Against the Academics

O Romanianus, if only virtue could take a man suited to her away from fortune when fortune resists, as she allows no one to be taken from her by fortune! She would surely have laid hands on you long ago, proclaimed you her own, and, bringing you into possession of the most certain goods, would not let you be a slave even to prosperous chances. But since it has been so arranged, whether for our deserts or by the necessity of nature, that the divine mind dwelling in mortal things is never received into the harbor of wisdom, where it is moved neither by fortune's adverse wind nor by its favorable one, unless fortune herself, favorable or seemingly adverse, brings it there, nothing remains for us to do for you but prayers. By them, if we can, let us obtain from God, who cares for these things, that he give you back to yourself (for so he will easily give you back to us as well), and let that mind of yours, which has long been in labor to breathe, at last come out into the air of true freedom. For perhaps what is commonly called fortune is governed by some hidden order, and what we call chance in events is nothing but that whose reason and cause is secret; and nothing advantageous or disadvantageous happens in a part that does not fit and agree with the whole. Philosophy, to which I invite you, promises to show this view to her true lovers, a view set forth in the oracles of the richest teachings and very far removed from the understanding of the uninitiated. Therefore, when many things happen to you that are unworthy of your mind, do not despise yourself. For if divine providence reaches down even to us, which is not to be doubted in the least, believe me, you must be dealt with as you are being dealt with. For when, with that great natural gift of yours which I always admire, you entered from early youth upon human life, so full of every error, while the footing of your reason was still weak and slipping, an overflowing abundance of riches received you. It had begun to swallow up in its alluring whirlpools that age and that mind, eagerly following whatever seemed beautiful and honorable, and it would have done so had not those blasts of fortune that are thought adverse snatched you out of it as you were almost going under.

Or if, when you put on bear shows and spectacles never before seen there for our fellow citizens, the applause of the theater, always most favorable, had greeted you; if you were carried to the skies by the united and agreeing voices of foolish men, whose crowd is immense; if no one dared be your enemy; if the town's tablets marked you in bronze as patron not only of the citizens but also of the neighboring towns; if statues were set up, honors flowed in, and powers were even added that rose above a municipal rank; if rich tables were spread at daily banquets, and whatever anyone needed, whatever anyone's pleasures even thirsted for, he could ask without hesitation and drink in without hesitation, and much were poured out even on those who did not ask; and if your household estate itself, carefully and faithfully managed by your people, showed itself adequate and ready for such great expenses, while you meanwhile lived in the most exquisite masses of buildings, in the splendor of baths, in dice (which honorable men do not reject), in hunts, in banquets, and were spoken of on the lips of clients, of citizens, and finally of whole peoples as the most humane, most generous, most refined, most fortunate of men: would anyone, Romanianus, would anyone, I ask, dare to mention to you another happy life, which alone is happy? Could anyone persuade you that you were not only not happy but most wretched precisely where you seemed to yourself least so? But now, how briefly you need to be reminded, after the many great adversities you have endured! For you do not need to be persuaded by the examples of others how fleeting and fragile and full of calamity are all the things mortals think good, since you have so experienced them that we can persuade others from your case.

That, then, that quality of yours by which you always desired what was fitting and honorable, by which you preferred to be generous rather than rich, by which you never desired to be more powerful than you were just, and never gave way to adversities and wickedness: that very thing, I say, that divine element in you which has been lulled to sleep by I know not what slumber and lethargy of this life, secret providence has decided to awaken by those various and hard tossings. Wake up, wake up, I beg you! Believe me, you will greatly rejoice that the gifts of this world have flattered you with hardly any of the prosperities by which the unwary are held. They were trying to capture me too, as I daily sang their praises, had not a pain in my chest compelled me to throw away my windy profession and take refuge in the lap of philosophy. She now nourishes and cherishes me in the leisure we so earnestly desired; she has completely freed me from that superstition into which I had thrown you headlong along with me. For she teaches, and teaches truly, that nothing at all is to be worshiped, and that everything is to be despised that is seen by mortal eyes or touched by any sense. She promises to show clearly the most true and most hidden God, and already, as it were, she deigns to display him through bright clouds.

In her our Licentius lives with me most zealously; he has turned to her wholly from the enticements and pleasures of youth, so much so that I venture, not rashly, to set him before his father for imitation. For philosophy is one from whose breasts no age will complain that it is shut out. To spur you on to hold and drink her more eagerly, although I know your thirst well, I wanted nevertheless to send you a taste. I ask that it may be most sweet to you and, so to speak, an inducement, so that I may not have hoped in vain. For I have sent you, written down, the discussion that Trygetius and Licentius held between themselves. Military service had, as it were, claimed the former young man for a while to rub away his distaste for studies, and so it has given him back to us most ardent and hungry for the great and honorable arts. So, when a few days had passed after we began to live in the country, and I saw them, as I encouraged and stirred them to their studies, more ready than I had hoped and positively eager, I wanted to test what they could do for their age, especially since Cicero's Hortensius seemed already to have won them over to philosophy in large part. So, employing a stenographer so that the winds should not scatter our labor, I let nothing be lost. In this book, then, you will read their topics and opinions, but my words and also those of Alypius.

So when we had all gathered in one place at my urging for this purpose, where it seemed convenient, I said: "Do you doubt at all that we ought to know the truth?" "Not at all," said Trygetius, and the others indicated by their faces that they agreed. "What if," I said, "we can be happy even without having grasped the truth: do you think the grasping of truth necessary?" At this Alypius said: "I think it safer for me to be judge of this question. For since my journey to the city has been arranged, I must be relieved of the burden of taking up either side; and besides, I can more easily delegate to someone the role of judge than that of any defense. So from now on expect nothing from me for either side." When everyone had granted him this and I had repeated my question, Trygetius said: "Certainly we want to be happy, and if we can reach this without truth, we need not seek truth." "What of this very point?" I said. "Do you think we can be happy even without having found the truth?" Then Licentius said: "We can, if we seek the truth." When I had asked the opinion of the others by a nod, Navigius said: "What Licentius said moves me. For perhaps this itself may be living happily: to live in the search for truth." "Then define," said Trygetius, "what the happy life is, so that I may infer from it what answer is fitting." "What do you think living happily is," I said, "but living according to what is best in man?" "I will not pour out words rashly," he said, "for I think that what that best thing is must be defined for me by you." "Who would doubt," I said, "that the best thing in man is nothing other than that part of the mind which, when it rules, all the other things in man should obey? And this, so that you do not demand another definition, can be called mind or reason. If you do not agree, consider how you yourself would define either the happy life or the best thing in man." "I agree," he said.

"Well then," I said, "to return to our subject: do you think one can live happily without having found the truth, if only it is sought?" "I repeat my opinion," he said: "I do not think so at all." "And what do you think?" I said to the others. Then Licentius said: "I certainly think so. For our ancestors, whom we have been taught to regard as wise and happy, lived well and happily simply because they sought the truth." "I thank you," I said, "for making me judge along with Alypius, whom, I confess, I had already begun to envy. Since, then, one of you thinks the happy life can come about by the mere search for truth, and the other only by finding it, while Navigius showed a little while ago that he wants to cross over to your side, Licentius, I am very eager to see what sort of advocates for your opinions you can be. For the matter is a great one and most worthy of careful discussion." "If the matter is great," said Licentius, "it calls for great men." "Do not look," I said, "especially in this country house, for what is hard to find anywhere on earth; rather explain why you said what you said, not rashly, I think, and on what reasoning it seems so to you. For when the greatest matters are investigated even by small men, they usually make them great."

"Since I see," he said, "that you are pressing us hard to dispute against each other, which I trust you want for our benefit, I ask why one who seeks the truth cannot be happy, even if he does not find it at all." "Because," said Trygetius, "we hold that the happy man is the wise man, perfect in all things. But one who is still seeking is not perfect. So how you can claim that he is happy I do not see at all." And Licentius said: "Does the authority of our ancestors carry weight with you?" "Not of all of them," said Trygetius. "Of whom, then?" He said: "Of those, of course, who were wise." Then Licentius said: "Does Carneades not seem wise to you?" "I am not a Greek," he said; "I do not know who this Carneades was." "Well," said Licentius, "what then do you think of our own Cicero?" After a long silence he said: "He was wise." And Licentius said: "So his opinion on this matter has some weight with you?" "It has," he said. "Then hear what it is, for I think it has slipped your mind. Our Cicero held that he is happy who investigates the truth, even if he cannot attain to finding it." "Where did Cicero say this?" he said. And Licentius: "Who does not know that he strongly asserted that nothing can be perceived by man, and that nothing remains for the wise man but the most diligent search for truth, because, if he assented to uncertain things, even if they perhaps were true, he could not be free from error, which is the greatest fault of the wise man? Therefore, if we must believe both that the wise man is necessarily happy and that the mere search for truth is the perfect task of wisdom, why do we hesitate to think that the happy life can come about even through the investigation of truth by itself?"

Then Trygetius said: "Is it allowed, then, to go back to what was rashly granted?" Here I said: "Those whom no desire to find the truth but a childish display of cleverness drives to dispute do not usually allow this. But with me, especially since you are still to be nurtured and educated, it is not only allowed; I want you to have it among your rules that you should go back to examine what you have granted too incautiously." And Licentius said: "I think it no small progress in philosophy when a disputant despises victory in comparison with finding what is right and true. So I gladly obey your rules and your view, and I allow Trygetius to go back to what he thinks he granted rashly, since the matter is in my hands." Then Alypius said: "You yourselves recognize with me that the part of the office I took on has not yet come into play. But since the journey long arranged compels me to break off, my partner in judging will not refuse to take double authority, my share too, until my return; for I see that this contest of yours will go on a long time." And when he had left, Licentius said: "What had you granted rashly? Tell us." And he said: "I granted rashly that Cicero was wise." "So Cicero was not wise, by whom philosophy in the Latin language was both begun and completed?" "Even if I grant," he said, "that he was wise, I still do not approve everything of his." "But you must refute many other things of his, so as not to seem shameless in rejecting this point at issue." "What if I am prepared to assert that only on this did he not think rightly? It matters nothing to you, I think, except how weighty are the reasons I bring for what I want to assert." "Go on," said Licentius. "For what," he said, "would I dare against one who professes himself Cicero's opponent?"

Here Trygetius said: "You, our judge, I want you to note how you defined the happy life above; for you said that he is happy who lives according to that part of the mind which ought to command the rest. And you, Licentius, I want you to grant me at least now (for I have already shaken off that yoke of authority by the freedom into which philosophy above all promises to set us) that one who is still searching for the truth is not perfect." Then, after a long silence, Licentius said: "I do not grant it." Trygetius: "Why, I ask? Explain. I am all attention and eager to hear how a man can both be perfect and still be seeking the truth." Here Licentius said: "I admit that one who has not reached the end is not perfect. But I think that only God knows that truth, or perhaps the soul of a man when it has left this body, that is, this dark prison. The end of man, however, is to seek the truth perfectly; for we are looking for a perfect being, but still a man." And Trygetius said: "Then man cannot be happy. For how can he, when he cannot attain what he greatly desires? But man can live happily, if indeed he can live according to that part of the mind which rightly rules in man. Therefore he can find the truth. Or else let him collect himself and not desire the truth, so that he is not necessarily wretched when he cannot attain it." "But this very thing is man's happiness," said Licentius, "to seek the truth perfectly; for this is to reach the end beyond which one cannot go. Whoever, then, seeks the truth less earnestly than he should does not reach the end of man; but whoever gives as much effort to finding the truth as a man can and should, even if he does not find it, is happy; for he does everything that he was born to do. If finding is lacking, what is lacking is what nature did not give. Finally, since a man must be either happy or wretched, is it not madness to call wretched one who presses on day and night, as much as he can, in investigating the truth? So he will be happy. Then too, that definition, as I think, supports me more abundantly. For if he is happy, as he is, who lives according to that part of the mind which ought to reign over the rest, and this part is called reason, I ask whether one who perfectly seeks the truth does not live according to reason. If that is absurd, why do we hesitate to call a man happy by the mere search for truth?"

