how much less that Carneades, against whom, moved by I know not what youthful or childish levity, you thought that curses rather than any weapon should be hurled. For to him indeed, for the strengthening of his opinion — which was always founded only so far as the probable — this will meanwhile easily suffice against you: namely, that we are placed far from the discovery of truth, so that you yourself can be a great proof of it to yourself, you who were so moved from your ground by one little question that you were utterly ignorant where you ought to stand. But let us defer these things, and that knowledge of yours which you confessed a little while ago was impressed upon you concerning this tree, to another time. For although you have already chosen another side, still you must be diligently taught what I said a little before. We had not yet, as I think,
advanced into that question in which it is asked whether truth can be found; but I thought only that other point should be laid down in the very vestibule of my defense — the point at which I had seen you weary and prostrate — namely, that we need not inquire whether it should be called truth-like, or probable, or by some other name, which the Academics say suffices them. For if you now seem to yourself the best finder of truth, it is nothing to me. Afterward, if you are not ungrateful for this patronage of mine, you will perhaps teach me the same things. Here, when Licentius, out of modesty, dreaded Alypius' onset, I said: You have preferred, Alypius, to say anything rather than how we are to dispute with these men who know not how to speak. — And he:
Since it has long been known both to me and to all, and now by your own profession you sufficiently indicate that you are skilled in speaking, I should like you to unfold, first, the usefulness of this inquiry of his. Which either is superfluous, as I think — and to answer it is far more superfluous still — or, if it shall have seemed advantageous, and cannot be unfolded by me, I would obtain from you by entreaty that you not be reluctant to fulfill the office of a teacher. — You remember, I said, that yesterday I promised I would treat afterward of those terms. And now yonder sun warns me that I should gather back into their boxes the playthings I set before the boys, especially since I now set them out rather for adorning than for selling.
Now, before the darkness — which is wont to be the patroness of the Academics — seizes our pen, I wish it to stand most fully established among us today, to what question we must rise in the morning to unfold. So answer, I pray: does it seem to you that the Academics held a fixed opinion about truth and were unwilling rashly to betray it to minds unknown to them or unpurified; or did they truly think as their disputations hold themselves out to be? Then he: What their intention was, he said, I shall not rashly affirm. For as far as can be gathered from their books, you know better in what words they are wont to bring forth 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 concerning the Academics — that I think it cannot be found; and this not only by that opinion of mine, ingrained, as you have almost always noticed, but also by the authority of great and more excellent philosophers, to whom, whether it be our weakness or their sagacity, we offer our necks; for beyond them it must, somehow, be believed that nothing further can now be found. — This, I said, is what I wished. For I feared that, since to you too it seemed as it does to me, our disputation might remain crippled, there being no one to compel the matter from the other side to come to grips, so that it might be diligently handled as much as we are able.
And so, if that had happened, I was prepared to ask you to take up the Academics' part in such a way that they should seem to you not only to have disputed but also to have held the view that the truth cannot be comprehended. It is asked, then, between us whether, by their arguments, it is probable that nothing can be perceived and that assent should be given to no thing. If you make this good, I shall yield gladly; but if I can demonstrate that it is far more probable both that the wise man can arrive at truth and that assent is not always to be withheld, you will have, I think, no reason not to allow yourself to cross over to my opinion. — And when this had pleased him and those who were present, now overshadowed by the evening, we returned home. BOOK THREE.
When, after that discourse which the second book contains, we had on another day sat down in the baths — for the day was too gloomy for it to be pleasant to go down to the meadow — I began thus: I judge that you have now sufficiently noticed on what matter the question to be discussed among us has been set. But before I come to my part, which pertains to unfolding it, I pray you willingly to hear a few things — not foreign to the matter — concerning our hope, our life, and our purpose. I judge our business to be not slight or superfluous, but necessary and supreme: to seek truth with great effort. On this it is agreed between me and Alypius.
For both the other philosophers thought that their wise man had found it, and the Academics professed that it must be sought by their wise man with the utmost endeavor, and that he pursues this diligently; but since it either lay buried and hidden or, being confused, did not stand out, he follows, for the conduct of life, that which occurs to him as probable and truth-like. This too was settled by your earlier debate. For when one of you asserted that a man is made blessed by the truth found, and the other only by the truth diligently sought, there is no doubt to any of us that nothing is to be preferred by us to this business. Wherefore how, I pray, do we seem to you to have passed yesterday? To you indeed it was permitted to live amid your studies.
