Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
As for the memoranda that gather up the opinions of the Greeks at the necessary points, I say this much to those who are fond of fault-finding: first, even if philosophy should be useless, if the confirmation of its uselessness is useful, then it is useful; next, it is not possible even to condemn the Greeks by simply making use of a bare statement of their dogmas, without also entering along with them into the particular unveiling of each point, all the way to a fair judgment. For a very trustworthy proof indeed is refutation joined with experience, since the most perfect demonstration is found to be the knowledge of the things condemned. Many things, moreover, even when they do not contribute to the final purpose, nevertheless adorn the craftsman. And besides, wide learning proves supportive of one who sets forth the most authoritative of doctrines, both by producing persuasion in the hearers and by begetting wonder in those under instruction, and it recommends them toward the truth.
Trustworthy is such a leading of the soul, through which those fond of learning come to receive the truth though it lies veiled — so that they may neither themselves suppose that philosophy corrupts life, as though it were the maker of false affairs and base deeds (a charge some have brought against it), it being in fact a clear image of truth, a divine gift given to the Greeks; nor that we ourselves be dragged away from the faith, as though bewitched by some deceptive art, but rather, so to speak, by employing a fuller compass, in some manner or other procure for ourselves a kind of preparatory exercise demonstrative of faith. Yes indeed, and the linking together of the dogmas, through their being set side by side in comparison, courts the truth, through which knowledge has followed — philosophy having entered in not as the leading principle in the argument, but because through the fruit that comes from knowledge we receive a firm persuasion of true apprehension, by means of the science of the things darkly hinted at. For I pass over in silence the fact that the Miscellanies, being given body by this wide learning, wish skillfully to hide the seeds of knowledge.
Just then as the lover of the hunt, having sought, searched, tracked, and run down with hounds, takes his quarry, so too the truth appears sweet when it has been sought and procured through toil. Why then did it seem good to us to arrange the memoranda in this manner? Because great is the danger of publicly performing, before these men, the truly ineffable account of philosophy as it really is — men who are ready recklessly to contradict everything, and not justly, and who cast away all names and words in no orderly fashion whatever, deceiving themselves and bewitching those who cling to them. For the Hebrews ask for signs, as the apostle says, while the Greeks seek after wisdom.
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