3. Since then it is not possible for the philosophers by agreeing together to find out the soul of man, they can scarcely be able to declare the truth about the gods or the universe. For they have this audacity, that I may not call it infatuation. For those who are not able to discover their own soul, seek into the nature of the gods themselves; and those who do not know their own body, busy themselves - 195 - about the nature of the world. In truth they wholly oppose one another about the principles of nature. When Anaxa-goras catches me, he teaches me thus : The beginning of all things is mind, and this is the cause and regulator of all things, and gives arrangement to things unarranged, and motion to things unmoved, and distinction to things mixed, and order to things disordered. Anaxagoras, who says these words, is my friend, and I bow to his doctrine. But against him rise up Melissus and Parmenides. Parmenides indeed, in his poetical works, proclaims that being is one, and everlasting, and endless, and immoveable, and in every way alike. Again then, I know not why I change to this doctrine : Parmenides has driven Anaxagoras out of my mind. But when I am on the point of thinking that I have now a firm doctrine, Anaximenes, catching hold of me, cries out, "But I tell you, everything is air, and this air, thickening and settling, becomes water and air; rarefying and spreading, it becomes aether and fire: but returning into its own nature, it becomes thin air: but if also it becomes condensed, (says he) it is changed." And thus again I pass over to this opinion of his, and cherish Anaximenes.