Lucullus

The great natural gifts of Lucius Lucullus, and his great enthusiasm for the noblest of pursuits, together with all the liberal learning worthy of a man of rank which he had absorbed — these flourished at a time when he might most of all have been prominent in the forum, yet he had no part whatever in the affairs of the city. For while still quite a young man, in company with a brother of equal devotion and energy, he prosecuted his father's feuds with great distinction; then, having gone out to Asia as quaestor, he governed that province for very many years with a quite remarkable renown; next, in his absence, he was made aedile, and immediately afterwards praetor (for the privilege of the law allowed him to stand earlier); after that he went to Africa, and from there to the consulship — which he so administered that all admired his diligence and acknowledged his genius. Later, sent by the senate to the war against Mithridates, he not only surpassed everyone's expectation of his valour, but even the glory of his predecessors;

and this was the more astonishing because the praise of generalship was not greatly looked for from him, a man who had spent his youth in advocacy in the forum, and the long term of his quaestorship in the peace of Asia while Murena was conducting the war in Pontus. But a certain incredible greatness of intellect did not feel the want of training that experience teaches. And so, having spent the whole of his journey and voyage partly in questioning men of experience, partly in reading accounts of campaigns, he arrived in Asia a finished commander, though he had set out from Rome a novice in the art of war. For he possessed a kind of divine memory for facts — Hortensius had the greater memory for words; but inasmuch as in the conduct of affairs facts are of more use than words, his memory was by so much the more excellent. Such a memory they say was found in a singular degree in Themistocles, whom we readily set down as the foremost man of Greece; and indeed, when a certain person promised to teach him the art of memory, then newly being introduced, he is said to have replied that he would rather learn to forget — because, I suppose, whatever he had heard or seen clung fast in his memory. Endowed with such genius, Lucullus had moreover added to it that very training which Themistocles had scorned; and so, just as we commit to writing what we wish to entrust to records, so he held things engraved upon his mind.

So great a commander, then, was he in every kind of warfare — in battles, in sieges, in sea-fights, and in the whole equipment and apparatus of war — that the king who was the greatest since Alexander confessed that he had found this man a greater general than any of those of whom he had read. In the same man there was such prudence in establishing and ordering states, such fairness, that to this day Asia stands by observing Lucullus's institutions and following, as it were, in his footsteps. But although it was with great advantage to the commonwealth, yet for longer than I could have wished so great a force of virtue and genius was absent abroad from the sight of the forum and the senate-house. Indeed, when he had returned victorious from the Mithridatic war, through the slanders of his enemies he celebrated his triumph three years later than he should have done; for I, as consul, all but conducted that most illustrious man's chariot into the city. How much his counsel and authority then profited me in matters of the greatest moment I would say, were it not that I should have to speak of myself — which at this time is not necessary; so I will rather rob him of his deserved testimony than share it with praise of my own.

But the things in Lucullus that deserved to be honoured with popular renown have been, for the most part, celebrated in both Greek and Latin literature. We, however, came to know those outward matters along with many others, but these inner ones, in company with few, often from his own lips. For Lucullus was devoted with greater zeal, both to literature of every kind and especially to philosophy, than those who did not know him supposed; and this not only in his early years, but for several years as proquaestor, and even in the war itself, in which the demands of military business are commonly so great that not much leisure is left to a commander under the very tents. Now since, among the philosophers, Antiochus, a pupil of Philo, was reckoned to excel in genius and learning, Lucullus kept him with him both as quaestor and, some years later, as commander; and, possessing that memory of which I spoke before, he easily learned by frequent hearing things which he could have remembered though heard but once. He took, moreover, a wonderful delight in reading the books about which he heard.

And I sometimes fear that, while wishing to magnify the glory of such persons, I may even diminish it. For there are many who do not at all love Greek letters, more who do not love philosophy, and the rest who, even if they do not condemn these things, yet think that the discussion of such matters is not altogether becoming for leading men of the state. But since I have learned that Marcus Cato learned Greek letters in his old age, and since the histories tell us that of Publius Africanus, on that famous embassy which he undertook before his censorship, Panaetius was the one and only companion, I need seek no further authority either for Greek letters or for philosophy.

It remains for me to answer those who would not have persons of such weight involved in conversations of this kind — as though the meetings of distinguished men ought either to be silent, or filled with idle talk, or with conversation about trifling matters. For in fact, if in a certain book philosophy was truly praised by me, surely the practice of it is most worthy of every best and most eminent man; and we, whom the Roman people has placed in this rank, need see to nothing else save that we detract nothing from our public service by our private studies. And since, when we ought to have been discharging our office, we not only never withdrew our labour from the assembly of the people, but did not even write a single letter except on forensic matters, who will reproach our leisure? — leisure in which we are not only unwilling to grow dull and languid ourselves, but strive to be of use to as many as possible. Indeed, we hold that the glory of those men is not diminished but even increased, when to their popular and illustrious distinctions we add these others, less known and less widely spread abroad.

There are also those who deny that the persons who argue in our books possessed any knowledge of the matters discussed; men who seem to me to envy not only the living but the dead as well. There remains one class of critics, who do not approve the method of the Academy — which we should take harder, if anyone approved any school of philosophy except the one he himself followed. But we, since it is our custom to argue against all comers and to say what seems probable, cannot refuse to allow others to dissent from us. And yet our cause at any rate is an easy one, since we wish to find the truth without any contentiousness, and search for it with the utmost care and zeal. For although all knowledge is beset by many difficulties, and there is both such obscurity in things themselves and such weakness in our judgements that not without reason the most ancient and learned men despaired of being able to find what they desired — yet neither did they give up, nor shall we, wearied, abandon the zeal of inquiry. And our discussions aim at nothing else than, by speaking and hearing on both sides, to draw out and as it were to mould something which is either true, or comes as near as possible to the truth;

nor is there any difference between us and those who think they have knowledge, except that they do not doubt that what they defend is true, whereas we hold many things to be probable, which we can easily follow but can scarcely affirm. In this respect, moreover, we are freer and less constrained, in that our power of judgement is unimpaired, and we are bound by no necessity to defend everything that has been prescribed and as it were laid upon us as a command. For other men, in the first place, are held fast and bound before they have been able to judge what is best; then, at the weakest time of life, either deferring to some friend or captivated by the discourse of the first man they have heard, they pass judgement on matters they do not understand, and to whatever school they have been carried as if by a storm, to that they cling fast as to a rock.

As for their saying that they believe everything to the man whom they judge to have been wise, I should approve of it, if untrained and unlearned men could have judged this very point (for to determine who is wise seems above all to be the part of a wise man). But suppose they could: did they then judge after hearing all things and learning besides the opinions of the rest, or did they, having heard the matter once, betake themselves to the authority of a single man? But somehow most people prefer to be in error, and to defend most pugnaciously the opinion they have fallen in love with, rather than, without obstinacy, to seek out what is said with the greatest consistency. On these matters much has often been inquired and argued by us at other times, and once in particular at the villa of Hortensius near Bauli, when Catulus and Lucullus, and we ourselves, had come there on the day after we had been with Catulus. We had come the earlier, indeed, because it had been arranged that, if there were a wind, Lucullus should sail to his estate near Neapolis and I to mine near Pompeii. So, when we had talked a little in the colonnade, we then sat down in that same walk.

Here Catulus said: 'Although yesterday the question we were inquiring into was all but settled, so that almost the whole matter seems to have been treated, yet I am waiting for what you promised, Lucullus, to report as having heard it from Antiochus.' 'For my part,' said Hortensius, 'I have done more than I wished; for the whole matter, Catulus, ought to have been kept intact for Lucullus. And yet perhaps it has been kept; for I have said only what lay ready to hand, while from Lucullus I look for things more recondite.' Then he replied: 'Your expectation, Hortensius, does not in fact disturb me — though nothing is so contrary to those who wish to please; but since I do not trouble myself how strongly I shall prove what I say, I am the less disturbed. For I shall say things that are neither my own, nor such that, if they should fail, I would rather be conquered than conquer. But, by Hercules, as the case now stands — though it was shaken in yesterday's discussion — it nevertheless seems to me most true. I will therefore proceed as Antiochus used to proceed. For the matter is familiar to me; I used to hear him with an unprejudiced mind and great zeal, on the same subject indeed quite often — so that I may even raise a greater expectation of myself than Hortensius has just now raised.' When he had thus begun, we roused our minds to listen.

LUCULLUS. He then said: 'When I was proquaestor at Alexandria, Antiochus was with me, and already before that there was at Alexandria a friend of Antiochus, Heraclitus of Tyre, who had been a pupil of Clitomachus for many years and of Philo as well — a man approved and renowned in that philosophy which is now almost dismissed but is being recalled. With him I often heard Antiochus disputing — but each of them mildly; and indeed those two books of Philo, of which Catulus spoke yesterday, had then just been brought to Alexandria and had come for the first time into the hands of Antiochus. And though by nature a most gentle man (for nothing could be milder than he), he nevertheless began to be vexed. I marvelled; for I had never seen it before. But he, invoking the recollection of Heraclitus, began to ask of him whether those views seemed to be Philo's, or whether he had ever heard them either from Philo or from any Academic. He said no, yet acknowledged that the writing was Philo's; nor indeed could there be any doubt of that, for there were present my learned friends Publius and Gaius Selius and Tetrilius Rogus, who said that they had heard those things at Rome from Philo, and had copied out those two books from the man himself.'

'Then Antiochus said to him what Catulus mentioned yesterday as having been said by his own father to Philo, and many other things besides; nor did he restrain himself from even publishing a book against his own teacher, which is entitled Sosus. Then, accordingly, since I was eagerly hearing both Heraclitus arguing against Antiochus, and likewise Antiochus against the Academics, I gave my attention to Antiochus the more diligently, that I might learn the whole case from him. And so, for several days, with Heraclitus brought in and several other learned men, among them Antiochus's brother Aristus, and besides Aristo and Dio, to whom he assigned the most weight after his brother, we spent much time in that one discussion. But the part which was against Philo must be passed over; for he is the less keen adversary who denies that the Academics say at all those things which were defended yesterday — and even though he lies, he is nevertheless a milder adversary. Let us come to Arcesilas and Carneades.'

When he had said this, he began again thus: 'In the first place, you seem to me' (he was addressing me by name) 'when you name the ancient natural philosophers, to do the very thing that seditious citizens are wont to do, when they bring forward certain illustrious men of old whom they declare to have been champions of the people, that they themselves may seem to be like them. They go back to Publius Valerius, who in the first year after the kings were driven out was consul; they recall the rest who carried popular laws concerning appeals when they were consuls; then they come to those better known — Gaius Flaminius, who, some years before the Second Punic War, as tribune of the plebs, carried an agrarian law against the will of the senate, and was afterwards twice made consul; Lucius Cassius, Quintus Pompeius. Some are even wont to count Publius Africanus in the same number; and they say that those two most wise and illustrious brothers, Publius Crassus and Publius Scaevola, were the authors of laws for Tiberius Gracchus — the one openly, as we see, the other more obscurely, as men suspect. They add also Gaius Marius; and about him at least they tell no lie. When the names of so many and so great men have been set out, they say that they are following these men's practice.'

'In like manner you, when, as those men would throw the commonwealth into confusion, so you would throw into confusion philosophy already well established, bring forward Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Parmenides, Xenophanes, and even Plato and Socrates. But neither did Saturninus — to name an enemy of our own by preference — have anything like those men of old, nor is the slander of Arcesilas to be compared with the modesty of Democritus. And yet those natural philosophers, very rarely, when they are stuck at some point, cry out, as if driven by inspiration — Empedocles indeed so that he sometimes seems to me to rave — that all things are hidden, that we perceive nothing, discern nothing, can find out at all nothing of what kind a thing is; but for the most part all those men seem to me, at any rate, to affirm even too much, and to profess that they know more than they do.'

'But if those men then, in matters new and as it were just coming to birth, hesitated, are we to think that in so many ages, by the highest geniuses and the greatest efforts, nothing has been explained? When the most weighty schools of philosophy had now been established, was there not one who arose — as in the best-ordered commonwealth a Tiberius Gracchus to throw the public peace into confusion, so an Arcesilas to overthrow established philosophy, and to take refuge in the authority of those who had denied that anything could be known or perceived? From whose number both Plato and Socrates must be removed — the one because he left behind a most perfect school, the Peripatetics and the Academics, differing in name but agreeing in substance, from whom the Stoics themselves dissented in words rather than in opinions; while Socrates, disparaging himself in argument, conceded more to those whom he wished to refute; so that, saying one thing while thinking another, he was wont gladly to use that dissimulation which the Greeks call eironeia (irony) — which Fannius says was found even in Africanus, and that on that account it ought not to be reckoned a fault in him, since the same was found in Socrates.'

'But grant, if you will, that those old matters were unknown: was nothing then accomplished, that they were investigated, after Arcesilas — carping, as is supposed, at Zeno, who was finding nothing new but emending his predecessors by a change of words — while he wished to undermine Zeno's definitions, attempted to spread darkness over the clearest things? His method, at first not much approved (though he flourished both in keenness of intellect and in a certain admirable charm of speech), was next maintained by Lacydes alone, and afterwards perfected by Carneades, who is fourth from Arcesilas; for he heard Hegesinus, who had heard Euander, the pupil of Lacydes, when Lacydes had been the pupil of Arcesilas. But Carneades himself held it long, for he lived ninety years, and those who had heard him flourished exceedingly. Of these the greatest industry was in Clitomachus (the multitude of his books declares it), no less genius in Hagnon, eloquence in Charmadas, charm in Melanthius of Rhodes; but Metrodorus of Stratonice was reckoned to know Carneades well.'