For both you, Trygetius, delighted yourself with the songs of Virgil, and Licentius gave himself leisure for composing verses, with love of which he has been so smitten that on his account chiefly I thought this discourse must be brought in — a discourse whereby philosophy (for now is the time) may claim and vindicate to itself in his soul the greater part, not only more than poetry, but than any other discipline whatever. But I pray you, did you not pity us, when the day before we had gone to bed in such a way that we should rise only for the deferred question and for utterly nothing else — because such great domestic affairs, necessarily to be dispatched, arose that, wholly taken up with these, we could scarcely breathe upon our own selves in the last two hours of the day? Wherefore it has always been my opinion that the man already wise has need of nothing;
but that, in order to become wise, fortune is most necessary — unless Alypius thinks otherwise. Then he: How much right you assign to fortune, he said, I do not yet well know. For if you judge that, in order to despise fortune, fortune itself is needed, I too give myself to you as companion in this opinion. But if you grant to fortune nothing other than those things which cannot be supplied to the body's need except by fortune's own consent, I do not think so. For either it is permitted to one not yet wise, though desirous of wisdom — even with fortune reluctant and unwilling — to take up those things which we confess necessary to life; or it must be granted that fortune dominates even in the whole life of the wise man, since even the wise man himself cannot be free from need of those things necessary to the body.
You say, then, I said, that fortune is necessary to the one zealous for wisdom, but you deny it of the wise man. — It is not amiss to repeat the same things, he said. And so now I too ask you: do you reckon that fortune helps at all toward despising fortune itself? For if you think so, I say that the one desirous of wisdom greatly needs fortune. — I think so, I said, if indeed through it he will become such as can despise it. Nor is this absurd; for so also, when we are little, the breasts are necessary to us, whereby it is brought about that afterward we can live and be strong without them.
— Our opinions, he said, if the mind's conception is not discordant, plainly agree, as it appears to me — unless perhaps it seems to anyone that it must be argued that it is not the breasts themselves or fortune, whether of fortune or of the breasts, but some other thing that makes us their despisers. — It is no great thing, I said, to use another similar comparison.
For just as no one crosses the Aegean Sea without a ship or any vehicle whatever, or altogether — that I need not even fear Daedalus himself — without any instruments fitted for this thing or some more hidden power, although he proposes nothing else than to arrive (and when this has befallen him, he is ready to cast off and despise all those things by which he was conveyed): so whoever wishes to arrive at the harbor of wisdom, and as it were at its most firm and most quiet ground — since (to omit other things) if he be blind and deaf he cannot, which lies within the power of fortune — to him fortune seems to me necessary for that which he has desired.
And when he has obtained this, although he may be thought to need certain things pertaining to the body's health, yet this stands firm: that he has need of these not in order to be wise, but in order to live among men. — Nay, said he, if he be blind and deaf, both the wisdom to be attained and the very life for whose sake wisdom is sought, in my opinion he will rightly despise. — Yet, I said, since our very life, while we live here, is in the power of fortune, and no one can become wise except while living, must it not be confessed that there is need of its favor, whereby we may be carried through to wisdom? — But since wisdom, said he, is necessary to none but the living, and, life removed, there is no need of wisdom, I fear fortune in nothing as to the prolonging of life.
For indeed, because I live, therefore I want wisdom; not because I desire wisdom do I want life. Whence, if fortune shall have taken away my life, it will take away the cause of seeking wisdom. I have therefore no reason why, in order to become wise, I should either wish the favor of fortune or dread its impediments — unless perhaps you bring forward something else. — Then I: Do you not then judge that the one zealous for wisdom can be hindered by fortune from arriving at wisdom, even if it does not take away his life from him? — I do not think so, he said. — I wish, I said, that you would open up to me a little what seems to you to differ between the wise man and the philosopher. — I think the wise man differs from the zealous seeker in nothing, he said, except that of those things of which a certain settled possession is present in the wise man, there is in the seeker only an ardor.
— What then, pray, are these things? I said. For to me nothing else seems to be the difference, except that the one knows wisdom, the other desires to know it. — If you determine knowledge, he said, by a modest limit, you have expressed the thing itself more plainly. — In whatever way, I said, I may determine it, this has pleased all: that there cannot be knowledge of false things. — On this, said he, a caveat seemed to me to be interposed, lest by my unconsidered agreement your speech should easily go galloping into the fields of that principal question. — Plainly, I said, you have left me nothing where I might gallop. For, unless I am mistaken, we have arrived at the very end which I have long been laboring for.