"To me," said Trygetius, "whoever errs seems neither to live according to reason nor to be happy at all. But everyone errs who always seeks and does not find. So you must show one of two things: either that one who errs can be happy, or that one who never finds what he seeks does not err." Here Licentius said: "The happy man cannot err." And after a long silence he said: "But he does not err when he seeks, because he seeks in order not to err." And Trygetius said: "He seeks in order not to err, indeed, but he errs when he does not find. You thought it would help you that he does not want to err, as though no one erred unwillingly, or anyone at all erred except unwillingly." Then, as Licentius hesitated a long time over what to answer, I said: "You must define what error is; for you can more easily see its boundaries when you have already gone deep into it." "I am not fit to define anything," said Licentius, "although it is easier to define error than to bring it to an end." "I will define it," said Trygetius, "which is very easy for me, not by cleverness but because my case is excellent. To err is surely always to seek and never to find." "If I could easily refute even that definition," said Licentius, "I would long ago have come to the help of my case. But since either the matter is difficult in itself or seems so to me, I ask you to put off the question until tomorrow's light, if I can find nothing to answer today after turning it over carefully by myself." Since I thought this should be granted and the others did not object, we got up to go for a walk; and while we talked of many different things among ourselves, he remained fixed in thought. When he realized this was in vain, he chose to relax his mind and join our conversation. Later, as evening came on, they had returned to the same contest; but I set a limit and persuaded them to let it be put off to another day. Then to the baths.

The next day, when we had sat down, I said: "Bring out what you began yesterday." Then Licentius said: "We had put off the discussion, unless I am mistaken, at my request, since the definition of error was very difficult for me." "Here at least," I said, "you plainly do not err; and I would gladly wish that to be an omen for you for the rest." "Hear, then," he said, "what I would have brought out yesterday too, if you had not interrupted. Error seems to me to be the approval of what is false as true. One who always thinks the truth is to be sought in no way falls into it; for one who approves nothing cannot approve what is false; therefore he cannot err. But he can very easily be happy. For not to go far, if we could live every day as we were allowed to yesterday, nothing occurs to me why we should hesitate to call ourselves happy. For we lived in great tranquility of mind, keeping the mind free from every stain of the body and far removed from the firebrands of desires, giving our effort to reason as far as a man may, that is, living according to that divine part of the mind which, as we agreed in yesterday's definition, is the happy life; and yet, as I think, we found nothing, but only sought the truth. So the happy life can come to a man by the mere search for truth, even if he cannot find it at all. And see how easily your definition is excluded by common notion. You said that to err is always to seek and never to find. What if someone seeks nothing, and when asked, for example, whether it is now day, rashly and at once thinks and answers that it is night: does he not seem to you to err? Your definition, then, has not included even this most monstrous kind of error. And what if it has also included people who do not err: can any definition be more faulty? For if someone seeks Alexandria and goes toward it by the straight road, I do not think you can call him one who errs. What if, hindered by various causes, he takes a long time on the same road and is overtaken by death on it: has he not both always sought and never found, and yet not erred?" "He did not always seek," said Trygetius.

"You are right," said Licentius, "and you remind me well. For from that it follows that your definition has nothing at all to do with the matter; for I did not say that he is happy who always seeks the truth. That cannot even happen: first, because a man does not always exist; and second, because from the moment he begins to be a man he cannot yet seek the truth, his age preventing it. Or if you think 'always' should be said if he lets no time be lost in which he is now able to seek, you must go back again to Alexandria. Suppose someone begins to travel that road from the time his age or business allows him to travel, and, as I said above, though he never strays, he still departs this life before he arrives: you will surely err greatly if he seems to you to have erred, although at every moment he could he neither stopped seeking nor was able to find where he was heading. Therefore, if my description is true and, according to it, one who seeks perfectly does not err even though he does not find the truth, and he is happy because he lives according to reason, while your definition has been foiled and, even if it had not been, I need not care about it, if my case has been sufficiently established by my own definition alone: why, I ask, has this question between us not yet been settled?"

Here Trygetius said: "Do you grant that wisdom is the right way of life?" "I grant it without doubt," said Licentius; "but still I want you to define wisdom for me, so that I may know whether it seems to you the same as to me." And Trygetius said: "Does it seem to you too little defined by the very question you were just asked? You have even granted what I wanted. For, unless I am mistaken, the right way of life is called wisdom." Then Licentius said: "Nothing seems to me as ridiculous as that definition." "Perhaps," said Trygetius; "but step by step, I ask, so that reason may come before your laughter; for nothing is more shameful than laughter that deserves to be laughed at." "Well," said Licentius, "do you not admit that death is the opposite of life?" "I admit it," he said. "Then," said Licentius, "nothing seems to me more a way of life than the one by which each person goes so as not to fall into death." Trygetius agreed. "So if some traveler, avoiding a byroad that he has heard is beset by robbers, goes straight on and so escapes death, has he not followed both the way of life and the right way? And no one calls that wisdom. How then is every right way of life wisdom?" "I granted that it is wisdom, but not that it alone is." "But a definition ought to have included nothing foreign to it. So define again, if you please: what do you think wisdom is?"

He was silent a long time; then he said: "Look, I define it again, since you have decided never to finish. Wisdom is the right way that leads to truth." "This too is refuted in the same way," said Licentius. "For when Aeneas was told by his mother in Vergil, 'Only go on, and where the road leads you, direct your step,' following this road he came to what had been said, that is, to the truth. Maintain, if you please, that the place where he set his foot as he went can be called wisdom. And yet it is quite foolish of me to try to break down this description of yours, for none helps my case more. For you said that wisdom is not the truth itself but the way that leads to it. Whoever uses this way, then, surely uses wisdom, and whoever uses wisdom must be wise. So he will be wise who has perfectly sought the truth, even if he has not yet reached it. For no way that leads to truth, as I think, is better understood than the diligent search for truth. Using this way alone, then, he will already be wise. And no wise man is wretched; but every man is either wretched or happy. So not only finding but the investigation of truth by itself will make a man happy."

Then Trygetius said with a smile: "This serves me right, for confidently agreeing with my opponent on an unnecessary point; as though I were a great definer, or thought anything more superfluous in disputing! For what end will there be, if I in turn want you to define something, and then demand that the words of that definition, and of everything that follows, be defined one by one, pretending that I understand nothing? For what is there so plain that I may not by my own right compel it to be defined, if a definition of wisdom is rightly demanded of me? For of what word has nature willed that there be a clearer notion in our minds than of wisdom? But somehow, when the notion itself has left the harbor, as it were, of our mind and spread the sails of words, at once a thousand shipwrecks of quibbles assail it. Therefore, either let no definition of wisdom be demanded, or let our judge deign to come down to its defense." Then, since night was already hindering the pen, and I saw that something great was arising to be discussed as if from the beginning, I put it off to another day. For we had begun to dispute when the sun was already sinking toward its setting, and almost the whole day had been spent both in arranging farm matters and in going over the first book of Vergil.

Then, as soon as it was light (for matters had been so arranged the day before that there was ample leisure), the business we had taken up was immediately pursued. Then I said: "Yesterday, Trygetius, you asked me to come down from the office of judge to the defense of wisdom, as though wisdom suffered any opponent in your conversation, or were so hard pressed by anyone defending her that she had to call for greater help. For no question has arisen between you except what wisdom is, and on that point neither of you attacks her, since both of you long for her; nor, if you think you have failed in defining wisdom, must you therefore abandon the rest of the defense of your opinion. So from me you will have nothing but a definition of wisdom, which is neither mine nor new, but belongs to the men of old, and I am surprised that you do not remember it. For you are not hearing now for the first time that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine."

Here Licentius, who I thought would take a long time after that definition to find something to say, at once put in: "Why, then, I ask, do we not call wise that utterly disgraceful man whom we ourselves know well to be habitually dissipated with countless harlots, I mean that Albicerius who for many years at Carthage gave wonderful and sure answers to those who consulted him? I could mention countless instances, were I not speaking among people who have experienced them, and a few are enough now for my purpose. When a spoon could not be found at home" (he was speaking to me), "and he was asked at your bidding, did he not answer very quickly and very truly not only what was being sought but also, by name, whose it was and where it was hidden? Likewise in my presence (I pass over the fact that he was not at all mistaken in what he was asked) when the boy who carried the coins had stolen a certain part of them while we were on our way to him, he ordered them all to be counted out to him and compelled the boy, before our eyes, to give back the ones he had taken, before he himself had seen those coins at all or heard from us how much had been brought to him.

"What of the fact we have heard from you, that the most learned and distinguished Flaccianus used to marvel? When he had been discussing the purchase of a farm, he brought the matter to that diviner so that he might declare, if he could, what he had done. And at once the man pronounced not only the kind of business but also (at which Flaccianus loudly exclaimed in wonder) the very name of the farm, though it was so outlandish that Flaccianus himself hardly remembered it. And this I cannot tell without amazement: when a friend of ours, a pupil of yours, wanting to test him, insolently demanded that he say what he was silently turning over in his mind, he answered that he was thinking of a verse of Vergil. When the young man, astounded, could not deny it, he went on to ask which verse it was; and Albicerius, who had hardly ever seen a grammarian's school even in passing, did not hesitate to sing the verse itself, carefree and chattering. Were the matters on which he was consulted, then, not human things, or did he give such sure and true answers to those who consulted him without knowledge of divine things? But both are absurd. For human things are nothing but the things of men, such as silver, coins, a farm, and finally even a thought; and who would not rightly judge those things divine through which divination itself comes to a man? So Albicerius was wise, if we grant by that definition that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine."

Here Trygetius said: "First, I do not call it knowledge when the one who professes it is sometimes deceived. For knowledge consists not only in things grasped, but in things so grasped that no one should err in it or waver when pushed by any opponents whatever. Hence some philosophers say very truly that it can be found in no one but the wise man, who must not only possess perfectly what he maintains and follows but also hold it unshaken. But we know that the man you mentioned often said many false things; I learned this not only from others' reports but also perceived it once myself when present. Shall I call him one who knows, when he often said false things, whom I would not call so even if he had said true things hesitantly? Take what I have said as said also of haruspices and augurs and all who consult the stars, and of interpreters of dreams; or produce, if you can, someone of this class of men who, when consulted, never doubted his answers and, in short, never answered falsely. As for the inspired seers, I think I need not trouble myself about them, since they speak with another's mind."

"Next, even if I grant that human things are the things of men, do you think anything is ours that chance can give us or snatch from us? Or when we speak of knowledge of human things, do we mean the knowledge by which someone knows how many farms we have or of what kind, how much gold, how much silver, or, finally, what verses of others we are thinking of? That is the knowledge of human things which knows the light of prudence, the beauty of temperance, the strength of fortitude, the holiness of justice. For these are the things which, fearing no fortune, we dare to call truly ours; and if that Albicerius had learned them, believe me, he would never have lived so luxuriously and shamefully. As for his telling what verse the one who consulted him was turning over in his mind, I do not think that is to be counted among our goods either; not that I deny that the most honorable studies belong to a kind of possession of our mind, but because even the most ignorant are allowed to sing and recite another's verse. So when such things have come into our memory, it is no wonder if they can be sensed by certain very base animals of this air, whom they call demons; I grant that they can surpass us in sharpness and subtlety of the senses, but I deny that they surpass us in reason; and this happens in some very hidden way, far removed from our senses. For if we marvel that a little bee, when honey has been set out, flies to it from wherever it may be by some keenness of scent in which it surpasses man, we need not on that account rank it above us or even compare it with us."

"So I would rather that this Albicerius, when questioned by someone eager to learn, had taught the meters themselves, or, when pressed by one of his clients, had sung verses of his own on a subject just put to him. You often recall that the same Flaccianus used to say this, when with great loftiness of mind he mocked and despised that kind of divination and attributed it to some utterly contemptible little soul (for so he used to call it), by whose prompting or inspiration, as by a spirit, the man used to give these answers. For that most learned man used to ask those who marveled at such things whether Albicerius could teach grammar or music or geometry. And who that knew him would not admit that he was utterly ignorant of all these? Therefore he used to urge in the end that those who had learned such things should without hesitation prefer their own minds to that divination, and should take pains to instruct and support their minds with those disciplines by which they might leap over and fly above that airy nature of invisible animals."

