Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/78

 taken away that by which everything is judged of, they deny that they take away the rest; just as if a person were to deprive a man of his eyes, and then say that he has not taken away from him those things which can be seen. For just as those things are known by the eyes, so are the other things known by the perceptions; but by a mark belonging peculiarly to truth, and not common to what is true and false.

Wherefore, whether you bring forward a perception which is merely probable, or one which is at once probable and free from all hindrance, as Carneades contended, or anything else that you may follow, you will still have to return to that perception of which we are treating. But in it, if there be but one common characteristic of what is false and true, there will be no judgment possible, because nothing peculiar can be noted in one sign common to two things: but if there be no such community, then I have got what I want; for I am seeking what appears to me to be so true, that it cannot possibly appear false.

They are equally mistaken when, being convicted and overpowered by the force of truth, they wish to distinguish between what is evident and what is perceived, and endeavour to prove that there is something evident,—being a truth impressed on the mind and intellect,—and yet that it cannot be perceived and comprehended. For how can you say distinctly that anything is white, when it may happen that that which is black may appear white? Or how are we to call those things evident, or to say that they are impressed faithfully on the mind, when it is uncertain whether it is really moved or only in an illusory manner? And so there is neither colour, nor body, nor truth, nor argument, nor sense, nor anything certain left us. And, owing to this, it frequently happens that, whatever they say, they are asked by some people,—Do you, then, perceive that? But they who put this question to them are laughed at by them; for they do not press them hard enough so as to prove that no one can insist upon any point, or make any positive assertion, without some certain and peculiar mark to distinguish that thing which each individual says that he is persuaded of.

What, then, is this probability of yours? For if that which occurs to every one, and which, at its first look, as it were, appears probable, is asserted positively, what can be more