For believe me, or rather believe Him who said, 'Seek and you shall find,' that knowledge is not to be despaired of, and that it will become more manifest than those numbers are. Now let us come to the matter proposed. For already, late as it is, I have begun to fear lest this preface exceed due measure. And it is no light thing — for measure is beyond doubt divine, but it can deceive when it leads us sweetly along. I shall be more cautious — when I am wise. After the earlier discourse, which we gathered into the first book, we rested from disputing for about seven days, during which, however, we went over three books of Virgil after the first, and discussed them as seemed to suit the occasion. Yet by that work Licentius was so inflamed with zeal for poetry that I thought he even needed somewhat to be restrained by me.
For now he could not gladly bear to be recalled from this pursuit to any other matter. Yet at last, to take up again the question about the Academics which we had postponed, he came not unwillingly, once the light of philosophy had been praised by me as far as I could. And by chance the day had dawned so bright that it seemed to suit nothing more than the clearing of our minds. And so, rising earlier than usual, we left our beds and dealt a little with the country folk, as the season pressed us to do. Then Alypius said: 'Before I hear you disputing about the Academics, I want that discourse of yours read to me, which you say was completed in my absence;'
'for I cannot do otherwise, since from that place the occasion of this debate arose, than either err in listening to you, or at least labour twice over.' When this had been done, and we saw that almost the whole forenoon had been consumed in it, we resolved to return home from the field, which had received us as we walked about. And Licentius said: 'I beg you, before lunch, do not be reluctant to run through and repeat for me briefly the whole opinion of the Academics, lest anything in it escape me which might be on the side of my party.' 'I shall do so,' I said, 'and the more gladly, since by thinking about this matter you will eat but little lunch.' 'Do not,' said he, 'be secure on that score; for I have often observed many men, and especially my father, to be the more voracious the more they are stuffed with cares.'
'Besides, you yourself have experienced that a man thinking about those metres of yours is not such that my care makes his table free of care. Indeed, I am often wont to marvel at this within myself; for what does it mean, that we then most stubbornly crave food precisely when we bend our mind to something else? Or who is he that, when our hands and teeth are already busy, becomes too imperious a master over us?' 'Rather listen,' I said, 'to what you had asked about the Academics, lest, while you turn over those metres, I should endure you not only in your food without metre but even in our questions. But if I conceal anything on my side, Alypius will betray it.' 'Your good faith is needed,' said Alypius;
'for if it is to be feared that you conceal something, I judge it hard for it to be detected by me — from whom no one who knows me is ignorant that I learned these very things — especially since, in bringing forth the truth, you will be consulting no more for victory than for your own conscience.' 'I shall proceed,' I said, 'in good faith, since you prescribe by the rule of right. For the Academics held both that knowledge cannot fall to a man — of those matters at least which pertain to philosophy (for Carneades denied that he cared for the rest) — and yet that a man can be wise, and that the whole task of the wise man, as was set forth by you too, Licentius, in that discourse, is unfolded in the search for truth: from which it follows that the wise man assents to nothing at all;
'for he must err — which is a sin in the wise man — if he assents to uncertain things. And they not only said that all things are uncertain, but affirmed it with the most abundant arguments. But that the truth cannot be comprehended they seemed to have seized upon from that definition of the Stoic Zeno, who says that this can be perceived as true which is so impressed upon the mind from that whence it is, that it could not be from that whence it is not. Which is said more briefly and plainly thus: the truth can be comprehended by these signs which those things cannot have that are false. That this can in no way be found, they laboured most vehemently to prove. Thence the disagreements of the philosophers.'
'Thence the deceptions of the senses; thence dreams and frenzies; thence the liar-paradox and the sorites flourished in defence of that cause. And since they had received from the same Zeno that nothing is baser than to hold mere opinion, they concluded most cunningly that, if nothing can be perceived and opinion is the basest thing, the wise man will never approve anything. Hence great ill-will was stirred up against them; for it seemed to follow that a man who approved nothing would do nothing. Whence the Academics seemed to describe your wise man as ever sleeping and a deserter of all duties, whom they judged to approve of nothing.'
'Here they, introducing a certain 'probable,' which they also named 'truth-like,' asserted that the wise man in no way ceases from his duties, since he has something to follow — while truth, whether because of certain shadows of nature or because of the resemblance of things, lay hidden, either overwhelmed or confused. Yet they said that even this reining-in and, as it were, suspension of assent was in itself a great action of the wise man. I seem to myself to have set forth the whole briefly, as you wished, and to have departed in nothing from your prescription, Alypius — that is, to have acted, as it is said, in good faith. For if I have said anything either not as it is, or perhaps have failed to say it, nothing has been done by me willingly. Good faith, then, is according to the mind's intention.'
