Against the Academics 2.14–3.4

Then, when we had taken enough food to check our hunger and had returned to the meadow, Alypius said: "I will obey your decision and would not dare refuse. If nothing escapes me, I will rejoice both in your teaching and in my memory. But if I perhaps go astray in anything, you will put it right, so that from now on I need not dread such a commission. I think the split of the New Academy was set in motion not so much against the conception of the Old as against the Stoics. Nor indeed should it be thought a split, since the new question brought in by Zeno had to be resolved and discussed. For the view about not perceiving, though not stirred up by any conflicts, was not shamelessly thought to dwell in the minds of the Old Academics too. This is easy to prove even from the authority of Socrates and Plato themselves and the other ancients, who believed they could be defended from error so far as they had not rashly committed themselves to assent, although they did not introduce a special discussion of this matter into their schools, nor was it ever precisely inquired by them whether truth can be perceived or not. When Zeno brought this in, rough and new, and contended that nothing can be perceived except what is so true that it is distinguished from the false by marks unlike it, and that the wise man must not hold opinion, and Arcesilas heard this, he denied that anything of this kind can be found by man, and said that the wise man's life must not be committed to that shipwreck of opinion. Hence he also concluded that one should assent to nothing."

"But although matters stood so that the Old Academy seemed to have been enlarged rather than attacked, Antiochus, a hearer of Philo, arose, who, as some thought, more eager for glory than for truth, brought the opinions of the two Academies into conflict. For he said that the New Academics had tried to introduce something unheard of and very far removed from the opinion of the ancients. For this he appealed to the testimony of the old natural philosophers and other great philosophers, attacking also the Academics themselves, who contended that they followed what is like the truth while confessing that they did not know the truth itself. He had gathered many arguments, which I think must be passed over now; but he defended nothing more than that the wise man can perceive. This, I think, was the controversy between the New and Old Academics. If it is otherwise, I ask that you inform Licentius very fully on behalf of both. But if it is as I have been able to say, carry through the discussion you have undertaken."

Then I said: "How long, Licentius, are you going to rest during this conversation of ours, longer than I expected? Have you heard who your Academics are?" And he, smiling bashfully and somewhat disturbed by this address, said: "I am sorry I asserted so strongly against Trygetius that the happy life consists in the search for truth. For this question disturbs me so much that I am almost wretched, and I surely seem to you pitiable, if you have any humanity. But why do I foolishly torment myself? Or why do I shudder, supported by so good a cause? I will certainly yield to nothing but the truth." "Do the New Academics please you?" I said. "Very much," he said. "Then they seem to you to speak the truth?" Then, when he was about to agree, he was made more cautious by Alypius's smile and hesitated a little, and then said: "Repeat your little question." "Do the Academics seem to you to speak the truth?" I said. And again, after a long silence, he said: "Whether it is true, I do not know; but it is probable. For I see nothing more that I may follow." "Probable," I said: "do you know that they also call it 'like the truth'?" "So it seems," he said. "So," I said, "the opinion of the Academics is like the truth." "Yes," he said. "Please pay closer attention," I said. "If someone asserted that your brother, on seeing him, was like your father, and did not know your father himself, would he not seem to you mad or foolish?" And here he was silent a long time; then he said: "This does not seem absurd to me."

When I had begun to answer him, he said: "Wait a little, please." And then, smiling: "Tell me, I beg you, are you already sure of your victory?" Then I said: "Suppose I am sure; you still should not therefore abandon your case, especially since this discussion between us was undertaken for the sake of exercising you and challenging you to polish your mind." "Have I read the Academics," he said, "or been trained in as many disciplines as you come equipped with against me?" "Those who first defended that opinion," I said, "had not read the Academics either. And if learning and a wealth of disciplines fail you, still your mind ought not to be so feeble that you give in to a very few words and questions of mine without making any attack. For I have begun to fear that Alypius may take your place sooner than I wish, and with him as opponent I will not walk about so carefree." "Then I wish," he said, "that I were already defeated, so that I might at last hear you two discussing, and, what is more, see you; no spectacle could be shown me happier than that. For since you have decided to pour these things out rather than pour them away, since you catch with the pen what bursts from your mouth and do not let it fall to the ground, as they say, it will also be possible to read you; but somehow, when the very men between whom the conversation is struck are before one's eyes, a good discussion floods the mind, if not more usefully, at least more delightfully."