For if, as you have subtly and truly said, there is no difference between the one zealous for wisdom and the wise man, except that the one loves and the other possesses the discipline of wisdom — whence also you did not hesitate to express the very name, that is, a certain settled possession (habitus) — and no one can possess a discipline in his mind who has learned nothing, and no one has learned anything who knows nothing, and no one can know a false thing: therefore the wise man knows the truth, he whom you yourself have already confessed to possess in his mind the discipline of wisdom, that is, the settled possession of it. — I know not, said he, of what impudence I should be, if I should wish to deny that I confessed that there is in the wise man a settled possession of the investigation of things divine and human. But how it should seem to you not to be a settled possession of probable findings, I do not see.
— Do you grant me, I said, that no one knows false things? — Easily indeed, he said. — Now say, if you can, I said, that the wise man does not know wisdom. — What then? he said; do you enclose all things by this boundary, so that it cannot seem to him that he has comprehended wisdom? — Give me your right hand, I said. For, if you remember, this is what I said yesterday I would bring about — which now I rejoice has been not concluded by me but offered to me freely by you. For when I had said that this is the difference between me and the Academics — that to them it seemed probable that truth cannot be comprehended, but to me it seems that, though not yet found by me, it can nevertheless be found by the wise man — now, when you were being pressed by my question, whether the wise man does not know wisdom, you said 'he seems to himself to know it.'
— What then afterward? he said. — Because, I said, if he seems to himself to know wisdom, it does not seem to him that the wise man can know nothing; or, if wisdom is nothing, I wish you to affirm it. — I should truly believe, he said, that we had come to the finishing-line and to the goal, but suddenly, when you interposed the joining of right hands, I see that we are most disjoined and have advanced into a long distance apart — namely because yesterday no other question seemed to have been set up by us, except that, while you affirmed that the wise man can arrive at the comprehension of truth, I had denied it; but now I think I have conceded to you nothing more than that it can seem to the wise man that he has attained a wisdom of probable things;
which wisdom, however, I think none of us doubts that he set up as consisting in the investigation of things divine and human. — Not, I said, because you wrap yourself up, are you thereby unwrapped; for you now seem to me to be disputing for the sake of exercising yourself, and, because you well know that these young men can as yet scarcely discern what things are argued acutely and subtly, you abuse the ignorance of the judges, as it were, so that it may be permitted you to talk as much as you please, with no one crying out against you. For a little while ago you said, when I asked whether the wise man knows wisdom, that he seems to himself to know it. To whom, then, it seems that the wise man knows wisdom, to him it certainly does not seem that the wise man knows nothing. For this cannot be maintained, unless someone should dare to say that wisdom is nothing.
From which it comes about that this seems to you which also seems to me; for it seems to me that the wise man knows something, and to you also, I think, to whom it is pleasing that it seems to the wise man that the wise man knows wisdom. — Then he: I no more think that you wish to exercise your talent than I do, and I marvel at it; for you have no need in this matter of any exercise. For to me, still perhaps 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. Since either of these is said by us, how they square with one another I do not find. — Then I, when we were now being called to lunch: It does not displease me, I said, that you resist so much;
for either both of us know not what we are saying — and effort must be given lest we be so base — or one of us does, which likewise to leave aside and neglect is no less base. But in the afternoon hours we shall return to one another. For when it seemed to me that we had now arrived at the finishing-line, you even mixed in fists. — Here, when they had smiled, we departed. And when we had returned, we found Licentius — to whom Helicon had never come to the aid when he thirsted — gaping after verses to be devised. For from almost the middle of lunch — although the same was the beginning of our lunch as its end — he had risen secretly and had drunk nothing. To him I said:
I wish indeed for you, I said, that you may someday embrace that poetics which you have coveted — not because that perfection greatly delights me, but because I see that you have so blazed up that, unless by satiety, you cannot escape from this love, which is wont easily to happen after perfection. Then, since you are well-tuned of voice, I should prefer that you drum your own verses into our ears, rather than that, in those Greek tragedies, after the manner of the little birds which we see shut up in cages, you sing words that you do not understand.
