1. 1. 1. O that virtue, Romanianus, could in turn snatch a man fit for her from fortune's opposition, just as she suffers no one to be snatched from herself! Already, surely, she would have laid hands on you, and, proclaiming that you are her own, and bringing you into the possession of the most certain goods, she would not allow you to be a slave even to prosperous turns of chance. But because it has been so arranged—whether for our deserts or by the necessity of nature—that the harbor of wisdom by no means receives the divine mind while it clings to mortal things, where it would be moved neither by the contrary blast of fortune nor by the favorable, unless fortune itself, whether favorable or as if adverse, brings it there: nothing remains for us on your behalf but prayers, by which we may, if we can, obtain from that God who has these things in his care that he restore you to yourself; for thus he will easily restore you to us as well, and let that mind of yours, which has long been in labor to breathe again, at last emerge into the airs of true freedom. For perhaps what is commonly called fortune is governed by a certain hidden order, and we call nothing in things "chance" except that whose reason and cause is secret; and nothing of advantage or disadvantage happens in a part that does not fit and agree with the whole. This opinion, set forth by the oracles of the most fruitful teachings, and removed very far from the understanding of the profane, philosophy promises to demonstrate to her true lovers—to which I invite you. Therefore, when many things unworthy of your mind befall you, do not despise yourself. For if divine providence extends all the way to us, which is least to be doubted, believe me, it is fitting that you be dealt with as you are being dealt with. For when, with so great a natural gift as yours, which I always admire, from your earliest youth you entered—with reason's footing still weak and slipping—upon a human life most full of all errors, an inflowing flood of riches received you, which had begun, with its enticing whirlpools, to swallow up that age and mind of yours, eagerly following what seemed beautiful and honorable, had not the blasts of that fortune which are thought adverse snatched you from there, all but drowning.

1. 1. 2. For truly, if theatrical applause—always most prosperous—had received you as you gave shows of bears and spectacles never before seen there to our fellow citizens; if by the blended and consenting voices of foolish men, whose throng is immense (see Eccl 1:15), you were borne to the sky; if no one dared to be your enemy; if the municipal tablets marked you in bronze as the patron not only of citizens but even of neighbors; if statues were set up, honors flowed in, powers were added that overgrew the municipal measure; if at daily banquets rich tables were spread; if whatever anyone needed, whatever anyone's delights thirsted for, he asked for without hesitation, drew without hesitation, and much was poured out even on those who did not ask; and your very household estate, diligently and faithfully managed by your people, showed itself suitable and prepared for so great expenses; if you meanwhile lived among the most exquisite piles of buildings, in the splendor of baths, at the gaming-tables which honor does not reject, in hunts, in banquets, on the lips of clients, on the lips of citizens, finally on the lips of peoples, and were extolled as most humane, most generous, most refined, most fortunate—as you were: would anyone, Romanianus, dare to make mention to you of that other happy life, which alone is happy? Would anyone, I ask, be able to persuade you that not only are you not happy, but that you are most wretched for this very reason, that you seemed to yourself least so? But now, how briefly you need to be admonished, all those great adversities you have endured have brought about! For you do not need to be persuaded by others' examples how fleeting and fragile and full of calamities are all the things that mortals think good, since you have experienced it well enough in some measure, so that from you we can persuade the rest.

1. 1. 3. That, then—that quality of yours, by which you always desired what is comely and honorable; by which you preferred to be generous rather than rich; by which you never desired to be more powerful than just, never yielded to adversities and dishonesties—that very thing, I say, which is divine in you, lulled to sleep by I know not what slumber and lethargy of this life, a hidden providence has decreed to awaken by those varied and harsh tossings. Awake, awake, I beg you; you will, believe me, give much thanks that, with almost none of the prosperities by which the incautious are held, the gifts of this world have flattered you—which were daily contriving to capture me too, as I chanted these things, had not a pain in my chest forced me to throw off my windy profession and flee into the bosom of philosophy. Philosophy now nourishes and cherishes me in the leisure we vehemently longed for; she has freed me utterly 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 worshipped, and that everything ought to be despised, whatever is discerned by mortal eyes, whatever any sense touches. She promises that she will clearly demonstrate the truest and most secret God, and now and again she deigns, as it were, to show him through bright clouds.

1. 1. 4. In her our Licentius lives most studiously with me: wholly turned to her from youthful enticements and pleasures, so that I would not rashly dare to set him before his father as a model to imitate. For philosophy it is, from whose breasts no age will complain of being shut out; and to make you the more eager to hold fast to her and drink her in—although I know your thirst well—I wanted nonetheless to send you a taste, which I ask I may not have hoped in vain will be most sweet to you and, so to speak, an introduction. For I have sent you, set down in writing, the discussion that Trygetius and Licentius had between themselves. For military service, as if to wipe away a distaste for the disciplines, had taken something of that young man too for itself, but restored him to us so most ardent and most voracious for the great and honorable arts. And so, after a very few days had passed, once we had begun to live in the country, when, exhorting and rousing them to their studies, I saw them more ready than I had wished and downright gaping, I wanted to test what they could do, in proportion to their age—especially since Cicero's book the Hortensius already seemed to have reconciled them in great part to philosophy. And so, a stenographer being employed, lest the breezes scatter our labor, I let nothing perish. In this book, to be sure, you will read both the substance and the opinions of those young men, but the very words of me and of Alypius.