"Now since divine things, as everyone grants, are much better and more august than human things, how could he attain them who did not know what he himself was? Unless perhaps he thinks the stars, which we contemplate every day, are something great in comparison with the most true and most hidden God, whom the intellect perhaps rarely touches and no sense touches at all. But these are present to our eyes. So these are not those divine things which wisdom professes that she alone knows; and the other things, which these diviners, whoever they are, misuse for vain boasting or for gain, are surely more worthless than the stars. So Albicerius did not share in the knowledge of things human and divine, and our definition was attacked by you in this way in vain. Finally, since we ought to regard as most worthless and altogether despise whatever lies outside things human and divine, I ask in what things that wise man of yours seeks the truth." "In divine things," said Licentius; "for virtue, even in man, is without doubt divine." "So Albicerius already knew these things which your wise man will always be seeking?" Then Licentius said: "He too knew divine things, but not those that the wise man must seek. For who would not overturn all usage of speech if he granted him divination but took away divine things, from which divination is named? So that definition of yours, unless I am mistaken, included something else that did not belong to wisdom."

Then Trygetius said: "That definition will be defended, if he pleases, by the one who put it forward. Now answer me, so that we may at last come to the point at issue." "I am ready," said Licentius. "Do you grant," he said, "that Albicerius knew the truth?" "I grant it," he said. "Then he is better than your wise man." "Not at all," said Licentius; "for the kind of truth the wise man seeks is attained not only not by that crazy soothsayer but not even by the wise man himself while he lives in this body. Yet it is so great that it is far more excellent always to seek it than sometimes to find that other." "In my straits," said Trygetius, "that definition must come to my aid. If it seemed faulty to you because it included one whom we cannot call wise, I ask whether you would approve it if we said that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine, but of those that pertain to the happy life." "That too is wisdom," said Licentius, "but not the only wisdom. So the former definition invaded what belonged to another, and this one abandoned what belongs to it; the former can be convicted of greed, this one of folly. For to explain now by a definition what I myself think, wisdom seems to me to be not only the knowledge but also the diligent search of things human and divine that pertain to the happy life. If you wish to divide this description, the first part, which holds knowledge, belongs to God, and this part, which is content with searching, to man. By the former, then, God is happy, by the latter man." Then Trygetius said: "I wonder how you claim that your wise man spends his effort in vain." "How does he spend his effort in vain," said Licentius, "when he seeks for so great a reward? For by the very fact that he seeks he is wise, and in that he is wise he is happy, since he unwinds his mind as much as he can from all the wrappings of the body and gathers himself into himself, since he does not let himself be torn by desires but always tranquilly directs himself toward himself and toward God; so that here he enjoys reason, which we agreed above is happiness, and on the last day of his life he is found ready to attain what he desired, and deservedly enjoys divine blessedness, having first enjoyed the human."

Then, as Trygetius was searching a long time for an answer, I said: "I do not think, Licentius, that arguments will fail him either, if we let him search at leisure. For what has he lacked for answering at any point? First he himself brought forward that, since the question had arisen about the happy life, and only the wise man can be happy (since folly is wretched even in the judgment of fools), the wise man must be perfect, but one who is still inquiring what the truth is is not perfect, and therefore not happy either. When you threw against this point the mass of authority, he was somewhat modestly disturbed by Cicero's name, yet he at once rose up again and with a noble defiance leapt to the summit of freedom, seized again what had been violently struck from his hands, and asked you whether one who was still seeking seemed to you perfect; so that, if you admitted he was not perfect, he could run back to the beginning and show, if he could, by that definition, that the man is perfect who governs his life by the law of the mind, and hence that one cannot be happy unless he is perfect. When you had freed yourself from that snare more cautiously than I expected, saying that the perfect man is the most diligent inquirer after truth, and had fought too confidently and too openly with that very definition by which we had said that the happy life is the one lived according to reason, he plainly paid you back; for he seized your stronghold, and, driven from it, you would have lost the whole battle had not the truce restored you. For where did the Academics, whose opinion you defend, place their citadel, if not in the definition of error? Had it not perhaps come back to your mind at night in a dream, you would have had no answer, though you yourself had mentioned that very point earlier in setting out Cicero's opinion. Then we came to the definition of wisdom. You tried to undermine it with such cunning that perhaps not even your helper Albicerius would have detected your thefts; yet with what vigilance, with what strength he resisted you, how nearly he entangled and overthrew you, had you not at last protected yourself with your new definition, saying that human wisdom is the search for truth, from which, through tranquility of mind, the happy life comes! He will not answer this view, especially if he asks that the favor be returned to him by putting off the matter for the day, or for the part of it that remains."

"But not to make it long, let this discussion now be closed, if you please; I think it even superfluous to linger in it. For the matter has been treated sufficiently for the task we took up; it could have been finished altogether in a few words, had I not wanted to exercise you and to test your strength and your zeal, which is a great concern to me. For when I had set out to urge you strongly to seek the truth, I had begun to ask you how much importance you placed on it; and all of you placed so much on it that I want no more. For since we desire to be happy, whether that cannot come about except by finding the truth or only by seeking it diligently, we must, setting aside all other things, search it out if we want to be happy. Therefore, as I said, let us now end this discussion and, Licentius, send it written down above all to your father. I already hold his mind for philosophy entirely, but I am still looking for the fortune that will admit him to it. He can be set more ardently on fire for these studies when he learns, not only by hearing but also by reading this, that you yourself are already living with me in this way. As for you, if, as I sense, the Academics please you, prepare stronger forces to defend them; for I have decided to accuse them." When this had been said, we rose.

If it were as necessary that wisdom be found while it is sought as it is necessary that the wise man cannot be without the discipline and knowledge of wisdom, then surely every quibble or obstinacy or stubbornness of the Academics, or, as I sometimes think, their reasoning suited to that time, would have been buried together with that time and with the bodies of Carneades and Cicero themselves. But whether because of the many and various tossings of this life, Romanianus, as you prove in your own case, or because of a certain stupor or sluggishness or slowness of dull minds, or because of despair of finding (since the star of wisdom does not rise as easily to minds as this light rises to eyes), or also because of what is the error of whole peoples, the false opinion that they have found the truth, men do not seek diligently, if any do seek, and are turned away from the will to seek; and so it happens that knowledge comes rarely and to few. Hence the weapons of the Academics, when one comes to grips with them, seem invincible and as if forged by Vulcan, not to mediocre men but to sharp and well-educated ones. Therefore, against those waves and storms of fortune we must both strive with the oars of whatever virtues we have and, above all, implore divine help with all devotion and piety, so that the most constant intent of good studies may hold its course, from which no chance may shake it so as to keep the safest and most pleasant harbor of philosophy from receiving it. This is your first cause; on this account I fear for you, on this account I long for you to be freed; on this account, if only I am worthy to obtain it, I do not cease to pray in daily prayers for favorable winds for you; and I pray to the very power and wisdom of the most high God. For what else is he whom the mysteries hand down to us as the Son of God?

You will help me greatly as I pray for you if you do not despair that we can be heard, and strive with us not only by prayers but also by will and by that natural loftiness of your mind for which I seek you, in which I take singular delight, which I always admire, which in you (alas!) is wrapped up like lightning in those clouds of domestic affairs and is hidden from many, indeed from almost all, but cannot be hidden from me and from one or two others, your closest friends, who have often not only listened attentively to your rumblings but also seen some flashes nearer to thunderbolts. For, to pass over other things for the present and mention one, who, I ask, ever thundered so suddenly and flashed so brightly with the light of the mind that, under one roar of reason and a kind of lightning of temperance, a lust that had been most savage the day before died utterly in one day? Will not this virtue, then, one day break out and turn the laughter of many who despair into dread and amazement, and, having spoken on earth like a sign of things to come, return again to heaven, the burden of the whole body cast off? Has Augustine, then, said these things of Romanianus in vain? He will not allow it, to whom I have given myself wholly, and whom I have now begun to know again in some measure.

So undertake philosophy with me; here is whatever wonderfully moves you when you are often anxious and in doubt. For I do not fear for your mind either from sluggish habits or from slowness of wit. Who, when you were allowed to breathe a little, appeared more alert in our conversations, who sharper? Shall I not repay your kindness? Or perhaps I owe you only a little? When I was a poor young man setting out for my studies, you received me with your home, your money, and, what is more, your heart. When I was bereft of my father, you consoled me with friendship, encouraged me with exhortation, helped me with your resources. In our own town you made me, by your favor, your friendship, and the sharing of your house, almost as distinguished and prominent as yourself. When I was returning to Carthage for the sake of a more illustrious profession, and had disclosed my plan and hope to you and to none of my own, you hesitated a while, out of that love of our homeland implanted in you, because I was already teaching there; yet when you could not overcome the desire of a young man striving toward what seemed better, you turned with a wonderful restraint of goodwill from dissuader to helper. You furnished my journey with everything necessary; there again you, who had cherished the cradle and as it were the nest of my studies, supported the first attempts of one now daring to fly. Even when I had sailed away in your absence and without your knowledge, though you were somewhat angry that I had not consulted you as I used to, and suspected anything but defiance, you remained unshaken in friendship, and the children abandoned by their teacher were no more before your eyes than the inner chambers and purity of my mind.

Finally, whatever I now rejoice in from my leisure, that I have flown free of the chains of superfluous desires, that having laid down the burdens of dead cares I breathe again, come to my senses, return to myself, that I seek the truth with the greatest intent, that I am now beginning to find it, that I trust I shall reach the very highest measure: you encouraged it, you urged it, you brought it about. But whose minister you were, I have so far conceived more by faith than grasped by reason. For when, face to face, I had set out to you the inner fears of my mind, and asserted strongly and repeatedly that no fortune seemed favorable to me unless it gave leisure for philosophy, no life happy unless it were lived in philosophy, but that I was held back by the great burden of my dependents, whose living hung on my office, and by many necessities, whether of propriety or of the foolish distress of my people, you were lifted up with such great joy, so inflamed with holy ardor for this life, that you said that if you could somehow be freed from the chains of those troublesome lawsuits, you would break all my chains too by sharing even your patrimony with me.

So when you had applied the kindling to us and departed, we never ceased longing for philosophy and thinking of absolutely nothing but that life which we had agreed upon among ourselves; and we pursued it steadily indeed, but less keenly, though we thought we were doing enough. And since the flame that was to seize us completely had not yet come, we thought the one with which we glowed was the very greatest, when behold, certain books full, as Celsinus says, of good things from Arabia breathed them upon us; when they let fall a very few drops of most precious ointment on that little flame, they kindled, incredibly, Romanianus, incredibly, and beyond what perhaps even you believe of me (what more shall I say?), a fire incredible even to myself about myself. What honor, what human pomp, what desire for empty fame, in short what comfort or tie of this mortal life moved me then? I was returning wholly and swiftly into myself. Yet I looked back, I confess, as if from the road, to that religion which was implanted in us as boys and woven into our very marrow; but she herself was drawing me to herself without my knowing it. So, stumbling, hurrying, hesitating, I seized the apostle Paul. For truly, I said, those men could not have done such great things or lived as they clearly lived, if their writings and reasonings were opposed to this great good. I read it all through with the greatest attention and reverence.

Then indeed, with however little light already sprinkled on me, so great a face of philosophy opened itself to me that, I will not say to you, who have always burned with hunger for her though you did not know her, but if I could have shown her even to your opponent himself, by whom I do not know whether you are more exercised or hindered, he would have cast away and left behind Baiae and pleasant gardens and delicate and elegant banquets and his household actors, and finally whatever keenly stirs him toward any delights, and would have flown to her beauty as a gentle and chaste lover, marveling, panting, glowing. For he too has, it must be confessed, a certain beauty of mind, or rather a kind of seed of beauty, which, striving to break out into true beauty, puts forth leaves crookedly and misshapenly among the roughness of vices and the thickets of false opinions; yet it does not cease to put forth leaves and to stand out, as far as it is allowed, to the few who look keenly and carefully into the thicket. From this comes that hospitality, from this the many seasonings of humanity at his banquets, from this the elegance, the polish, the very neat appearance of all things, and the refinement of shadowed grace that suffuses everything on every side.

