Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 8 part 6/7

These things indeed I have from dialectic, and many others which it is not necessary to recount; for I ought not to show myself ungrateful. But that wise man either disregards these things, or, if perfected dialectic is itself the very knowledge of truth, he knows it so well that he despises—and does not pity—that most beggarly slander of theirs: 'if it is true, it is false; if it is false, it is true,' letting it perish of hunger. I think this suffices concerning perception, because when I begin to speak about assent, the whole matter will again be treated there. Now then let us come to that part in which Alypius still seems to be in doubt, and first let us examine of what sort this very thing is that moves you so keenly and so cautiously.

For if this discovery of yours—by which we are compelled to confess that it is far more probable that the wise man knows wisdom—shakes the opinion of the Academics (fortified, as you said, by so many and such great arguments), the opinion in which it pleased them that the wise man knows nothing, then all the more must assent be withheld. For by this very fact it is shown that nothing can be established by however copious and subtle arguments, without its being resisted no less keenly, or perhaps more keenly, from the opposite side, if the wit be present. Hence it comes about that, when the Academic is conquered, he has conquered. Oh, would that he might be conquered! Yet he will never bring it about by any Pelasgian art that the conquered and the conqueror depart together at once. Surely let nothing else be found that can be said against these things, and I of my own accord confess myself conquered.

For we are not dealing with the winning of glory, but with the finding of truth. It is enough for me by any means to surmount that mass which sets itself against those entering upon philosophy, and which, veiling its darkness in I know not what recesses, threatens that all philosophy is of that kind, and permits no hope that any light will be found in it. If it is already probable that the wise man knows something, I have nothing further to desire. For there was no other reason why it seemed truth-like that he ought to withhold assent, except that it was truth-like that nothing can be comprehended. Once this is removed—for the wise man does perceive at least wisdom itself, as is now granted—no reason will now remain why the wise man should not assent at least to wisdom itself.

For it is without doubt more monstrous that the wise man should not approve wisdom than that the wise man should not know wisdom. For I ask that we set before our eyes for a little while, if we can, such a spectacle: a certain quarrel between the wise man and wisdom. What else does wisdom say than that she is wisdom? But on the contrary this fellow says, 'I do not believe it.' Who says to wisdom, 'I do not believe you to be wisdom'? Who but he with whom she was able to speak and in whom she deigned to dwell—namely, the wise man? Go now and seek me out to do battle with the Academics; you now have a new contest: the wise man and wisdom fight with each other. The wise man refuses to consent to wisdom. I along with you wait untroubled. For who would not believe wisdom to be invincible?

Nevertheless, let us fortify ourselves with some complexion of argument. For either in this contest the Academic will conquer wisdom—and be conquered by me, since he will not be wise; or he will be overcome by her, and we shall have shown that the wise man consents to wisdom. Either, therefore, the Academic is not wise, or the wise man will assent to some thing—unless perchance one who was ashamed to say that the wise man does not know wisdom will not be ashamed to say that the wise man does not consent to wisdom. But if it is now truth-like that even the perception of wisdom itself falls to the wise man, and there is no reason why he should not assent to what can be perceived, I see what I wished to be truth-like: namely, that the wise man will assent to wisdom. If you ask where he may find wisdom itself, I shall answer: in his very self.

If you say that he does not know what he has, you return to that absurdity: that the wise man does not know wisdom. If you deny that the wise man himself can be found, then we shall discourse in another kind of debate—not with the Academics, but with you, whoever you are who holds this. For they, when they dispute these things, certainly dispute about the wise man. Cicero cries out that he himself is a great opiner, but that he inquires about the wise man. And if you young men still find this unknown, you have surely read in the Hortensius: 'If, therefore, nothing is certain, and it is not the part of the wise man to opine, the wise man will never approve anything.' Whence it is manifest that in those disputations of theirs, against which we strive, they inquire about the wise man.

Therefore I judge that to the wise man wisdom is certain—that is, that the wise man has perceived wisdom, and on this account he does not merely opine when he assents to wisdom; for he assents to that thing which, had he not perceived it, he would not be wise. Nor do these men affirm that no one ought to assent except to things which cannot be perceived; and yet wisdom is not nothing. Since, therefore, he both knows wisdom and assents to wisdom, he neither knows nothing nor does the wise man assent to no thing. What more do you want? Or are we inquiring at all about that error which they say is wholly avoided if assent inclines the mind to no thing? For, they say, whoever approves not only a false thing but even a doubtful one, though it be true, errs.