1. 2. 5. When, then, all of us had at my urging gathered into one place 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 rest signified by their very looks that they approved. "What if," I said, "we can be happy even without truth being grasped—do you judge the grasping of truth necessary?" Here Alypius said, "I think it safer that I be the judge of this question. For since a journey to the city has been arranged for me, it is fitting that I be relieved of the burden of taking up some side; at the same time because I can more easily delegate to someone the parts of a judge than of any advocate. Therefore from now on expect nothing from me on either side." When this had been granted him by all, and I had repeated the question, Trygetius said, "Certainly we want to be happy; and if we can come to this thing without the truth, the truth need not be sought by us." "What of this very point?" I said. "Do you think we can be happy even without truth being found?" Then Licentius said, "We can, if we seek the truth." Here, when I had by a nod demanded the opinion of the rest, Navigius said, "What Licentius said moves me. For perhaps this very thing—to live in the search for truth—can be to live happily." "Define, then," said Trygetius, "what the happy life is, that from it I may gather what it is fitting to answer." "What else do you think it is to live happily," I said, "than to live according to that which is best in a human being?" "I will not pour out words rashly," he said; "for this very 'best,' what it is, I think must be defined for me by you." "Who would doubt," I said, "that the best in a human being is nothing other than that part of the mind to whose rule the other things in a human being ought to submit? And this part—lest you ask for another definition—can be called mind or reason. But if this does not seem so to you, find how you yourself would define either the happy life or the best in a human being." "I agree," he said.

1. 2. 6. "What then?—that we may return to our subject," I said. "Does it seem to you that one can live happily without the truth being found, if it is only sought?" "I repeat that opinion of mine," he said: "it does not seem so at all." "You—what do you think?" I said. Then Licentius said, "To me it seems so altogether: for our ancestors, whom we have received as wise and happy, lived well and happily by this alone, that they sought the truth." "I give thanks," I said, "that you have made me, along with Alypius, a judge—whom, I confess, I had already begun to envy. Since, then, to one of you it seems that the happy life can come about by the mere investigation of truth, to the other only by its finding, while Navigius a little while ago showed that he wished to cross over to your side, Licentius, I greatly await what sort of patrons of your opinions you can be. For the matter is great, and most worthy of diligent discussion." "If the matter is great," said Licentius, "it requires great men." "Do not seek," I said, "especially in this country house, what is hard to find anywhere among the nations; but rather unfold why what you brought forward—not rashly, I think—seems so to you, and for what reason. For even the greatest matters, when sought by the small, are wont to make them great."

1. 3. 7. "Since," he said, "I see you greatly urge us to dispute against one another, which I trust you usefully wish, I ask why one cannot be happy who seeks the truth, even if he does not find it." "Because," said Trygetius, "we want the happy man to be a wise man perfect in all things. But one who is still seeking is not perfect. How, then, you can assert him to be happy, I do not at all see." And the other said, "Can the authority of our forebears prevail with you?" "Not of all," said Trygetius. "Of whom, then?" He: "Of those, of course, who were wise." Then Licentius said, "Does Carneades not seem to you wise?" "I am not a Greek," he said; "I do not know who this Carneades was." "What," said Licentius, "do you think of that Cicero of ours?" Here, when he had long been silent, he said, "He was wise." And the other: "Then his opinion on this matter has some weight with you?" "It has," he said. "Hear, then, what it is, for I think it has slipped your mind. For it pleased our Cicero that he is happy who investigates the truth, even if he cannot reach its finding." "Where did Cicero say this?" he said. And Licentius: "Who does not know that he strongly affirmed that nothing can be perceived by a human being, and that nothing remains for the wise man but the most diligent inquiry into truth; for this reason, that if he assented to uncertain things, even if perhaps they were true, he could not be freed from error?—which is the greatest fault of the wise man (see Cicero, frag. 101). Therefore, if both the wise man must necessarily be believed happy, and the mere inquiry into truth is the perfect office of wisdom, why do we hesitate to judge that the happy life can come about even of itself, by the investigation of truth?"

1. 3. 8. Then he said, "Is it permitted, after all, to return again to the things rashly conceded?" Here I said, "Those do not usually allow this who are driven to dispute not by desire of finding the truth, but by the boastfulness of a boyish wit. And so, with me—especially since you are still to be nourished and brought up—it is not only allowed, but I want you to hold it among your precepts that you ought to return to discuss the things you have conceded too incautiously." And Licentius said, "I think it no small progress in philosophy when, in comparison with finding the right and the true, victory is despised by the disputant. And so I gladly obey your precepts and your opinion, and I permit Trygetius to return to that which he thinks he conceded rashly—for the matter is within my right." Then Alypius said, "You yourselves recognize with me that it is not yet the part of the office I have taken up. But since a departure long since arranged compels me to interrupt, by my office too the partner with me in judgment will not refuse a doubled power for himself until my return: for I see that this contest of yours will go on rather long." And when he had departed, Licentius said, "Bring out what you conceded rashly." And the other said, "I granted rashly that Cicero was wise. Then was Cicero not wise, by whom philosophy in the Latin tongue was both begun and perfected?" "Even if I grant," he said, "that he was wise, I do not, however, approve everything of his." "But you ought to refute many other things of his, so that you may not seem shamelessly to disapprove this one which is at issue." "What if I am prepared to affirm that he did not rightly think this one thing alone? It makes no difference, I think, to you, except what weight the reasons I bring carry toward asserting what I want." "Go on," said the other. "For what should I dare against him who professes himself Cicero's adversary?"