'For to a man, a false man ought to seem one to be taught, a deceitful man one to be guarded against; of these, the former requires a good teacher, the latter a cautious pupil.' Then Alypius said: 'I am grateful, since you have both satisfied Licentius and relieved me of the burden laid upon me. For you had no more to fear lest something be said by you too little for the sake of testing me — for how else could it have been done? — than I had, if it had been necessary in anything to betray you. Wherefore, do bring it about that what is lacking — not so much to the inquiry as to the inquirer himself — you may not be loath to expound: I mean, concerning the difference between the New and the Old Academy.' 'I confess outright,' said I, 'that I am loath.'
'Wherefore you will have done me a kindness — for I cannot deny that what you mention pertains most of all to the matter — if, while I take a little rest with myself, you should be willing to distinguish these names and to lay open the cause of the New Academy.' 'I would believe,' said he, 'that I too wished to call you away from lunch, did I not think that just now you were rather frightened off by Licentius, and that his request had prescribed to us that whatever there is of this tangle should be unravelled for him before lunch.' And as he was pressing on to say the rest, our mother — for we were now at home — began to push us in to lunch in such a way that there was no room for making words. Then, after we had taken as much nourishment as was enough to restrain hunger, and had returned to the meadow, Alypius said:
'I shall obey your judgment and shall not dare to refuse. For if nothing escapes me, I shall rejoice both in your learning and in my own memory. But if perchance I stray in anything, you will correct it, so that henceforth I may not dread a commission of this kind. I judge that the schism of the New Academy was stirred up not so much against the Old, as it was conceived, as against the Stoics. Nor indeed is it to be thought a schism, if indeed the new question brought in by Zeno needed to be resolved and thrashed out. For concerning the non-perceiving — though agitated by no conflicts — the opinion, nonetheless dwelling even in the minds of the ancient Academics, was not immodestly held.'
'This is easily proved even by the authority of Socrates himself and of Plato and of the rest of the ancients, who believed that they could thus far be defended from error, if they had not rashly committed themselves to assent — although they did not introduce a proper disputation on this matter into their schools, nor was it ever inquired by them in a thorough way whether truth can be perceived or not. And when Zeno had brought this in as something crude and new, and contended that nothing can be perceived except what is so true that it may be distinguished from the false by dissimilar marks, and that no opinion is to be undertaken by the wise man — and Arcesilas heard this — he denied that anything of this kind could be found by man, and that the wise man's life was to be committed to the shipwreck of opinion.'
'Whence he also concluded that assent is to be given to nothing. But since the matter so stood that the Old Academy seemed rather augmented than assailed, there arose Antiochus, a hearer of Philo, who — as he seemed to some, more desirous of glory than of truth — brought the opinions of both Academies into feud. For he said that the New Academics had attempted to introduce a thing unwonted and most remote from the opinion of the ancients.'
'For this matter he implored the good faith of the ancient natural philosophers and of the other great philosophers, attacking even the Academics themselves — who contended that they followed the truth-like, while confessing that they were ignorant of the truth itself — and he had gathered many arguments, over which I now think we should pass, yet he defended nothing more strongly than that the wise man can perceive. This, I think, was the controversy between the New Academics and the Old. If it is otherwise, I would ask that you fully instruct Licentius on behalf of both parties. But if it is as I have been able to state, carry through the disputation you have undertaken.' Then I said: 'How long, Licentius, will you rest in this discourse of ours, longer than I thought? You have heard who your Academics are?'
But he, smiling shyly and somewhat disturbed by this address, said: 'It grieves me that I so vehemently affirmed, against Trygetius, that the happy life consists in the search for truth. For this question so troubles me that I am almost wretched — I who certainly seem to you, if you bear any humanity, worthy of pity. But why do I, foolish, torment myself? Or why do I shudder, upheld by so good a cause? I shall utterly not yield except to the truth.' 'Do the New Academics please you?' I said. 'Very much,' said he. 'Do they then seem to you to speak truly?' Then he, being now about to assent, made more cautious by Alypius' smile, hesitated a little and then said: 'Repeat your little question.' 'Do the Academics,' I said, 'seem to you to speak truly?'
