Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/96

 black: would you endure me if I were to say the same? You would not bear even for me to express a doubt on the subject. But who is this man? is he a Sophist? for by that name were those men called, who used to philosophize for the sake of display or of profit. The glory of the gravity and genius of that man was great. Why should I speak of Democritus? Who is there whom we can compare with him for the greatness, not merely of his genius, but also of his spirit? a man who dared to begin thus: “I am going to speak of everything.” He excepts nothing, so as not to profess a knowledge of it. For indeed, what could there possibly be beyond everything? Who can avoid placing this philosopher before Cleanthes, or Chrysippus, or all the rest of his successors? men who, when compared with him, appear to me to be in the fifth class.

But he does not say this, which we, who do not deny that there is some truth, declare cannot be perceived: he absolutely denies that there is any truth. He says that the senses are not merely dim, but utterly dark; for that is what Metrodorus of Chios, who was one of his greatest admirers, says of them, at the beginning of his book on Nature. “I deny,” says he, “that we know whether we know anything or whether we know nothing; I say that we do not even know what is ignorance and knowledge; and that we have no knowledge whether anything exists or whether nothing does.”

Empedocles appears to you to be mad; but to me he seems to utter words very worthy of the subjects of which he speaks. Does he then blind us, or deprive us of our senses, if he thinks that there is but little power in them to judge of those things which are brought under their notice? Parmenides and Xenophanes blame, as if they were angry with them, though in no very poetical verses, the arrogance of those people who, though nothing can be known, venture to say that they know something. And you said that Socrates and Plato were distinct from these men. Why so? Are there any men of whom we can speak more certainly? I indeed seem to myself to have lived with these men; so many of their discourses have been reported, from which one cannot possibly doubt that Socrates thought that nothing could be known. He excepted one thing only, asserting that he did know that he knew nothing; but he made no other