1. 3. 9. Here Trygetius said, "I want you to attend, you our judge, to how you defined the happy life above: for you said that he is happy who lives according to that part of the mind which it is fitting should command the rest. But you, Licentius, I want even now to concede to me (for I have already, in the freedom into which philosophy especially promises to vindicate us, shaken off that yoke of authority) that he is not perfect who still seeks the truth." Then he, after a long silence, said, "I do not concede it." And Trygetius: "Why, I ask? Explain. For I am right here, and eager to hear in what way a man can be both perfect and still seek the truth." Here he said, "He who has not come to the end, I confess, is not perfect. But that truth I think God alone knows, or perhaps a human being's soul, when it has left this body—that is, this dark prison. But the end of a human being is to seek the truth perfectly: for we are seeking one who is perfect, but nonetheless a human being." And Trygetius: "Then a human being cannot be happy. For how can he, when he cannot attain what he greatly desires? But a human being can live happily, since he can live according to that part of the mind which it is right should rule in a human being. Therefore he can find the truth. Or let him gather himself in and not desire the truth, lest, when he cannot attain it, he be necessarily wretched." "But this very thing is the happiness of a human being," said the other, "to seek the truth perfectly: for this is to come to the end beyond which he cannot advance. Whoever, then, seeks the truth less insistently than he ought does not come to the end of a human being; but whoever gives effort to finding the truth, as much as a human being can and ought, he, even if he does not find it, is happy; for he does everything he is born to do. But if the finding is lacking, that will be lacking which nature did not give. Finally, since a human being must necessarily be either happy or wretched, is it not the mark of a madman to call wretched one who day and night insists, as much as he can, on investigating the truth? He will therefore be happy. Then that definition, as I think, supports me more richly: for if he is happy, as he is, who lives according to that part of the mind which it is fitting should reign over the rest, and this part is called reason, I ask whether he who seeks the truth perfectly does not live according to reason. And if that is absurd, why do we hesitate to call a human being happy by the very investigation of truth alone?"

1. 4. 10. "To me," said the other, "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. Whence you must show me 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 he said, "A happy man cannot err." And when he had long been silent, he said, "But he does not err when he seeks; because, in order not to err, he seeks perfectly." And Trygetius said, "He seeks indeed in order not to err; but he errs when he does not find. And so you thought it would profit you that he does not wish to err—as if no one errs unwillingly, or anyone errs at all except unwillingly." Then I, when he hesitated long over what to answer, said, "You must define what error is: for you can more easily see the bounds of that into which you have now deeply entered." "I," said Licentius, "am not fit to define anything—although to define error is easier than to put an end to it." "I," said the other, "will define it; which is most easy for me, not from my wit, but from my cause being the best. For to err is surely always to seek, never to find." "I," said Licentius, "if I could easily refute even that definition, would long since not have failed my cause. But because either the matter itself is hard of itself, or so appears to me, I ask of you that the question be deferred until tomorrow's light, if I can find nothing today to answer, since I shall diligently turn it over with myself." When I thought this had to be granted, the rest not refusing, we rose to go for a walk; and while we talked among ourselves of many and various things, he stayed fixed in thought. When he felt this to be in vain, he preferred to relax his mind and join in our conversation. Afterward, when it was now growing dark, they had returned to the same struggle; but I set a limit to it, and persuaded them to put it off to another day.

1. 4. 11. The next day, when we had sat down, I said, "Bring out what you began yesterday." Then Licentius said, "We had deferred the discussion, unless I am mistaken, at my request, since the definition of error was most difficult for me." "Here," I said, "you plainly do not err; which I would gladly wish to be an omen for you for the rest." "Hear, then," he said, "what I would have brought forth yesterday too, had you not interrupted. Error seems to me to be the approval of the false as true; into which he by no means falls who thinks the truth must always be sought: for one who approves nothing cannot approve the false; therefore he cannot err. But he can most easily be happy: for, not to go too far afield, if it were permitted us to live daily as it was permitted yesterday, nothing occurs to me why we should hesitate to call ourselves happy. For we lived with great tranquility of mind, freeing the mind from every defilement of the body, and most far removed from the torches of desires, giving—as far as a human being may—effort to reason; that is, living according to that divine part of the mind, which by yesterday's definition we agreed to be the happy life: and yet, I think, we found nothing, but only sought the truth. Therefore by the mere investigation of truth, even if he cannot find it at all, the happy life can come to a human being. For see with how great ease your definition is excluded by a common notion. For you said that to err is to seek always and never to find. What if someone seeks nothing, and being asked, for example, whether it is now day, rashly and at once should think and answer that it is night?—does he not seem to you to err? This kind of error, then, even the most monstrous, your definition has not included. What if it has even included those who do not err? Can any definition be more faulty? For if someone is seeking Alexandria, and goes straight toward it, you cannot, I think, call him erring. What if he should walk the same road, with various hindrances, for a long time, and be overtaken by death on it?—did he not both always seek and never find, and yet not err?" "He did not," said the other, "always seek."