This is commonly called philocalia. Do not despise this name because of its common use. For philocalia and philosophia are named almost alike and want to appear as kin to each other, and they are. For what is philosophy? The love of wisdom. What is philocalia? The love of beauty. Ask the Greeks. What, then, is wisdom? Is it not itself true beauty? So these two are full sisters, born of the same parent; but the one, dragged down from her heaven by the birdlime of lust and shut up in the common cage, has still kept the closeness of the name to warn the fowler not to despise her. Her sister, flying freely, often recognizes her, wingless, soiled, and needy, but rarely frees her; for this philocalia does not recognize her lineage except through philosophy. This whole fable (for I have suddenly become Aesop) Licentius will tell you more sweetly in a poem, for he is almost a perfect poet. So if that man could behold, with his eyes healed and uncovered a little, the true beauty of which he loves a false one, with what pleasure would he wrap himself in the lap of philosophy! How would he embrace you there, recognized as a true brother! You wonder at this and perhaps laugh. What if I explained these things as I wished? What if at least the voice of philosophy herself could be heard by you, if her face cannot yet be seen? You would surely wonder, but you would not laugh or despair. Believe me, one must despair of no one, least of all of such men; there are examples everywhere. This kind of bird easily escapes and easily flies back, while many who are shut in greatly marvel.

But let me return to us. Let us, I say, Romanianus, do philosophy; I will repay your kindness: your son has begun to do philosophy. I hold him back, so that, first trained in the necessary disciplines, he may rise up more vigorous and firmer. Do not fear that you lack these; if I know you well, I wish you only free winds. For what shall I say of your natural gifts? Would that they were as rare in men as they are sure in you! There remain two faults and obstacles to finding the truth, for which I do not much fear on your account; yet I do fear that you may despise yourself and despair of finding it, or certainly that you may believe you have found it. If the first of these is in you, this discussion will perhaps take it away. For you have often been angry with the Academics, the more seriously the less educated you were, and the more willingly because you were drawn by love of truth. So now I will contend with Alypius with you as my supporter, and I will easily persuade you of what I want, though only probably; for you will not see the truth itself unless you enter wholly into philosophy. As for the other, that you perhaps presume you have found something: although you left us still seeking and doubting, yet if any superstition has rolled back into your mind, it will surely be cast out, either when I send you some discussion between us on religion, or when I talk over many things with you in person.

For I am now doing nothing else but purging myself of vain and harmful opinions. So I do not doubt that I am better off than you. There is only one thing for which I envy your fortune: that you alone enjoy my Lucilianus. Or do you envy me too, because I said "my"? But what did I say except "yours" and "all of ours," all of us who are one? Yet what shall I ask of you to meet my longing for him? Or shall I earn it from you myself? You know only that you owe it. But now I say to you both: beware of thinking you know anything unless you have learned it at least as well as you know that one, two, three, and four added together make ten. But likewise beware of thinking that you will not come to know the truth by philosophy, or that it cannot be known in this way at all. For believe me, or rather believe him who says, "Seek and you will find," that knowledge is not to be despaired of, and that it will be clearer than those numbers. Now let us come to the subject. For I have begun, too late, to fear that this preface may exceed due measure. And that is no light thing. For measure is without doubt divine, but it deceives when it leads us on sweetly. I will be more careful when I am wise.

After the earlier conversation, which we put into the first book, we were free from disputing for about seven days, though we went over three books of Vergil after the first and discussed them as seemed suitable at the time. Licentius was so inflamed by this work with zeal for poetry that it seemed to me he should even be held back somewhat; for he was no longer willing to be called away from this pursuit to anything else. At last, however, when I had praised the light of philosophy as much as I could, he came not unwillingly to take up again the question about the Academics that we had put off. And by chance the day had dawned so clear that it seemed suited to nothing so much as to clearing our minds. So we left our beds earlier than usual and attended a little with the farmhands to what the season pressed for. Then Alypius said: "Before I hear you disputing about the Academics, I want that conversation of yours read to me which you say was completed in my absence; for since the occasion of this debate arose from it, I cannot otherwise avoid either erring or at least struggling in hearing you." When this had been done, and we saw that almost the whole morning had been spent on it, we decided to return home from the field that had received us on our walk. And Licentius said: "Please do not mind briefly going over the whole opinion of the Academics for me before lunch, so that nothing in it escapes me that is in my favor." "I will," I said, "and the more gladly because, thinking about this, you may eat less." "Do not feel safe on that score," he said; "for I have often noticed that many people, and especially my father, are the greedier the fuller they are of cares. Then too, you have not found me, when I was thinking about those meters, such that my table is safe from my cares. I often wonder at this myself; for what does it mean that we go for food more stubbornly when we have turned our mind to something else? Or who is it that becomes so imperious over us when our hands and teeth are occupied?" "Listen rather," I said, "to what you asked about the Academics, so that I do not have to put up with you turning over those meters not only at meals without meter but also in our questions. And if I hide anything that is in favor of my side, Alypius will reveal it." "Your good faith is needed," said Alypius; "for if there is any fear that you may hide something, I think it would be hard for me to catch you, since no one who knows me is unaware from whom I learned these things, especially since in revealing the truth you will be considering not victory so much as your own mind."

"I will do it," I said, "in good faith, since you lay down the rule of law. For the Academics held both that knowledge cannot come to man, at least of those things that pertain to philosophy (for Carneades said he did not care about the rest), and yet that man can be wise, and that the whole task of the wise man, as you too, Licentius, argued in that conversation, is carried out in the search for truth. From this it followed that the wise man assents to nothing at all; for he must err, which is impious for the wise man, if he assents to uncertain things. And they not only said that all things are uncertain but asserted it with the most abundant reasons. But they seemed to have seized on the view that the truth cannot be grasped from that definition of the Stoic Zeno, who said that that true thing can be perceived which is so impressed on the mind from the source from which it comes that it could not come from a source from which it does not come. This is said more briefly and plainly thus: the truth can be grasped by those marks which what is false cannot have. They set themselves most vigorously to prove that this can never be found. Hence the disagreements of philosophers, hence the deceptions of the senses, hence dreams and madness, hence the liar arguments and sorites flourished in the defense of that cause. And since they had received from the same Zeno that nothing is more shameful than to hold opinions, they concluded most cleverly that, if nothing could be perceived and opinion was most shameful, the wise man would never approve anything."

"From this great ill will arose against them; for it seemed to follow that one who approved nothing would do nothing. Hence the Academics seemed to describe your wise man, whom they held to approve nothing, as always asleep and a deserter of all duties. Here they introduced a certain 'probable,' which they also called 'like the truth,' and asserted that the wise man in no way fails in his duties, since he has something to follow, while the truth lies hidden, either buried or confused, whether because of a certain darkness of nature or because of the likeness of things; although they said that this very restraint and, as it were, suspension of assent is a great act of the wise man. I think I have set out the whole briefly, as you wished, and have not departed from your rule, Alypius, that is, I have acted, as the saying goes, in good faith. For if I have said anything not as it is, or perhaps not said something, nothing has been done by me on purpose. Good faith, then, is according to the mind's intent. For a man who is mistaken ought to seem to another man someone to be taught, and a deceiver someone to be guarded against; the first requires a good teacher, the second a careful pupil."

Then Alypius said: "I am grateful that you have both satisfied Licentius and relieved me of the burden placed on me. For you had no more reason to fear saying anything less in order to test me (how else could it have been done?) than I would have had if it had been necessary to expose you in anything. So please do not be reluctant to explain, not so much for the inquiry as for the inquirer himself, what is lacking: the difference between the New and the Old Academy." "I confess," I said, "I am quite reluctant. So you will do me a favor (for I cannot deny that what you mention is very much to the point) if, while I rest a little, you will distinguish these names in my presence and explain the case of the New Academy." "I would think," he said, "that you too wanted to call me away from lunch, if I did not think you more frightened by Licentius a while ago, and if his request had not prescribed to us that whatever of this tangle there was should be unraveled for him before lunch." And as he was going on to say the rest, our mother (for we were already at home) began to push us so to lunch that there was no room for words.

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.

"I want you to show me a little," I said, "what difference seems to you to lie between the wise man and the philosopher." "I think the wise man differs from the one devoted to wisdom," he said, "in nothing except that of the things of which there is a certain settled state in the wise man, there is only an ardent desire in the devotee." "What, then, are these things?" I said. "For to me there seems to be no difference except that the one knows wisdom and the other desires to know it." "If you define knowledge within modest limits," he said, "you have stated the thing itself more plainly." "However I define it," I said, "all have agreed that there cannot be knowledge of false things." "Here," he said, "I thought an objection should be raised, so that your speech might not easily ride over the fields of that principal question through my inconsiderate agreement." "You have plainly left me nowhere to ride," I said. "For, unless I am mistaken, we have reached the very goal I have long been working toward. For if, as you said subtly and truly, there is no difference between the devotee of wisdom and the wise man except that the former loves and the latter has the discipline of wisdom (for which reason you did not hesitate to use the very name, that is, to express a certain settled state); and if no one can have a discipline in his mind who has learned nothing, and he has learned nothing who knows nothing, and no one can know what is false: then the wise man knows the truth, since you yourself have admitted that he has the discipline of wisdom, that is, a settled state, in his mind." "I do not know how shameless I would be," he said, "if I wanted to deny that I admitted that there is in the wise man a settled state of inquiry into divine and human things. But why it seems to you that it is not a settled state of probable things found, I do not see." "Do you grant me," I said, "that no one knows false things?" "Readily," he said. "Now say, if you can," I said, "that the wise man does not know wisdom." "What then?" he said. "Do you shut everything in by this boundary, so that it cannot seem to him that he has grasped wisdom?" "Give me your right hand," I said. "For, if you remember, this is what I said yesterday I would bring about, and I rejoice that it has not been concluded by me but offered to me by you of your own accord. For when I had said that the difference between me and the Academics was that to them it seemed probable that the truth cannot be grasped, while to me it seems that, though not yet found by me, it can be found by the wise man, now, when you were pressed by my question whether the wise man does not know wisdom, you said: 'It seems to him that he knows.'" "What then?" he said. "Because," I said, "if it seems to him that he knows wisdom, it does not seem to him that the wise man can know nothing; or else I want you to affirm that wisdom is nothing."

"I would truly believe," he said, "that we had come to the finishing line and the end; but suddenly, when you offered your right hand, I see that we are very far apart and have gone a long way. For yesterday no other question seemed to have been set by us except that you affirmed that the wise man can reach the grasp of truth and I denied it; but now I think I have granted you nothing except that it can seem to the wise man that he has attained the wisdom of probable things; and that I placed this wisdom in the investigation of divine and human things none of us, I think, doubts." "You do not get out," I said, "just because you wrap things up; for you seem to me now to be disputing to exercise yourself, and because you know well that these young men can as yet hardly discern what is argued sharply and subtly, you are abusing the ignorance of the judges, as it were, so that you may say as much as you like with no one protesting. For a little while ago, when I asked whether the wise man knew wisdom, you said it seems to him that he knows. To whom, then, it seems that the wise man knows wisdom, it surely does not seem that the wise man knows nothing. For this cannot be maintained unless someone dares to say that wisdom is nothing. From this it follows that you think what I also think. For it seems to me that the wise man knows something, and so, I think, to you, who hold that it seems to the wise man that he knows wisdom." Then he said: "I think I want to exercise my wit no more than you do, and I am surprised at that; for you need no exercise in this matter. For to me, perhaps still blind, there seems to be a difference between seeming to oneself to know and knowing, and between wisdom, which is placed in investigation, and truth. When each of these is said by us, I do not find how they fit together." Then, as we were now being called to lunch, I said: "I am not displeased that you resist so much; for either we both do not know what we are saying, and we must take pains not to be so shameful, or one of us does not, and to leave that and neglect it is no less shameful. But in the afternoon hours we will come back to each other. For when it seemed to me that we had reached the finish, you even started a fistfight." When they had laughed at this, we left.