Yet I admonish you to go on to drink, if you will, and to return to our school, if indeed Hortensius and philosophy still deserve anything of you — to whom, by that discourse of yours, you have already offered up the sweetest firstfruits, which had inflamed you more vehemently than that poetics of yours toward the knowledge of great and truly fruitful things. But while I desire to recall you to the circle of those disciplines by which minds are cultivated, I fear lest it become a labyrinth to you, and I am almost sorry to have checked you from that impulse. — He blushed and departed, to drink. For he both thirsted much, and an occasion was given of avoiding me, who was perhaps about to say more and harsher things. And when he had returned, with all attentive, I began thus:
Is it so, Alypius, that between us there is no agreement about a matter now, as it seems to me, most manifest? — It is no wonder, he said, if what you assert to be ready-at-hand should be obscure to me, since indeed very many manifest things can be more manifest to others, and likewise certain obscure things more obscure to some. For if this is truly manifest to you, believe me there is some other person to whom this manifest thing of yours is even more manifest, and likewise another to whom my obscure thing is more obscure. But lest you think me too pugnacious any longer, I would beseech you to expound this manifest thing more manifestly. — Attend, I pray, diligently, I said, and, laying aside for a little while the care of answering.
For if I know both myself and you well, what I say will easily become clear, effort being applied, and the one will quickly persuade the other. Did you say, then — or had I perhaps grown deaf — that it seems to the wise man that he knows wisdom? — He nodded. — Let us leave aside for a little, I said, that wise man. Are you yourself wise, or not? — Nothing less, he said. — Yet I wish, I said, that you would answer me what you yourself feel about the Academic wise man: does it seem to you that he knows wisdom? — Whether it seems to him that he knows, he said, or whether he knows — do you think this one and the same or diverse? For I fear lest this confusion furnish a refuge to some one of us. — This, I said, is that Tuscan wrangling, as it is wont to be called, when to a question not attempted, not its solution but the raising of another seems to bring remedy.
which even our poet — that I may give myself a little to Licentius' ears — fittingly judged, in his Bucolic song, to be a rustic and plainly shepherd-like thing, when one asks the other where the space of heaven lies open no wider than three ells, and the other, in what lands are born flowers inscribed with the names of kings. And this, I pray, Alypius, do not think permissible for us in a country villa. Surely even these little baths may make some recollection of the ornament of the gymnasia; to this, if you please, to what I ask, answer: does the wise man of the Academics seem to you to know wisdom? — Lest by referring words to words we go on at length, he said, it seems that it seems to him that he knows. — Does it seem to you, then, I said, that he does not know?
For I do not ask what seems to you to seem to the wise man, but whether it seems to you that the wise man knows wisdom. You can, I think, here either affirm or deny. — Oh, would, he said, that it were either as easy for me as for you, or as hard for you as for me — then you would neither be so troublesome, nor would you hope for anything in these matters. For when you asked me what seems to me concerning the Academic wise man, I answered that it seems to me that it seems to him that he knows wisdom, lest either I should rashly affirm that I know, or should say, no less rashly, that he knows.
— As a great favor, I said, I beseech you to grant me: first, that you deign to answer to what I ask, not to what you yourself ask; next, that you now lay aside for a little my hope, which I know is no less a care to you than your own — surely, if I deceive you by this question, I shall quickly cross over to your side and end the controversy — finally, that, dispelling I know not what anxiety by which I see you touched, you attend more diligently, so that you may easily understand what I wish answered to me by you. For you said that therefore you neither affirm nor deny — which surely must be done as to what I ask — lest you rashly say you know what you do not know; as though indeed I had asked what you know, and not what seems to you.
And so now I ask the same thing more plainly — if indeed it can be said more plainly: does it seem to you that the wise man knows wisdom, or does it not seem so? — If a wise man can be found, he said, such as reason discloses, it can seem to me that he knows wisdom. — Reason, then, I said, discloses to you that the wise man is such as does not ignore wisdom; and rightly so, for it could not befit you to seem otherwise. I ask therefore now whether a wise man can be found. For if he can, he can also know wisdom, and the whole question between us is dissolved. But if you say he cannot, then it will no longer be asked whether the wise man knows anything, but whether anyone can be wise.