1. 4. 12. "You say rightly," said Licentius, "and you warn well. For thence your definition pertains to the matter not at all: for I did not say that he is happy who always seeks the truth. Which cannot even happen: first, because a human being does not always exist; then, because not from the time he begins to be a human being can he yet, his age hindering, seek the truth. Or if you think it should always be said, provided he allows none of the time in which he can already seek to perish, again you must return to Alexandria. For suppose someone, from the time when he is permitted by age or by occupation to make the journey, begins to take that road, and, as I said above, when he nowhere goes astray, yet departs life before he arrives: you will greatly err if this man shall seem to you to have erred, although, in all the time he could, he neither ceased to seek nor was able to find where he was going. Therefore, if both my description is true, and according to it he does not err who seeks perfectly, even though he does not find the truth, and he is happy for this reason, that he lives according to reason; while your definition both has failed, and, even if it had not, I should pay it no heed, if from what I alone have defined the cause is sufficiently established: why, I ask, is this question not yet resolved between us?"

1. 5. 13. Here Trygetius said, "Do you grant that wisdom is the right way of life?" "I grant it," he said, "without doubt: but yet I want you to define wisdom for me, that I may know whether the same thing seems to you to be wisdom as seems so to me." And the other said, "Does it seem to you too little defined by this very thing of which you have just been asked? You have even conceded what I wanted. For, unless I am mistaken, wisdom is named the right way of life." Then Licentius said, "Nothing seems to me so ridiculous as that definition." "Perhaps," said the other; "but step by step, I beg, let reason go before your laughter: for nothing is fouler than laughter most worthy of being laughed at. For what?" he said. "Do you not confess that death is contrary to life?" "I confess it," he said. "To me, then," said he, "no way of life seems more such than that by which someone goes so as not to fall into death." Trygetius agreed. "Then, if some traveler, avoiding a byway which he had heard was beset by robbers, should go straight on and so escape death, has he not followed both a way of life and a right one—and no one calls that wisdom? How, then, is every right way of life wisdom? For I conceded that it is, but not that it alone is. But a definition ought to include nothing foreign. So define again, if you please, what seems to you to be wisdom."

1. 5. 14. He was silent for a long time; then he said, "See, I define again, since you have resolved never to make an end of this. Wisdom is the right way which leads to truth." "This too is refuted in like manner," said the other; "for when in Virgil it was said to Aeneas by his mother,
Only go on, and where the way leads you, direct your step (Virgil, Aeneid 1.401),
following this way he came to what had been spoken—that is, to the truth. Contend, if you please, that the place where he set his foot as he advanced can be called wisdom: although it is altogether foolish for me to try to break down this description of yours; for nothing aids my cause more. For you said that wisdom is not truth itself, but the way that leads to it. Whoever, then, uses this way surely uses wisdom; and whoever uses wisdom must be wise: therefore he will be wise who has sought the truth perfectly, even if he has not yet reached it. For the way that leads to truth is, I think, understood as nothing better than the diligent inquiry into truth. Using this way alone, then, this man will now be wise: but no wise man is wretched; and every human being is either wretched or happy: therefore not only the finding, but the investigation itself of truth, of itself, will make one happy."

1. 5. 15. Then he, smiling, said, "Deservedly do these things befall me, while I confidently agree with my adversary on a point not necessary—as if I were a great definer, or thought anything more superfluous in disputing. For what limit will there be, if I should again want something defined by you, and again the words of that same definition, and likewise all the words that follow, one by one, pretending that I understand nothing, demand to be defined? For what most plain thing would I not compel to be defined by my right, if by right a definition of wisdom is demanded of me? For of what word has nature willed there to be in our minds a more open notion than of wisdom? But somehow, when the notion itself has, as it were, left the harbor of our mind and spread, as it were, the sails of words for itself, at once a thousand shipwrecks of false charges meet it. Therefore either let no definition of wisdom be demanded, or let our judge deign to come down into its defense." Then I, when night now hindered my pen, and I saw something great, as if from the beginning, arising to be discussed, deferred it to another day: for we had begun to dispute when the sun was already declining toward setting, and nearly the whole day had been spent both in ordering rustic affairs and in reviewing the first book of Virgil.

1. 6. 16. Then soon, as it grew light—for things had been so arranged the day before that there was ample leisure—at once the business undertaken was to be carried through. Then I said, "Yesterday, Trygetius, you demanded that I come down from the office of judge to the defense of wisdom: as if, indeed, wisdom would suffer any adversary in your conversation, or, with anyone defending it, labored so as to need to implore greater help. For neither has anything else arisen to be sought between you than what wisdom is; in which neither of you attacks it, because each desires it. Nor, if you think you have failed in defining wisdom, must you therefore desert the rest of the defense of your opinion. And so from me you will have nothing else than a definition of wisdom, which is neither mine nor new, but of the men of old, and which I wonder you do not recall. For it is not now for the first time that you hear that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.26.57; On Duties 2.2.5)."

1. 6. 17. Here Licentius, whom after that definition I long thought would be seeking what to say, at once added, "Why then, I ask, do we not call wise that most disgraceful man, whom we ourselves know well to be wont to dissolve himself among countless harlots—I mean that Albicerius, who at Carthage for many years gave to those consulting him certain wondrous and sure answers? I could recall countless instances, were I not speaking among those who have experienced them, and were not a few enough now for what I want. Did he not—when a spoon-case could not be found at home—being asked at your bidding, most quickly and most truly answer not only what was sought, but even by name whose it was and where it lay hidden? Likewise, in my presence—I pass over the fact that in what was asked of him he was in no way at all false—when the boy who carried the coins had stolen a certain part of them as we were going to him, he ordered them all to be counted out to himself, and forced the boy, before our eyes, to give back what he had taken, before he himself had either seen those same coins or heard from us how much had been brought to him."