But I find nothing that is not doubtful. Yet the wise man finds wisdom itself, as we were saying. But from here now you perhaps wish me to withdraw. Positions so utterly secure are not easily to be relinquished; we are dealing with most cunning men; yet I will humor you. But what shall I say here? What? What indeed? Doubtless that old saying must be uttered, where they too have something to say. For what am I to do, whom you thrust forth out of my own camp? Shall I implore the aid of the learned, with whom, if I cannot conquer, it will perhaps be less shameful to be conquered? I will therefore hurl, with what strength I can, a weapon smoky indeed and rough, but, unless I am mistaken, most powerful: 'He who approves nothing does nothing.' Oh rustic fellow! And where is the probable? Where is the truth-like?

This is what you wanted. Do you hear how the Greek shields ring out? What was caught up was indeed most sturdy, but with what a hand we have hurled it! And these men of mine suggest to me nothing more powerful, nor, as I see, have we inflicted any wound. I will turn myself to those things which the country-house and the field supply; but these burden me rather than equip me. For when I had long pondered at leisure in that countryside in what way this 'probable' or 'truth-like' could defend our actions from error, at first it seemed to me, as it is wont to seem when I was selling these wares, fair, roofed, and fortified; then, when I had surveyed the whole more cautiously, I seemed to myself to have seen a single entrance by which error might rush in upon the unsuspecting.

For I think that not only he errs who follows a false way, but also he who does not follow the true one. Let us imagine two travelers heading to one place, of whom the one has resolved to believe no one, while the other is over-credulous. They have come to some fork in the road. Here that credulous one says to the shepherd who was present, or to some countryman: 'Hail, honest fellow! Tell me, pray, by which way does one go well to that place?' The answer is: 'If you go this way, you will not go astray.' And he to his companion: 'He speaks the truth; let us go this way.' The most cautious man laughs, and wittily mocks the assent given so quickly, and meanwhile, as the other departs, he stays rooted at the fork.

And now it begins to seem shameful to be idle, when behold, from another arm of the road a certain sleek and elegant fellow, mounted on a horse, comes into view and begins to draw near. This man rejoices, then, and when the newcomer has arrived and been greeted, he reveals his purpose, asks the way, and even tells the reason for his lingering, so that he may render him more kindly by preferring him to the shepherd. But that man, as it happened, was one of those cheats whom the crowd now calls 'samardocos.' This worst of men kept up his habit even for nothing. 'Go this way,' he says; 'for I am coming from there.' He deceived him and went off. But when would this cautious one be deceived? 'For I do not approve that direction as though true,' he says, 'but because it is truth-like, and here to be idle is neither honorable nor useful; let me go this way.'

Meanwhile that man who erred by assenting, so quickly reckoning the shepherd's words to be true, was already refreshing himself in that very place toward which they were heading; but the other, who did not err—if indeed he follows the probable—wandered about through I know not what forests, and now no longer met anyone to whom that place was known to which he had proposed to come. He found. Truly I tell you, when I was thinking over these things, I could not restrain my laughter—that through the words of the Academics it somehow comes about that the one errs who holds the true way even by chance, while the other, who was led plausibly through pathless mountains and did not find the region he sought, does not seem to err. For, that I may rightly condemn rash consent, both men err more readily than that this one does not err.

From this, now more vigilant against those words, I began to consider the very deeds and morals of men. And then so many and so capital things came into my mind against those men, that I no longer laughed, but partly grew angry, partly grieved, that men most learned and most acute had rolled down into such crimes of doctrine and such disgraceful teachings. For certainly not everyone who errs perhaps sins; yet everyone who sins is granted either to err or to do something worse. What, then, if some young man, when he has heard these men saying, 'It is shameful to err, and therefore we ought to consent to no thing;

but nevertheless, when anyone does what seems to him probable, he neither holds back nor errs, provided only he remembers this: that whatever presents itself, whether to the mind or to the senses, is not to be approved as true'—hearing this, then, that young man will lie in wait for the chastity of another man's wife? You, you I consult, Marcus Tullius; we are treating of the morals and life of young men, for whose education and instruction all those writings of yours kept vigil. What else will you say than that it is not probable to you that a young man should do this? But to him it is probable. For if we live by another's probable—nor ought you to have administered the republic, since it seemed to Epicurus that it ought not to be done. That young man, then, will commit adultery with another's spouse;

and if he be caught, where will he find you, by whom he may be defended? And yet, even if he should find you, what will you say? You will assuredly deny it. What if it is so clear that you deny it in vain? You will want to persuade—doubtless as though in the Cumaean, or rather the Neapolitan, gymnasium—that he has committed no sin, nay, that he has not even erred. For he did not persuade himself that adultery ought to be committed as true; a probable thing occurred to him, he followed it. He did it; or perhaps he did not do it, but only seemed to himself to have done it. But that husband, a foolish man, throws everything into confusion with lawsuits, crying out for the chastity of his wife—with whom perchance he is now sleeping, and knows it not.