'Then your master Philo gave his attention to Clitomachus for many years. And while Philo lived, the patronage of the Academy was not wanting. But that very thing which we are now undertaking to do, namely to argue against the Academics, certain philosophers — and those not undistinguished — thought ought not to be done at all, and held that there was no reason to dispute with men who approved nothing; and they censured Antipater the Stoic, who had been much occupied in it. Nor, they said, was it necessary to define what cognition or perception is, or — if we want the word translated word for word — comprehension, which they call katalepsis; and they said that those who tried to persuade men that there was something which could be comprehended and perceived were acting ignorantly, because nothing was clearer than enargeia — as the Greeks have it — which, if you please, let us call clearness or evidentness, and let us coin words if there be need, and let not this man here' (he said, addressing me in jest) 'think this allowed to himself alone — but yet they thought that no statement could be found more luminous than evidentness itself, and they held that things so clear ought not to be defined. Others, however, said that they would not be the first to say anything on behalf of this evidentness, but thought that what was said against it ought to be answered, lest any be deceived.'

'Most, however, both do not disapprove of definitions even of evident things, and think the matter a fit one to be inquired into and the men worthy ones to argue with. But Philo, while he stirs up certain novelties — because he could scarcely sustain what was being said against the obstinacy of the Academics — both openly lies, as he was reproved for doing by the elder Catulus, and, as Antiochus showed, entangles himself in the very thing he feared. For when he thus denied that there is anything which can be comprehended (for this is what we mean by akatalepton, the incomprehensible), if that, as Zeno defined it, were such an impression (for this word too, in place of phantasia, we have worn smooth enough in yesterday's discussion) — an impression, then, stamped and moulded from that whence it came, of a kind such as it could not be from that whence it did not come (this we say was most rightly defined by Zeno; for how can anything be comprehended, so that you may plainly trust it to be perceived and known, if it is of such a kind as could be false?) — when Philo weakens and removes this, he removes the criterion of the unknown and the known; from which it follows that nothing can be comprehended. So, unwittingly, he rolls back to the very thing he least wishes. Wherefore all our discourse against the Academy is undertaken in order that we may retain that definition which Philo wished to overthrow; and unless we maintain it, we concede that nothing can be perceived.'

'Let us begin, then, with the senses. Of these the judgements are so clear and certain that, if the choice of our nature were given, and some god were to ask whether it were content with its senses sound and uncorrupted, or demanded something better, I do not see what more it would ask. Nor, on this point, must we wait for me to answer about the bent oar or the dove's neck; for I am not the man to say that whatever appears is such as it appears — let Epicurus see to that, and to much else besides. But in my judgement the truth in the senses is greatest, provided they are sound and vigorous, and everything is removed that hinders and impedes. And so we often wish the light to be changed, and the position of the things we look at, and we either lessen or increase the intervals, and do many things until the very sight produces confidence in its own judgement. The same happens with sounds, with smell, with taste, so that there is none of us who looks for a keener judgement in the senses, each in its own kind.'

'Indeed, when practice and skill are brought to bear, so that the eyes are held by a painting and the ears by songs, who is there but discerns how great a power there is in the senses? How many things painters see in shadows and in projection which we do not see; how many things that escape us in song are heard by those trained in that kind, who, at the first breath of the flute-player, say it is the Antiopa or the Andromacha, when we do not even suspect it. There is no need to speak of taste and smell, in which, though there is a certain faulty discernment, there is nevertheless some. What of touch — and that touch indeed which the philosophers call inner, of pain or of pleasure — in which alone the Cyrenaics think there is a criterion of truth, because it is felt?'

'Can anyone, then, say that there is no difference between the man who is in pain and the man who is in pleasure, or that whoever should feel so would not be most plainly mad? And just as the things are which we say are perceived by the senses, such are those which follow, which are said to be perceived not by the senses themselves but in a certain way through the senses, as these: "this is white, this sweet, that melodious, this sweet-smelling, this rough" — these things we now grasp comprehended by the mind, not by the senses. "That," next, "is a horse, that a dog." Then the rest of the series follows, linking greater things, such as these which embrace, as it were, a complete comprehension of facts: "if it is a man, it is a mortal animal partaking of reason." From this kind there are imprinted upon us notions of things, without which nothing can be understood, nor inquired into, nor discussed.'

'But if notions were false (for you seemed to call notions ennoiai) — if, then, these were false, or stamped by impressions of such a kind that true impressions could not be distinguished from false, in what way, pray, should we use them? In what way, moreover, should we see what was consistent with each thing and what was repugnant? To memory, at any rate, certainly — which alone above all things contains not only philosophy but the whole conduct of life and all the arts — no place at all is left. For what memory can there be of things false, or what does anyone remember which he has not comprehended and holds in the mind? And what art can there be except such as consists not of one or two but of many perceptions of the mind? If you take this away, how will you distinguish the craftsman from the ignorant? For we shall not call this man a craftsman, and deny it of that one, by chance, but because we see the one to hold things perceived and comprehended and the other not. And since of the arts one kind is such that the mind only discerns a thing, another such that it contrives and makes something, how can the geometer discern those things which either are nothing or cannot be distinguished from false; or how can he who uses the lyre fill out the measures and complete the verses? The same will hold in like arts, whose whole work lies in making and doing. For what is there that can be brought about by art, unless he who handles the art has perceived many things?'

'But most of all the knowledge of the virtues confirms that many things can be perceived and comprehended. In these alone we say that knowledge also resides — knowledge which we hold to be not merely the comprehension of things but a comprehension stable and unchangeable as well; and likewise wisdom, the art of living, which has constancy from its very self. But if that constancy has nothing perceived and known, I ask whence it was born, or in what way. I ask also: that good man, who has resolved to endure every torment, to be torn by intolerable pain rather than betray either his duty or his faith — why has he laid upon himself laws so heavy, if he had nothing comprehended, perceived, known, or established as to the reason why it should be so? In no way, then, can it come about that anyone should so esteem fairness and faith that, for the sake of preserving them, he refuses no punishment, unless he has assented to things which cannot be false.'

'But wisdom itself, if it shall not know whether it be wisdom or not, how shall it in the first place hold the name of wisdom? Next, how shall it dare to undertake or do any matter confidently, when there is nothing certain that it may follow? But when it shall doubt what is the extreme and ultimate of goods, not knowing to what all things are to be referred, how shall it be wisdom? And this too is evident, that a beginning must be established, which wisdom may follow when it begins to do anything, and that this beginning is suited to nature. For otherwise appetite (for this is what we mean by horme, by which we are impelled to act, and we seek what has appeared good) cannot be moved.'

'But that which moves must first be seen and believed; which cannot happen, if what shall have appeared cannot be distinguished from the false. And how can the mind be moved to desire, if what is seen is not perceived, whether it be suited to nature or alien? And likewise, if it does not occur to the mind what its duty is, it will never do anything at all, will never be impelled to any thing, will never be moved. But if it is to do anything at any time, that which occurs to it must necessarily seem true.'

'What of this — that, if those views are true, all reason is taken away, which is as it were the very light and lamp of life? Will you nevertheless persist in that perversity? For reason supplied the beginning of inquiry, reason which perfected virtue, when reason itself had been confirmed by inquiry; and inquiry is the desire of knowledge, and the end of inquiry is discovery; but no one discovers things false, nor can those things which remain uncertain have been discovered, but it is when things which before were, as it were, wrapped up are laid open that they are said to be discovered: thus reason holds both the beginning of inquiry and the issue of perceiving and comprehending. And so the conclusion of an argument, which in Greek is apodeixis (demonstration), is thus defined: "a reasoning which leads from things perceived to that which was not being perceived."'

'But if all impressions were of the kind those men say, such that they could be false, and no notion could distinguish them, in what way shall we say that anyone has concluded or discovered anything, or what would be the reliability of an argument's conclusion? And philosophy itself, which ought to advance by reasonings, what issue will it have? And what is to become of wisdom, which ought to doubt neither about itself nor about its own decrees (which the philosophers call dogmata), of which none can be betrayed without crime? For when a decree is betrayed, the law of the true and the right is betrayed — a fault from which both betrayals of friendships and of commonwealths are wont to arise. It cannot, then, be doubted that no decree of the wise man can be false; nor is it enough for it not to be false, but it ought also to be stable, fixed, and ratified, such as no reasoning can move; but such things can neither be nor seem to be, on the principle of those who deny that those impressions, from which all decrees are born, differ at all from false ones.'

'From this arose that which Hortensius demanded — that the wise man should at least say that this very thing was perceived, namely that nothing can be perceived. But when Antipater demanded this same thing, saying that for him who affirmed that nothing could be perceived it was consistent nevertheless to say that this one thing could be perceived, that other things could not, Carneades resisted more acutely. For he said that so far was it from being consistent, that it was even most repugnant. For he who denied that there was anything which could be perceived made no exception; so that it necessarily followed that not even that very thing which was not excepted could in any way be comprehended and perceived.'

'Antiochus seemed to approach this point more closely. For since the Academics held this as a decree (you perceive now that I am calling this a dogma), that nothing can be perceived, they ought not, he said, to waver in their own decree, as in other matters, especially since the whole sum stood upon it: for this, he said, was the rule of all philosophy, the establishing of the true and the false, of the known and the unknown; and since they undertook this method and wished to teach which impressions ought to be accepted and which rejected, they certainly ought to have perceived this very thing, from which every judgement of true and false proceeded. For there are these two greatest things in philosophy, the criterion of truth and the end of goods; nor can he be wise who is ignorant either of the beginning of knowing or of the extreme of seeking — so that he knows neither whence he starts nor whither he must arrive; but to hold these things doubtful, and not to be so confident of them that he cannot be moved, is utterly at variance with wisdom. In this way, then, it would rather have been right to demand of them that they should say that this one thing at least, that nothing can be perceived, had been perceived. But on the inconsistency of their whole opinion — if any opinion can belong to anyone who approves nothing — enough, I think, has been said.'

'There follows a discussion, copious indeed but a little more abstruse — for it has something of the natural philosophers, so that I fear I may grant too much liberty and licence to the man who is to speak against me; for what should I suppose he will do with matters hidden and obscure, who attempts to snatch away the light? — but it could be argued with subtlety with how great a craft, as it were, nature has fashioned, first every animal, and then man especially; what force there is in the senses; how the first impressions strike us; then how appetite, set in motion by these, follows; then how we direct the senses to the perceiving of things. For the mind itself, which is the source of the senses and is itself even a sense, has a natural force, which it directs to those things by which it is moved. And so some impressions it seizes upon so as to use them at once, others it as it were stores away, from which memory arises; the rest it constructs by likenesses, from which are produced the notions of things, which the Greeks call now ennoiai, now prolepseis (preconceptions); and when to this are added reason, and the conclusion of argument, and the multitude of innumerable things, then both the perception of all those things appears, and that same reason, perfected by these steps, arrives at wisdom.'

'Since, then, the mind of man is most fitted for the knowledge of things and for constancy of life, it embraces above all cognition and that katalepsis, which, as I said, translating word for word, we shall call comprehension; both because it loves it for its own sake (for nothing is sweeter to it than the light of truth), and also on account of its use. Wherefore it both uses the senses and produces arts as it were second senses, and so far confirms philosophy itself that it produces virtue, on which alone the whole of life depends. Therefore those who deny that anything can be comprehended snatch away these very instruments or ornaments of life — or rather they even overthrow the whole of life from its foundations, and rob the very living creature of its mind; so that it is hard to speak of their rashness as the case demands.'

'Nor indeed can I sufficiently determine what their purpose is, or what they wish. For sometimes, when we address to them a discourse of this kind — that, if the things they argue are true, then all things will be uncertain — they reply: "What, then, is that to us? Is it our fault? Accuse Nature, who, as Democritus says, has hidden the truth deep in the abyss." Others, however, more elegantly, who even complain that we charge them with saying that all things are uncertain, and try to teach how great a difference there is between the uncertain and that which cannot be perceived, and to distinguish these. With these, then, let us deal, who make these distinctions; those who say that all things are so uncertain as whether the number of the stars is even or odd, let us leave behind, as men past hope. For they wish (and this indeed I noticed moved you most of all) that there is something probable and as it were like the truth, and that they use this as a rule both in conducting life and in inquiring and discoursing.'

'What rule of true and false is this, if we have no notion of true and false, because they cannot be distinguished from each other? For if we have it, there must be a difference, as between right and wrong, so between true and false. If there is no difference, there is no rule, nor can he, to whom the appearance of true and false is common, have any judgement, or any mark of truth at all. For when they say that they take away this one thing only, that anything can so appear true that it could not in the same way also appear false, but concede the rest, they act childishly. For having taken away that by which all things are judged, they say they do not take away the rest — as if a man who deprived someone of his eyes should say that he had not taken from him the things that could be seen. For just as those are recognized only by the eyes, so the rest by impressions, but by a mark proper to the true, not common to true and false. Wherefore whether you propose a probable appearance, or a probable one and one not impeded, as Carneades wished, or some other thing which you may follow, you will have to return to that impression about which we are speaking.'

'But if there shall be in it any community with the false, there will be no judgement, because what is proper cannot be marked in a common sign. But if there shall be nothing common, I have what I want; for this is what I seek — that which shall so appear true to me that it cannot likewise appear false. They are involved in a like error when, constrained by the reproach of truth, they wish to distinguish the clear from the perceived, and try to show that there is something clear, true indeed and stamped upon the soul and mind, but that nevertheless it cannot be perceived and comprehended. For in what way could you say clearly that something is white, when it can happen that what is black should seem white; or in what way shall we call those things either clear or subtly stamped, when it is uncertain whether the mind is moved truly or emptily? Thus neither colour, nor body, nor truth, nor argument, nor sense, nor anything clear is left.'