1. 6. 18. "What of this, that we have heard from you that the most learned and most famous man Flaccianus was wont to marvel? Who, when he had been speaking of buying an estate, brought the matter to that diviner in such a way that he might tell, if he could, what he had done. And the man at once pronounced not only the kind of business, but even—at which the other, marveling, vehemently cried out—the very name of the estate, though it was so absurd that Flaccianus himself scarcely remembered it. And this I cannot say without amazement of mind: that to a friend of ours, your pupil, who wished to provoke him and insolently demanded that he say what he himself was silently turning over within himself, he answered that he was thinking of a verse of Virgil. When the man, astounded, could not deny it, he went on to ask which verse it was. Nor did Albicerius, who had scarcely ever glanced at a grammarian's school in passing, hesitate, careless and chatty, to recite the verse itself. Were, then, the things about which he was consulted not human affairs; or did he answer those consulting him so surely and truly without knowledge of divine things? But both are absurd. For human affairs are nothing other than the affairs of human beings—such as silver, coins, an estate, finally even thought itself; and who would not rightly judge that those are divine things through which divination itself comes to a human being? Albicerius, then, was wise, if by that definition we concede that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine."

1. 7. 19. Here I said, "First, I do not call knowledge that in which the one who professes it is sometimes deceived. For knowledge consists not only of things grasped, but of things so grasped that no one can err in it, nor be made to waver by the impulse of any opposing arguments. Whence it is most truly said by certain philosophers that it can be found in no one but the wise man, who ought not only to hold perceived what he watches over and follows, but to hold it unshaken. But we know that the man you mentioned often said many false things—which I learned not only from others reporting to me, but sometimes perceived myself, being present. Shall I, then, call him knowing, when he often said false things—him whom I would not call so even if he had hesitantly said true ones? Take it that I have said this of soothsayers and augurs, and of all who consult the stars, and of interpreters of dreams. Or bring forth, if you can, someone of this kind of men who, when consulted, never doubted his own answers, never, finally, answered falsely. For about seers I think I need not trouble myself, who speak with another's mind."

1. 7. 20. "Then, that I may grant that human affairs are the affairs of human beings—do you think anything is ours that chance can either give to us or snatch from us? Or, when the knowledge of human affairs is spoken of, is that meant by which anyone knows either how many or what kind of estates we have, what gold, what silver, and finally what verses of others we are thinking of? That is the knowledge of human affairs 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 truly to call ours: which if that Albicerius had learned, he would never, believe me, have lived so luxuriously and foully. But as to his saying what verse the one who consulted him was turning over in his mind—neither do I think this should be counted among our possessions: not that I deny that the most honorable disciplines pertain to a certain possession of our mind, but because to chant and recite another's verse is granted even to the most ignorant. And therefore, when such things run into our memory, it is no wonder if they can be sensed by certain most worthless animals of this air, which they call demons—by whom I grant we can be surpassed in keenness and subtlety of sense, but in reason I deny it; and that this happens in some most secret way, most remote from our senses. For if we marvel at the little bee, when honey is set out, by what shrewdness—by which it surpasses a human being—it knows whence to fly to it, we ought not therefore to set it before us, or even compare it with us."

1. 7. 21. "And so I would rather that this Albicerius, asked by one who desired to learn, had taught the meters themselves; or, forced by one of those consulting him, had sung verses of his own on a matter set before him on the spot. This, you are wont to recall, that same Flaccianus often said, when with great loftiness of mind he derided and despised that kind of divination, and attributed it to some most abject little soul—for so he spoke—by which the man, as if warned or inflated by a spirit, was wont to give these answers. For that most learned man would ask of those who marveled at such things whether Albicerius could teach grammar or music or geometry. But who knew him and would not confess him the most ignorant of all these? Therefore in the end he would exhort that those who had learned such things should without hesitation prefer their own minds to that divination, and should give effort to instructing and supporting their minds with those disciplines by which they might leap over and fly above that airy nature of invisible living beings."

1. 8. 22. "Now since divine things, by everyone's concession, are far better and more august than human ones, how could he attain them, who did not know what he himself was? Unless perhaps he thought the stars which we daily contemplate something great in comparison with the truest and most secret God, whom rarely perhaps the understanding, but no sense at all, touches—whereas these stars are present to our eyes. Nor, then, are these stars those divine things which wisdom alone professes to know; but the rest, which those diviners (whatever they are) misuse, whether for empty boasting or for gain, are surely baser than the stars. Albicerius, then, was not a sharer in the knowledge of things human and divine, and in vain has our definition been attacked by you in that way. Finally, since whatever there is besides things human and divine we ought to count most worthless and altogether despise, I ask: in what things does that wise man of yours seek the truth?" "In divine things," said the other; "for virtue too, even in a human being, is without doubt divine." "Did Albicerius, then, already know these divine things which your wise man will always seek?" Then Licentius said, "He knew divine things too, but not those which are to be sought by the wise man. For who would not overturn all the custom of speaking, if he should concede divination to him and take away from him the divine things from which divination is named? Therefore that definition of yours, unless I am mistaken, included something else, I know not what, that did not pertain to wisdom."

