Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/97

 exception. What shall I say of Plato? who certainly would never have followed up these doctrines in so many books if he had not approved of them; for there was no object in going on with the irony of the other, especially when it was so unceasing.

XXIV. Do I not seem to you, not, like Saturninus, to be content with naming illustrious men, but also sometimes even to imitate them, though never unless they are really eminent and noble? And I might have opposed to you men who are annoying to you, but yet disputants of great accuracy; Stilpo, Diodorus, and Alexinus: men who indulged in far-fetched and pointed sophisms; for that was the name given usually to fallacious conclusions. But why need I enumerate them, when I have Chrysippus, who is considered to be the great support of the portico of the Stoics? How many of the arguments against the senses, how many against everything which is approved by ordinary practice, did he not refute! It is true that I do not think very much of his refutations; but still, let us grant that he did refute them. Certainly he would never have collected so many arguments to deceive us with their excessive probability, unless he saw that it was not easily possible to resist them.

What do you think of the Cyrenaic School? philosophers far from contemptible, who affirm that there is nothing which can be perceived externally; and that they perceive those things alone which they feel by their inmost touch, such as pain, or pleasure. And that they do not know what colour anything is of, or what sound it utters; but only feel that they themselves are affected in a certain manner.

We have said enough about authors: although you had asked me whether I did not think that since the time of those ancient philosophers, in so many ages, the truth might have been discovered, when so many men of genius and diligence were looking for it? What was discovered we will consider presently, and you yourself shall be the judge. But it is easily seen that Arcesilas did not contend with Zeno for the sake of disparaging him; but that he wished to discover the truth. No one, I say, of preceding philosophers had said positively, no one had even hinted that it was possible for man never to form opinions: and that for a wise man it was not only possible, but indispensable. The opinion of Arcesilas