And when we came back, we found Licentius, whom Helicon would never have relieved even if he had been thirsty, eagerly intent on thinking out verses. For he had quietly risen from almost the middle of lunch (though our lunch had the same beginning as its end) and had drunk nothing. I said to him: "I do wish that you may one day master that poetry you have longed for, not because such perfection delights me very much, but because I see you so on fire that you cannot escape from this love except by distaste, which usually comes easily after perfection. Then too, since you have a good voice, I would rather you pressed your own verses on our ears than sang words you do not understand in those Greek tragedies, like the little birds we see shut up in cages. But I advise you to go and drink, if you like, and come back to our school, if Hortensius and philosophy now deserve anything of you, to whom you offered the sweetest first fruits in that conversation of yours, which had kindled you more strongly than this poetry toward knowledge of great and truly fruitful things. But while I want to call you back to the circle of those disciplines by which minds are cultivated, I fear it may become a labyrinth for you, and I almost regret having held you back from that impulse." He blushed and went off to drink. For he was very thirsty, and an opportunity was given to escape me, who might perhaps say more and harsher things.

And when he had returned, with everyone attentive, I began thus: "Is it really the case, Alypius, that we do not agree on a matter which, as it seems to me, is most evident?" "It is no wonder," he said, "if what you assert is obvious to you is obscure to me, since many evident things can be more evident to some, and likewise certain obscure things more obscure to some. For if this is truly evident to you, believe me that there is someone else to whom this evident thing of yours is more evident, and likewise another to whom my obscure thing is more obscure. But so that you do not think me too contentious, I would beg you to set out this evident thing more evidently." "Pay careful attention, please," I said, "setting aside for a little the concern to answer. For if I know you and myself well, what I say will easily become clear with a little effort, and one of us will quickly persuade the other. Did you say, or perhaps I had gone deaf, that it seems to the wise man that he knows wisdom?" He nodded. "Let us leave that wise man aside for a little," I said. "Are you yourself wise or not?" "Nothing less," he said. "Still I want you to answer me," I said, "what you yourself think of the Academic wise man: does he seem to you to know wisdom?" "Do you think," he said, "that seeming to himself to know and knowing are one and the same, or different? For I fear that this confusion may give one of us a refuge."

"This," I said, "is that 'Tuscan wrangling,' as it is called, when a question not yet tried seems to be cured not by its solution but by the raising of another. Our poet too (to give myself a little to Licentius's ears) fittingly judged this in his pastoral poem to be rustic and plainly shepherdish, when one asks the other where the space of the sky opens no wider than three ells, and the other in what lands flowers are born inscribed with the names of kings. Please, Alypius, do not think this is allowed us because we are in a country house. Surely even these little baths may bring to mind something of the dignity of the gymnasia. Answer, if you please, what I ask: does the wise man of the Academics seem to you to know wisdom?" "So as not to go on long by returning words for words," he said, "it seems to me that it seems to him that he knows." "So it seems to you," I said, "that he does not know? For I am not asking what it seems to you seems to the wise man, but whether it seems to you that the wise man knows wisdom. You can, I think, either affirm or deny here." "O, if only," he said, "it were as easy for me as for you, or as hard for you as for me, you would not be so troublesome or hope for anything in this. For when you asked me what I thought of the Academic wise man, I answered that it seems to me that it seems to him that he knows wisdom, so that I would neither rashly affirm that I knew nor no less rashly say that he knew." "As a great favor," I said, "I beg you to grant me, first, that you deign to answer what I ask, not what you ask yourself; next, that you set aside for a little my hope, which I know is no less your concern than your own (surely if I deceive you by this question I will quickly cross over to your side and we will end the controversy); and finally, that, driving away some anxiety by which I see you are touched, you attend more carefully, so that you may easily understand what answer I want from you. For you said that you did not either affirm or deny (which certainly must be done in reply to what I ask) so as not to say rashly that you know what you do not know; as though I had asked what you know and not what seems to you. So now I ask the same thing more plainly, if it can be said more plainly: does it seem to you that the wise man knows wisdom, or does it not?" "If a wise man such as reason discloses can be found," he said, "it can seem to me that he knows wisdom." "So reason discloses to you," I said, "that the wise man is one who is not ignorant of wisdom; and rightly. For it was not fitting that it should seem otherwise to you."

"So now I ask whether a wise man can be found. For if he can, he can also know wisdom, and the whole question between us is settled. But if you say he cannot, the question will no longer be whether the wise man knows anything, but whether anyone can be wise. Once that is set down, we will have to leave the Academics and turn this question over with you diligently and carefully, as far as we are able. For they held, or rather it seemed to them, both that a man can be wise and yet that knowledge cannot befall a man (and so they affirmed that the wise man knows nothing); whereas it seems to you that he knows wisdom, which is certainly not knowing nothing. At the same time we agreed, as all the ancients and the Academics themselves also agreed, that no one can know false things. So it now remains that you either contend that wisdom is nothing, or admit that the Academics describe a wise man such as reason does not contain, and, leaving them aside, agree that we should inquire whether such wisdom as reason discloses can come to man. For we neither ought nor can rightly call anything else wisdom."

"Even if I grant," he said, "what I see you are striving hard for, that wisdom is known by the wise man and that something has been discovered between us that the wise man can perceive, still it does not at all appear to me that the whole aim of the Academics has been overthrown. For I foresee that no small ground of defense is left to them, and that their suspension of assent has not been cut off, since they cannot lack for their cause the very thing by which you think them convicted. For they will say that nothing is grasped and no assent is to be given to anything, to such a degree that even this view about nothing being perceived, of which they had probably persuaded themselves through almost their whole life up to your time, has now been wrested from them by this conclusion; so that, whether the force of this argument is invincible because of the slowness of my wit or truly by its own strength, it cannot move them from their position, since they can still boldly affirm that not even now should one assent to anything. For perhaps at some time something might be found against this too, by themselves or by someone, that would be said sharply and probably; and their image and, as it were, a mirror should be seen in that Proteus who is said to be usually caught where he was least caught, and whose pursuers never held him as the same unless some divinity pointed him out. May that divinity be present and deign to show us that truth which is our great concern! Then I too will confess that they are overcome, even if they are unwilling, which I hardly think."

"Very well," I said; "I wished for nothing more. For see, please, how many and how great goods have come to me. The first is that the Academics are now said to be so convicted that nothing is left them for defense except what cannot happen. For who could in any way understand or believe that one who has been defeated boasts that he is the victor by the very thing by which he was defeated? Next, if any conflict with them still remains, it is not because they say that nothing can be known, but because they contend that one should assent to nothing. So now we are in agreement. For it seems to them, as to me, that the wise man knows wisdom. But they advise that he should still refrain from assent. For they say only that it seems so to them, but that they in no way know it; as though I professed that I know! I too say that it seems so to me; for I am a fool, as they are too, if they do not know wisdom. But I think we ought to approve something, namely the truth. I consult them about this, whether they deny it, that is, whether they hold that one should not assent to the truth. They will never say that, but they will assert that it is not found. So here too they hold me in some measure as their ally, since both of us are not displeased with, indeed necessarily hold, that one should assent to the truth. 'But who will show it?' they say. There I will not trouble to contend with them; it is enough for me that it is no longer probable that the wise man knows nothing, unless they are to be forced to say a most absurd thing: either that wisdom is nothing or that the wise man does not know wisdom."

"But who can show the truth has been said by you, Alypius, from whom I must take great pains not to disagree. For you said, briefly and also piously, that only some divinity can show man what truth is. So in this conversation of ours I have heard nothing more gladly, nothing weightier, nothing more probable, and, if that divinity is present, as I trust, nothing truer. For that Proteus too (with what loftiness of mind you recalled him, with what aim toward the best kind of philosophy!), that Proteus, so that you young men may see that poets are not to be wholly despised by philosophy, is brought in as an image of truth. Of truth, I say, Proteus displays and bears the character in poems, which no one can hold if, deceived by false images, he loosens or lets go the knots of his grasp. For there are those images which, through our familiarity with bodily things, by means of these senses that we use for the necessities of this life, try to deceive and mock us even when the truth is held and as it were in our hands. This, then, is the third good that has befallen me, and I cannot find how highly to value it. For my most intimate friend agrees with me not only about the probability of human life but also about religion itself; which is the clearest sign of a true friend, since friendship has been most rightly and holily defined as agreement in things human and divine with goodwill and love."

"Still, so that the arguments of the Academics may not seem to spread some fog, or that we may not seem to resist proudly the authority of most learned men, among whom Tully above all cannot fail to move us, I will first, if you please, argue a few things against those points by which those disputations seem to oppose the truth; then I will show, as it seems to me, what reason the Academics had for hiding their opinion. So, Alypius, although I see you wholly on my side, still take up their part a little and answer me." "Since you have set out today," he said, "under good auspices, as they say, I will not hinder your complete victory, and I will try to take up that part more securely because it is imposed by you; but only if you prefer, if it suits you, to turn what you indicate you will do by questions into a continuous speech, so that I am not tortured by you with those little darts as a captive, like a stubborn opponent, which is very far from your humanity."

And I, noticing that the others too were waiting for this, began as though with another introduction: "I will humor you; and although, after that labor of the school of rhetoric, I had presumed I would rest somewhat in this light armor, doing these things by questioning rather than by speaking, yet, because we are very few, so that I need not shout against my health, and because I wanted this pen, for the sake of the same health, to be the charioteer and governor of my speech, so that I am not carried away by my mind more excitedly than care of the body requires: hear in a continuous speech, as you wish, what I think. But first let us see what sort of thing it is in which the lovers of the Academics are wont to boast too much. For there is in the books of Cicero which he wrote in defense of this cause a certain passage seasoned, as it seems to me, with wonderful wit, but, as it seems to some, also strengthened by firmness. It is very hard for what is said there not to move someone: that the second place is given to the Academic wise man by all those of the other schools who seem to themselves wise, since each must claim the first place for himself; from which it can probably be concluded that he is rightly first by his own judgment who is second by the judgment of all the others."

"For suppose, for example, that a Stoic wise man is present; for it was above all against them that the genius of the Academics blazed up. So if Zeno or Chrysippus is asked who is wise, he will answer that it is the one he himself has described. Against him Epicurus or some other opponent will deny it and contend that rather his own most expert fowler of pleasures is wise. Then to the quarrel! Zeno shouts and the whole Porch is in uproar that man is born for nothing but virtue; that it draws minds to itself by its own splendor, with no advantage at all set before them from outside and no reward, as it were, playing the pimp; and that the pleasure of Epicurus is common only to cattle among themselves, into whose company it is impious to thrust both man and the wise man. Against him that man, calling to his aid from his little gardens, like Liber, a crowd of drunkards, who still look for someone to tear apart, raving, with unkempt nails and rough mouths, exaggerating the name of pleasure, its sweetness, its quiet, with the people as witness, presses on keenly, so that no one seems able to be happy without it. If the Academic runs into their brawl, he will hear both dragging him to their side; but if he gives way to these or to those, he will be shouted at by those he deserts as mad, ignorant, and rash. So, when he has carefully put his ear now this way, now that, and is asked what he thinks, he will say he is in doubt. Ask the Stoic now who is better: Epicurus, who shouts that he is raving, or the Academic, who declares that he must still deliberate about so great a matter? No one doubts that the Academic will be preferred. Turn again to the other and ask whom he loves more: Zeno, by whom he is called a beast, or Arcesilas, from whom he hears, 'You perhaps speak the truth, but I will inquire more carefully'? Is it not clear that the whole Porch seems mad to Epicurus, and the Academics, by comparison with them, modest and cautious men? So, in much the same way about almost all the schools, Cicero most copiously offers his readers a very delightful spectacle, as it were, showing that there is none of them who, when he has given himself the first place, as he must, does not say that he gives the second to one whom he sees not opposing but doubting. In this I will not oppose anything or take away any glory from them."