"We are grateful," I said; "but this sudden joy of yours has made that statement slip out rashly, in which you said no spectacle could be shown you happier. For what if you see that father of yours, than whom surely no one will drink philosophy more ardently after so long a thirst, seeking and discussing these things with us? Since I shall never think myself more fortunate, what then should you feel and say?" At this he wept a little, 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 from you." Here, when almost all of us had begun to be drawn from the attention of the discussion into tears, struggling with myself and barely collecting myself, I said: "Come, rather, and return to your strength, which I warned you long ago to gather from wherever you could, as the future advocate of the Academy; not, I think, so that now 'before the trumpet trembling should seize your limbs,' or that you should wish to be taken prisoner so quickly out of desire to watch another's fight." Here Trygetius, when he had noted well that our faces had cleared, said: "Why should he not wish it, a man so holy that God granted it to him before his prayers? Believe now, Licentius; for since you cannot find an answer and still wish to be defeated, you seem to me of little faith." We laughed. Then Licentius said: "Speak, happy man, not by finding the truth, but certainly by not seeking it."

Since we were made merrier by this cheerfulness of the young men, I said: "Attend to the question, and return to the road firmer and stronger, if you can." "Here I am," he said, "as far as I can be. For what if that man who saw my brother had learned by report that he was like his father: can he be mad or foolish if he believes it?" "Can he at least be called stupid?" I said. "Not necessarily," he said, "unless he contends that he knows it. For if he follows as probable what frequent report has spread, he cannot be accused of any rashness." Then I said: "Let us consider the matter itself a little and set it, as it were, before our eyes. See, suppose that man we are describing, whoever he is, is present; your brother arrives from somewhere. Then the man says: 'Whose son is this boy?' The answer is: 'A certain Romanianus's.' And he: 'How like his father he is! How rightly report had brought this to me!' Here you or someone else says: 'Do you know Romanianus, good man?' 'I do not know him,' he says; 'still he seems to me like him.' Could anyone keep from laughing?" "Not at all," he said. "So," I said, "you see what follows." "I have seen it for some time," he said; "but still I want to hear the conclusion itself from you; for you ought to begin feeding the one you have captured." "Why should I not conclude?" I said. "The thing itself cries out that your Academics are equally to be laughed at, who say that in life they follow what is like the truth, though they do not know what the truth itself is."

Then Trygetius said: "The caution of the Academics seems to me very unlike the foolishness of the man you have described. For they reach by reasoning what they say is like the truth, while that fool followed report, than whose authority nothing is more worthless." "As though," I said, "he would not be more foolish if he said: 'I do not know his father at all, nor have I learned by report how like his father he is; but still he seems to me like him.'" "More foolish certainly," he said; "but what is the point of this?" "That such are those," I said, "who say: 'We do not know the truth, but this which we see is like what we do not know.'" "They say 'probable,'" he said. To which I said: "How do you mean that? Do you deny that they say 'like the truth'?" And he said: "I wanted to say it in order to exclude that likeness. For it seemed to me that report had wrongly broken into your question, since the Academics do not trust even human eyes, much less report, with its thousand eyes, as the poets imagine, but monstrous ones. For who am I, after all, to be a defender of the Academy? Or do you begrudge me my freedom from care in this question? Look, you have Alypius, whose arrival I pray may give us a holiday, and whom we may think you have long feared, not without reason."

Then, when silence had fallen, both turned their eyes to Alypius. Then he said: "I would indeed like, as far as my strength allows, to help your side somewhat, if your omen did not frighten me. But I may easily put this fear to flight, unless hope deceives me. For at the same time it consoles me that the present attacker of the Academics has almost taken on the burden of the defeated Trygetius, and now by your own admission it is probable that he is the victor. I am more afraid that I may not be able to avoid both the negligence of deserting my office and the impudence of invading another's. For I do not think you have forgotten that the office of judge was conferred on me." Here Trygetius said: "That is one thing, this another; so we ask you to allow yourself at last to be a private person." "I would not refuse," he said, "lest, while I wish to avoid impudence or negligence, I fall into the snares of pride, than which no vice is more monstrous, if I held the honor granted me by you longer than you permit."