And again, after he had long been silent, he said: 'Whether it is true, I do not know; nevertheless it is probable. For I see nothing further that I might follow.' 'Do you know, then,' I said, 'that the very word probable is also named by them truth-like?' 'So it seems,' he said. 'Therefore,' I said, 'the opinion of the Academics is truth-like.' 'So it is,' he said. 'I beg you,' I said, 'attend more carefully. If anyone affirmed that your brother was like your father, but did not know your father himself, would he not seem to you insane or foolish?' And here he was long silent; then he said: 'This does not seem absurd to me.' And when I had begun to answer him: 'Wait, I beg you, a little,' he said; and then, smiling: 'Tell me, I pray you, are you now certain of your victory?' Then I said: 'Grant that I am certain;'
'yet you ought not on that account to desert your cause, especially since this disputation has been undertaken among us for the sake of exercising you and provoking you to polish your mind.' 'Have I,' said he, 'either read the Academics, or been trained in the many disciplines with which you come to me equipped?' 'The Academics,' I said, 'neither had those men read by whom this opinion was first defended. But if learning and abundance of disciplines fail you, your natural talent nevertheless ought not to be so feeble that, without any assault made, you should succumb to my very few words and questions. For I have now begun to fear that Alypius may succeed you sooner than I wish — with which adversary I shall not walk about so free of care.'
'Then would that,' said he, 'I might already be conquered, so that at some time I may hear you disputing, and, what is more, may see you — a spectacle than which nothing more happy can be shown to me. For since it has pleased you to pour out these things rather than to pour them away — if indeed you catch with the pen the words bursting from your mouth, and do not let them fall, as they say, to the ground — it will even be permitted us to read them; but somehow, when the very same persons among whom the discourse is struck out are brought before the eyes, a good disputation, if not more usefully, at least more joyfully floods the soul.' 'We are grateful,' I said; 'but these sudden joys of yours have rashly forced you to slip past that opinion by which you said that no spectacle could be shown to you more happy. What, indeed, if you were to see that father of yours' —
'than whom assuredly no one, after so long a thirst, will drink philosophy more ardently — inquiring and disputing about these things together with us, when I shall never think myself more fortunate: what, pray, is it fitting for you to feel and to say?' Here indeed that man wept somewhat, and, when he could speak, stretching out his hand and looking up to heaven, he said: 'And when, O God, shall I see this?' — 'But nothing is to be despaired of concerning you.' Here, when almost all of us had begun to be released from the intensity of the disputation into tears, struggling against me and scarcely collecting myself, I said: 'Come rather, and return to your strength, which — that you might gather it from wheresoever you could, being about to be the patron of the Academy — I had warned you long before.'
'I do not think it is so that, just now, before the trumpet, trembling should seize your limbs, or that, from a desire to behold another's fight, you should so quickly wish yourself to be a captive.' Here Trygetius, when he had sufficiently noted that our faces were now serene, said: 'Why should not this man wish it, so holy a man that God has granted him this before his prayers? Believe already, Licentius; for you who find nothing to answer, and still wish to be conquered, seem to me of little faith.' We smiled. Then Licentius said: 'Speak, O blessed one — not by finding the truth, but at least by not seeking it.' And when, at the gaiety of the young men, we had become more cheerful, I said: 'Attend to the question, and return to the path firmer and stronger, if you can.' 'Behold, here I am,' said he, 'as much as I can be. For what' —
'if that seer of my brother should have learned by report that he is like his father, can he be insane or foolish if he believes it?' 'Can he,' I said, 'at least be called stupid?' 'Not at once,' he said, 'unless he should contend that he knows it. For if he follows as probable what frequent report has bandied about, he can be charged with no rashness.' Then I said: 'Let us for a little consider the matter itself, and set it, as it were, before our eyes. Behold, suppose that man of ours, whom we describe, to be present; your brother arrives from somewhere. There this fellow says: whose son is this boy? It is answered: a certain Romanianus'. But he says: how like his father he is! how not rashly had report brought this to me! Here you or someone else: do you know Romanianus, good man? I do not know him, he says;'
'nevertheless he seems to me like him. Could anyone hold back laughter?' 'By no means,' said he. 'Therefore,' I said, 'you see what follows.' 'I have seen it this long while,' he said; 'but nevertheless I wish to hear the very conclusion from you; for it is fitting that you begin to nourish him whom you have taken captive.' 'Why should I not,' I said, 'conclude? The matter itself cries out that your Academics are to be laughed at in like manner, who say they follow in life the likeness of truth, while they are ignorant of what the truth itself is.' Then Trygetius said: 'The caution of the Academics seems to me far unlike the foolishness of this man whom you have described. For they by reasonings attain what they say is truth-like, whereas that foolish fellow followed report, than whose authority nothing is cheaper.'