When this is established, we shall now have to withdraw from the Academics, and this question must be handled with you diligently and cautiously, as far as we are able. For to them it was pleasing — or rather, it seemed — both that a man can be wise, and yet that knowledge cannot fall into a man (wherefore they affirmed that the wise man knows nothing); but to you it seems that he knows wisdom, which is surely not to know nothing. For it was at the same time agreed between us — as also among all the ancients and among the Academics themselves — that no one can know false things;
whence this now remains: that either you contend that wisdom is nothing, or you confess that such a wise man is described by the Academics as reason does not admit; and, these things being dismissed, you consent that we inquire whether such wisdom can come to a man as reason discloses. For we ought not, nor can we, rightly call anything else wisdom. — Even if I should grant, he said, what I see you greatly striving for — that wisdom is known by the wise man, and that something has been apprehended between us which the wise man can perceive — nevertheless the whole intention of the Academics by no means occurs to me as overthrown.
For I foresee that no small place of defense is reserved for them, and that that suspension of assent has not been cut off, since here they cannot fail their own cause on the very point on which you think them convicted. For they will say that to such a degree is nothing comprehended and assent to be given to no thing, that even this — about nothing being perceived, which they had for almost their whole life probably persuaded themselves of up to your time — has now been wrested from them by this very conclusion; so that, whether then the force of this argument prevails through the slowness of my talent, or whether in very truth it is unconquered by its own strength, it cannot move them from their ground, since they are still able boldly to affirm that not even now is assent to be given to any thing.
For perhaps someday, against this too, something can be found — either by themselves or by anyone — that is said acutely and probably; and one ought to observe their image and, as it were, a kind of mirror in that Proteus, who is reported to be wont to be caught by that whereby he was least caught, and whose investigators never held the same one except by the indication of some divine power. May it be present, and deign to demonstrate to us that truth which is our sole care! Then I too, even against their will — which I by no means suppose — shall confess that they have been overcome. — It is well, I said; truly I have wished nothing further. For see, I pray, how many and how great goods have come to me.
The first point is this: the Academics are said to have been so thoroughly refuted that nothing remains to them for their defense except what cannot possibly be. For who could in any way understand or believe that a man who has been beaten should, by the very fact by which he was beaten, boast himself the victor? Next, if any ground of dispute still remains with them, it does not arise from their saying that nothing can be known, but from their contending that assent must be given to nothing. Now, therefore, we are in agreement. For to me, as also to them, it seems that the wise man knows wisdom. Yet they warn that one must nonetheless refrain from assent. For they say that things only seem so to them, but that they know nothing at all — as if I were professing that I know. I too say that this same thing seems so to me;
for I am foolish, just as they too are, if they do not know wisdom. But I think we ought to approve something — namely, the truth. Concerning this I ask them whether they deny it — that is, whether it pleases them that assent should not be given to the truth. They will never say this, but will maintain that it cannot be found. Therefore even here they hold me as their ally in some measure, since it displeases neither party — indeed, of necessity it pleases both — that we must consent to the truth. 'But who will point it out?' they say. Here I will not trouble to contend with them; it is enough for me that it is now no longer probable that the wise man knows nothing, lest they be forced to say the most absurd thing of all: either that there is no such thing as wisdom, or that the wise man does not know wisdom.
But as to who can display the truth — this was spoken by you, Alypius, and I must strive greatly not to dissent from it. For you said that only some divine power can show a man what is true — briefly, yet also piously. And so in this discourse of ours I heard nothing more gladly, nothing weightier, nothing more probable; and if that divine power, as I trust, is present, nothing truer. For that famous Proteus too — with what loftiness of mind was he recalled by you, with what earnestness toward the noblest kind of philosophy! — that Proteus, I say, that you young men might see that the poets are not to be utterly despised as apart from philosophy, is brought forward as an image of truth;
Proteus, I say, in the poems displays and sustains the person of truth, which no one can grasp and hold if, deceived by false images, he loosens or lets slip the knots of comprehension. For these are the very images that, through the habit of corporeal things, by means of those senses which we use for the necessities of this life, contrive to deceive and mock us even when the truth is held and, as it were, grasped in our hands. This, then, is the third good that has befallen me, and I do not find at what price I should value it.
For my most intimate friend agrees with me not only concerning the probability of human life but also concerning religion itself — which is the clearest sign of a true friend, if indeed friendship has been most rightly and most holily defined as agreement, with goodwill and charity, upon things human and divine. Nevertheless, lest either the arguments of the Academics should seem to spread some sort of mist, or lest we should seem arrogantly to resist the authority of most learned men — among whom especially Cicero cannot fail to move us — if it please you, I shall first say a few things against those by whom those disputations seem to be set against the truth, and then, as it seems to me, I shall show what cause the Academics had for concealing their own opinion.