'From this it is wont to befall them in practice, that, whatever they say, they are asked by certain people: "So you perceive that, do you?" But those who ask thus are laughed at by them. For they do not press them so as to convict them that no one can about any matter contend or assert without some certain and proper mark of that thing which each says is approved by him. What, then, is that probable of yours? For if whatever occurs to anyone and seems probable at first sight is confirmed, what is more frivolous than that? But if they shall say that they follow what has appeared after some circumspection and careful consideration, yet they will have no issue,'

'in the first place because, among impressions between which there is no difference, confidence is equally taken away from all; next, since they say it can happen to the wise man that, when he has done everything most diligently and looked round most carefully, something should arise which both seems like the truth and is very far from the truth, they will not be able to be confident of themselves even if, as they are wont to say, they reach the truth itself in great part, or come as near as possible. For in order to be confident, the mark of the true will have to be known to them; and that being obscured and suppressed, what truth shall they at last seem to themselves to touch? And what can be said so absurdly as when they speak thus: "This indeed is a sign or argument of that thing, and for that reason I follow it, but it may be that what is signified is either false or nothing at all"? But on perception so far; for if anyone shall wish to undermine what has been said, the truth will easily defend itself even in our absence.'

'These things being sufficiently understood, which have now been set forth, we will now say a few words about assent and approval, which the Greeks call synkatathesis — not that the subject is not broad, but because the foundations were laid a little earlier. For when we were setting forth the force that is in the senses, this also was being disclosed at the same time, that many things are comprehended and perceived by the senses; which cannot happen without assent. Then, since this above all is the difference between the inanimate and the living creature, that the living creature does something (for what is doing nothing cannot even be conceived as to what it is), either sense must be taken away from it, or that assent must be restored which is placed in our power.'

'And indeed the mind is in a manner taken away from those whom they would have neither to feel nor to assent. For just as the scale of a balance must necessarily be pressed down when weights are placed upon it, so the mind must yield to clear things. For just as no living creature can fail to seek that which appears suited to nature (the Greeks call this oikeion), so it cannot fail to approve a clear thing set before it. And yet, if the matters that have been argued are true, it is of no consequence to speak of assent at all; for whoever perceives anything assents at once. But these things also follow — that neither memory can stand without assent, nor the notions of things, nor the arts; and, what is greatest, in order that there may be something in our power, in him who shall assent to no thing there will be nothing.'

'Where, then, is virtue, if nothing is placed in our own selves? But it is most absurd that vices should be in their own power, and that no one sins except by assent, and that this same thing should not hold in virtue, whose whole constancy and firmness consists of those things to which it has assented and which it has approved. And altogether something must necessarily be seen before we act, and assent be given to what has appeared. Wherefore he who takes away either the appearance or the assent takes away all action from life.'

'Now let us see what is wont to be argued on the other side against these things. But first you can learn the foundations, as it were, of their whole method. They compose, then, first a certain art concerning the things we call impressions, and define both the force and the kinds of them, among these what kind a thing is that can be perceived and comprehended — in just as many words as the Stoics. Then they set forth those two propositions which contain, as it were, this whole question: that of things which so appear that other things also can appear in the same way, with no difference between them, some cannot be perceived and others not; and that there is no difference, not only if they are of the same kind in every part, but even if they cannot be distinguished. These being laid down, the whole case is comprehended by them in the conclusion of a single argument. And that conclusion is composed thus: "Of things which appear, some are true, some false; and what is false cannot be perceived, but what has appeared true is all of such a kind that a false impression of the same kind could also appear"; and "of impressions which are of such a kind that there is no difference among them, it cannot happen that some of them can be perceived and others not"; "there is, then, no impression which can be perceived."'

'Of the premises which they assume in order to conclude what they wish, they think two are conceded to them (for indeed no one contests them); these are the following: that impressions which are false cannot be perceived; and the other, that among impressions between which there is no difference, it cannot be that some are such as can be perceived and others such as cannot. The rest, however, they defend with much and varied discourse, and these too are two: one, that of things which appear some are true and others false; the other, that every impression which comes from a true thing is of such a kind as could also come from a false one.'

'These two propositions they do not skim over, but so expand that they bring no slight care and diligence to bear. For they divide into parts, and those indeed large ones — first into the senses, then into those things which are drawn from the senses and from all habit, which they wish to obscure; then they come to that part where they hold that not even by reason and by any conjecture can a thing be perceived. But all these in their entirety they cut up even more minutely. For as, concerning the senses, you saw yesterday, so they do concerning the rest; and in single matters, which they divide into the smallest parts, they wish to make out that to all those things which are true impressions there are joined false ones which differ in nothing from the true; and these being such, that they cannot be comprehended.'

'This subtlety I judge most worthy indeed of philosophy, but most foreign from the cause of those who argue thus. For definitions, and partitions, and discourse using the illuminations of these, and likenesses and unlikenesses and the fine and acute distinction of them, belong to men confident that the things they defend are true and firm and certain, not to those who cry out that those things are no more true than false. For what would they do, if, when they have defined something, someone should ask them whether that definition can be transferred to any other thing whatever you please? If they say it can, what will they have to say as to why that definition is true? If they deny it, it must be admitted that, since a true definition cannot be transferred to a false thing, that which is explained by such a definition can be perceived — which they least of all wish. The same things will be able to be said in all the parts.'

'For if they shall say that they clearly perceive the things they argue about, and are impeded by no community of impressions, they will confess that they comprehend them; but if they shall deny that true impressions can be distinguished from false, how will they be able to proceed further? For they will be met, just as they have been met. For an argument cannot be concluded unless the things assumed for concluding are so approved that there can be no false ones of the same kind. Therefore, if reason, having relied on and advanced from things comprehended and perceived, shall bring this about, that nothing can be comprehended, what can be found that is more at variance with itself? And since the very nature of careful discourse professes this — that it will lay open something which does not appear, and, in order to attain it the more easily, will bring to bear both the senses and things that are clear — of what kind is the discourse of those men who wish all things not so much to be as to seem? But they are most convicted when they assume these two as consistent which are so vehemently repugnant: first, that there are certain false impressions (and when they wish this, they declare that certain ones are true); then, in the same breath, that between false and true impressions there is no difference. But first you had assumed it as though there were a difference; thus the latter is convicted by the former, the former by what went before.'

'But let us go further, and so proceed that we may seem to have flattered ourselves in nothing, and let us so pursue the things said by them that we leave nothing among matters passed over. First, then, that clearness of which we have spoken has force great enough that of itself it shows us the things which are, as they are. But yet, in order that we may remain among clear things more firmly and constantly, there is need of a certain greater either art or diligence, lest we be driven away from the things that are clear of themselves as if by certain juggleries and tricks. For Epicurus, who wished to succour these errors of men who seem to throw the knowledge of truth into confusion, and said that it was the part of the wise man to separate opinion from clearness, accomplished nothing; for he in no way removed the error of opinion itself.'

'Wherefore, since two causes are opposed to clear and evident things, just as many aids must be prepared against them. For they are opposed: first, because men fix and direct their minds too little upon those things which are clear, so that they can recognize with how great a light they are surrounded; the other is, that certain men, circumscribed and deceived by fallacious and captious questions, when they cannot resolve them, fall away from the truth. It is necessary, then, both to have ready the answers that can be made on behalf of clearness, of which we have already spoken, and to be armed so that we can meet their questions and shatter their tricks — which I have resolved to do next.'

'I will therefore set forth their arguments by kinds, since they themselves too are wont not to speak confusedly. First they try to show that many things can appear to be which are nothing at all, when the mind is moved emptily, in the same way by those things which are nothing as by those which are. "For when you say," they say, "that certain impressions are sent by a god, such as those which appear in dreams and those which are declared by oracles, auspices, and entrails" (for they say these are approved by the Stoics, against whom they argue) — they ask in what way a god can make probable those false impressions which are such, but cannot make those which plainly come nearest to the truth; or, if he can make these too, why he cannot make those which are nevertheless distinguished with great difficulty; and, if these, why not those between which there is no difference at all.'

'"Next, since the mind is moved of itself — as both those things declare which we depict in thought, and those which appear either to sleepers or to madmen — is it not likely that the mind is so moved that it not only does not distinguish whether those impressions are true or false, but that there is no difference at all among them?" — as if some should tremble and grow pale either by some movement of the mind of itself, or by a terrible thing presented from without, there being nothing whereby that trembling and pallor could be distinguished, nor anything to differ between the inward and the presented. "Finally, if no false impressions are probable, the case is different; but if there are, why not also those which are not easily distinguished, why not so that there is plainly no difference — especially since you yourselves say that the wise man in madness withholds himself from all assent, because no distinction appears in the impressions."'

'Against all these empty visions Antiochus indeed used to say very much, and there was on this one matter a discussion of a whole day. But I think I ought not to do the same, but only to state the chief points. And first this must be reproved, that they use a most captious kind of questioning — a kind that is least of all wont to be approved in philosophy — when something is added or taken away little by little and step by step: this they call sorites, those who make a heap by adding one grain, a kind faulty indeed and captious. For thus you ascend: "If such an impression has been presented by a god to one sleeping, that it is probable, why not also so that it is very like the truth; why next not so that it is distinguished with difficulty from the true; next so that it is not even distinguished; finally so that there is no difference at all between this and that." If you have come to this point, with me conceding each step first, the fault will have been mine; but if you have advanced of your own accord, it will be yours.'

'For who would grant you either that a god can do all things, or that he would do so if he could? And how do you assume that, if anything can be like something, it follows that it can also be distinguished with difficulty, then that it cannot even be distinguished, and finally that it is the same? And if wolves are like dogs, will you say at last they are the same? And indeed certain dishonourable things are like honourable ones, and not-good like good, and most inartistic like artistic things: why, then, do we hesitate to affirm that there is no difference between these? Do we not even see the contradiction? For there is nothing which can be transferred from its own kind into another kind; but if it were brought about that there were no difference between impressions of different kinds, things would be found that were both in their own kind and in an alien one;'

'and how can that be done? Then of all empty impressions there is one and the same refutation, whether they are formed by thought (which we concede is wont to happen), or in sleep, or through wine, or through madness. For from all impressions of that kind we shall say that clearness, which we ought to hold fast with our teeth, is absent. For who, when he feigns something for himself and depicts it in thought, does not, as soon as he has roused himself and recalled himself to himself, feel what difference there is between the clear and the empty? The same reasoning holds of dreams. Do you suppose that Ennius, when he had walked in his gardens with his neighbour Servius Galba, said, "I seemed to myself to be walking with Galba"? But when he had dreamed, he narrated thus: "The poet Homer seemed to be present"; and likewise in the Epicharmus, "for I seemed to dream that I myself was dead." And so, as soon as we are awake, we despise those impressions, nor do we hold them as we hold the things we have done in the forum.'

'"But while they are seen, the appearance of those things which we see in sleep is the same as of those we see waking." In the first place there is a difference, but let us pass that by; for this is what we say — that the force and integrity of those sleeping and those waking is not the same, neither in mind nor in sense. Not even drunken men do what they do with the same approval as the sober: they hesitate, they waver, they sometimes recall themselves, and assent more weakly to the things that appear; and when they have slept it off, they understand how trivial those impressions were. The same befalls the mad, so that, both as they begin to rave they feel and say that something seems to them which is not, and, when they relax, they feel it, and say those words of Alcmeon: "but in no way does my heart agree with the sight of my eyes."'

'"But the wise man himself withholds himself in madness, that he may not approve false things for true." And at other times indeed often, if either there is by chance in his very senses some heaviness or slowness, or the things that appear are too obscure, or he is shut out from perceiving by the shortness of time. And yet this whole point, that the wise man sometimes withholds assent, is against you. For if among impressions there were no difference, he would either always withhold it or never. But from this whole class can be perceived the levity of the discourse of those who wish to confound all things. We seek the judgement of gravity, constancy, firmness, wisdom; we use examples of dreamers, madmen, drunkards: this we attend to — how inconsistently in all this class we speak. For we should not bring forward men oppressed by wine or sleep or out of their minds so absurdly, as to say at one time that there is a difference between the impressions of the waking and of the sober and the sane and of those otherwise affected, and at another time that there is no difference.'

'Do they not even discern this — that they make all things uncertain, which they do not wish? (I call those things uncertain which the Greeks call adela.) For if the matter stands so that there is no difference whether a thing appears to one as to a madman or as to a sane man, to whom can it be ascertained about his own sanity? And to wish to bring this about is no slight madness. The likenesses, indeed, either of twins, or of seals stamped by signet-rings, they pursue childishly. For who of us denies that there are likenesses, since they appear in very many things? But if it is enough, for the taking away of cognition, that many things of many be alike, why are you not content with that — especially as we concede it — and why do you rather contend for that which the nature of things does not allow, namely that each thing should not be such as it is in its own kind, nor that in two or more things differing in no respect there should be no community? So that — granted that eggs are most like eggs and bees like bees — why, then, do you fight, or what do you want with twins? For it is conceded that they are alike, with which you might have been content;'

'but you wish them to be plainly the same, not alike — which can in no way be done. Then you take refuge in those natural philosophers who are most of all laughed at in the Academy, from whom even you yourself will no longer abstain, and you say that Democritus says there are innumerable worlds, and indeed certain of them so among themselves not only alike but on every side so perfectly and absolutely equal that there is no difference at all between them — and innumerable men likewise. Then you demand that, if one world is so equal to another that there is not even the least difference between them, it be conceded to you that in this our world too something should be so equal to something that it differs in nothing, that there is no difference. "For why," you will say, "out of those atoms, from which Democritus affirms all things are produced, in the other worlds — and those indeed innumerable — there can be and even are innumerable Quintus Lutatius Catuluses, while in this so great world another Catulus cannot be made?" In the first place, then, you call me to Democritus;'

'to whom I do not assent rather — that I may be deceived — it can be that which is clearly taught by the more polished natural philosophers, that single things have their single properties. For suppose those ancient Servilii, who were twins, as alike as they are said to be — do you suppose they were even the same? "They were not distinguished abroad": but at home; "not by strangers": but by their own. Or do we not see this happen in practice — that those whom we should never have thought could be distinguished by us, we, once habit was brought to bear, distinguished so easily that they seemed not in the least alike?'