1. 8. 23. Then Trygetius said, "That definition let him defend, if he pleases, who brought it forth. Now you answer me, that we may at last come to what is at issue." "Here I am," said the other. "Do you grant," said Trygetius, "that Albicerius knew the truth?" "I grant it," he said. "Then he is better than your wise man." "By no means," said the other: "for the kind of truth that the wise man seeks, not only does that raving soothsayer not attain, but not even the wise man himself while he lives in this body; which yet is so great that it is far more excellent always to seek this than sometime to find that." "It is necessary," said Trygetius, "that that definition come to my aid in my straits. If it seemed faulty to you because it included one whom we cannot call wise, I ask whether you approve it if we say that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine, but of those which pertain to the happy life." "That too," he said, "is wisdom, but not it alone: whence the earlier definition seized on something foreign, but this one has deserted something proper; so that the former can be convicted of greed, this one of folly. For—that I myself may now explain by a definition what I feel—wisdom seems to me to be not only the knowledge, but also the diligent inquiry, into things human and divine which pertain to the happy life. If you wish to divide this description, the first part, which holds knowledge, is God's; but this part, which is content with inquiry, is the human being's. By the former, then, God is happy, but by this, the human being." Then he said, "I wonder how you assert that your wise man spends his labor in vain." "How," said Licentius, "does he spend his labor in vain, when he gathers with so great a reward? For by this very thing, that he seeks, he is wise; and by which he is wise, by that he is happy: when he unfolds his mind, as far as he can, from all the wrappings of the body, and gathers himself into himself; when he does not permit himself to be torn by desires, but is always, tranquil, intent upon himself and upon God; so that both here he enjoys, by reason, that which we agreed above to be happy, and at the last day of life he may be found prepared for attaining what he desired, and deservedly enjoys divine blessedness, who has first enjoyed the human."

1. 9. 24. Then I, when Trygetius was long seeking what to answer, said, "I do not think, Licentius, that arguments will be lacking to him either, if we permit him to seek at leisure: for what was lacking to him at any point for answering? For first he himself brought in—since the question arose about the happy life, and only the wise man must necessarily be happy, seeing that folly is wretched even by the judgment of the foolish—that the wise man ought to be perfect, but that one is not perfect who is still inquiring what the truth is; whence he is not even happy. To which point, when you set against it the mass of authority, he, somewhat disturbed at Cicero's name, yet at once raised himself up, and with a certain noble defiance leaped up to the summit of liberty, and seized again what had been violently struck from his hands; and he asked of you whether one who was still seeking seemed to you perfect; so that, if you confessed he was not perfect, he might run back to the head of the matter, and show, if he could, by that definition, that a human being is perfect who governs his life according to the law of the mind, and through this, that no one can be happy unless perfect. From which snare, when you had freed yourself more cautiously than I thought, and said that the perfect human being is the most diligent inquirer of truth, and had fought, by that very definition by which we had said that that is the happy life which is conducted according to reason, more confidently and more openly; he plainly threw it back at you: for he occupied your stronghold, from which, driven out, you had altogether lost the sum of the matter, had not the truce restored you. For where did the Academics, whose opinion you defend, place their citadel, but in the definition of error? Which, had it not perhaps returned to your mind by night through a dream, you now had nothing to answer—since in expounding Cicero's opinion you yourself had earlier recalled that very thing. Then we came to the definition of wisdom, which, when you tried to overthrow it with so great cunning that perhaps not even your helper Albicerius would have caught your thefts, with what vigilance, with what strength did he resist you? How nearly he wrapped you up and pressed you down; had you not at last protected yourself with your new definition, and said that human wisdom is the inquiry into truth, from which, on account of the tranquility of mind, the happy life comes about? To this opinion he will not respond, especially if, in extending what remains of the day, or part of it, he demands that the favor be returned to him."

1. 9. 25. "But not to make it long, let this conversation now, if you please, be closed, in which I think it even superfluous to linger. For the matter has been treated enough for the business undertaken; which could be finished in a very few words altogether, did I not wish to exercise you, and to test your sinews and your zeal, which are a great care to me. For when I had resolved greatly to exhort you to seek the truth, I had begun to ask of you how much weight you placed in it: and you all placed so much that I desire no more. For since we desire to be happy, whether that can come about only by truth being found, or only by truth being diligently sought, all other things being set aside, it must be sought out by us, if we wish to be happy. Therefore let us now, as I said, end this discussion, and, set down in writing, send it, Licentius, above all to your father, whose mind toward philosophy I already wholly hold. But I still ask what fortune may allow him. He can be kindled to these studies more vehemently when he learns that you yourself, now intent, are living thus with me—not only by hearing, but also by reading these things. But you, if, as I perceive, the Academics please you, prepare stronger forces for defending them; for I have resolved to accuse them." When these things had been said, it was announced that the meal was ready, and we rose.

