Book 2

[Book II survives only in scattered fragments, preserved as quotations by later authors (chiefly Nonius and Augustine). They are given here in sequence, without continuous numbering.]

And yet, if we believed that, we should have no need of plumb-lines, of squares, of rules.

Can you tell what the outlines of the moon are, whose horns, both as it waxes and as it grows old, appear now blunter, now sharper?

What seems as flat as the sea?—from which the poets even call it "the level plain" [aequor].

In water we see an oar, though whole, as if broken.

Is not the sea blue? Yet when its wave is struck by the oars, it grows purple; and the water, dyed in a certain manner and stained, [we see takes on colour].

[Things appear] one way to the grown, another to the vigorous, another to the sick, another to the sober, another to the drunk.

For whenever we have plunged under, like those who dive, we discern either nothing above us, or only very dimly.

To such men even an alabaster jar full of perfume seems to be rotten.

[Cicero held] that nothing can be perceived by man, and that nothing is left to the wise man but the most diligent inquiry into truth; and this for the reason that, if assent were given to uncertain things, then even if they should perhaps be true, he could not be freed from error—which is the greatest fault of a wise man.

…which seemed to him to chime most closely with the likeness of truth.

"The probable, or the truth-like, …, which can invite us to action without assent; but by 'without assent' I mean this, that, though we may not suppose what we do to be true or think that we know it, we nevertheless act…. Such, it seems to me, are all the things I have thought ought to be named 'probable' or 'truth-like'; and if you wish to call them by another name, I make no objection; for it is enough for me that you have now well understood what I mean—that is, to what things I am giving these names; for it befits the wise man to be not a craftsman of words but an inquirer into things."

[He spoke of philosophy's power] to break avarice, to lay aside crimes, to set out one's own life for the young to imitate.

For those who have come too late to the love of public honours are scarcely admitted to them, and, not sufficiently recommended, cannot win the favour of the multitude.

[Cicero argued] that to the Academic wise man the second place is given by all those of the other sects who think themselves wise, since each must necessarily claim the first place for himself; from which it can be probably concluded that the man rightly stands first in his own judgement who, in the judgement of all the rest, stands second. For suppose, for the sake of argument, that a Stoic wise man is present—for it was chiefly against the Stoics that the genius of the Academics blazed forth. Zeno, then, or Chrysippus, if asked who the wise man is, will answer that he is the man whom he himself has described; Epicurus, on the contrary, or some other adversary, will deny it, and will contend that his own man—the most expert hunter of pleasures—is rather the wise one. Hence to wrangling. Zeno cries out, and that whole Porch is in an uproar, that man was born for nothing else than honourableness, that honourableness by its own splendour draws men's minds to itself with no advantage whatever set outside it and no enticing reward, and that the pleasure of Epicurus is shared only among the beasts, into whose company it is a sin to thrust both man and the wise man. On the other side, that other man, having summoned out of his little gardens a crowd of drunkards to his aid, like the rout of Bacchus—a crowd that nonetheless looks for someone whom, raving with unkempt nails and savage mouth, they may tear to pieces—heaping up the name of pleasure as sweetness and repose with the people for witness, presses on fiercely, so that no one seems able to be happy unless by that. If an Academic should fall into their brawl, he will hear each side dragging him to its own party; but if he should go over to the one set or the other, he will be cried down by those he deserts as mad, ignorant, and rash. And so, when he has carefully lent his ear both this way and that, on being asked what he thinks, he will say that he is in doubt. Ask the Stoic now who is the better man: Epicurus, who cries that he is raving, or the Academic, who declares that on so great a matter he must still deliberate? No one doubts the Academic will be preferred. Turn again to the other and ask whom he loves more: Zeno, by whom he is called a beast, or Arcesilas, from whom he hears, "You are perhaps speaking the truth, but I shall inquire more diligently." Is it not plain that to Epicurus that whole Porch seems mad, while the Academics, compared with them, seem modest and cautious men?

[It is reported] that it was the custom of the Academics to conceal their own opinion, and not to reveal it to anyone except those who had lived with them right up to old age.