"So I would like you to explain to me, good accuser of the Academics, your office, that is, in defense of whom you are attacking these men. For I fear that in refuting the Academics you may want to prove yourself an Academic." "You know well, I think," I said, "that there are two kinds of accusers. For if Cicero said very modestly that he was the accuser of Verres in such a way as to be the defender of the Sicilians, it does not follow that one who accuses someone must have another whom he defends." And he said: "Do you at least have anything in which your opinion has now been established?" "It is easy," I said, "for me especially to answer this question, since it is not sudden to me; I have already gone over all this with myself and turned it over in my mind long and often. So hear, Alypius, what I think you already know very well: I do not want this discussion to be undertaken for the sake of disputing. Let it be enough that we have played a prelude with these young men, in which philosophy has gladly joked with us, as it were. So let childish tales be taken from our hands. Our life, our morals, our mind are at stake: the mind that presumes it will overcome the hostility of all deceptions and, having grasped the truth and returning as it were to the region of its origin, will triumph over lusts and so, taking temperance as a wife, will reign, to return more securely to heaven. You see what I mean. Let us now remove from our midst all these weapons, 'arms to be made for a keen hero.' I have always wished nothing less than that something should arise, between those who have lived much together and talked much together, from which a new conflict, as it were, might spring. But because of memory, which is an unfaithful guardian of what has been thought out, I wanted what we have often discussed between ourselves to be put in writing, and at the same time that these young men might learn to attend to these things and try to approach and undertake them."

"Do you not know, then, that I as yet hold nothing certain as my view, but am hindered from seeking it by the arguments and disputations of the Academics? For somehow they have produced in my mind a certain probability (not to depart yet from their word) that man cannot find the truth; and so I had become sluggish and altogether inactive, and did not dare to seek what the sharpest and most learned men were not allowed to find. So unless I first persuade myself that the truth can be found as firmly as they persuaded themselves that it cannot, I will not dare to seek, and I have nothing to defend. So put that question aside, if you please; let us rather discuss between ourselves, as shrewdly as we can, whether the truth can be found. And on my side I think I already have many things with which I am trying to strive against the reasoning of the Academics. Meanwhile there is no difference between them and me except that to them it seemed probable that the truth cannot be found, while to me it is probable that it can. For ignorance of the truth is either peculiar to me, if they were pretending, or certainly common to us both."

Then Alypius said: "Now I will go forward without care; for I see that you will be not so much an accuser as a helper. So, not to go further, let us see first, please, that through this question, in which I seem to have taken the place of those who yielded to you, we do not fall into a dispute about words, which, at your own suggestion and on Tully's authority, we have often admitted is most shameful. For when, unless I am mistaken, Licentius said that the Academics' opinion about probability pleased him, you added the question, which he undoubtedly affirmed, whether he knew that they also called it likeness to truth. And I know well, since I learned them from you, that the tenets of the Academics are not unknown to you. Since, as I said, they are fixed in your mind, I do not know why you chase after words." "This is not, believe me," I said, "a controversy about words, but a great one about the things themselves. For I do not think they were men who did not know how to give names to things; rather, they seem to me to have chosen these terms both to hide their opinion from the slower and to signify it to the more alert. Why and how it seems so to me I will explain when I have first discussed what people think they said as enemies of human knowledge. So I am very glad that our conversation has gone so far today that it is clear and settled enough what we are inquiring into between us. For they seem to me to have been altogether serious and prudent men. If there is anything we shall now dispute, it will be against those who have believed that the Academics were opposed to the finding of truth. And so that you do not think me frightened, I will arm myself not unwillingly even against them, if they defended in earnest what we read in their books, and not in order to hide their opinion, so that certain sacred things of truth might not be rashly betrayed by them to polluted and, as it were, profane minds. This I would do today, if the setting of the sun were not now compelling us to return home." So far the discussion went that day.

The next day, although a day no less mild and calm had dawned, we were barely disentangled from household business. For we had spent a great part of it chiefly in writing letters, and when hardly two hours remained, we went out to the meadow. The very great clearness of the sky invited us, and we decided not to let even the time that remained be lost. So when we had come to our usual tree and settled there, I said: "Young men, since no great matter is to be undertaken today, I would like you to recall to me how Alypius answered yesterday the little question that troubled you." Here Licentius said: "It is so short that it is no trouble to remember; how light it is, you must judge. For, I think, he forbade you, since the matter was agreed, to raise a question about words." And I said: "Have you noticed well enough what this itself is, and what force it has?" "I think I see what it is," he said; "but please explain it a little. For I have often heard you say that it is shameful for disputants to linger over a question of words when no contest remains about things. But this is too subtle to be demanded of me to explain."