'As if, indeed,' I said, 'he were not more foolish if he said: his father I do not at all know, nor have I learned by report how like his father he is; yet nevertheless he seems to me like him.' 'More foolish, certainly,' he said. 'But to what end are these things?' 'Because,' I said, 'such are those who say: the truth indeed we do not know, but this which we see is like that which we do not know.' 'It is probable,' he said, 'that they say.' To whom I: 'How do you mean that? Do you deny that they call it truth-like?' And he: 'I,' said he, 'wished to say this in order to exclude that likeness. For it seemed to me that report had improperly burst into your question, since the Academics do not trust even human eyes, much less report — not indeed a thousand-eyed one, as the poets feign, but with monstrous lights all the same.'
'For who am I, after all, to be a defender of the Academy? Or in this question do you envy my security? Behold, you have Alypius, whose arrival, I pray, may have given us a holiday — whom we may judge you have not vainly dreaded this long while.' Then, silence being made, they both turned their eyes upon Alypius. Then he said: 'I could wish indeed, as far as my strength allows, to aid your side to some extent, were not your omen a terror to me. But this dread, unless hope has deceived me, I shall easily put to flight. For at once it consoles me that the present assailant of the Academics has almost taken up the burden of the vanquished Trygetius; and now that it is probable, by your own confession, that I am the victor.'
'That which I fear more is lest I be unable to avoid both the negligence of a deserted office and the impudence of an usurped one. For I do not believe you have forgotten that the office of judge was assigned to me.' Here Trygetius said: 'That is one thing, and this another; wherefore we beg that you would at some time suffer yourself to be a private man.' 'Let me not refuse,' he said, 'lest, while I desire to avoid impudence or negligence, I fall into the snares of pride, than which vice nothing is more monstrous, should I hold the honour granted me by you longer than you permit. Accordingly I should wish you to expound to me, good accuser of the Academics, your office — that is, in whose defence you attack these men. For I fear lest, in refuting the Academics, you should wish to prove yourself an Academic.' 'Of accusers,' —
'as I suppose,' I said, 'you well know there are two kinds. For if it was said by Cicero most modestly that he was the accuser of Verres in such a way as to be the defender of the Sicilians, it is on that account necessary that he who accuses someone should have another whom he defends.' And he: 'Have you at least anything in which your opinion now stands firmly founded?' 'It is easy,' I said, 'for me especially to answer this question, which is not sudden to me; I have already dealt with this whole thing within myself and long and much turned it over in my mind. Wherefore hear, Alypius, what, as I think, you already know very well: I do not want this disputation to have been undertaken for the sake of disputing. Let it be enough that we have made our preludes with these youths, where philosophy has played, as it were, pleasantly with us.'
'Wherefore let childish little tales be taken from our hands. The matter concerns our life, our morals, our soul, which presumes that it will overcome the enmities of all deceptions, and, having grasped the truth, as if returning into the region of its own origin, will triumph over the lusts, and thus, having received temperance as a spouse, will reign — destined to return more secure into heaven. You see what I say. Let us now take from our midst all those arms that are to be wielded by a fierce man; nor have I ever wished anything less than that, among those who have lived much together and conversed much, something should arise from which, as it were, a new conflict might spring up.'
'But on account of memory, which is a faithless keeper of things devised, I wished to have set down in writing what we have often discussed among ourselves — at the same time, so that these young men might both learn to attend to these matters, and might attempt to approach and undertake them. Do you not then know that I hold nothing certain as yet as to what I should think, but am hindered from inquiring into it by the arguments and disputations of the Academics? For somehow they wrought in my mind a certain probability — that I may not yet withdraw from their own word — that a man cannot find the truth; whence I had become sluggish and utterly slothful, and dared not inquire into what it was not granted to the keenest and most learned men to find.'
'Unless, then, I first persuade myself that the truth can be found, as fully as they persuaded themselves that it cannot, I shall not dare to inquire, nor have I anything to defend. So remove that interrogation, if you please; rather let us discuss between ourselves, as sagaciously as we can, whether indeed the truth can be found. And on my side I seem to myself to have already many things by which I strive to press against the reasoning of the Academics; between whom and myself just now there is for the moment no difference, except that to them it seemed probable that the truth cannot be found, whereas to me it is probable that it can be found. For ignorance of the truth is either peculiar to me — if they were only feigning — or at least common to us both.' Then Alypius said: 'Now I shall advance free of care;'
'for I see that you will be not so much an accuser as a helper. And so, that we may not stray too far, let us first, I pray, see to it that through this question — in which I seem to have succeeded with those who yielded to you — we do not fall into a controversy about a word, which, at your own prompting and on the authority of that famous saying of Cicero, we have often confessed to be most base. For when — if I am not mistaken — Licentius said that the opinion about probability of the Academics pleased him, you added, and he without doubt confirmed it, whether he knew that this was also named by them truth-likeness. And I well know, if indeed I have learned these things from you, that the tenets of the Academics are not apart from you. Since these, as I said, are fixed in your mind, I do not know why you pursue words.'
