Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/132

 Catulus think? and Hortensius? I? said Catulus. I return to my father's opinion, which he used to say was derived from Carneades, and think that nothing can be perceived; but still I imagine that a wise man will assent to what is not actually perceived—that is to say, will form opinions: being, however, aware at the same time that they are only opinions, and knowing that there is nothing which can be comprehended and perceived. And, practising that ἐποχὴ so as to take probability for a guide in all things, I altogether assent to that other doctrine, that nothing can be perceived. I see your meaning, said I; and I do not very much object to it. But what is your opinion, Hortensius? He laughed, and said, I suspend my judgment. I understand, said I; for that is the peculiar principle of the Academy.

So, after we had finished our discourse, Catulus remained behind, and we went down to the shore to embark in our vessels.

following treatise was composed by Cicero a little before the publication of his Tusculan Disputations. It consists of a series of Dialogues, in which the opinions of the different schools of Greek philosophy, especially the Epicureans, Stoics, and Peripatetics, on the Supreme Good, as the proper object or end (finis) of our thoughts and actions, are investigated and compared. It is usually reckoned one of the most highly finished and valuable of his philosophical works; though from the abstruse nature of some of the topics dwelt upon, and the subtlety of some of the arguments adduced, it is unquestionably the most difficult.

He gives an account himself of the work and of his design and plan in the following terms. (Epist. ad Att. xiii. 19.) “What I have lately written is in the manner of Aristotle, where the conversation is so managed that he himself has the principal part. I have finished the five books De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, so as to give the Epicurean doctrine