Diodorus

, of Caria, a philosopher of the Megaric school, flourished about 2SO years B. C. and was a famous adept in the verbal quibbles so common at that time, and which Aristotle called Kristic syllogisms. A dialectic question was proposed to him in the presence of Ptolemy Soter, at whose court he was, by Stilpo, another quibbler like himself; and Diodorus acknowledging himself incapable of giving an immediate answer, requested time for the solution; on which the king himself, we presume a wit, ridiculed his want of ingenuity, and gave him the surname of Chronus. Mortified at this defeat, he retired from the court, wrote a book upon the question, and at last, foolishly enough, died of vexation. He is said to have invented the famous argument against motion: “if any body be moved, it is either moved in the place where it is, or in a place where it is not; but it is not moved in the place where it is, for where it is, it remains; nor is it moved in a place where it is not, for nothing can either act or suffer where it is not; therefore there is no such thing as motion.” Diodorus, after the invention of this wonderful argument, was very properly repaid for his ingenuity. Having had the misfortune to dislocate his shoulder, the surgeon whom he sent for to replace it, kept him for some time in torture, whilst he proved to him, from his own method of reasoning, that the bone could not have moved out of its place. Diodorus has been ranked among the atomic philosophers, because he held the doctrine of small indivisible bodies, infinite in number, but finite in magnitude; but it does not appear that he conceived the idea which distinguishes the atomic doctrine, as it was taught by Democritus and |

others, that the first atoms are destitute of all properties except extension and figures. ¹