"Listen, then," I said, "to what it is. The Academics call probable or like the truth that which can invite us to act without assent. I say 'without assent' in the sense that we do not hold what we do to be true, or think we know it, and yet we act; as, for example, if someone asked us whether after so clear and pure a night last night so bright a sun would rise today, we would say, I believe, that we did not know, but that it seemed so. 'Such,' says the Academic, 'seem to me all the things that I thought should be called probable or like the truth; if you want to call them by another name, I do not fight. For it is enough for me that you have now well understood what I mean, that is, to what things I give these names. For it befits the wise man to be not a manufacturer of words but an investigator of things.' Do you understand well enough how those toys with which I was harassing you were struck from my hands?" Here, when both had answered that they understood and were asking for my answer by their very faces, I said: "Do you think that Cicero, whose words these are, was so poor in the Latin language that he gave names less suited to the things he meant?"

Then Trygetius said: "We are now content not to raise quibbles about words, since the thing is known. So consider rather what to answer this man who freed us, against whom you, driven on, are trying to rush again." And Licentius said: "Wait, please; for something is dawning on me, so that I see that so strong an argument ought not to have been snatched from you so easily." And when he had been silent a while, fixed in thought, he said: "I ask: nothing seems more absurd than for one who does not know what the truth is to say that he follows what is like the truth. Nor does that comparison of yours disturb me. For if I am asked whether, from this mildness of the sky, no rain will gather tomorrow, I rightly answer that it is like the truth, since I do not deny that I know something true. For I know that this tree cannot suddenly become silver, and I say without shamelessness that I truly know many such things, to which I see that the things I call like the truth are similar. But you, Carneades, or whatever other Greek plague (to spare our own) - for why should I hesitate to cross over to this side, to him to whom I am owed as a captive by right of victory? - you, then, since you say you know nothing true, from what do you follow this 'like the truth'? 'But I could not give it another name.' Why then should we dispute with one who cannot even speak?"

"I am not one to fear deserters," said Alypius; "how much less would that Carneades, against whom, moved by I do not know whether youthful or childish levity, you thought you should hurl insults rather than any weapon. For him, to strengthen his opinion, which was always founded only on the probable, this will easily suffice against you for the time being: that we are placed so far from finding the truth that you yourself can be a great proof of it, since you were so moved from your position by one little question that you did not know at all where you should stand. But let us put off these things, and the knowledge you confessed a little while ago is impressed on you concerning this tree, to another time. For although you have now chosen the other side, you must still be carefully taught what I said a little earlier. We had not yet advanced, I think, to the question in which it is asked whether the truth can be found; I thought only this should be laid down in the very entrance of my defense, where I had seen you weary and overthrown: that it is not to be inquired whether what the Academics say is enough for them should be called truthlike or probable or by any other name it can have. For if you think yourself already an excellent finder of the truth, that is nothing to me. Later, if you are not ungrateful for this advocacy of mine, you will perhaps teach me the same things."

Here, as Licentius bashfully feared Alypius's attack, I said: "Alypius, you preferred to speak about everything rather than about how we should dispute with those who do not know how to speak." And he said: "Since it has long been known to me and to everyone, and you now sufficiently show by your profession, that you are skilled in speaking, I would like you first to explain the usefulness of this inquiry of yours. Either it is superfluous, as I think, and it is far more superfluous to answer it; or, if it seems useful and I cannot explain it, I would beg you not to mind the office of teacher." "You remember," I said, "that yesterday I promised to deal with those terms later. And now that sun warns me to put back into their boxes the toys I set out for the boys, especially since I now set them out for display rather than for sale. Now, before the darkness, which is usually the patron of the Academics, takes over our pen, I want it to be fully settled between us today what question we must rise early to explain. So answer, please: do the Academics seem to you to have held a certain opinion about the truth and to have been unwilling to reveal it rashly to unknown or unpurified minds, or did they really think as their disputations show?"

Then he said: "What their mind was I will not rashly affirm. As far as can be gathered from books, you know better in what words they used to express their opinion. But if you consult me about myself, I think the truth has not yet been found. I add also, what you were demanding about the Academics, that I think it cannot be found, not only from my ingrained opinion, which you have almost always noticed, but also from the authority of great and very excellent philosophers, to whom somehow either our weakness or their sagacity, beyond which it must be believed nothing more can be found, compels us to bow our necks." "This is what I wanted," I said. "For I was afraid that, if you also thought what I think, our discussion would remain maimed, with no one on the other side to force the matter to come to grips, so that it might be turned over as diligently as we can. So if that had happened, I was ready to ask you to take up the part of the Academics as if they seemed to you not only to have argued but also to have believed that the truth cannot be grasped. The question between us, then, is whether by their arguments it is probable that nothing can be perceived and that one should assent to nothing. If you win this, I will gladly yield; but if I can show that it is much more probable both that the wise man can reach the truth and that assent is not always to be withheld, you will have no reason, I think, not to let yourself cross over to my opinion." When this had pleased him and those present, we returned home, now overshadowed by evening.