If the judges understand this, they will either disregard the Academics and punish him as a most true crime, or, complying with those same men, they will condemn the man truth-likely and probably, so that this advocate would utterly not know what he is doing. For he will have no one with whom to be angry, since all say they have erred in nothing, seeing that they did what seemed probable without assenting to it. He will therefore lay aside the person of an advocate and take up that of a philosopher and consoler; and thus he will easily persuade the young man—who has by now made such progress in the Academy—to think himself condemned as though in a dream. But you think I am jesting.

It is clear that I could swear by everything divine that I utterly do not know how this man has sinned, if whoever does what seems probable does not sin—unless perhaps they say that to err is one thing altogether, and to sin another; and that he acted according to those precepts of theirs, lest we err, but reckoned it no great matter to sin. I am silent about murders, parricides, sacrileges, and all the disgraceful acts and crimes whatsoever that can be done or thought, which are defended in a few words and—what is more grievous—before the wisest judges: 'I consented to nothing, and therefore I did not err; but how could I help doing what seemed probable?'

But let those who think that such things cannot be probably urged read the oration of Catiline, by which he persuaded to the parricide of the fatherland, in which one crime all crimes are contained. And who does not now laugh at this? They themselves say that they follow nothing in acting except the probable, and they seek the truth with great effort, though it is probable to them that it cannot be found. O wondrous monstrosity! But let us pass this by; it pertains less to us, less to the peril of our life, less to the danger of our fortunes.

This is the capital thing, this is the frightful thing, this is what every best man should fear: that every impiety—if this reasoning of the probable holds good—when it has seemed to anyone that it ought to be done, provided only that he assents to nothing as though true, he may commit not only without the reproach of crime but even without the reproach of error. What then? Did those men not see this? Nay, they saw it most skillfully and most prudently, nor would I in any way arrogate to myself so much as to follow Marcus Tullius in any part in industry, vigilance, genius, or learning; yet to him, asserting that man can know nothing, if only this one thing were said—'I know that it seems so to me'—he would have nothing whereby to refute it.

Why, then, did it please such great men to carry on with perpetual and stubborn contentions, that the knowledge of the truth might seem to fall to no one? Hear now a little more attentively—not what I know, but what I judge; for this I was reserving to the last, that I might unfold, if I could, of what sort the whole design of the Academics seems to me. Plato, a man most wise and most learned of his times, who both so spoke that whatever he said became great, and spoke such things that in whatever way he said them they did not become small, is said, after the death of Socrates his master, whom he had singularly loved, to have learned many things also from the Pythagoreans.

But Pythagoras, not content with Greek philosophy, which then was either almost nothing or at any rate most hidden, after he, moved by the disputations of a certain Pherecydes the Syrian, believed the soul to be immortal, had also heard many wise men, having traveled far and wide. Plato, therefore, adding to the charm and subtlety of Socrates—which he had in moral matters—the expert knowledge of natural and divine things, which he had diligently received from those whom I have mentioned, and joining on, as it were, dialectic to be the shaper and judge of those parts—which either was itself wisdom, or without which wisdom could in no way exist—is said to have composed a perfect discipline of philosophy, about which there is now no time to discourse.

For it is enough for what I want that Plato held there to be two worlds: one intelligible, in which truth itself dwelt, and this sensible one, which it is manifest that we perceive by sight and touch; and so the former is the true world, this one truth-like and made after the image of that; and therefore from that former world truth is, as it were, refined and, so to speak, made serene in the soul that knows itself, but from this sensible one there can be generated in the minds of the foolish not knowledge but opinion; yet whatever was done in this world through those virtues which he called civil—similar to the other true virtues, which are unknown save to a few wise men—could not be named anything but truth-like.

These things and others of this kind seem to me to have been preserved among his successors, as far as they could, and guarded as mysteries. For either these things are not easily perceived except by those who, cleansing themselves from all vices, have laid claim to some manner of life more than human; or he sins not lightly, whoever, knowing them, has wished to teach them to any and every sort of men. And so I suspect that Zeno, the chief of the Stoics, when he had come—after certain things had been heard and believed—into the school left by Plato, which Polemo then held, was held in suspicion, and did not seem such a one to whom those Platonic decrees, as though sacrosanct, ought easily to be betrayed and entrusted, before he had unlearned those things which he had brought into that school, received from others.