'Here you may fight: I will not fight back; nay, I will even concede that the wise man himself, of whom this whole discourse is, when things alike occur to him which he has not noted down, will withhold his assent, and will never assent to any impression unless it shall be of such a kind as could not be false. But both, for other things, he has a certain art by which he can distinguish true from false, and for those likenesses of yours practice must be brought to bear: as a mother distinguishes twins by the habit of her eyes, so you will distinguish if you grow accustomed. Do you not see how, in the proverb, there is the likeness of eggs to one another? Yet we have received this account: that at Delos, while those affairs of theirs were flourishing, there were several men who used to rear very many hens for the sake of gain; and they, when they had inspected an egg, were wont to say which hen had laid it.'

'Nor is this against you; for it would be enough for you that they do not distinguish those eggs; for I should no more assent that this is that, than if among those eggs there were no difference at all. For I have a rule, that I judge such impressions true as could not be false; from this it is not allowed me to depart by a finger's breadth, as they say, lest I confound all things; for not only the cognition but even the nature of true and false will be taken away, if there shall be nothing that makes a difference. So that this too is absurd which you are sometimes wont to say — that, when impressions are stamped upon the mind, you do not say there is no difference between the impressions themselves, but between the appearances and certain forms of them. As though, forsooth, impressions were not judged by their appearance — which will have no reliability, the mark of true and false being taken away.'

'But that indeed is most absurd which you say — that you follow probabilities if you are impeded by nothing. In the first place, how can you not be impeded, when false things are not distant from true? Next, what judgement is there of the true, when it is common to the false? From these things necessarily arose that epoche, that is, the withholding of assent, in which Arcesilas was the more consistent with himself, if those things are true which some think about Carneades. For if nothing can be perceived — which seemed so to both — assent must be taken away; for what is so foolish as to approve anything not known? But Carneades too, we heard yesterday, was wont sometimes to slip into saying that the wise man will hold an opinion, that is, will sin. To me, moreover, it is not so certain that there is something which can be comprehended — about which I am now arguing too long — as that the wise man holds no opinion, that is, never assents to a thing either false or unknown.'

'There remains that which they say — that for the sake of finding the truth one ought to argue against all things and on behalf of all things. I wish, therefore, to see what they have found. "We are not wont," he says, "to show it." What, pray, are these mysteries of yours, or why do you conceal your opinion as if it were something shameful? "That those who hear," he says, "may be led by reason rather than by authority." What if by both — is it any the worse? Yet one thing they do not conceal: that there is nothing which can be perceived. Does authority have no ill effect in that? To me indeed it seems to have very much. For who would have followed views so openly and clearly both perverse and false, had there not been in Arcesilas, and much more even in Carneades, so great a store of matter and force of speaking?'

'These things Antiochus said, both then at Alexandria, and many years afterward much more emphatically, when he was with me in Syria a little before he died. But, the case being now established, I will not hesitate to admonish you, a man most friendly to me' (he was addressing me) 'and some years younger. Can it be that you, who have extolled philosophy with such great praises and have stirred our friend Hortensius, who dissented, should follow that philosophy which confounds true with false, despoils us of judgement, deprives us of all approval, robs us of the senses? And the Cimmerians indeed, from whom either some god, or nature, or the situation of the place they inhabited had taken away the sight of the sun, yet had fires present whose light they were allowed to use; but those whom you approve, having spread so great a darkness, have left us not even a single spark for discerning; whom if we should follow, we should be bound by such fetters that we could not stir ourselves.'

'For by taking away assent they have taken away both all movement of the mind and all action of affairs — which not only cannot be done rightly, but cannot be done at all. Provide also, lest it be least of all allowed to you alone to defend that opinion. Can it be that you, when you have laid open the most hidden things and brought them into the light, and have said upon oath that you found these things out (which was allowed to me also, who had learned them from you), will deny that there is any thing which can be known, comprehended, perceived? See, I pray, again and again, lest the authority of those most beautiful things too be lessened by your own self.' When he had said this, he made an end.'

Hortensius, however, marvelling vehemently (which indeed he had done throughout while Lucullus spoke, so that he even often raised his hands; nor was it strange, for I think nothing was ever said against the Academy more subtly), began to exhort me too — whether in jest or in earnest I did not sufficiently understand — to desist from my opinion. Then Catulus said to me: 'If Lucullus's speech, which was delivered from memory, accurately, and copiously, has swayed you, I am silent, nor do I think you ought to be deterred, if it seems so to you, from changing your opinion. But this indeed I would not advise — that you be moved by his authority. For just now he warned you' — he said, smiling — 'to beware lest some unprincipled tribune of the plebs, of whom you see how great a supply there will always be, should seize you and ask in the assembly how you are consistent with yourself, when you both deny that anything certain can be found and have said that you yourself found these things out. This, I pray, beware lest it frighten you. But about the case itself I would rather you dissented from him; and if you yield, I shall not greatly wonder: for I remember that Antiochus himself, when for many years he had held other views, as soon as it seemed good, desisted from his opinion.'

When Catulus had said this, all looked at me. Then I, no less moved than I am wont to be in greater cases, began with a speech of this kind. 'Catulus, the speech of Lucullus, about the matter itself, so moved me — as that of a learned man, copious, well-prepared, and passing over none of the things that could be said for that cause — yet not so that I should despair of being able to answer him; but his authority, so great, was plainly moving me, had you not opposed to it your own, no less. I will therefore make my attack, if first I say a few words, as it were, about my reputation.'

'For I, if either led by some ostentation or by a zeal for contention, I attached myself to this philosophy in particular, I think not only my folly but even my character and nature ought to be condemned. For if in the smallest matters obstinacy is reproved, and slander even punished, would I, about the whole condition and counsel of my whole life, wish either to contend pugnaciously with others, or to deceive both others and even myself? And so, unless I thought it unbecoming in such a discussion to do that which, when there is debate about the commonwealth, is sometimes wont to be done, I would swear by Jupiter and the household gods that I both burn with zeal for finding the truth, and think the things that I say.'

'For how can I not desire to find the truth, when I rejoice if I have found something like the truth? But as I judge this most beautiful, to see things true, so to approve false for true is most base. Nor yet am I one who never approves anything false, who never assents, who holds no opinion; but we are inquiring about the wise man. I indeed am even a great holder of opinions (for I am not a wise man), and I so direct my thoughts, not by that tiny Cynosura, by which "the Phoenicians trust their guide in deep night," as Aratus says, and steer the more directly because they keep to that which "is turned in a brief circle in the inner course" — but by Helice and the most brilliant Septentriones, that is, by these reasonings of broader appearance, not filed down to a fineness; whence it comes that I err and wander more widely. But, as I said, it is not about me, but about the wise man, that the inquiry is. For when those impressions have keenly struck the mind or the sense, I accept them, and sometimes even assent to them; and yet I do not perceive — for I think nothing can be perceived. I am not a wise man; and so I yield to impressions, nor can I resist. But Arcesilas thinks this the greatest power of the wise man, agreeing with Zeno — to beware lest he be caught, to see to it that he be not deceived. For nothing is more removed from that conception which we have of the gravity of the wise man than error, levity, rashness. What, then, shall I say of the firmness of the wise man? — whom you too, Lucullus, concede to hold no opinion. And since this is approved by you, that I may deal with you out of order (I will presently bring myself back to the proper order), consider first what force this conclusion has:'

'"If the wise man shall ever assent to anything, he will sometimes also hold an opinion; but he will never hold an opinion; therefore he will assent to nothing." This conclusion Arcesilas approved; for he confirmed both the first and the second premise. Carneades sometimes granted that second premise, that the wise man assents sometimes; so it followed that he also holds opinions — which you do not wish, and rightly, as it seems to me. But that first premise — that the wise man, if he were to assent, would also hold an opinion — the Stoics say is false, and Antiochus their supporter; for he can distinguish false from true, and things which cannot be perceived from those which can.'

'But to us, in the first place, even if anything could be perceived, yet the very habit of assenting seems perilous and slippery. Wherefore, since it is agreed to be so faulty to assent to anything either false or unknown, all assent must rather be withheld, lest he rush headlong if he proceed rashly. For false things are so close to true, and those which cannot be perceived to those which can (if indeed there are any such; for we shall presently see), that the wise man ought not to commit himself to so headlong a place. But if I shall assume from myself that there is nothing at all which can be perceived, and shall accept what you grant me, that the wise man holds no opinion, this will be the result — that the wise man will check all his assents; so that you must see whether you prefer this, or that the wise man should hold some opinion. "Neither of these," you will say. Let us strive, then, to show that nothing can be perceived; for about that is the whole controversy.'

'But first a few words with Antiochus, who both learned these very things which are defended by me under Philo for so long that it was agreed that no one had learned longer, and wrote about these matters most acutely, and yet himself accused these same things no less keenly in his old age than he had defended them before. However acute he was, then, as he was, yet his authority is lightened by his inconsistency. For I ask what day dawned upon him that showed him that mark of true and false which for many years he had denied to exist. Did he think out something? He says the same things as the Stoics. Did he repent of having held those views? Why did he not transfer himself to others, and especially to the Stoics? For that dissension was peculiarly theirs. Why was he discontented with Mnesarchus, why with Dardanus, who were then the leaders of the Stoics at Athens? He never departed from Philo, until after he himself began to have men who would hear him.'

'But whence was the Old Academy suddenly recalled? He seems, while departing from the thing itself, to have wished to retain the dignity of the name. There were those who said he did it for the sake of glory, hoping even that those who followed him would be called Antiochians; but to me it seems rather that he could not endure the assault of all the philosophers. For about other matters there are some points common among them; this is the one opinion of the Academics which none of the other philosophers approves. And so he gave way, and, as those who under new constellations cannot bear the sun, so he, when he was scorched, followed the shade — as men follow that of balconies, so he that of the ancients, that is, of the Academics.'

'And the argument he was wont to use, at the time when it pleased him that nothing could be perceived, when he asked whether that famous Dionysius of Heraclea had comprehended, by that certain mark by which you say one ought to assent, either that which for many years he had held, and had believed his master Zeno — that what is honourable is alone good — or that which he afterwards defended, that honour is an empty name and that pleasure is the highest good — he, who from that man's changed opinion wished to teach that nothing can be so marked in our minds by the true that it could not in the same way be marked by the false, took care that the rest should take from Dionysius the argument which he himself had taken from him. But of this more in another place; now to the things that were said by you, Lucullus.'

'And first, let us see of what kind is that which you said at the beginning — that we mention the ancient philosophers in like manner as seditious men are wont to name certain illustrious yet still popular men. They, when they handle bad matters, wish to seem like the good; but we say that those things seem to us which you yourselves concede pleased the noblest philosophers. Anaxagoras said snow was black. Would you bear with me if I said the same? You would not bear it even if I doubted. But who is he? Surely no sophist (for so were called those who philosophize for the sake of ostentation or of gain)? He was of the greatest glory both for weight and for genius.'

'What shall I say of Democritus? Whom can we compare with him, not only in greatness of genius but also of spirit — who dared to begin thus, "These things I say about the universe"? He excepts nothing about which he does not profess to speak; for what can there be outside the universe? Who does not set this philosopher before Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and the rest of the later age, who, compared with him, seem to me of the fifth class? And he does not say what we say — who do not deny that there is something true, but deny that it can be perceived; he plainly denies that there is anything true; the senses, indeed, he calls not obscure but shadowy (for so he names them). Metrodorus of Chios, who admired him most, at the beginning of his book On Nature says: "I deny that we know whether we know anything or know nothing; nor that we even know this very thing, that we do not know or know; nor at all whether there is anything or nothing."'

'Empedocles seems to you to rave: but to me he seems to pour forth a sound most worthy of the things of which he speaks. Does he, then, blind us or rob us of our senses, if he thinks there is not a great enough force in them for judging the things subjected to them? Parmenides and Xenophanes, in verses less good — though still in verses — rebuke the arrogance of those, as if in anger, who, when nothing can be known, dare to say that they know. And from these, he said, Socrates and Plato must be removed. Why? Can I speak more certainly about any men? For my part I seem to have lived with them, so many discourses have been written down, from which it cannot be doubted that to Socrates nothing seemed capable of being known; he excepted one thing only, that he knew that he knew nothing — nothing more. What shall I say of Plato, who certainly would not have pursued these matters in so many books had he not approved them? For there was no reason to pursue the irony of another — a perpetual one especially.'

'Do I seem to you not, like Saturninus, merely to name illustrious men, but even to imitate none but the famous, none but the noble? And yet I had others, troublesome to you but petty — Stilpo, Diodorus, Alexinus, whose are certain twisted and barbed sophisms (for so are called fallacious little conclusions). But why should I gather these, when I have Chrysippus, who is thought to prop up the Porch of the Stoics? How many things he said against the senses, how many against all that is approved in common usage! "But he refuted them himself." To me, indeed, it does not seem so; but grant that he refuted them: certainly he would not have gathered so many things which deceive us by their great probability, had he not seen that they could not easily be resisted.'

