Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/131

 more acuteness. But, just as you said, that if nothing could be comprehended, all the arts were destroyed at once, and would not grant that mere probability was a sufficient foundation for art; so I now reply to you, that art cannot exist without knowledge. Would Zeuxis, or Phidias, or Polycletus allow that they knew nothing, when they were men of such marvellous skill? But if any one had explained to them how much power knowledge was said to have, they would cease to be angry; they would not even be offended with us, when they had learnt that we were only putting an end to what did not exist anywhere; but that we left them what was quite sufficient for them.

And this doctrine is confirmed also by the diligence of our ancestors, who ordained, in the first place, that every one should swear “according to the opinion of his own mind;” secondly, that he should be accounted guilty “if he knowingly swore falsely,” because there was a great deal of ignorance in life; thirdly, that the man who was giving his evidence should say that “he thought,” even in a case where he was speaking of what he had actually seen himself. And that when the judges were giving their decision on their evidence, they should say, not that such and such a thing had been done, but that such and such a thing appeared to them.

XLVIII. But since the sailor is making signals, and the west wind is showing us too, by its murmur, that it is time for us, Lucullus, to set sail, and since I have already said a great deal, I must now conclude. But hereafter, when we inquire into these subjects, we will discuss the great disagreements between the most eminent on the subject of the obscurity of nature, and the errors of so many philosophers who differ from one another about good and evil so widely, that, as more than one of their theories cannot be true, it is inevitable that many illustrious schools must fall to the ground, rather than the theories about the false impressions of the eyes and the other senses, and sorites, or false syllogism,—rods which the Stoics have made to beat themselves with.

Then Lucullus replied, I am not at all sorry that we have had this discussion; for often, when we meet again, especially in our Tusculan villas, we can examine other questions which seem worth investigation. Certainly, said I; but what does