"Let it seem to anyone at all that Cicero was not joking here but wanted to pursue and collect empty and windy things, which would be foreign even to the levity of the little Greeks themselves. For what prevents me, if I wish to resist this vanity, from easily showing how much less evil it is to be untaught than unteachable? From this it follows that, when that boastful little Academic has given himself as a pupil, as it were, to each of them, and no one has been able to persuade him of what he thinks he knows, he is afterwards laughed at by their great agreement. For each will now judge that any other of his opponents has learned nothing, but this one can learn nothing. As a result he will be thrown out of the schools of all of them, not with the cane, which would be more disgraceful than painful, but with the clubs and sticks of those men in cloaks. For it will be no great business to demand, as it were, the Herculean help of the Cynics against a common plague. But if one wanted to contend with them for that most worthless glory (which should be granted with easier pardon to me, who am already doing philosophy but not yet wise), what will they have to refute? For see, let us suppose that I and an Academic have rushed into those disputes of the philosophers; let them all be present and set out their opinions briefly, as time allows. Let Carneades be asked what he thinks. He will say he is in doubt. So each will prefer him to the rest, and therefore all to all: a great and lofty glory, no doubt! Who would not want to imitate him? So I too, when asked, will answer the same; the praise will be equal. The wise man, then, rejoices in a glory in which the fool is made equal to him. What if the fool even easily surpasses him? Does shame do nothing? For I will hold back that Academic as he is already leaving the court, since folly is greedier for this kind of victory. So, holding him back, I will reveal to the judges what they do not know and say: 'Excellent men, I have this in common with this man, that he doubts which of you follows the truth. But we also have our own opinions, on which I ask you to judge. For it is uncertain to me, though I have heard your doctrines, where the truth is, but only because I do not know which of you is wise. But this man denies that even the wise man knows anything, not even the very wisdom from which he is called wise.' Who does not see whose the palm is? For if my opponent says this, I will win in glory; but if, blushing, he confesses that the wise man knows wisdom, I will win in opinion."

"But let us now withdraw from this litigious court to some place where no crowd may trouble us, and would that it were to the very school of Plato, which is said to have taken its name from being withdrawn from the people. Here let us discuss, as far as we can between ourselves, not glory, which is a light and childish thing, but life itself and some hope of a happy mind. The Academics deny that anything can be known. Why did you hold this, most studious and learned men? 'The definition of Zeno warned us,' they say. Why, I ask? For if it is true, one who knows even that definition knows something true; if false, it should not have disturbed the most steadfast men. But let us see what Zeno says: that an impression can be grasped and perceived which is such that it does not have marks in common with the false. Did this move you, Platonist, to draw students back from the hope of learning with all your strength, so that, aided even by a certain sluggishness of mind, they should groaningly abandon the whole business of philosophy?"

"But how could it fail to move him greatly, if nothing of the kind can be found, and nothing can be perceived except what is of that kind? If this is so, it should rather have been said that wisdom cannot befall man than that the wise man does not know why he lives, does not know how he lives, does not know whether he lives, and finally (nothing more perverse, crazy, and mad can be said) that he is at once wise and ignorant of wisdom. For which is harsher: that a man cannot be wise, or that the wise man does not know wisdom? There is nothing to dispute here, if the matter thus set out is not enough for judging. But perhaps if that were said, men would be wholly turned away from philosophy; whereas now they are to be lured by the most sweet and holy name of wisdom, so that, having worn out their life and learned nothing, they may afterwards pursue you with the greatest curses, whom they followed, having at least left the pleasures of the body, into the torments of the mind."

"But let us see by whom they would rather be frightened away from philosophy: by one who says, 'Listen, friend: philosophy is called not wisdom itself but the pursuit of wisdom; if you devote yourself to it, you will not indeed be wise while you live here (for wisdom is with God and cannot come to man); but when you have exercised and cleansed yourself enough by such a pursuit, your mind will easily enjoy it after this life, that is, when you have ceased to be a man'; or by one who says, 'Come, mortals, to philosophy! Great is the fruit here; for what is dearer to man than wisdom? Come, then, so that you may be wise and not know wisdom!' 'I will not say it that way,' he says. That is deception; for nothing else will be found with you. So it happens that if you say this they flee you as a madman; if you bring them to it some other way, you make them mad. But let us believe that men are equally unwilling to do philosophy because of either view. If Zeno's definition compelled one to say something harmful to philosophy, my good man, should a man have been told what would grieve him, or what would make him laugh at you?"

"Still, let us discuss, as far as we fools can, what Zeno defined. He says that that impression can be grasped which appears in such a way that what is false could not appear so. It is clear that nothing else comes into perception. 'I too see this,' says Arcesilas, 'and by this very thing I teach that nothing is perceived; for nothing of that kind can be found.' Perhaps not by you and by other fools; but why not by the wise man? Although I think nothing could be answered even to a fool, if he tells you to refute this very definition of Zeno with that memorable sharpness of yours and to show that it too can be false. If you cannot, you have this very definition, which you may perceive. But if you refute it, you have nothing to keep you from perceiving. I do not see that it can be refuted, and I judge it altogether most true. So, since I know it, although I am a fool, I know something. But suppose it yields to your cunning. I will use a most secure dilemma. Either it is true or false. If true, I hold it well; if false, something can be perceived even if it has marks in common with the false. 'How can it?' he says. Most truly, then, did Zeno define it, and whoever agreed with him even in this did not err. Or shall we think a definition of small praise and sincerity which, against those who were going to say much against perception, when it marked out what sort of thing can be perceived, showed itself to be such? So it is both definition and example of things that can be grasped. 'Whether it is itself true,' he says, 'I do not know; but because it is probable, I follow it and show that there is nothing such as it expressed could be grasped.' You show it, perhaps, except for itself, and you see, I think, what follows. And even if we are uncertain about it, knowledge does not desert us so; for we know that it is either true or false; so we do not know nothing. Although it will never make me ungrateful: I judge that definition altogether most true. For either false things too can be perceived, which the Academics fear greatly and which is truly absurd, or not even those things can be perceived which are most like false ones; hence that definition is true. But now let us look at the rest."

"Although these things, unless I am mistaken, may be enough for victory, they are perhaps not enough for the full satisfaction of victory. There are two things said by the Academics against which we have resolved to come, as far as we are able: that nothing can be perceived, and that one ought to assent to nothing. About assent later; now we will say a few other things about perception. Do you say that absolutely nothing can be grasped? Here Carneades woke up (for none of them slept less deeply than he) and looked around at the evidence of things. And so, speaking to himself, I believe, as people do, he says: 'So, Carneades, are you going to say that you do not know whether you are a man or an ant? Or will Chrysippus triumph over you? Let us say that we do not know the things inquired into among philosophers, and that the rest do not concern us; so that, if I stumble in the daily and common light, I may appeal to those darknesses of the unskilled, where only certain divine eyes see, which, even if they see me trembling and falling, cannot betray me to the blind, especially to the arrogant and those ashamed to be taught anything.' Splendidly indeed, O Greek industry, you go forth girded and ready; but you do not consider that that definition is both the discovery of a philosopher and fixed and founded in the entrance of philosophy. If you try to cut it down, the axe will rebound onto your legs; for if it is shaken, not only can something be perceived, but even what is most like the false can, if you do not dare to overthrow it. For it is your hiding place, from which you burst out fiercely on the unwary who want to pass by, and leap out; some Hercules will strangle you in your cave like a half-man and crush you under its own masses, teaching that there is something in philosophy which you cannot make uncertain as being like the false. Certainly I was hurrying on to other things; whoever presses this point greatly insults you yourself, Carneades, for he thinks you can be overcome by me, even dead, anywhere or from any position. But if he does not think so, he is merciless, compelling me to abandon my defenses here and there and fight with you in the open field; when I had begun to go down into it, terrified by your name alone, I drew back my foot and hurled something from higher ground; whether it reached you or what it did, let those judge under whose scrutiny we fight. But why do I foolishly fear? If I remember rightly, you are dead, and Alypius no longer rightly fights for your tomb; God will easily help me against your shade."

"You say that nothing in philosophy can be perceived, and, to spread your speech far and wide, you seize on the quarrels and disagreements of the philosophers and think they supply you with weapons against them. For how shall we decide the dispute between Democritus and the earlier natural philosophers about one world or innumerable worlds, when agreement could not last even between him and his heir Epicurus? For that voluptuary, letting his atoms, his little handmaids as it were, that is, the little bodies which he joyfully embraces in the darkness, not keep their own path but swerve of their own accord here and there into others' bounds, squandered the whole inheritance even through quarrels. But this does not concern me at all. For if knowing any of these things pertains to wisdom, it cannot be hidden from the wise man; but if it is something else, the wise man knows that wisdom and despises these things. Yet I, who am still far even from the neighborhood of the wise man, know something in these physical matters. For I hold it certain that there is either one world or not one; and if not one, either a finite number or an infinite. Will Carneades say that this view is like a false one? Likewise I know that this world of ours is arranged as it is either by the nature of bodies or by some providence; and that it either always was and will be, or began to be and will by no means cease, or has no beginning in time but will have an end, or began to remain and will not remain forever; and I know innumerable physical things in this way. For these disjunctions are true, and no one can confuse them by any likeness to the false. 'But take one side,' says the Academic. I will not; for that is to say: 'Leave what you know, say what you do not know.' 'But the statement is left hanging.' Better that it hang than fall; surely it is complete; surely it can now be called either false or true. This I say I know. You, who do not deny that these things pertain to philosophy and assert that nothing of them can be known, show that I do not know them; say that these disjunctions are either false or have something in common with the false by which they cannot be distinguished at all."

"'How do you know,' he says, 'that this world exists, if the senses are deceived?' Your reasonings have never been able to refute the force of the senses so far as to convince us that nothing appears to us; nor have you ever dared to attempt this, but you have set yourselves vigorously to persuade us that a thing can be other than it appears. So this whole thing, whatever it is, which contains and nourishes us, this, I say, which appears to my eyes and is perceived by me to have earth and sky, or something like earth and something like sky, I call the world. If you say that nothing appears to me, I will never err. For he errs who rashly approves what appears to him. For you say that something false can appear to those perceiving; you do not say that nothing appears. Indeed, every ground of dispute will be removed, where you like to reign, if we not only know nothing but nothing even appears to us. But if you deny that this which appears to me is the world, you are making a controversy about a name, since I have said that this is what I call the world."

"'Even if you are asleep,' you will say, 'is that the world you see?' It has already been said: whatever appears to me as such, I call the world. But if you choose to call world only what appears to those awake or even to the sane, contend, if you can, that those who sleep and rave do not rave and sleep in the world. So I say this: this whole mass and fabric of bodies in which we are, whether sleeping or raving or waking or sane, is either one or not one. Explain how this statement can be false. For if I am asleep, it may be that I have said nothing; or if words have escaped the mouth of a sleeper, as happens, it may be that I have not said it here, not sitting thus, not with these listening; but that it is false cannot be. Nor do I say I have perceived that I am awake. For you can say that this could have appeared to me even when asleep, and so this can be most like the false. But if there are one and six worlds, it is clear that there are seven worlds, however I am affected, and I affirm without shamelessness that I know this. So teach that either this conjunction or those disjunctions above can be false through sleep or madness or the vanity of the senses, and if I remember them when I wake, I will concede that I am defeated. For I think it is already clear enough which things appear false through dreams and madness, namely those which pertain to the senses of the body; for that three times three is nine, and the square of intelligible numbers, must be true even if the human race is snoring. Although I see that many things can also be said for the senses themselves which we do not find refuted by the Academics. For I believe the senses are not to be accused either because raving men suffer false imaginations or because we see false things in dreams. For if they have reported true things to the waking and sane, it is nothing to them what the mind of one sleeping or insane invents for itself."