'What of the Cyrenaics, philosophers by no means to be despised, who deny that there is anything which can be perceived from without, and say that they perceive those things alone which they feel by inner touch, such as pain and pleasure; and that they do not know by what colour or sound a thing is, but only feel that they are affected in a certain way? Enough has been said about authorities. And yet you had asked of me whether I did not think that, after those ancients, in so many ages the truth could have been found, with so many geniuses and such great efforts inquiring. What has been found I shall see a little later — with you yourself as judge. But that Arcesilas fought with Zeno not for the sake of disparaging him but because he wished to find the truth, is understood thus.'

'No one of the earlier men had ever, I do not say expressed, but even said, that a man could hold no opinion, nor only that he could, but that it was thus necessary for the wise man. This opinion seemed to Arcesilas both true and honourable and worthy of the wise man. He asked of Zeno, perhaps, what would happen if the wise man could neither perceive anything, nor was it the part of the wise man to hold an opinion. He, I suppose, said that the wise man would hold no opinion, since there was something that could be perceived. What, then, was this? "An impression," I suppose. "What sort of impression, then?" Then he defined it thus: stamped and signed and moulded from that which is, just as it is. Afterward it was further asked whether, if a true impression were of such a kind, a false one could be of the like kind. Here Zeno saw acutely that no impression could be perceived, if that which is were of such a kind as could also be that which is not. Arcesilas rightly agreed that this was added to the definition, for neither could a false impression be perceived, nor a true one if it were such as a false might also be; and he bent himself to those discussions in order to teach that no impression coming from a true thing was such that one of the same kind could not also come from a false.'

'This is the one contention which has lasted to this day. For that other — that the wise man will assent to nothing — pertained nothing to this controversy. For it was allowed to perceive nothing and yet to hold an opinion; which is said to have been approved by Carneades. For my part, trusting Clitomachus more than Philo or Metrodorus, I think this was rather argued by him than approved. But let us pass that by. This at least follows, opinion and perception being taken away — the withholding of all assents; so that, if I shall have shown that nothing can be perceived, you would concede that the wise man will never assent.'

'What, then, is there that can be perceived, if not even the senses report true things? — which you, Lucullus, defend with a commonplace. That you should not be able to do this, I had on that account yesterday said many things against the senses, in no necessary place; but you say that you are not moved by the broken oar or the dove's neck. First, why? For both in the oar I perceive that it is not what it appears, and in the dove more colours seem to appear, and there are no more than one. Next, have we said nothing besides? "Let all those things stand; this cause tears at them: Epicurus says his senses are truthful." So you always have an authority, and one who pleads his cause at his own great peril; for Epicurus brings the matter to this — that if one sense has lied once in life, no sense is ever to be believed.'

'This is to be truthful — to trust one's own witnesses and to stand firm upon them; and so Timagoras the Epicurean denies that, when he had twisted his eye, two little flames from the lamp were ever seen by him; for the falsehood was of opinion, not of the eyes — as though the question were what a thing is, not what it appears. So this man indeed is like his elders; but you, who say that of impressions of the senses some are true and others false, how do you distinguish them? And cease, I pray, from commonplaces; these things are born for us at home. "If," you say, "a god should ask you, with your senses only sound and unimpaired, whether you desire anything more, what would you answer?" Would that indeed he might ask: you would hear how ill it goes with us. For, that we may see true things, how far do we see? I make out Catulus's villa at Cumae from this place; I see the region of Pompeii, but the villa at Pompeii itself I do not make out, nor is there anything interposed to obstruct, but the keenness of sight cannot be directed further. O what a splendid prospect! We see Puteoli; but our friend Publius Avianius, walking perhaps in the colonnade of Neptune, we do not see.'

'"But that man, whoever he is, who is wont to be named in the schools, used to see what was eighteen hundred stadia distant." Certain birds see further; I should therefore answer boldly to that god of yours that I am plainly not content with these eyes. He says I see more keenly than perhaps those fishes which are neither seen by us (and they are now under our very eyes) nor can themselves look up at us; therefore, as the water is to them, so to us the thick air is poured around. "But we desire nothing more." Do you suppose the mole desires light? Nor should I so much complain of god that I see too little far as that I see falsely. Do you see that ship? It seems to us to stand still; but to those who are in the ship this villa seems to move. Seek the reason why it appears so; which though you find it ever so well — which I rather think you cannot — you would not show that you have a true witness, but that he speaks false testimony not without cause.'

'But why speak of a ship? — for I saw the oar despised by you: greater things, perhaps, you seek. What can be greater than the sun, which the mathematicians affirm to be more than eighteen times larger than the earth? How small it seems to us! To me indeed about a foot across; but Epicurus thinks it may even be smaller than it appears, though not by much; nor does he think it much larger, but either just so great as it appears, so that the eyes either do not lie at all or do not lie much — yet they do lie: where, then, is that "once"? But let us leave this credulous man, who thinks the senses never lie — who not even now, when that sun, which is borne with so great a rush that how great its swiftness is cannot even be conceived, yet seems to us to stand still.'

'But, that I may lessen the controversy, see, I pray, in how small a matter the dispute lies. There are four heads which would conclude that there is nothing which can be known, perceived, comprehended — about which is this whole question. Of these the first is that there is some false impression; the second, that this cannot be perceived; the third, that among impressions between which there is no difference, it cannot happen that some of them can be perceived and others not; the fourth, that there is no true impression proceeding from a sense to which is not attached another impression which differs from it in nothing and which cannot be perceived. Of these four heads all concede the second and the third; the first Epicurus does not grant; you, with whom we have to do, concede that too; the whole battle is about the fourth.'

'He, therefore, who saw Publius Servilius Geminus, if he thought he saw Quintus, fell upon an impression of such a kind that it could not be perceived, because by no mark was the true distinguished from the false; and that distinction being taken away, what mark could he have in recognizing Gaius Cotta, who was twice consul with Geminus, of such a kind as could not be false? You deny that there is so great a likeness in the nature of things; you fight altogether, but with an easy adversary. Grant that there is not: it can certainly seem so; it will therefore deceive the sense. And if one likeness shall have deceived, it will have rendered all things doubtful; for that judgement being taken away by which it is right to recognize, even if it shall be the very man whom you see who appears to you, yet you will not judge by that mark by which you say one ought, so that there cannot be a false one of the same kind.'

'When, therefore, Publius Geminus can seem to you to be Quintus, what have you ascertained why Cotta cannot seem to you to be one who is not, since something seems to be that is not? You say all things are of their own kind, and nothing is the same as something else. That indeed is Stoic, and not very credible — that there is no hair like another hair in all things, no grain like another grain. These things can be refuted, but I do not wish to fight; for, as to the matter at issue, it makes no difference whether, the thing being seen, the impression differs in no part, or cannot be distinguished even if it differs. But if there cannot be so great a likeness of men, can there not even of statues? Tell me: could not Lysippus, with the same bronze, the same tempering, the same graver, water, and all else, make a hundred Alexanders of the same kind? By what notion, then, would you distinguish them?'

'What if I shall stamp in wax of such a kind a hundred seals with this signet-ring? Can there be any distinction in recognizing them? Or will you have to seek out some ring-maker, since you found that man of Delos who kept hens, to recognize the eggs? But you bring in art summoned even to the aid of the senses: "the painter sees what we do not see," and "as soon as the flute-player has breathed, the tune is recognized by the skilled." What of this? Does it not seem to tell against you, if, without great arts, to which few attain — of our kind indeed very few — we can neither see nor hear? Now that famous matter — with how great a craft nature has fashioned our senses and mind and the whole construction of man —'

'why should I not dread the rashness of opinion? Can you even affirm this, Lucullus, that there is some force, with prudence and counsel forsooth, which has fashioned, or, to use your own word, which has fabricated man? Of what kind is that workmanship, where applied, when, why, in what manner? These things are ingeniously handled, even elegantly argued; finally, let them seem so, only let them not be affirmed. But of the natural philosophers presently — and indeed for this reason, lest you, who said a little before that I would do this, should seem to have lied. But, that I may come to things which are clearer, I will now pour forth whole subjects, about which volumes have been filled, not only by our men but even by Chrysippus (about whom the Stoics are wont to complain that, while he zealously sought out everything against the senses and clearness, and against all common usage and against reason, he was, in answering himself, the weaker — and so by him Carneades was armed);'

'these are of such a kind as have been most diligently handled by you. You said that the impressions of sleepers and drunkards and madmen are weaker than those of the waking, the sober, the sane. How so? Because when Ennius was awake he would not say that he had seen Homer, but that he seemed to; and Alcmeon, "but in no way does my heart agree"; the like about drunkards. As though anyone denied either that he who is awake does not dream, or that he whose madness has subsided thinks the things were not true which seemed to him in his madness. But that is not the point; the question is, at the time when they were seen, how they were seen. Unless indeed we think that Ennius did not so hear that whole "O piety of soul" — if only he dreamed it — as if he had heard it waking. For awake he could think those impressions to be, what they were, dreams; but to the sleeper they were approved equally as to the waking. What of Ilione in that sleep, "Mother, I call you" — does she not so believe her son spoke as she would believe even when awake? For whence those words, "come, stand, stay, hear; repeat those same things to me again"? Does she seem to have less confidence in the impressions than the waking?'

'What shall I say of the mad? Of what kind, pray, was your kinsman, Catulus, Tuditanus? Does anyone, however sane, think the things he sees as certain as that man thought the things that appeared to him? What of him who said, "I see, I see you; live, Ulysses, while you may" — did he not even twice cry out that he saw, when he did not see at all? What of Hercules in Euripides, when, as he pierced the sons of Eurystheus, so he pierced his own with arrows, when he slew his wife, when he tried even to slay his father — was he not moved by false things just as he would be moved by true? What of your own Alcmeon, who denies that his heart agrees with his eyes — does he not in the same place, his madness roused, cry, "whence rises this flame?" and then those words next, "they come on, they come on, they are here, they seek me"? And when he implores the maiden's faith: "bring me aid, drive off the plague from me, this flame-bearing force which tortures me; girt with a dark serpent they advance, they stand around with burning torches" — do you doubt that he seems to himself to see these things? And likewise the rest: "long-haired Apollo bends his golden bow, leaning on the moon; Diana hurls a torch from the left."'

'How would he believe these things more if they were than he believed because they appeared? For it is plain now that his heart agrees with his eyes. And all these things are brought forward in order that this may be made out — than which nothing can be more certain — that between true and false impressions, as regards the assent of the mind, there is no difference. But you accomplish nothing when you refute those false impressions of madmen or dreamers by their own recollection. For it is not asked of what kind the recollection is wont to be of those who have awakened or of those who have ceased to rave, but of what kind the vision was either of the raving or of the dreaming at the time when they were moved by it.'

'But I depart from the senses. What is there that can be perceived by reason? You say that dialectic was invented as the arbiter, as it were, and judge of true and false. Of what true and false, and in what matter? In geometry will the dialectician judge what is true or false, or in letters, or in music? But he does not know those things. In philosophy, then: how great the sun is, what is that to him? What has he by which he can judge what is the highest good? What, then, will he judge? Which conjunction, which disjunction is true; what has been said ambiguously; what follows each thing and what is repugnant: if he judges these and the like, he judges about himself; but he promised more. For to judge these things is not enough for the rest of the matters which are in philosophy, many and great.'

'But since you place so much in that art, see lest it has been wholly born against you; which, having first advanced pleasantly, hands down the elements of speech and the understanding of ambiguities and the method of concluding, then, with a few things added, comes to the sorites, a slippery and dangerous place indeed — which you just now said was a faulty kind of questioning. What, then, of that fault — is it our fault? The nature of things has given us no cognition of limits, so that in any matter we can determine how far; nor only in this heap of wheat, whence the name comes, but in no matter at all, being questioned little by little — whether one is rich, poor, famous, obscure; many, few, great, small, long, short, broad, narrow — by how much, either added or taken away, we may answer for certain, we have no means of knowing.'

'"But sorites are faulty." Break them, then, if you can, that they may not be troublesome; for they will be, unless you beware. "It has been guarded against," he says; "for it pleases Chrysippus, when one is questioned step by step — for example, whether three are few or many — to keep quiet somewhat before he comes to many" (that is what is called by these men hesychazein, to be still). "For all I care, you may snore," says Carneades, "not merely keep quiet. But what does it profit? For there follows one who rouses you from sleep and questions you in the same way: 'at what number you fell silent, if to that number I add one, will they be many?' You will advance again as far as it seems good." Why say more? For you confess this, that you can answer neither the last of the few nor the first of the many. An error of this kind so spreads that I do not see whither it cannot reach.'

'"It does me no harm," he says; "for, like a skilful charioteer, before I come to the end I will hold in my horses, and the more so if the place to which the horses are borne shall be precipitous. So," he says, "I hold myself in beforehand, and answer no longer to one questioning captiously." If you have something that is clear and do not answer, that is haughty; if you have not, then you yourself do not perceive. If because it is obscure, I grant it; but you deny that you advance as far as obscure things; in clear matters, then, you stop. If only so that you may be silent, you accomplish nothing; for what is it to him who wishes to ensnare you, whether he entangles you silent or speaking? But if you answer without doubt, for example, up to nine, that they are few, and at the tenth stop, you withhold assent even from things certain and clearer; this same thing in obscure matters you do not allow me to do. That art, then, helps you nothing against the sorites, which teaches neither what, in increasing or diminishing, is first nor what is last.'

