Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Just as the many men who haul a ship down to the sea would not each be called causes in the plural, but rather one cause arising out of many (for no single one of them is the cause of the ship's being hauled down, but only in conjunction with the others), so too philosophy, being an inquiry into truth, is taken up as a joint contributor toward the apprehension of truth, not being the cause of that apprehension, but a cause and co-worker together with other things. And perhaps what is a joint-cause may also be called simply a cause. So too, though happiness is one thing, the virtues, being several, are its causes. And just as the sun, fire, the bath, and clothing all contribute toward being warmed, so, though truth is one, many are the things taken up together in the search for it, while the actual finding of it comes through the Son. If, at any rate, we consider it, virtue according to its power is one, yet it happens that, as it comes to reside in these particular matters, it is called prudence, in those, temperance, and in others, courage or justice. By the same reasoning, then, though truth is one, geometry possesses its own particular truth, music likewise has a truth proper to itself, and among the Greeks, right philosophy would hold a truth belonging to it. But this truth alone, the sovereign one which we are taught at the side of the Son of God, is unassailable.
In this way, we say, one and the same drachma, when given to the ship-owner, is called passage-fare, but to the tax-collector, toll, and rent to the landlord, wages to the teacher, and earnest-money to the seller. So too each thing called by the common name of either virtue or truth is the cause only of its own particular effect. It is by the combined use of these that living happily comes about (for we ought not, after all, to be happy merely about names), when we call the right life happiness, and call happy the person whose soul has been adorned with virtue. And if philosophy, too, contributes from a distance toward the discovery of truth, reaching by various approaches toward that knowledge of ours which lays hold of truth directly, still it does contribute, for the one who has been in earnest to grasp knowledge by reasoning. Yet Greek truth is distinguished from ours, even though it has come to share the same name — distinguished both by the greatness of its knowledge and by a more authoritative demonstration, and by divine power, and by other such things; for we have been taught by God, being instructed in truly sacred writings at the side of the Son of God; hence they do not move souls in the same way, but by a different kind of teaching.
But if, on account of those fond of finding fault, we must also draw the distinction, calling philosophy a joint-cause and co-worker of the true apprehension, being an inquiry into truth, we shall acknowledge it to be a preliminary training for the man of true knowledge, without setting down the joint-cause as the cause, nor indeed the co-worker as what holds the thing together, nor as that without which philosophy could not be; since nearly everyone, without the education of the general curriculum and Greek philosophy, and some even without letters, moved by that divine and barbarian philosophy, have received in power, through faith, the account concerning God, having been instructed by a wisdom that worked of itself. What one thing does along with another, being incomplete to act by itself alone, we call a co-worker and joint-cause, either from being a cause together with a cause, or from becoming, by coming together with another, what is named a cause, while being unable by itself to furnish the effect that is in accordance with truth. And yet philosophy by itself once did make the Greeks righteous, though not with a view to universal righteousness, toward which it is found to be a co-worker (just as the first and second step are for the man going up to the upper room, and the grammar-teacher for the one who is going to philosophize); nor is it the case that, by its removal, the universal reason is deficient, or truth is done away with, since sight too contributes to truth, and hearing, and speech, yet it is the mind that recognizes it properly. But of the co-workers, some furnish a greater power, others a lesser. Clarity, at any rate, co-works toward the handing on of truth, and dialectic toward not falling prey to the heresies that come rushing in.
Self-sufficient, then, and in need of nothing is the teaching that comes through the Savior, being the power and wisdom of God, while Greek philosophy, coming alongside it, does not make truth more powerful, but by rendering the sophistic attack upon it powerless, and by deflecting the treacherous plots laid against truth, it has fittingly been called the fence and the wall of the vineyard. And the one, the truth according to faith, is necessary for life like bread; but the preliminary training is like a side-dish and a dessert, or, as the Theban Pindar says, a sweet morsel eaten at the close of dinner. Scripture has said this outright: the guileless man who has understanding will become more shrewd, and the wise man will receive knowledge. And the one who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, says the Lord, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is truthful, and there is no unrighteousness in him. Conversely, then, the man who appropriates the things of the barbarians and boasts of them as his own, thereby increasing his own reputation and falsifying the truth, does wrong. This man Scripture calls a thief. It says, at any rate: my son, do not become a liar, for lying leads on to theft. Now the thief, whatever he has stolen, does in fact truly possess it, whether it be gold or silver or a saying or a doctrine. So then, in part, the things they have stolen are true, but they know them only by conjecture and by the logical necessities of the arguments. Having been taught as disciples, then, they will come to know them with true comprehension.
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