrain your lip with your finger. The philosophy of silence therefore provides that one does not speak too much, nor that one is silent too much and against decorum. It weighs both with an equal balance, lest the followers of this philosophy be able to decline into either of these extremes. They will do them an injury if they restrict their philosophy to a solitary and more than Harpocratic silence, which I have condemned myself in §. VII.

§. X.

Having dismissed the argument that could have impugned the philosophy of silence, I now turn to those advantages which can redound to all parts of philosophy from silence. In general, however, it must be noted that the so-called philosophical temperaments depend on the prudence of being silent. By these, in difficult matters and in those sentences which have equally probable reasons on both sides, the decisive judgment is suspended, and τὸ ἐπέχειν the act of holding back judgment is chosen. Hence, a custom obtains among some philosophers that, for the sake of avoiding arrogance, they use the word "it seems," by which they prefer themselves to no one, and tolerate the dissent of others in a matter very difficult to explain. Nor do those for whom the philosophy of silence is a care fear to profess a learned ignorance. Such they discover in the cognition of things greater than their own intellect, or which they cannot penetrate due to certain external impediments, or which they understand do not concern them at all. Hence, they by no means err, including such ignorance under the temperament of science, and excusing it among those to whom all ignorance is placed in vice and vituperation by an insane audacity. For Lactantius leads the way in Divine Institutes, Book II, chap. VI: Let no one think that he knows everything, which belongs to God, nor that he knows nothing, which is the mark of a beast. There is a middle ground, science joined with ignorance. And Hugo Grotius provides an example in Book on the Law of Supreme Power concerning Sacred Things, chap. VI, §. 6 with these words: Ignorance of private law, medicine, commerce, and other matters is not only excusable, but is often to be praised in supreme powers, on account of greater and better occupations. But these examples of learned ignorance are wrongly referred by Henricus Alstedius in Encyclopaedia, Book XXXV, Section 12, for which it does not behoove a busy man to be solicitous. Specifically: concerning the food of marine fish, the turning of the winds, the administration of another’s house, and the divine government. The first of these fails the fisherman; the second, the sailors; the third, the judge, the guardian, the curator of assets, and others; the fourth, those who are of the secret councils of a Prince; the fifth, theologians, whose greatest interest it is that they propose divine government to mortals.