Polemo dies; Arcesilaus succeeds him—a fellow-pupil of Zeno, but under the mastership of Polemo. Wherefore, when Zeno delighted in a certain opinion of his own about the world and especially about the soul—on whose account true philosophy keeps vigil—saying that it is mortal, and that there is nothing beyond this sensible world, and that nothing is done in it except by body (for he thought even God himself to be fire), Arcesilaus seems to me to have acted most prudently and most usefully, when that evil was creeping widely, in concealing the opinion of the Academy utterly, and burying it, like gold to be found at some time by posterity.

Wherefore, since the crowd is more prone to rush into false opinions, and, from the habit of bodies, it is most easily but harmfully believed that all things are corporeal, that most acute and most humane man determined rather to unteach those whom he suffered to be badly taught than to teach those whom he did not judge to be teachable. Thence were born all those things which are attributed to the New Academy, because the ancients did not have the necessity of them. But if Zeno had at some time awakened and seen that nothing could be comprehended except such as he himself was defining, and that no such thing could be found in bodies, to which he attributed all things, that whole kind of disputations, which had blazed up from great necessity, would long since have been extinguished.

But Zeno, deceived by an image of constancy, as it seemed to the Academics themselves and does not seem otherwise to me, was obstinate; and that pernicious faith in bodies, in whatever way it could, survived on into Chrysippus, who was giving it (for he was most able) great strength to spread itself more widely, had not Carneades, keener and more vigilant than all the rest before him, so resisted it, that I marvel that opinion afterward had any force at all. For Carneades first laid aside that impudence, as it were, of slandering, by which he saw Arcesilaus had been not moderately defamed, lest he should seem to wish to speak against all things as though for the sake of ostentation; but he proposed to himself that the Stoics properly, and Chrysippus, must be pulled down and overthrown.

Then, when he was pressed on all sides with the argument that, if there were assent to no thing, the wise man would do nothing—O wondrous man, and yet not wondrous, for it flowed forth from the very fountains of Plato!—he wisely attended to what sort of actions those men approved, and, seeing them to be similar to I know not what true things, he named that which in this world one should follow for acting 'truth-like.' To what it was similar he both expertly knew and prudently concealed, and this too he called 'probable.' For whoever contemplates the exemplar of an image well approves it. For how does the wise man approve, or how does he follow the truth-like, when he is ignorant of what the true itself is? Therefore those men knew and approved falsehoods, in which they discerned a praiseworthy imitation of true things.

But because it was neither lawful nor easy to show this to the profane, as it were, they left to posterity, and to those whom at that time they could, a certain sign of their opinion; but those good dialecticians they forbade to raise a question about words, insulting and mocking them. On account of these things Carneades is also said to have been the founder and author of the Third Academy. Then this conflict endured down into our own Tullius, now plainly wounded and about to inflate Latin letters with its last breath. For nothing seems to me more inflated than to say so many things most copiously and most ornately while not thinking so. Yet by those winds that hay-like Platonist, Antiochus, was, as it seems to me, sufficiently scattered and dispersed.

For the herds of the Epicureans set up their sunny stalls in the souls of pleasure-loving peoples.

Indeed Antiochus, a hearer of Philo—a man, as I judge, most circumspect, who had already begun, as it were, to open the gates to the retreating enemy and to recall the Academy and its laws to the authority of Plato (although Metrodorus too had earlier attempted to do this, who is said to have been the first to confess that it had not been the direct view of the Academics that nothing can be comprehended, but that they had of necessity taken up arms of this kind against the Stoics)—Antiochus, therefore, as I had begun to say, having heard Philo the Academic and Mnesarchus the Stoic, had crept into the Old Academy as though into a place empty of defenders and secure as though with no enemy, like a helper and citizen, introducing I know not what evil out of the ashes of the Stoics, whereby he might violate the inner shrines of Plato.

But against him Philo again took up those arms and resisted, until he died, and all the remnants of him our Tullius crushed—being, while he lived, impatient that whatever he had loved should be shaken or contaminated. Indeed after those times, at no long interval, when all willfulness and obstinacy had died away, that face of Plato, which in philosophy is the purest and most luminous, shone forth—the clouds of error being scattered—most of all in Plotinus, who was judged to be so like that Platonic philosopher that one would think they had lived at the same time; yet so great is the interval of time, that he must be thought to have lived again in this man.