When, after that conversation which the second book contains, we had sat down on another day in the baths (for the day was too gloomy for us to want to go down to the meadow), I began thus: "I think you have already noticed well enough what the question is that has been set for discussion between us. But before I come to my part, which concerns explaining it, please listen willingly to a few things about our hope, our life, and our purpose, not unrelated to the matter. I think our business is not light or superfluous, but necessary and supreme: to seek the truth with great effort. On this Alypius and I agree. For the other philosophers thought that their wise man had found it, and the Academics professed that their wise man must seek it with the greatest effort and that he does this diligently, but that, since it either lay hidden and buried or did not stand out because it was confused, he follows for the conduct of life what appears probable and like the truth. This was also established in your earlier debate. For since one of you asserted that a man becomes happy by finding the truth, the other merely by seeking it diligently, none of us doubts that nothing should be put by us before this business. So what sort of day, I ask, do you think we spent yesterday? You were allowed to live in your studies. For you, Trygetius, delighted yourself with Vergil's poems, and Licentius was free for composing verses, by love of which he is so struck that it was chiefly on his account that I thought this discourse should be brought in, so that in his mind philosophy (for now is the time) may claim and take for herself a greater part not only than poetry but than any other discipline."

"But tell me, did you not pity us, when the day before we had gone to bed intending to rise for the postponed question and for nothing else, because so many household matters that had to be dealt with arose that, wholly occupied with them, we could barely breathe for ourselves in the last two hours of the day? Hence it has always been my opinion that the man already wise needs nothing, but that for one to become wise fortune is very necessary; unless Alypius thinks otherwise." Then he said: "How much power you give fortune I do not yet well know. For if you think that fortune itself is needed for despising fortune, I too give myself as your companion in that opinion. But if you grant to fortune nothing but those things that cannot be supplied to the body's need except by her will, I do not think so. For either one not yet wise, but desirous of wisdom, may take the things we admit are necessary for life even when she resists and is unwilling, or it must be granted that she rules even in the whole life of the wise man, since the wise man himself cannot fail to need the things necessary to the body."

"So you say," I said, "that fortune is necessary for the one devoted to wisdom, but you deny it for the wise man." "It is not out of place to repeat the same things," he said. "So now I also ask you whether you think fortune helps at all toward despising itself. If you think so, I say that one who desires wisdom greatly needs fortune." "I think so," I said, "if through her he will become such that he can despise her. Nor is this absurd; for so too, when we are small, breasts are necessary for us, by which it comes about that later we can live and be strong without them." "Our opinions," he said, "clearly agree, if our minds' conception does not differ; unless perhaps someone thinks it should be argued that it is not breasts or fortune themselves but something else that makes us despisers of fortune or of breasts." "It is no great matter," I said, "to use another comparison. For just as no one crosses the Aegean Sea without a ship or some vehicle, or at all (not to fear Daedalus himself) without some instruments suited to this, or some more hidden power, although he intends nothing but to arrive, and when he has arrived he is ready to throw away and despise all the things by which he was carried, so whoever wants to reach the harbor of wisdom, as it were the firmest and quietest ground, seems to me to need fortune to have what he desired (since, to omit other things, if he is blind and deaf he cannot, and this lies in the power of fortune). When he has obtained it, although he may be thought to need certain things pertaining to the health of the body, it is clear that he needs them not in order to be wise but in order to live among men." "On the contrary," he said, "if he is blind and deaf, in my opinion he will rightly despise both the attaining of wisdom and life itself, for whose sake wisdom is sought."

"Still," I said, "since our life itself, while we live here, is in the power of fortune, and no one can become wise except while living, must it not be admitted that we need her favor to be carried to wisdom?" "But since wisdom," he said, "is necessary only for the living, and when life is removed there is no need of wisdom, I have no fear of fortune in prolonging life. For I want wisdom because I live; I do not want life because I desire wisdom. So if fortune takes away my life, she will take away the reason for seeking wisdom. I have no reason, then, either to wish for fortune's favor or to dread her obstacles in order to become wise, unless perhaps you bring forward other arguments." Then I said: "So you do not think that one devoted to wisdom can be hindered by fortune from reaching wisdom, even if she does not take away his life?" "I do not think so," he said.