2. 1. 1. If it were as necessary that the wise man, who cannot be void of the discipline and knowledge of wisdom, should find that wisdom while it is being sought, as it is necessary, then surely all the Academics' cavil, or stubbornness, or obstinacy, or—as I sometimes think—reasoning suited to that time, would have been buried together with that time and with the very bodies of Carneades and Cicero. But because, whether by the many and various tossings of this life, Romanianus, as you yourself prove in your own case, or by a certain numbness of minds grown torpid through sloth or slowness, or by despair of finding—because the star of wisdom does not rise upon minds as easily as this light upon the eyes—or even by that error of all peoples, by the false opinion of having found the truth themselves, human beings do not seek diligently, if any do seek, and are turned away from the will to seek; it comes about that knowledge comes rarely and to few: and thence it happens that the weapons of the Academics, when one comes to grips with them, seem—not to ordinary men, but to keen and well-learned ones—unconquered and, as it were, Vulcanian. Therefore against those waves and storms of fortune, both must one strive with the oars of whatever virtues, and especially must divine help be implored with all devotion and piety; that the most constant intent of good studies may hold its course, from which no chance may shake it out, so that the safest and most delightful harbor of philosophy may receive it. This is your first cause; from this I fear for you, from this I desire you freed, from this—if only I am worthy to obtain it—I do not cease with daily prayers to ask for you favorable breezes; and I pray to the very Virtue and Wisdom of the highest God (see 1 Cor 1:24). For what else is he whom the mysteries hand down to us as the Son of God?

2. 1. 2. But you will greatly help me as I pray on your behalf, if you do not despair that we can be heard, and strive with us not only with prayers but also with will, and with that natural loftiness of mind of yours, on account of which I seek you, in which I am singularly delighted, which I always admire, which in you—alas!—is wrapped, like a lightning bolt, in those clouds of domestic affairs, and lies hidden from many, indeed from nearly all: but it cannot be hidden from me, and from one other, or a third, your most intimate friends, who have often not only attentively heard your mutterings, but have even beheld some flashes nearer to lightning bolts. For who—to pass over the rest as the time requires, and to recall one thing—who, I say, ever thundered so suddenly so much, and flashed forth so much with the light of mind, that under one roar of reason and a certain coruscation of temperance, in one day a lust most savage the day before utterly died? Will not, then, that virtue someday burst forth, and turn the laughter of many despairing into horror and astonishment; and, having spoken on earth, as it were, certain signs of things to come, again, the burden of the whole body cast off, run back to heaven? Did Augustine, then, say these things of Romanianus in vain? He will not allow it, to whom I have given myself wholly, whom I have now begun somewhat to recognize.

2. 2. 3. Approach philosophy with me, then: here is whatever has so wondrously been wont to move you, often anxious and doubting. For I fear nothing for your wit from sluggishness of character or slowness. For who, when you were granted to breathe again a little, was more vigilant in our conversations? Who appeared more keen? Shall I not repay you the favor? Or do I perhaps owe but a little? You received me, a poor young man going to study abroad, both with your home and with your means, and—what is more—with your heart. You consoled me, bereft of my father, with your friendship, roused me with your exhortation, aided me with your help. In our very town you made me, by your favor, your intimacy, the sharing of your home, almost as distinguished and a leading citizen as yourself. When I was returning to Carthage for the sake of a more illustrious profession, and had opened my plan and hope to you alone, and to none of my own, although for some time you hesitated out of that love of fatherland implanted in you—because I was already teaching there—yet, when you could not overcome the young man's desire, striving toward what seemed better, you were changed, with a wondrous moderation of benevolence, from a dissuader into a helper. You supported my journey with all necessaries. You there again, who had cherished the cradle and, as it were, the nest of my studies, supported the first efforts of one now daring to fly. You too, when I had sailed in your absence and without your knowledge, taking no offense that I had not, as I was wont, shared it with you, and suspecting anything rather than obstinacy, remained unshaken in friendship; nor were children deserted by their teacher more before your eyes than the inner depths and purity of my mind.

2. 2. 4. Finally, whatever I now rejoice in regarding my leisure—that I have flown out from the bonds of superfluous desires, that, the burdens of dead cares laid down, I breathe again, recover my senses, return to myself; that I seek the truth most intently, that I am now beginning to find it, that I trust I shall reach the very highest measure itself: you roused me, you impelled me, you brought it about. But whose minister you were, I have conceived more by faith than grasped by reason. For when, present to you present, I had set forth the inner motions of my mind, and vehemently and often asserted that no fortune seemed to me prosperous except that which gave leisure for philosophizing, no life happy except that in which one lived in philosophy; but that I was reined in by so great a burden of my own people, on whose welfare, by my office, life depended, and by many necessities, whether of shame or of the foolish wretchedness of my people: you were lifted up with so great joy, so inflamed with a holy ardor for this life, that you said, if you could in some way be released from the bonds of those troublesome lawsuits, you would break all my bonds too, by sharing your patrimony with me.

2. 2. 5. And so, when you had departed, having applied the kindling to us, we never ceased, gaping after philosophy and after that life which had pleased and been agreed upon among us, to think of nothing else at all: and this we did constantly indeed, but less keenly; yet we thought we were doing enough. And because that flame was not yet present which was to seize us at the highest, the one by which we slowly burned we judged to be even the greatest. When behold, certain books full—as Celsinus says—of good Arabian things, when they had breathed upon us, when they had instilled into that little flame a very few drops of most precious ointment: incredible, Romanianus, incredible, and beyond what perhaps even you believe of me—what more shall I say?—they kindled in me, even in my own eyes, an incredible blaze about myself. What honor then moved me, what human pomp, what desire of empty fame, what, finally, comfort and restraint of this mortal life? Wholly and swiftly I was returning into myself. I looked back, however—I confess—as if from a journey, upon that religion which was implanted in us as children and woven into our very marrow: but it was drawing me, unknowing, to itself. And so, tottering, hastening, hesitating, I seized the apostle Paul. For truly, I said, those men could not have done such great things, nor have lived as it is manifest they lived, if their writings and reasonings were opposed to this so great good. I read the whole through most intently and most cautiously.