'What of this — that that same art, unweaving as it were the web of Penelope, takes away at the end what went before: is that your fault or ours? Surely the foundation of dialectic is that whatever is stated (and this they call axioma, which is as it were an assertion) is either true or false. What, then, are these true or false: "if you say that you are lying and you say this truly, you are lying; you speak truly"? These things, of course, you say are inexplicable; which is more odious than those which we call not comprehended and not perceived — but this I pass over. This I ask: if those things cannot be explained, nor is any judgement of them found, so that you can answer whether they are true or false, where is that definition, that an assertion is that which is either true or false? Things being assumed, I will add that from them some must be inferred and others rejected which are in the contrary class.'

'In what way, then, do you judge this to have been concluded: "if you say it is now light and you say truly, it is light; but you say it is now light and you say truly; it is light therefore"? You certainly approve the form and say it is most rightly concluded, and so in teaching you hand down this first as a mode of concluding. Either, then, you will approve whatever is concluded in the same way, or that art is nothing. See, therefore, whether you will approve this conclusion: "if you say you are lying and you say truly, you are lying; but you say you are lying and you say truly; you are lying therefore." How can you not approve this, when you have approved the earlier one of the same kind? These things are Chrysippus's, not resolved even by himself. For what would he do with this conclusion, "if it is light, it is light; but it is light; it is light therefore"? He would yield, of course; for the very reasoning of the connected proposition, when you have conceded the antecedent, compels you to concede the consequent. How, then, does this differ from that conclusion, "if you are lying, you are lying; but you are lying; you are lying therefore"? This you deny that you can either approve or disapprove; how, then, the other any the more? If art, if reason, if method, if in fine the force of the conclusion holds good, it is the same in both.'

'But this is their last resort: they demand that these inexplicables be excepted. Let them look for some tribune, I advise; that exception they will never obtain from me. For when from Epicurus, who both despises and mocks the whole of dialectic, they cannot obtain that he concede the truth of what we shall thus state, "either Hermarchus will be alive tomorrow or he will not be alive," while the dialecticians thus determine that everything which is so disjoined as "either yes or no" is not only true but even necessary (see how cautious is the man whom those people think dull: "for if," he says, "I shall have conceded either to be necessary, it will be necessary that Hermarchus tomorrow either be alive or not be alive; but there is no such necessity in the nature of things") — when, then, the dialecticians fight with this man, that is, Antiochus and the Stoics — for he overthrows the whole of dialectic; for if a disjunction of contraries (and I call those contrary, when one affirms, the other denies) — if such a disjunction can be false, none is true.'

'But what disputes have they with me, who follow their own school? When anything of this kind had occurred, Carneades was wont to jest thus: "if I have concluded rightly, I keep my ground; but if faultily, Diogenes shall give back my mina"; for he had learned dialectic from that Stoic, and this was the fee of the dialecticians. I follow, then, those paths which I learned from Antiochus, nor do I find how I should judge "if it is light, it is light" to be true for this reason, because I so learned, that everything which is connected of itself is true, and not judge "if you are lying, you are lying" to be connected in the same way: either, then, this as that, or, unless this, not even that shall I judge. But, that we may leave all those stings and the whole tortuous kind of arguing, and may show what we are, the whole opinion of Carneades being now explained, all those Antiochean things will collapse together. Nor indeed shall I say anything in such a way that anyone may suspect it is invented; I will take it from Clitomachus, who was with Carneades even to old age, a man both acute, as a Carthaginian, and very zealous and diligent; and there are four books of his on the withholding of assents, but these things which I shall now say are taken from the first.'

'It pleases Carneades that there are two kinds of impressions; in the one this division, that some impressions are such as can be perceived and others such as cannot; in the other, that some impressions are probable and others not probable. And so the things which are said against the senses and against clearness pertain to the former division; against the latter nothing ought to be said. Wherefore he holds thus — that no impression is such that perception follows, but that approval follows many. For it would be against nature, if nothing were probable; there follows that overthrow of all life which you, Lucullus, were mentioning. And so many things even of the senses must be approved, provided only that this be held — that there is in them nothing of such a kind as a false one differing in nothing from it could not also be; thus whatever shall occur probable in appearance, if nothing shall present itself contrary to that probability, the wise man will use it, and thus the whole reason of life will be governed. And indeed even he who is brought in by you as the wise man follows many probabilities not comprehended nor perceived nor assented to, but like the truth, which unless he should approve, the whole of life would be taken away.'

'For when the wise man embarks upon a ship, has he comprehended in his mind and perceived that he will sail according to his purpose? How can he? But if now he should set out from this place for Puteoli, thirty stadia, in a sound vessel with a good helmsman in this calm, it would seem probable that he will arrive there safe. By impressions of this kind, then, he will take his counsels of acting and not acting, and will be readier to approve that snow is white than was Anaxagoras, who not only denied that it is so, but, because he knew that the water from which it was congealed is black, denied that it even seems white;'

'and whatever thing shall so touch him that the impression is probable and impeded by nothing, he will be moved. For he is not carved from rock or hewn from oak; he has a body, he has a mind; he is moved in mind, he is moved in his senses, so that many things seem to him true, and yet he does not have that distinguishing and proper mark of perceiving. And on that account the wise man does not assent, because there can arise something false of the same kind as this true thing is. Nor do we speak against the senses otherwise than the Stoics, who say that many things are false and stand far otherwise than they appear to the senses. But if this be so, that even one thing appears false to the senses, there is at hand one to deny that any thing can be perceived by the senses. So, with us silent, from one head of Epicurus and another of yours, perception and comprehension are taken away. What is the head of Epicurus? "If any impression of a sense is false, nothing can be perceived." What is yours? "There are false impressions of the senses." What follows? Though I be silent, the conclusion itself speaks: "nothing can be perceived." "I do not concede it," he says, "to Epicurus." Contend then with him, who is wholly opposed to you; do not contend with me, who in this at least certainly — that there is something false in the senses — agree with you.'

'And yet nothing seems to me so strange as that these things are said, and by Antiochus above all, to whom those things were most familiar which I said a little before. For anyone may by his own judgement reprove this — that we deny anything can be perceived; the reproach is certainly lighter, in that we nevertheless say that certain things are probable. This does not seem enough to you. Let it not be; those things at least we ought to escape which were most agitated by you: "You discern nothing, then, you hear nothing, nothing is clear to you." I explained a little before, on Clitomachus's authority, in what way Carneades said these things; hear in what way the same things are said by Clitomachus in that book which he wrote to Gaius Lucilius the poet, when he had written on the same matters to Lucius Censorinus, the one who was consul with Manius Manilius. He wrote, then, in nearly these words (for they are known to me, because in that book is contained the first instruction and as it were teaching of those very matters about which we are dealing) — but it is written thus:—'

'that it pleases the Academics that there are such dissimilarities of things that some seem probable and others the contrary; but that this is not enough for you to say that some can be perceived and others cannot, because many false things are probable, but nothing false can be perceived and known. And so he says that those greatly err who say that the senses are taken away by the Academy, by whom it was never said that either colour or taste or sound is nothing; this was argued — that there is not in them that proper mark of the true and the certain which exists nowhere else.'

'When he had set forth these things, he adds that the wise man is said in two ways to withhold assent: in one way, when this is understood, that he assents to no thing at all; in the other, when he withholds himself from answering, so as either to approve or disapprove something, so that he neither denies nor affirms anything. This being so, the one pleases him — that he should never assent; the other he holds — that, following probability, wherever it either occurs or fails, he may answer either "yes" or "no." And since it pleases that he who restrains himself from assenting about all things is nevertheless moved and does something, he leaves impressions of such a kind by which we are roused to action, likewise those to which, being questioned, we can answer on either side, following only what so appears, provided it be without assent; nor yet that all impressions of such a kind are approved, but those which are impeded by nothing.'

'If we do not prove these things to you, let them be false, granted; invidious they certainly are not. For we do not snatch away the light, but those things which you say are perceived and comprehended, those same we say seem to us — provided only they be probable. Thus, the probable being introduced and established — and that indeed unencumbered, free, loose, involved in nothing — you surely see, Lucullus, that that patronage of yours of clearness now lies prostrate. For this wise man of whom I speak will behold the sky, the earth, the sea with the same eyes with which that wise man of yours does, and will perceive with the same senses the rest of the things which fall under each sense. That sea, which now, with the west wind rising, seems purple, will seem the same to this man of ours, and yet he will not assent, because to us ourselves a little while ago it seemed dark blue in the morning, grey; and that part which now, where it is lit by the sun, grows white and quivers, and is unlike the part next to it — so that, even if you can give the reason why this comes about, you cannot yet maintain that to be true which appeared to the eyes.'

'"Whence comes memory, if we perceive nothing?" — for so you used to ask. What, can we not remember impressions except those comprehended? What of Polyaenus, who is said to have been a great mathematician, who afterward, assenting to Epicurus, believed the whole of geometry to be false — did he forget even those things which he knew? But what is false cannot be perceived, as you yourselves hold. If, then, memory is of things perceived and comprehended, all that anyone remembers he holds comprehended and perceived; but nothing false can be comprehended; and Siro remembers all the dogmas of Epicurus; therefore those things are now all true. This, for all I care, may stand; but you must either concede that it is so — which you least of all wish — or grant me memory and confess that there is a place for it even if there be no comprehension and perception.'

'"What will become of the arts?" Of which? Of those which themselves confess that they use conjecture more than knowledge, or of those which only follow what appears, and have not that art of yours by which they distinguish true and false? But there are those two lights which most of all contain that cause of yours. For first you deny that it can happen that anyone assents to no thing. But this indeed is clear, since Panaetius, almost the chief of the Stoics in my judgement at least, says that he doubts about that matter which all the Stoics except him think most certain — that the responses of soothsayers, auspices, oracles, dreams, prophecies are true — and withholds himself from assent: which since he can do even about those matters which they from whom he himself learned held certain, why cannot the wise man do this about the rest? Or is there something which, being laid down, he can either disapprove or approve, but cannot doubt? Or will you be able to stop in the sorites when you wish, while he cannot stop in the rest of matters in the same way — especially when he can, without assent, follow the very likeness of truth that is unimpeded?'

'The other point is that you deny that there can be action of any thing in him who approves no thing by his assent. For first something must be seen, in which there is also assent (for the Stoics say that the senses themselves are assents, which, since appetite follows, action follows) — but that all things are taken away if impressions are taken away. On this matter much has been both said and written on both sides; but the whole thing can be settled briefly. For I, although I think it the greatest action to fight against impressions, to resist opinions, to withhold assents that are slippery — and I believe Clitomachus, who writes thus, that a certain labour of Hercules was performed by Carneades, in that, like a wild and savage beast, he had drawn out from our minds assent, that is, opinion and rashness — yet, that this part of the defence may be left aside, what shall impede the action of him who follows probabilities with nothing impeding?'

'"This very thing," he says, "will impede him — that he will determine that not even that which he approves can be perceived." Now this will impede you too in sailing and in sowing, in taking a wife and in begetting children, and in very many matters, in which you follow nothing but the probable. And yet you bring up that worn and oft-rejected argument, not as Antipater did, but, as you say, more pointedly; for Antipater was reproved for saying that it is consistent for him who affirms that nothing can be comprehended to say at least that this very thing can be comprehended. This seemed gross to Antiochus himself and self-contradictory; for it cannot be said consistently that nothing can be comprehended, if it be said that anything can be comprehended. He thinks Carneades should rather have been pressed in this way — that, since no decree of the wise man can exist unless comprehended, perceived, known, he who said that this very decree is the wise man's, that nothing can be perceived, should confess that it has been perceived. Just as if the wise man had no other decree and could lead his life without decrees.'

'But as he holds those things probable, not perceived, so this very thing — that nothing can be perceived. For if in this he had a mark of cognition, he would use the same in the rest; since he has it not, he uses probabilities. And so he does not fear lest he seem to confound all things and render them uncertain. For not in the way that, if it be asked of him whether the number of the stars is even or odd, so also, if about duty and many other matters in which he is versed and practised, he would say that he does not know. For in uncertain things there is nothing probable; but in those in which there is, in them there will be wanting to the wise man neither what he should do nor what he should answer.'

'You did not pass over even that reproach of Antiochus, Lucullus (nor was it strange, for it is among the most famous), by which Antiochus used to say that Philo was most of all confounded. For when it was assumed, in the one premise, that certain impressions are false, in the other, that they differ in nothing from the true, he did not attend to this — that the former premise was conceded for the reason that there seemed to be a certain difference in impressions, and that this was taken away by the other, in which he denies that true impressions differ from false — nothing being so repugnant. This would be so, if we took away the true altogether. We do not; for we discern things true as well as false. But there is an appearance of approving, of perceiving we have no sign.'

'And I seem to myself even now to be acting too meagrely. For since there is a field in which discourse might exult, why do we drive it into such straits and into the brambles of the Stoics? For if I had to do with a Peripatetic, who said that what was stamped from the true could be perceived, and that there did not adhere that great addition, "in such a way that it could not be stamped from the false," I should deal simply with a simple man, nor should I greatly contend; and even if, when I said that nothing could be comprehended, he said that the wise man sometimes holds an opinion, I should not resist — especially since not even Carneades strongly resists this point. As it is, what can I do? For I ask what there is that can be comprehended.'