And so now we see almost no philosophers except either Cynics, or Peripatetics, or Platonists; and the Cynics indeed, because a certain freedom and license of life delights them. But as regards erudition and doctrine and the morals by which the soul is cared for, because there have not been lacking most acute and skillful men who taught in their disputations that Aristotle and Plato so accord with one another that they seem to disagree only to the inexpert and less attentive—through many ages indeed and many contentions, yet at last there has been strained out, as I think, one discipline of the truest philosophy. For that is not the philosophy of this world, which our sacred rites most deservedly detest, but of another, the intelligible world.

To that world souls, blinded by the manifold darkness of error and befouled by the deepest defilements from the body, this most subtle reasoning would never recall, unless the most high God, by a certain popular clemency, had bent down and lowered the authority of the divine intellect even to the human body itself, by whose precepts and even by whose deeds the souls, once roused, might return into themselves and behold their fatherland again, even without the contention of disputations. This much concerning the Academics I have for the present persuaded myself of probably, as I could. But if it is false, it is nothing to me, for whom it is now enough no longer to think that truth cannot be found by man. But whoever thinks that the Academics held this—let him hear Cicero himself.

For he says that it was their custom to conceal their opinion, and not to be wont to open it to anyone except to those who had lived with them even to old age. But what that opinion is, let God see; yet I judge it to have been Plato's. But that you may briefly grasp my whole proposal: in whatever way human wisdom may be, I see that I have not yet perceived it. Yet, though I am in the thirty-third year of my age, I do not judge that I ought to despair of attaining it at some time. For, despising all those other things which mortals reckon goods, I have proposed to devote myself to the investigation of this. And since the reasonings of the Academics were deterring me from this business not lightly, I have, as I judge, sufficiently fortified myself against them by this disputation.

But no one doubts that we are impelled to learning by a twofold weight: that of authority and that of reason. For me, therefore, it is certain never anywhere at all to depart from the authority of Christ; for I find none more powerful. But as for what must be pursued by most subtle reasoning—for I am now so disposed that I impatiently desire to apprehend what is true not only by believing but also by understanding—I am confident that I shall for the present find among the Platonists what does not conflict with our sacred rites. Here, after they perceived that I had made an end of my discourse—although it was already night, and something had even been written after the lamp was brought in—yet those young men were most intently waiting to see whether Alypius would promise to reply either then or on another day. Then he:

'I am prepared to affirm,' he said, 'that nothing has ever turned out for me so much according to my wish as that I depart from today's disputation overcome. Nor do I think that this joy of mine ought to be mine alone. I will therefore share it with you, my fellow-contenders or our judges, since indeed the Academics themselves perhaps wished by this very compact to be conquered by their own posterity. For what could seem or be shown to us more delightful than this charm of discourse, more weighed in the gravity of its sentiments, more ready in benevolence, more expert in learning? I am utterly unable to marvel worthily that things so harsh were treated so wittily, things so desperate so bravely, things so refuted so moderately, things so obscure so lucidly.'

Therefore now, my companions, turn the expectation with which you were urging me to reply into a surer hope, and join me in learning. We have a guide who may lead us into the very secrets of truth, with God now showing the way. At this point, when out of a certain boyish eagerness they showed by their faces that they felt cheated—because Alypius did not seem about to answer—I said with a smile: Do you begrudge me my praises? But since I am now secure about Alypius' steadfastness and fear nothing from him, so that you too may thank me, I arm you against him who has thwarted so great an intentness of your expectation. Read the Academics, and when there—for what is easier?

—find Cicero the champion of those trifles, then let him be compelled by you to defend this discourse of ours against those unconquered arguments. This harsh recompense, Alypius, I render you in return for your false praise of me. At this they laughed, and we brought to an end that great contest—whether on the firmest footing I do not know—yet more modestly and more quickly than I had hoped. FROM BOOK I OF AUGUSTINE'S RETRACTATIONS, CHAPTER I (page 11, line 3, Knöll's edition).

When therefore I had abandoned both what I had attained in the desires of this world and what I still wished to attain, and had betaken myself to the leisure of the Christian life, then, not yet baptized, I first wrote against the Academics, or concerning the Academics, so that with all the reasoning I could muster I might remove from my mind—since they were troubling me—their arguments, which instill in many a despair of finding the truth, forbid the wise man to assent to any matter or to approve anything at all as though it were manifest and certain, since to them all things seem obscure and uncertain. And this was done by the Lord's mercy and help.