Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/59

 nature had given it to us to be as it were a rule of knowledge, and a principle from which subsequently all notions of things might be impressed on our minds, from which not only principles, but some broader paths to the discovery of reason are found out. But error, and rashness, and ignorance, and opinion, and suspicion, and in a word everything which was inconsistent with a firm and consistent assent, he discarded from virtue and wisdom. And it is in these things that nearly all the disagreement between Zeno and his predecessors, and all his alteration of their system consists.

XII. And when he had spoken thus—You have, said I, O Varro, explained the principles both of the Old Academy and of the Stoics with brevity, but also with great clearness. But I think it to be true, as Antiochus, a great friend of mine, used to assert, that it is to be considered rather as a corrected edition of the Old Academy, than as any new sect. Then Varro replied—It is your part now, who revolt from the principles of the ancients, and who approve of the innovations which have been made by Arcesilas, to explain what that division of the two schools which he made was, and why he made it; so that we may see whether that revolt of his was justifiable. Then I replied—Arcesilas, as we understand, directed all his attacks against Zeno, not out of obstinacy or any desire of gaining the victory, as it appears to me, but by reason of the obscurity of those things which had brought Socrates to the confession of ignorance, and even before Socrates, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and nearly all the ancients; who asserted that nothing could be ascertained, or perceived, or known: that the senses of man were narrow, his mind feeble, the course of his life short, and that truth, as Democritus said, was sunk in the deep; that everything depended on opinions and established customs; that nothing was left to truth. They said in short, that everything was enveloped in darkness; therefore Arcesilas asserted that there was nothing which could be known, not even that very piece of knowledge which Socrates had left himself. Thus he thought that everything lay hid in secret, and that there was nothing which could be discerned or understood; for which reasons it was not right for any one to profess or affirm anything, or sanction anything by his assent, but men ought always to restrain their rashness and to keep it in check