"It remains to ask whether, when the senses themselves report, they report the truth. Come, suppose some Epicurean says: 'I have no complaint to make about the senses; for it is unjust to demand of them more than they can do; and whatever the eyes can see, they see truly.' So is what they see of the oar in the water true? Entirely true. For since there is a cause why it should appear so, if the oar plunged in the water appeared straight, I would rather accuse my eyes of a false report. For they would not be seeing what ought to be seen when such causes exist. What need of many words? The same can be said of the movement of towers, of the feathers of birds, and of countless other things. 'Still I am deceived if I assent,' someone says. Do not assent more than to persuade yourself that it appears so to you, and there is no deception. For I do not see how the Academic refutes one who says: 'I know that this appears white to me; I know that my hearing is delighted by this; I know that this smells pleasant to me; I know that this tastes sweet to me; I know that this is cold to me.' 'Say rather whether the leaves of the wild olive, which the goat seeks so persistently, are bitter in themselves.' O shameless man! Is not the goat himself more modest? I do not know what they are to the animal, but to me they are bitter. What more do you ask? 'But perhaps there is some man too to whom they are not bitter.' Are you trying to be troublesome? Did I say they are bitter to everyone? I said to me, and I do not always affirm even this. For what if at different times, for different reasons, something is now felt sweet in the mouth, now bitter? I say this: that a man, when he tastes something, can swear in good faith that he knows it is pleasant to his palate, or the opposite, and that no Greek quibble can draw him away from this knowledge. For who would be so shameless as to say to me, while I am licking something with delight: 'Perhaps you are not tasting, but this is a dream'? Do I resist? But it would delight me even in dreams. So what I said I know is confused by no likeness of false things; and an Epicurean or the Cyrenaics may perhaps say many other things for the senses, against which I have not heard that anything was said by the Academics. But what is that to me? If they want to and can, let them cut these down, even with my approval. For whatever they argue against the senses does not hold against all philosophers. For there are those who admit that all these things which the mind receives through the sense of the body can produce opinion, but deny that they produce knowledge, which they hold is contained in the intelligence and lives in the mind, removed from the senses. And perhaps that wise man whom we seek is among their number. But of this another time. Now let us go on to the rest, which, because of what has already been said, we will explain in a few words, unless I am mistaken."

"For what does the sense of the body help or hinder one inquiring about morals? Unless indeed, for those very people who placed the highest true good of man in pleasure, the dove's neck or the uncertain voice or the weight heavy for a man that is light for camels, or six hundred other things, prevent them from saying that they know they are delighted by what delights them, or offended by what offends them; which I do not see can be refuted. Will these things move one who embraces the end of the good with the mind? Which of these do you choose? If you ask what I think, I judge that the highest good of man is in the mind. But now we are inquiring about knowledge. So ask the wise man, who cannot be ignorant of wisdom; but even I, slow and foolish as I am, may meanwhile know that the end of human good, in which the happy life dwells, either is nothing, or is in the mind, or in the body, or in both. Convince me, if you can, that I do not know this; which those very well-known reasonings of yours in no way do. And if you cannot (for you will not find anything false that it resembles), shall I hesitate to conclude that it rightly seems to me that the wise man knows whatever is true in philosophy, since I have come to know so many true things from it?"

"But perhaps he fears that he may choose the highest good while asleep. There is no danger; when he wakes, he will reject it if it displeases him, and keep it if it pleases. For who will rightly blame him because he saw something false in dreams? Or perhaps you will dread that, asleep, he may lose wisdom if he approves false things for true? Not even a sleeper dares dream this, that he should call a man wise when awake and deny it if he sleeps. These things can also be said of madness; but my speech hurries to other things. Still I do not leave these without a most secure conclusion. For either wisdom is lost through madness, and then he will no longer be the wise man whom you proclaim ignorant of the truth; or his knowledge remains in the intellect, even if the other part of the mind imagines, as in dreams, what it has received from the senses."

"There remains dialectic, which the wise man certainly knows well, and no one can know what is false. But if he does not know it, knowledge of it does not pertain to his wisdom, since he could be wise without it, and we inquire superfluously whether it is true or can be perceived. Here perhaps someone may say to me: 'You fool, you usually reveal what you know; or could you know nothing about dialectic?' Indeed I know more of it than of any other part of philosophy. For first, it taught me that all those propositions I used above are true. Then through it I know many other true things. But count how many they are, if you can: if there are four elements in the world, there are not five; if there is one sun, there are not two; one soul cannot both die and be immortal; a man cannot be at once happy and wretched; it is not both sunlight and night here; either we are now awake or asleep; either what I seem to see is a body or it is not a body. These and many others, which it would take very long to mention, I learned through it to be true, true in themselves however our senses may be. It taught me that if the antecedent part of any of the statements I just proposed as conditionals is assumed, it necessarily draws with it what is joined to it; and that those which I stated by incompatibility or disjunction have this nature, that when the others are removed, whether one or many, something remains that is confirmed by their removal. It taught me also that when the thing for which words are spoken is agreed, one should not contend about words; and that whoever does this, if he does it from ignorance, is to be taught; if from malice, abandoned; if he cannot be taught, warned to do something else rather than waste time and effort on superfluous things; if he does not obey, ignored. As for captious and fallacious little arguments, the rule is short: if they are brought in through wrong concessions, one must go back to what was conceded; if true and false clash in one conclusion, one must take from it what is understood and leave what cannot be explained; and if the measure of some things lies wholly hidden from man, knowledge of it is not to be sought. These things I have from dialectic, and many others which there is no need to mention; for I must not be ungrateful. But that wise man either neglects these things, or, if perfect dialectic is itself the knowledge of truth, he knows it in such a way that he starves to death, by contempt and without pity, that most beggarly quibble of theirs: 'If it is true, it is false; if it is false, it is true.' I think this is enough about perception, because when I begin to speak about assent, the whole case will turn on it again."

"Now, then, let us come to that part in which Alypius still seems to doubt, and first let us see what sort of thing it is that moves you so sharply and cautiously. For if this discovery of yours, by which we are forced to admit that it is much more probable that the wise man knows wisdom, shakes the opinion of the Academics, strengthened (as you said) by so many and such great reasons, by which they held that the wise man knows nothing, then assent must be withheld all the more. For by this very thing it is shown that nothing can be urged by arguments, however copious and subtle, which cannot be resisted no less keenly, or perhaps more keenly, from the opposite side, if wit is present. So it happens that when the Academic is defeated, he has won. O, would that he were defeated! He will never bring it about by any Pelasgian art that he leaves me at once defeated and victor. Certainly, let nothing else be found that can be said against these things, and I will freely profess myself defeated. For we are dealing not with winning glory but with finding the truth. It is enough for me to get over, in any way at all, that mass which opposes itself to those entering philosophy and, hiding darkness in some recesses, threatens that all philosophy is such and allows no hope that any light will be found in it. And I have nothing more to desire if it is now probable that the wise man knows something. For it seemed likely that he should withhold assent for no other reason than that it was likely that nothing can be grasped. When that is removed (for the wise man perceives at least wisdom itself, as is now granted), no reason will 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 please let us set such a spectacle before our eyes for a little, if we can: a quarrel of the wise man and wisdom. What else does wisdom say but that she is wisdom? But he on the other side says, 'I do not believe it.' Who says to wisdom, 'I do not believe that you are wisdom'? Who but the one with whom she could speak and in whom she deigned to dwell, namely the wise man? Go now and look for me to fight with the Academics; you have a new contest: the wise man and wisdom fight with each other. The wise man will not consent to wisdom. I wait with you without care. For who does not believe that wisdom is invincible? Still, let us fortify ourselves with a dilemma. Either in this contest the Academic will defeat wisdom and be defeated by me, because he will not be wise; or he will be overcome by her, and we will teach that the wise man consents to wisdom. So either the Academic is not wise, or the wise man will assent to something; unless perhaps 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 likely that even the perception of wisdom itself befalls the wise man, and there is no reason why he should not assent to what can be perceived, I see that what I wanted is likely, namely that the wise man will assent to wisdom. If you ask where he finds wisdom itself, I will answer: in himself. If you say 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, we will discuss this, in another conversation, not with the Academics but with you, whoever you are who think so. For when they dispute these things, they are surely disputing about the wise man. Cicero proclaims that he himself is a great holder of opinions, but that he is inquiring about the wise man. And if you young men do not yet know this, you have certainly read in the Hortensius: 'If, then, nothing is certain, and holding opinions does not befit the wise man, the wise man will never approve anything.' From this it is clear that in those disputations of theirs against which we strive, they are inquiring about the wise man."

"So I judge that wisdom is certain to the wise man, that is, that the wise man has perceived wisdom, and that for this reason he does not merely hold an opinion when he assents to wisdom; for he assents to that which, if he had not perceived it, he would not be wise. Nor do they affirm that one should not assent except to things that cannot be perceived. But wisdom is not nothing. Since, then, he both knows wisdom and assents to wisdom, the wise man neither knows nothing nor assents to nothing. What more do you want? Or are we inquiring something about that error which they say is wholly avoided if assent inclines the mind to nothing? For whoever approves, they say, not only a false thing but even a doubtful one, even if it is true, errs. But I find nothing that is not doubtful. 'But the wise man finds,' as we were saying, 'wisdom itself.'"

"But perhaps you want me to leave this point now. The most secure positions are not easily abandoned; we are dealing with very cunning men. Still, I will humor you. But what shall I say here? What? What indeed? That old saying, of course, must be said, to which they too have something to say. For what shall I do, whom you are pushing out of my camp? Shall I implore the help of the learned, with whom, if I cannot win, it will perhaps be less shameful to be defeated? So I will hurl, with what strength I can, a weapon already smoky and rough but, unless I am mistaken, very strong: 'He who approves nothing does nothing.' O rustic fellow! And where is the probable? Where is the truthlike? This is what you wanted. Do you hear how the Greek shields resound? What was very strong has been caught, but with what a hand we threw it! And my supporters suggest nothing more powerful to me, nor, as I see, have we inflicted any wound. I will turn to what the country house and the field supply; greater things weigh me down rather than equip me."

"For when I had long been thinking at leisure in this countryside how this probable or truthlike could defend our actions from error, at first it seemed to me, as it used to seem when I was selling these wares, nicely covered and fortified; then, when I looked over the whole more carefully, I thought I saw one approach by which error could rush in upon those who feel secure. For I think that not only he errs who follows a false road, but also he who does not follow the true one. Let us suppose two travelers heading for one place, one of whom has resolved to believe no one, while the other is too credulous. They come to a fork in the road. Here the credulous one says to a shepherd who was there, or to some countryman: 'Good day, honest fellow! Tell me, please, which is the right way to that place.' The answer comes: 'If you go this way, you will not go wrong at all.' And he says to his companion: 'He speaks the truth; let us go this way.' The very cautious man laughs and wittily mocks so quick an assent, and meanwhile, as the other goes off, he stays fixed at the fork. And now it begins to seem shameful to linger, when behold, from the other branch of the road a fine, elegant gentleman on horseback appears and begins to approach. This man is glad, and when he has arrived and been greeted, tells him his purpose, asks the way, and even tells him why he stayed behind, preferring him to the shepherd so as to make him more kindly. But by chance that man was a tramp, one of those whom the common people now call samardoci. The scoundrel kept to his habit even without pay. 'Go this way,' he says; 'for I come from there.' He deceived him and went off. But when would this man be deceived? 'For I do not approve this direction as true,' he says, 'but because it is truthlike; and to be idle here is neither honorable nor useful; I will go this way.' Meanwhile the one who erred by assenting, thinking so quickly that the shepherd's words were true, was already refreshing himself in the place they were heading for; while this one, not erring, since he follows the probable, wandered around some woods or other and did not even find anyone to whom the place he had set out for was known. I will tell you truly: when I thought of these things I could not keep from laughing that, by the words of the Academics, it somehow comes about that the one who holds the true road, even by chance, errs, while the one who was led probably through pathless mountains and did not find the region he sought does not seem to err. For even if I rightly condemn rash assent, it is easier to say that both err than that this one does not. From here, more watchful against these words, I began to consider men's very deeds and morals. Then indeed so many and such deadly things against them came to my mind that I no longer laughed, but was partly angry and partly grieved that most learned and sharp men had fallen into such crimes and disgraces of opinion."