'There answers me not Aristotle or Theophrastus, not even Xenocrates or Polemo, but these lesser men, that a truth is of such a kind as a falsehood could not be. I find nothing of that kind: therefore, doubtless, I shall assent to the unknown, that is, I shall hold an opinion. This both the Peripatetics and the Old Academy concede me; you deny it, Antiochus above all. He moves me greatly, both because I loved the man as he did me, and because I so judge — the most polished and acute of all the philosophers of our memory. Of whom I ask first, in what manner, pray, he is of that Academy of which he professes to be. To pass over other things, of these two matters at issue, who ever said, either of the Old Academy or of the Peripatetics, either that that alone could be perceived which was a truth of such a kind as a falsehood could not be, or that the wise man holds no opinion? Certainly no one. Neither of these was strongly defended before Zeno; I, however, think both true, nor do I say so for the occasion, but I plainly approve them so.'

'This I cannot bear: that you, when you forbid me to assent to the unknown, and say that this is most base and most full of rashness, should arrogate so much to yourself as to set forth the doctrine of wisdom, to unfold the nature of all things, to fashion characters, to establish the ends of good and evil, to describe duties, to define what life I am to enter upon, and at the same time to say that you will hand down a criterion and an art of arguing and understanding — will you bring it about that I, embracing those innumerable things, should nowhere slip, should hold no opinion? What, pray, is that doctrine to which you would lead me, if you should draw me away from this one? I fear you act somewhat arrogantly if you say "your own"; and yet you must necessarily say so. Nor indeed you alone, but each man will snatch me to his own.'

'Come — should I withstand the Peripatetics, who say that they have a kinship with orators, who say that illustrious men trained by them have often governed the commonwealth; should I hold out against the Epicureans, so many of my friends, men so good, so loving toward one another; what shall I do with Diodotus the Stoic, whom I heard from boyhood, who lives with me so many years, who dwells in my house, whom I both admire and love, who despises those Antiochean things? "Ours alone," you will say, "are true." Certainly alone, if true; for there cannot be several true things at variance with each other. Are we, then, the shameless ones, who do not wish to slip, or they the arrogant, who have persuaded themselves that they alone know all things? "Not I indeed," he says, "but the wise man, I say, knows." Excellent: namely, knows those things which are in your doctrine. What is this in the first place — that wisdom is explained by one who is not wise? But let us depart from our own selves, let us speak of the wise man, about whom, as I have often said already, is this whole question.'

'Into three parts, then, both by most men and by your own selves, is wisdom divided. First, then, let us see, if you please, what has been inquired about the nature of things — or, as before: is there anyone puffed up with so great an error as to have persuaded himself that he knows those things? I do not seek those reasonings which depend on conjecture, which are dragged this way and that by discussions, and bring no necessity of persuading; let the geometers see to it, who profess not to persuade but to compel, and who prove to you all the things they describe. I do not seek from them those first principles of the mathematicians, which not being conceded they cannot advance a finger's breadth: that a point is that which has no magnitude, an extremity and as it were a boundary in which there is no thickness at all, a line a length without any breadth. When I shall have conceded these to be true, if I should put the wise man to his oath — and not before Archimedes, while he looks on, has described all those reasonings by which it is made out that the sun is many times larger than the earth — do you think he would swear? If he should do so, he would have despised the sun itself, which he thinks to be a god.'

'But if he is not going to believe geometrical reasonings, which bring force in teaching, as you yourselves say, that man will be far from believing the arguments of the philosophers — or, if he is going to believe, those of which men's especially? For one may unfold all the views of the natural philosophers, but it is long; yet I ask whom he follows. Suppose someone now becomes wise, is not yet so; what opinion and doctrine will he choose by preference? And yet whatever he shall choose, he will choose as a fool; but let him be of divine genius: which one of the natural philosophers will he most approve? Nor will he be able to approve more than one. I do not pursue the infinite questions; only about the first principles of things, of which all things consist, let us see whom he approves; for among great men there is the highest dissension.'

'Thales, the chief, one of the seven, to whom the remaining six are said to have yielded the first place, said that all things consist of water. But he did not persuade Anaximander, his fellow-citizen and companion, of this; for he said that the infinity of nature was that from which all things were begotten. Afterward his pupil Anaximenes said that the air was infinite, but that the things which arose from it were finite; and that earth, water, fire were begotten, then from these all things. Anaxagoras said matter was infinite, but that from it there were minute particles like one another, these at first confused, afterward brought into order by a divine mind. Xenophanes, a little earlier even, said that all things were one, and that this was not changeable, and that this was god, never born and everlasting, of a spherical figure. Parmenides said it was fire which moves, earth which is formed by it. Leucippus, the full and the void. Democritus is in this like him, but richer in the rest. Empedocles those four well-known and familiar elements. Heraclitus, fire. Melissus, that which was infinite and unchangeable, and had been always and would be. Plato thinks that the world was made by a god out of matter receiving all things into itself, and is everlasting. The Pythagoreans wish all things to proceed from numbers and the first principles of the mathematicians. Out of these your wise man will choose, I suppose, some one whom he will follow; the rest, so many and so great men, rejected and condemned by him, will depart.'

'But whatever opinion he shall have approved, he will so hold it comprehended in his mind as the things which he holds by the senses; nor will he any more approve that it is now light than, since he is a Stoic, that this world is wise, that it has a mind which has fashioned both itself and the world and moderates, moves, rules all things; he will be persuaded too that the sun, moon, all the stars, the earth, the sea are gods, because a certain animate intelligence pervades and passes through all those things; yet that there will be a time when this whole world shall blaze up with fire. Let those things be true (for you now laugh that I confess there is something true), yet I deny that they are comprehended and perceived. For when that Stoic wise man of yours has told you those things syllable by syllable, there will come Aristotle pouring forth a golden river of speech, who says that he raves; for the world was never born, because there was no beginning of so glorious a work upon any new counsel taken; and it is so fitted together on every side that no force can contrive such great motions and change, no old age arise through length of time that this fair order should ever fall away and perish. For you it will be necessary to reject this, but to defend that earlier view as your head and reputation: am I not left even to doubt?'

'To pass over the levity of those who assent rashly, of how great worth is liberty itself — that it is not necessary for me what is necessary for you. For I ask why god, when he made all things for our sake (for so you wish), made so great a quantity of water-snakes and vipers, why he scattered so many deadly and pernicious things over land and sea. You deny that these could be wrought so finely and so subtly without some divine skill; whose majesty indeed you bring down even to the perfection of bees and ants, so that there might seem to have been even among the gods some Myrmecides, a fashioner of tiny little works.'

'You deny that anything can be without a god: behold, there comes at you from the flank Strato of Lampsacus, who would grant to that god of yours an exemption — a great gift indeed; but since the priests of the gods have a dispensation, how much fairer that the gods themselves should have one. He denies that he uses the labour of the gods for fashioning the world, and teaches that all things, whatever they be, have been wrought by nature — not, like that other man, who says these things are concreted of rough and smooth and hooked and crooked bodies with void interposed: he thinks these are the dreams of Democritus, not teaching but wishing; but he himself, pursuing the single parts of the world, teaches that whatever either is or comes to be, comes to be or has been made by natural weights and motions. Truly that man both frees god from a great labour and frees me from fear. For who, when he thinks himself cared for by a god, can fail both day and night to dread the divine power, and, if anything adverse has happened — which has happened to whom does it not? — to be afraid lest it have come about by justice? Yet I assent neither to Strato nor indeed to you; now this, now that seems more probable.'

'All these things lie hidden, Lucullus, concealed and surrounded by thick darkness, so that no keenness of human genius is so great as to be able to penetrate into the sky, to enter into the earth. We do not know our own bodies; what is the position of the parts, what power each part has we are ignorant; and so the physicians themselves, whose interest it was to know these things, laid them open that they might be seen, nor do the empirics say that these things are on that account more known, because it may happen that, laid bare and uncovered, they are changed. But can we in the same way dissect, lay open, divide the natures of things, so as to see whether the earth is fixed deep down and clings as it were by its own roots, or hangs in the midst?'

'Xenophanes says that the moon is inhabited, and that it is an earth of many cities and mountains: these seem portents; but yet neither could he who said it swear that it is so, nor I that it is not. You too say that there are men over against us, on the contrary part of the earth, who stand with feet opposed to our feet, whom you call antipodes: why are you more angry with me, who do not spurn those things, than with those who, when they hear them, think you are out of your minds? Hicetas of Syracuse, as Theophrastus says, thinks that the sky, sun, moon, stars, and in fine all the things above stand still, and that nothing in the world is moved except the earth; which, since it turns and twists about its axis with the highest swiftness, all the same things are brought about as if, the earth standing still, the heaven were moved. And some think that Plato too says this in the Timaeus, but a little more obscurely. What of you, Epicurus, speak: do you think the sun so small? "I? For us indeed it is just so great." And you are mocked by him, and you yourselves in turn make sport of him. Free, then, from such mockery is Socrates, free Aristo of Chios, who think that none of these things can be known.'

'But I return to the soul and the body. Are these things at last well enough known to us — what the nature of the nerves is, what of the veins? Do we grasp what the soul is, where it is, in fine whether it is, or, as it seemed to Dicaearchus, is not at all? If it is, whether it has three parts, as it pleased Plato, of reason, of anger, of desire, or is simple and one; if simple, whether it is fire, or breath, or blood, or, as Xenocrates held, a number without any body — which can scarcely be understood of what kind it is; and, whatever it is, whether it is mortal or eternal, for on either side many things are said. Of these some one thing seems certain to your wise man; to ours not even what is most probable occurs; so equal in most matters are the weights of contrary reasonings.'

'But if you act more modestly and accuse me not because I do not assent to your reasonings but because I assent to none, I will conquer my mind and choose someone to assent to — whom in particular, whom? Democritus; for, as you know, I was always a lover of nobility. Now I shall be pressed by the reproach of you all: "Can you either think that there is any void, when all things are so filled and crammed that both the body which is moved gives way to bodies, and wherever each thing has given way another follows immediately into its place; or that there are any atoms, from which whatever is produced is most unlike them; or that anything excellent can be produced without some mind? And, when in one world this order is so wonderful, that there are innumerable worlds above, below, on the right, on the left, before, behind, some unlike, some of the same kind; and that, as we now are at Bauli and look upon Puteoli, so there are innumerable men in like places, with the same names, honours, deeds, geniuses, forms, ages, disputing about the same matters; and that, if now, or even if while sleeping, we seem to see something in the mind, images from without break into our minds through the body. Do you not adopt those things, nor assent to fabricated matters; to feel nothing is better than to feel things so perverse."'

'It is not, then, the point that I should approve something by my assent, but that you should beware lest you demand the same things which you do, even shamelessly, not only arrogantly — especially since those things of yours do not seem to me even probable. For I think there is no divination, which you approve; and that fate by which you say all things are bound together I despise; nor do I think that this world was built by divine counsel. And perhaps it may be so; but why am I dragged into ill-will? Is it allowed me, by your leave, not to know what I do not know, or for the Stoics themselves to dispute among themselves, when it shall not be allowed to me? To Zeno and nearly all the rest of the Stoics the highest god seems to be the aether, endowed with a mind by which all things are ruled; Cleanthes, who is as it were a Stoic of the greater clans, the pupil of Zeno, thinks that the sun rules and holds power over things: so we are compelled, by the dissension of the wise, not to know our own lord, since we know not whether we serve the sun or the aether. But the magnitude of the sun (for he himself here, all radiant, seems to look at me, warning me to make frequent mention of him) — you, then, report the magnitude of this body as if you had measured it with a ten-foot rod; I refuse to trust your measure, as one trusts bad architects: is it doubtful which of us, to put it gently, is the more modest?'

'Nor yet do I think these questions of the natural philosophers ought to be banished. For the consideration and contemplation of nature is a kind of natural pasture, as it were, of minds and geniuses: we are raised up, we seem to become loftier, we look down on human things, and, thinking of the upper and heavenly things, we despise these our own as scanty and trivial. The very investigation of things both greatest and most hidden has a delight; but if anything occurs that seems like the truth, the mind is filled with the most human pleasure. This, then, both your wise man and this one of ours will inquire into.'

'But yours so as to assent, believe, affirm; ours so as to fear to hold an opinion rashly, and to think it goes excellently with him if in matters of this kind he has found what is like the truth. Let us come now to the notion of good and evil; but first a little must be said. The natural philosophers do not seem to me to consider, when they affirm those things very strongly, that they lose the authority even of those matters which seem more clear. For they no more assent and approve that it is now light than, when a crow has croaked, that it then either orders or forbids something; nor will they more affirm that that statue is six feet, if they shall have measured it, than that the sun, which they cannot measure, is more than eighteen times larger than the earth. Whence arises that conclusion: "if the sun cannot be perceived how great it is; he who approves the rest in the same way as he approves the magnitude of the sun does not perceive those things; but the magnitude of the sun cannot be perceived; he, then, who approves it as if he perceived it, perceives no thing." They will answer that it can be perceived how great the sun is: I will not resist, provided only they say that the rest are perceived and comprehended in the same way. For they cannot say that one thing is more or less comprehended than another, since of all things there is one definition of comprehending.'

'But, as I had begun: what have we ascertained in matters good and evil? Surely ends must be established to which the sum of both goods and evils may be referred. On what matter, then, is there a greater dissension among the highest men? And I omit those views which now seem abandoned — Herillus, who places the highest good in cognition and knowledge; who, though he was a pupil of Zeno, you see how greatly he dissented from him, and how not much from Plato. Noble was the school of the Megarians, of which, as I see it written, the chief was Xenophanes, whom I just now named, then Parmenides and Zeno following him (and so by these they were called the Eleatic philosophers), afterward Euclides, a pupil of Socrates, of Megara, from whom those same were called Megarians, who said that that alone is good which is one and like and the same always; these too took much from Plato. From Menedemus, however — because he was of Eretria — they were called Eretrians, whose whole good was placed in the mind and in the keenness of mind by which the truth was discerned — things like those of Herillus, but, I suppose, explained more richly and more ornately.'