'This is not,' I said, 'believe me, a great controversy of words, but of the things themselves. For I do not think those men were such as not to know how to impose names on things; rather, these terms seem to me to have been chosen by them both to hide their meaning from the duller and to signify it to the more vigilant. And why and how this seems so to me, I shall expound, when I have first thrashed out those things which men think were said by them as if they were enemies of human knowledge. And so I hold it a very great pleasure that our discourse has thus far advanced today, so that it is sufficiently and openly established what is being inquired between us. For those men seem to me to have been altogether serious and prudent men.'
But if there is anything that we shall now dispute, it will be against those who have believed that the Academics were opposed to the discovery of truth. And that you may not think me alarmed, I shall not unwillingly arm myself even against those very men, if it was not for the sake of concealing their own opinion — lest certain sacred things of truth should be rashly betrayed to them, men of polluted and, as it were, profane minds — but rather that they defended from the heart those doctrines which we read in their books. This I would do today, were not the setting of the sun already compelling us to return home. — Thus far the discussion went on that day. But on the next day, although a day no less mild and calm had dawned, we scarcely disentangled ourselves from domestic affairs.
For we had spent a great part of it especially in the writing of letters, and when scarcely two hours were now left, we went out to the meadow; for the exceeding serenity of the sky invited us, and it seemed good that we should not allow even the little time that remained to be lost. And so, when we had come to the usual tree and had settled in the place, I said: I should like you, young men, since today no great matter is to be undertaken, to recall to my memory how Alypius answered yesterday that little question which so disturbed you. — Here Licentius said: It is so brief that there is no trouble in remembering it; but how trifling it is, you shall see. For, as I think, he forbade you, when the fact was agreed, to raise a question about words. — And I said:
Have you sufficiently observed this very thing — what it is and what force it has? — I seem, he said, to see what it is; but I beg you to explain it a little. For I have often heard from you that it is shameful for disputants to linger over a question of words, when no contest about the matters themselves remains. But this is too subtle a thing for its explanation to be demanded of me. Hear then, I said, what it is, you all. That which we can be invited to act upon without assent, the Academics call probable or truth-like. And I say 'without assent' in this sense: that what we do we do not suppose to be true, nor do we judge that we know it, and yet we do it:
as, for example, if someone were to ask us whether, after so clear and pure a night as last night's, the sun would today rise as bright. I believe we should deny that we know this, and yet should say that it so appears. — Such things, said the Academic, seem to me all those which I have thought ought to be named probable or truth-like; and if you wish to call them by another name, I do not fight about it. For it is enough for me that you have now well grasped what I mean — that is, upon what things I impose these names. For it befits the wise man to be not a fashioner of words, but an investigator of things. Have you sufficiently understood how those playthings, with which I was harassing you, have been struck from my hands? — Here, when both replied that they had understood, and by their very look demanded my answer:
What do you think, I said — of Cicero, whose words these are — that he was so poor in the Latin tongue as to impose on things names less fitting to what he perceived? Then Trygetius: Now, he said, it pleases us, since the matter is known, to stir up no cavils about words. Therefore consider rather what you may answer to this man who has freed us, upon whom, being driven on, you try once more to rush. — And Licentius: Wait, he said, I beg; for something or other gleams faintly upon me, whereby I see that so great an argument ought not to have been so easily wrested from you. And when he had sat silent for a while, fixed in thought: I ask, he said — nothing seems more absurd than to say that a man follows the truth-like who is ignorant of what the truth is; nor does that comparison of yours disturb me.
For when I am rightly asked whether, from this present temperateness of the sky, no rain is being gathered for the morrow, I answer that it is truth-like; and I do not deny that I know something true. For I know that this tree cannot presently be turned to silver, and I say — not impudently — that I truly know many such things, of which I see those to be similar which I call truth-like. But you, Carneades — or whatever other Greek pestilence, to spare our own men (for why should I hesitate to cross over to this side, to him to whom I am owed as captive by right of victory?) — you, then, since you say you know nothing true, whence do you follow this truth-like? But indeed, he could not impose another name on it. Why then must we dispute with one who cannot even speak? I, said Alypius, shall not fear deserters;