Page:The Golden verses of Pythagoras (IA cu31924026681076).pdf/220

 pass that the disciples of these great men, having lost sight of the real spirit of their doctrine, took the means for the end; and imagining that the perfection of wisdom was in the doubt which leads to it, established as fundamental maxim, that the wise man ought neither to affirm nor deny anything; but to hold his assent suspended between the pro and con of each thing. Arcesilaus, who declared himself the chief of this revolution, was a man of vast intellect, endowed with much physical and moral means, an imposing presence, and very eloquent, but imbued with that secret terror which prevents concentrating upon the things that one regards as sacred and forbidden; audacious and almost impious to all outward appearance, he was, in reality, timid and superstitious. Impressed with the inadequacy of his researches to discover the certainty of certain principles, his vanity had persuaded him that this certainty was undiscoverable, since he, Arcesilaus, did not find it; and his superstition acting in accord with his vanity, he finally believed that the ignorance of man is an effect of the will of God; and that, according to the meaning of a passage from Hesiod that he cited unceasingly, the Divinity has spread an impenetrable veil between it and the human understanding. Also he named the effect of this ignorance, Acatalepsy, that is to say incomprehensibility, or impossibility to raise the veil.ə His disciples in great numbers adopted this incomprehensibility and applied it to all sorts of subjects; now denying, then affirming the same thing; placing a principle, and overthrowing it the next moment; becoming entangled themselves in captious arguments in order to prove that they knew nothing, and making for themselves the calamitous glory of ignoring, to cover with a veil.]