'If we despise these and now think them cast aside, those at least we ought to despise less: Aristo, who, when he had been a pupil of Zeno, approved in fact those things which that man approved in words — that nothing is good except virtue, nor evil except what is contrary to virtue; he thought that in the things between there were none of those weights which Zeno wished there to be. For this man the highest good is to be moved to neither side in those matters — which is by himself called adiaphoria (indifference). But Pyrrho held that the wise man does not even feel those things — which is named apatheia (impassivity). These, then, and so many opinions let us pass over; let us look at these, which now have been long and much defended.'

'Others have wished pleasure to be the end, of whom the chief was Aristippus, who had heard Socrates — whence the Cyrenaics — afterward Epicurus, whose school is now better known, yet not agreeing with the Cyrenaics about pleasure itself. But Callipho judged that pleasure and honour are the ends; freedom from all distress, Hieronymus; this same thing joined with honour, Diodorus — both these Peripatetics. But to live honourably, enjoying those things which nature first reconciles to man, the Old Academy too judged, as the writings of Polemo show, whom Antiochus most approves, and Aristotle and his friends seem to come very near to this. Carneades too introduced — not that he approved it, but that he might oppose it to the Stoics — that the highest good is to enjoy those things which nature first reconciled to us. But to live honourably, which is derived from the reconciliation of nature, Zeno, who was the inventor and chief of the Stoics, established to be the end of goods.'

'Now this is plain — that, to all those ends of goods which I have set forth, the ends of evils are contrary. To you now I refer the question whom I should follow; only let no one give that answer so unlearned and absurd, "any one you please, only some one": nothing can be said more inconsiderate. I desire to follow the Stoics. Is it allowed — I omit by way of Aristotle, in my judgement nearly unique in philosophy — by way of Antiochus himself, who was called an Academic, though he was, if he had changed very few things, a most genuine Stoic? The matter, then, will now be at a crisis; for either the wise man must be set down as a Stoic, or as one of the Old Academy — both he cannot be; for between them there is a contention not about boundaries but about the whole possession; for the whole reason of life is contained in the definition of the highest good, and those who disagree about it disagree about the whole reason of life; both, then, cannot be wise, since they so greatly dissent, but one — : if the Polemonian view is right, the Stoic errs, assenting to a false thing (and you yourselves say that nothing is so alien to the wise man); but if Zeno's things are true, the same must be said against the Old Academics and Peripatetics. Here, then, assenting to neither — if never — which is the more prudent?'

'What, when Antiochus himself dissents in certain matters from those Stoics whom he loves, does he not show that those things cannot be approved by the wise man? It pleases the Stoics that all sins are equal; but this displeases Antiochus most vehemently. Let it be allowed me at last to consider which opinion I shall follow. "Cut it short," he says, "determine at last upon something whatever it be." What, when the things that are said seem to me both acute on either side and equal, should I not beware lest I commit a crime? For you said, Lucullus, that it is a crime to betray a dogma; I restrain myself, then, lest I assent to the unknown, which is a dogma common to me with you.'

'Behold, a much greater dissension still. Zeno thinks the happy life is placed in virtue alone. What of Antiochus? "Happy too," he says, "but not the happiest." That god, who judged that nothing is wanting to virtue; this little man, who thinks that many things besides virtue are to a man partly dear, partly even necessary. But I fear both that the former assigns more to virtue than nature allows — especially as Theophrastus says many things eloquently and copiously — and I am afraid that the latter is scarcely consistent with himself, who, while he says that there are certain evils both of body and of fortune, yet judges that he who is in all these will be happy if he is wise: I am pulled apart; now this seems to me more probable, now that; and yet, unless one or the other be so, I plainly think that virtue lies prostrate. But in these things they disagree.'

'What of those things in which they agree — can we approve them as true: that the mind of the wise man is never moved by desire nor carried away by gladness? Come, let these be granted probable; what of those — never to fear, never to grieve: should the wise man not fear lest his country be destroyed, not grieve if it has been destroyed? Hard; but necessary for Zeno, to whom there is nothing among goods except the honourable; but for you, Antiochus, least of all, to whom, besides the honourable, many things seem goods, and besides baseness many things evils, which the wise man must necessarily both fear as they come and grieve at as having come. But I ask when these things were doctrines of the Old Academy — that they should deny that the mind of the wise man is moved and disturbed: they approved means, and wished there to be a certain natural measure in every emotion. We have all read the book of Crantor, the Old Academic, on grief; for it is not great, but a little golden one, and, as Panaetius advises Tubero, to be learned by heart word for word. And those men indeed even said that those emotions were given to our minds usefully by nature — fear for the sake of caution, pity and grief for the sake of mercy; anger itself they said was as it were the whetstone of courage — whether rightly or not we shall see another time; but how that severity of yours has broken into the Old Academy I do not know. But those things indeed I cannot bear — not that they displease me, for most of the marvels of the Stoics which are called paradoxa are Socratic; but where did Xenocrates, where did Aristotle touch those things (for you wish these to be as it were the same)? — would they ever say that the wise alone are kings, alone rich, alone fair; that all things everywhere are the wise man's; that no one is consul, praetor, general — I know not whether even one of the board of five — unless he be wise; finally, that he alone is a citizen, alone free, and that the unwise are all foreigners, exiles, slaves, in fine madmen; that the writings of Lycurgus, of Solon, our Twelve Tables are not laws, nor even is it a city or a state unless it be of the wise?'

'These things, Lucullus, if you have assented to your friend Antiochus, are to be defended by you as much as the walls; but by me only in moderation, only so far as shall seem good. I read in Clitomachus that, when Carneades and the Stoic Diogenes were standing before the senate on the Capitol, Aulus Albinus — who was then praetor, in the consulship of Publius Scipio and Marcus Marcellus, the man who was consul with your grandfather, Lucullus, a learned man indeed, as his own history written in Greek shows — said jestingly to Carneades: "I, Carneades, do not seem to you to be praetor, because I am not wise, nor this a city, nor in it a state?" Then he: "To this Stoic you do not seem so." Aristotle or Xenocrates, whom Antiochus wished to follow, would not have doubted that both that man was praetor and that Rome was a city and that a state dwelt in it; but that man of ours is plainly, as I said above, a Stoic stammering a very few things.'

'But you — to me, fearing lest I slip into opinion and adopt and approve something unknown, which you least of all wish — what counsel do you give? Chrysippus testifies often that there are only three opinions which can be defended about the ends of goods; he cuts down and lops off the multitude. For either the honourable is the end, or pleasure, or both. For those who say that the highest good is this, if we be free from all distress, flee the invidious name of pleasure but dwell in its neighbourhood; which those also do who joined that same thing with the honourable, and not much otherwise those who added to the honourable the first advantages of nature. So he leaves three opinions which he thinks can be defended with probability.'

'Let it be so indeed — although from the ends of Polemo and the Peripatetics and Antiochus I am not easily torn away, nor have I anything as yet more probable. Yet I see how sweetly pleasure flatters our senses; I am slipping to the point of assenting to Epicurus or Aristippus: virtue calls me back, or rather rebukes me with the hand, says those are the movements of cattle, and joins man to god. I can be in the middle, so that, since Aristippus, as though we had no soul, guards the body alone, while Zeno, as though we were devoid of body, embraces the soul alone, I should follow Callipho — whose opinion indeed Carneades so zealously kept defending that he even seemed to approve it; although Clitomachus affirmed that he could never understand what Carneades approved — but if I should wish to follow that very end, would not severity itself and gravity and right reason confront me: "Will you, when honour consists in the despising of pleasure, couple honour with pleasure as one couples a man with a beast?"'

'There remains, then, one pair to fight it out — pleasure with honour; about which, as far as I perceive, there is no great contention for Chrysippus. If you follow the one, many things fall, and most of all fellowship with the human race, affection, friendship, justice, and the rest of the virtues, of which there can be none unless it be gratuitous; for that which is impelled to duty by pleasure as by a kind of wage is not virtue but a deceitful imitation and pretence of virtue. Hear, on the other side, those who say that the very name of honour is not even understood by them (unless perhaps we should wish to call honourable that which is glorious in the eyes of the crowd), that the fountain of all goods is in the body, that this is the norm, this the rule, this the prescription of nature, from which whoever has strayed will never have anything to follow in life.'

'Do you think, then, that I am moved by nothing, when I hear these things and innumerable others? I am moved as much as you, Lucullus, and you should not think me less a man than yourself; only this is the difference, that you, when you are moved, adopt, assent, approve, and wish that to have been true, certain, comprehended, perceived, ratified, firm, fixed, and can by no reasoning be either driven or moved from it; whereas I think there is nothing of such a kind that, if I should assent to it, I should not often assent to a falsehood, since true things are separated from false by no distinction of impression — especially since those criteria of dialectic are nothing.'

'For I come now to the third part of philosophy. Different is the criterion of Protagoras, who thinks that to each that is true which seems so to each; different that of the Cyrenaics, who think there is no criterion except inner emotions; different that of Epicurus, who places all criterion in the senses and in the notions of things and in pleasure; but Plato wished that all judgement of truth, and truth itself, drawn away from opinions and from the senses, should belong to thought itself and to the mind.'

'Does our friend Antiochus approve any of these? Not even, indeed, that of his own elders. For where does he follow Xenocrates, whose books on the method of speaking are many and much approved, or Aristotle himself, than whom certainly nothing is more acute, nothing more polished? From Chrysippus he nowhere stirs a foot. We, then, who are called Academics (or do we abuse the glory of the name?) — or why are we compelled to follow those who disagree among themselves? In this very thing which the dialecticians teach in their elements — in what way one ought to judge whether it be true or false, if anything is so connected as this, "if it is day, it is light" — how great is the contention: it pleases Diodorus one way, Philo another, Chrysippus another. What of Chrysippus — in how many matters does he disagree with his own teacher Cleanthes? What of the two leaders, as it were, of the dialecticians, Antipater and Archidemus, most thorny men — do they not dissent in many matters?'

'Why, then, Lucullus, do you call me into ill-will and as it were into an assembly, and, as seditious tribunes are wont, order the shops to be closed? For to what does that tend, when you complain that the arts are taken away by us, except that the craftsmen may be stirred up — who, if from all sides they all come together, will easily be incited against you? I will first set forth those invidious things — that you say all those who stand in the assembly are exiles, slaves, madmen. Then I will come to those things which now pertain not to the multitude but to your own selves who are present. For Zeno denies, Antiochus denies, that you know anything. "How so?" you will say; "for we defend that even the unwise man comprehends many things."'

'But you deny that anyone knows any thing except the wise man. And this indeed Zeno used to set forth by a gesture. For when he had held out his hand with the fingers extended, "an impression," he would say, "is of this kind"; then when he had drawn the fingers in a little, "assent of this kind"; then when he had wholly closed it and made a fist, he said that was comprehension — from which likeness he even imposed on that thing the name, which it had not had before, katalepsis; but when he had brought his left hand to it and pressed that fist tightly and forcibly, he said that knowledge was of such a kind, of which no one was possessed except the wise man. But who is or has been wise not even they themselves are wont to say. So you now, Catulus, do not know that it is light, nor you, Hortensius, that we are in your villa.'

'Are these things said any less invidiously? Yet not too elegantly; those other things more subtly. But, just as you, if nothing could be comprehended, said that the arts collapse, nor granted me that the probable has force great enough for the arts, so I now bring back to you that there cannot be art without knowledge. Or would Zeuxis, or Phidias, or Polyclitus have endured this — that they knew nothing, when in them there was such great skill? But if someone had taught them how great a force knowledge was said to have, they would cease to be angry; nor would they be wroth even with us, when they had learned that we take away that which exists nowhere, but leave to them that which is enough. This method the diligence of our ancestors also approves, who first wished each man to swear according to the conviction of his own mind, then that he be held bound if he should knowingly deceive — because much ignorance is involved in life; then, that he who gave testimony should say that he thought so, even of what he himself had seen, and that the things which sworn judges had ascertained should be pronounced not as having been done or not done, but as seeming so.'

'But since not only the sailor signals but the west wind itself whispers to us, Lucullus, that it is time for us to sail, and since I have said enough, let me make an end. Hereafter, however, when we inquire into these matters, let us rather discourse about the so great dissensions of the highest men, about the obscurity of nature, and about the error of so many philosophers, who disagree so greatly about good and contrary things that — since more than one cannot be true — it is necessary that so many and so noble schools lie prostrate, rather than about the falsehoods of the eyes and of the rest of the senses, and about the sorites or the liar — those nets which the Stoics have woven against themselves.'

Then Lucullus said: 'I do not take it ill that we have compared these views. For meeting more often, and especially at our places near Tusculum, we shall inquire into whatever shall seem good.' 'Excellent,' said I; 'but what does Catulus think, what Hortensius?' Then Catulus said: 'I? I return to my father's opinion, which indeed he used to say was that of Carneades — that I think nothing can be perceived, yet judge that the wise man will assent to the unperceived, that is, will hold an opinion, but so that he understands that he is holding an opinion, and knows that there is nothing which can be comprehended and perceived. And so, while approving that withholding of assent in all things, I vehemently assent to that other opinion, that there is nothing which can be perceived.' 'I have your opinion,' said I, 'and I do not greatly spurn it. But what, pray, seems good to you, Hortensius?' Then he, laughing, said: 'It must be done away with.' 'I have you,' said I; 'for that is the Academy's own opinion.' The discourse thus finished, Catulus stayed behind, and we went down to our little boats.