"Certainly not everyone who errs perhaps sins; yet everyone who sins is admitted either to err or to do something worse. What, then, if some young man hears them saying: 'It is shameful to err, and so we ought to consent to nothing; but still, when each does what seems probable to him, he neither sins nor errs; let him only remember that whatever presents itself to the mind or the senses is not to be approved as true': hearing this, will the young man lay snares for the chastity of another man's wife? I consult you, you, Marcus Tullius; we are dealing with the morals and life of young men, for whose upbringing and instruction all those writings of yours kept watch. What else will you say than that it is not probable to you that the young man should do this? But it is probable to him. For if we live by another's probable, you too ought not to have governed the state, because it seemed to Epicurus that this should not be done. So that young man will commit adultery with another's wife. If he is caught, where will he find you to defend him? And even if he finds you, what will you say? You will surely deny it. What if it is so clear that you would deny it in vain? No doubt you want to persuade them, as if in the gymnasium at Cumae or even at Naples, that he has not sinned at all, indeed has not even erred. For he did not persuade himself as true that adultery should be committed; it presented itself as probable, he followed it, he did it; or perhaps he did not do it, but it seemed to him that he did. And that husband, a fool, upsets everything with lawsuits, crying out for the chastity of his wife, with whom he is perhaps now sleeping and does not know it. If the judges understand this, they will either ignore the Academics and punish it as a most real crime, or, obeying the same Academics, will condemn the man truthlikely and probably, so that the advocate will no longer know at all what to do. For he will have no one to be angry with, since all will say they have not erred at all, since, without assenting, they did what seemed probable. So he will lay aside the role of advocate and take up that of a consoling philosopher; thus he will easily persuade the young man, who has already made so much progress in the Academy, to think that he has been condemned as if in a dream. But you think I am joking. I may swear by every divinity that I do not know at all how that man sinned, if whoever does what seems probable does not sin; unless perhaps they say that to err is wholly one thing and to sin another, and that they acted by those precepts so that we should not err, but thought sinning no great matter."

"I say nothing of murders, parricides, sacrileges, and absolutely all the disgraces and crimes that can be done or thought of, which are defended in a few words, and, what is worse, before the wisest judges: 'I consented to nothing and so I did not err; but how could I not do what seemed probable?' Those who do not think such things can be urged probably should read the speech of Catiline by which he urged the parricide of his country, in which alone all crimes are contained. And who does not laugh at this? They themselves say that in acting they follow nothing but the probable, and they seek the truth with great effort, though it is probable to them that it cannot be found. O wonderful monster! But let us leave this; it concerns us less, less the hazard of our life, less the danger to our fortunes. This is the deadly thing, this the dreadful thing, this what every good man must fear: that if this reasoning is probable, anyone may commit every impiety, when it has seemed probable to him that it should be done, provided only that he assents to nothing as true, without blame not only of crime but even of error. What then? Did they not see this? On the contrary, they saw it most shrewdly and wisely; nor would I in any way claim so much for myself as to follow Marcus Tullius in any respect in industry, vigilance, talent, or learning. Yet if, when he asserted that man can know nothing, only this were said to him: 'I know that it seems so to me,' he would have nothing with which to refute it."

"Why, then, did such great men choose to carry on perpetual and stubborn contentions so that knowledge of truth should seem to befall no one? Hear now a little more attentively, not what I know, but what I think; for I was keeping this for the end, to explain, if I could, what the whole plan of the Academics seems to me to have been. Plato, the wisest and most learned man of his time, who spoke in such a way that whatever he said became great, and said such things that, however he said them, they did not become small, is said after the death of Socrates his master, whom he had loved singularly, to have learned much also from the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras, not content with Greek philosophy, which was then either almost nothing or certainly very hidden, after he had been moved by the disputations of a certain Pherecydes of Syros to believe that the mind is immortal, had heard many wise men, traveling far and wide. So Plato, adding to the Socratic charm and subtlety which he had in morals the knowledge of natural and divine things which he had carefully received from those I have mentioned, and joining to them dialectic as the shaper and judge of those parts, which either is wisdom itself or without which wisdom cannot exist at all, is said to have composed the perfect discipline of philosophy, about which there is no time to discourse now. It is enough for my purpose that Plato held that there are two worlds: one intelligible, in which truth itself dwells, and this sensible one, which it is clear we perceive by sight and touch; so that the former is true, the latter like the true and made in its image; and therefore truth concerning the former is, as it were, polished and made clear in the soul that knows itself, while concerning the latter not knowledge but opinion can be produced in the minds of fools; and that whatever was done in this world by those virtues which he called civic, similar to other, true virtues which were unknown except to a few wise men, could be called only truthlike."

"These and other things of this kind seem to me to have been preserved, as far as they could be, among his successors and guarded as mysteries. For these things are not easily perceived except by those who, cleansing themselves from all vices, have claimed for themselves a different way of life, more than human; and whoever, knowing them, should want to teach them to any men at all sins gravely. So I suspect that Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, when he had come, after hearing and believing certain things, to the school left by Plato, which Polemo then held, was regarded with suspicion and did not seem one to whom those Platonic and as it were sacrosanct doctrines should easily be revealed and entrusted until he had unlearned what he had received from others and brought into that school. Polemo dies; Arcesilas succeeds him, a fellow pupil of Zeno, but under Polemo's teaching. Therefore, since Zeno was delighted with a certain opinion of his own about the world and above all about the soul, for whose sake true philosophy keeps watch, saying that it is mortal and that there is nothing beyond this sensible world and nothing is done in it except by body (for he thought even God himself was fire), it seems to me that Arcesilas, when that evil was spreading widely, most wisely and usefully hid the opinion of the Academy completely and buried it like gold to be found by posterity at some time. So, since the crowd is more inclined to rush into false opinions, and, from familiarity with bodies, it is very easily but harmfully believed that everything is bodily, this very sharp and very humane man undertook rather to unteach those whom he suffered to have been badly taught than to teach those whom he did not think teachable. From this were born all the things attributed to the New Academy, because the ancients had no need of them."

"But if Zeno had at some time woken up and seen both that nothing can be grasped except such as he himself defined and that nothing of that kind can be found in bodies, to which he attributed everything, this kind of disputation, which had blazed up from great necessity, would long ago have been entirely extinguished. But Zeno, deceived by an image of constancy, as it seemed to the Academics themselves and as it also seems to me, was stubborn, and that pernicious belief in bodies lived on in whatever way it could down to Chrysippus, who (for he was very able) gave it great strength to spread more widely, had not Carneades, sharper and more watchful than the others before him, resisted on that side so well that I wonder that opinion had any strength even afterward. For Carneades first laid aside that shamelessness, as it were, of quibbling, by which he saw Arcesilas had been not a little discredited, so as not to seem to want to speak against everything for show; instead he proposed to himself specifically to tear down and overthrow the Stoics and Chrysippus."

"Then, when he was pressed on every side with the charge that if he assented to nothing the wise man would do nothing (O wonderful man, and yet not wonderful, for he flowed from the very springs of Plato!), he wisely noted what sort of actions they approved, and, seeing them to be like some true ones, he called what one should follow in action in this world the truthlike. For he knew skillfully, and hid prudently, what it was like; and he also called it the probable. For whoever looks at the original approves well of the image. For how does the wise man approve, or how does he follow what is like the truth, when he does not know what the truth itself is? So they knew and approved false things, in which they noticed a praiseworthy imitation of true things. But since it was neither lawful nor easy to show this to the profane, as it were, they left to posterity, and to those they could at that time, a kind of sign of their opinion; while those good dialecticians, mocking and laughing, they forbade to raise a question about words. For these reasons Carneades is also said to have been the founder and author of the Third Academy."

"Then this conflict lasted down to our Tully, already plainly wounded and about to breathe its last breath into Latin literature. For nothing seems to me more inflated than to say so many things so copiously and ornately while not thinking so. Yet by these winds that straw Platonist Antiochus was, as it seems to me, sufficiently scattered and dispersed. For the herds of the Epicureans set up their sunny stables in the minds of pleasure-loving peoples. Antiochus was a hearer of Philo, a man, as I think, most circumspect, who had already begun as it were to open the gates to the retreating enemy and to call the Academy back to the authority and laws of Plato (although Metrodorus too had tried to do this earlier, who is said to have been the first to admit that the Academics did not hold directly that nothing can be grasped, but had necessarily taken up such weapons against the Stoics). So Antiochus, as I had begun to say, having heard Philo the Academic and Mnesarchus the Stoic, had crept into the Old Academy, as though it were empty of defenders and secure with no enemy, like an ally and citizen, bringing in some evil from the ashes of the Stoics that would violate the sanctuaries of Plato. But Philo, taking up those weapons again, resisted him until he died, and our Tully crushed all his remnants, unable while he lived to bear that anything he had loved should be shaken or contaminated. So, not long after those times, when all obstinacy and stubbornness had died away, that face of Plato, which is the most purified and bright in philosophy, shone out, the clouds of error being parted, above all in Plotinus, a Platonist philosopher judged so like him that one would think they had lived together, but there is so much time between them that one must think Plato lived again in him."

"So now we see hardly any philosophers but Cynics, Peripatetics, or Platonists; the Cynics because a certain freedom and license of life delights them. But as to learning and doctrine and the morals by which the soul is cared for, since there have not been lacking very sharp and skillful men who taught in their disputations that Aristotle and Plato agree with each other in such a way that they seem to disagree only to the unskilled and less attentive, there has been distilled, I think, over many centuries and many contentions, one discipline of the truest philosophy. For this is not the philosophy of this world, which our sacred rites most rightly detest, but of another, intelligible world. To it this most subtle reasoning would never call back souls blinded by the manifold darkness of error and smeared with the deepest filth from the body, had not the most high God, out of a certain clemency toward the people, bent and lowered the authority of the divine intellect even to a human body itself; roused not only by its precepts but also by its deeds, souls have been able to return to themselves and to recover their homeland even without the contest of disputations."

"This is what I have meanwhile persuaded myself, probably, as I could, about the Academics. If it is false, it is nothing to me, for whom it is enough that I no longer think that truth cannot be found by man. But whoever thinks the Academics held this, let him hear Cicero himself. For he says that they had the custom of hiding their opinion and of revealing it to no one except those who had lived with them right up to old age. What it was, God knows; but I think it was Plato's. But that you may grasp briefly my whole purpose: whatever human wisdom may be, I see that I have not yet perceived it. But since I am in my thirty-third year, I do not think I should despair of attaining it someday. Despising all the other things that mortals think good, I have resolved to devote myself to searching for it. And since the reasonings of the Academics deterred me not lightly from this task, I am, I think, sufficiently fortified against them by this discussion. Now no one doubts that we are impelled to learn by a twofold weight, of authority and of reason. For me, then, it is certain that I will never depart at all from the authority of Christ; for I find none stronger. But as for what must be pursued by the most subtle reason (for I am now so disposed that I long impatiently to grasp what truth is not only by believing but also by understanding), I trust that I shall meanwhile find among the Platonists what is not opposed to our sacred teaching."

When they saw that I had finished speaking, although it was already night and something had even been written after a lamp was brought in, those young men still waited most intently to see whether Alypius would promise to answer, even on another day. Then he said: "I am ready to affirm that nothing has ever turned out so much to my liking as that I leave today's discussion defeated. Nor do I think this joy should be mine alone. So I will share it with you, my fellow contestants, or rather our judges, since perhaps the Academics themselves also wished to be defeated by their posterity in this way. For what could be seen or shown more delightful to us than this charm of speech, more weighed than this seriousness of thought, more ready than this goodwill, more skilled than this learning? I can by no means worthily admire how wittily harsh things, how bravely desperate things, how moderately things proved, how lucidly obscure things have been treated. So now, my companions, turn your expectation, by which you were challenging me to answer, with a surer hope to learning with me. We have a leader who will lead us, God now showing the way, into the very secrets of truth."

Here, as they showed by their faces, with a kind of boyish eagerness, 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's constancy and fear nothing from him, so that you too may thank me, I equip you against him who has disappointed the great intensity of your expectation. Read the Academics, and when you find there Cicero, victor (what could be easier?) in these trifles, let him be compelled by you to defend this conversation of ours against those invincible arguments. This hard reward, Alypius, I give you in return for your false praise of me." When they had laughed at this, we brought to an end so great a contest (whether most firmly I do not know), but more modestly and more quickly than I had hoped.