2. 2. 6. But then indeed, with however little light now 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 it though unknown, but if I could have shown it even to your very adversary—by whom I know not whether you are more exercised than hindered—then he, casting off and leaving Baiae, and pleasant orchards, and dainty and elegant banquets, and household players, finally whatever sharply moves him to any delights whatever, would fly to its beauty, a fond and holy lover, marveling, panting, burning. For he too has, it must be confessed, a certain comeliness of mind, or rather, as it were, the seed of comeliness, which, striving to burst forth into true beauty, sends out its foliage tortuously and deformedly among the rough thorns of vices and the thickets of false opinions: yet it does not cease to put forth foliage, and, to the few who keenly and diligently look into the thickets, to stand out as far as it is allowed. Thence comes that hospitality of his; thence at banquets the many seasonings of humanity; thence that very elegance, polish, the most refined appearance of all things, and on every side a courtliness suffusing all things with a shaded charm.

2. 3. 7. This is commonly called philocalia: do not despise this name because it comes from the name of the common crowd: for philocalia and philosophy are named nearly alike, and wish to seem—and are—as if of one family with each other. For what is philosophy? Love of wisdom. What is philocalia? Love of beauty. Ask the Greeks. What, then, is wisdom? Is it not itself true beauty? They are, then, sisters indeed, and begotten of the same parent: but the one, dragged from her own heaven by the birdlime of lust and shut up in a popular cage, yet kept the nearness of name, to warn the bird-catcher not to despise her. This one, then—without wings, soiled and needy—her sister, flying free, often recognizes, but rarely sets free: for that philocalia does not recognize whence she draws her descent, except through philosophy. This whole fable (for I have suddenly become Aesop) Licentius will more sweetly set forth to you in verse: for he is an almost perfect poet. Therefore he, if he could behold the true beauty of which he is a lover of the false, with eyes a little healed and laid bare, with how great pleasure would he wrap himself in the bosom of philosophy! How there would he embrace you, recognized, like a true brother! You marvel at these things, and perhaps laugh. What if I explained them as I wished? What if at least the voice—if the face cannot yet be seen by you—of philosophy herself could be heard? You would surely marvel; but you would not laugh, you would not despair. Believe me, of no one must we despair, and of such men least of all. There are altogether examples; easily does this kind of bird escape, easily fly back, while many shut up marvel much.

2. 3. 8. But let me return to ourselves—to ourselves, I say, Romanianus: let us philosophize. I will repay you the favor: your son has now begun to philosophize; I hold him back, that, first cultivated in the necessary disciplines, he may rise up more vigorous and firmer; of which—do not fear that you are without them, if I know you well—I only wish you free breezes. For what shall I say of your natural gift? Would that it were not as rare among human beings as it is certain in you! There remain two vices and hindrances to finding the truth, from which I do not much fear for you; yet I fear lest you despise yourself, and despair of being going to find, or at least lest you believe you have found. The first of these, if it is in you at all, this discussion will perhaps remove from you. For you have rather often been angry at the Academics—the more gravely, indeed, the less learned you were; but the more gladly, because you were enticed by love of truth. And so now, with Alypius, you favoring me, I will fight, and easily persuade you of what I want—probably, however. For the truth itself you will not see, unless you enter wholly into philosophy. But as for that other point—that you perhaps presume to have found something, although you departed from us already 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 among us about religion, or when, present, I confer many things with you.

2. 3. 9. For I now do nothing else than purge myself of empty and ruinous opinions. And so I do not doubt that it is better with me than with you. There is one thing only for which I envy your fortune: that you alone enjoy my Lucilianus—or do you too envy me because I said "my"? But what else did I say than "yours," and the property of all of us who are one? Yet, that you may come to the aid of this longing of mine, what shall I ask of you? Or do I earn it of myself? You know this much only, that you owe it. But now I say to both of you: beware lest you think you know anything except what you have learned so well, at least, as you know that one, two, three, four, gathered together, make ten in the sum. But likewise beware lest you think you will either not come to know the truth in philosophy, or that it can in no way be so known. For believe me, or rather him who says, Seek and you will find (Matt 7:7), that knowledge is not to be despaired of, and that it will be more manifest than those numbers. Now let us come to our subject. For I have begun, somewhat late, to fear that this beginning may exceed measure, and it is no light matter. For measure is without doubt divine: but should it deceive me while it sweetly leads, I shall be more cautious when I have become wise.

2. 4. 10. After the earlier conversation, which we set down in the first book, we were at leisure from disputing for about seven days, while yet we reviewed three books of Virgil after the first, and treated them as seemed to suit the time. By this work, however, Licentius was so inflamed with zeal for poetry that he seemed to me even to need some restraining. For now he could not gladly bear to be called away from this intent to any other thing. At last, however, when the light of philosophy was praised by me as much as I could, he came not unwillingly to take up again the question about the Academics which we had deferred: and by chance the day had dawned so serene that it seemed to suit no thing more than the making-serene of our minds. And so we left our beds earlier than usual, and dealt a little with the country folk, since the season pressed. 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 otherwise, since the occasion of this dispute arose from it, I cannot, in hearing you, but either err or at least labor." When this had been done, and we saw that nearly the whole forenoon had been consumed in it, we resolved to return home from the field, which had received us as we walked. And Licentius said, "I ask that you not be loath, before the meal, to repeat to me briefly, by setting it forth, the whole opinion of the Academics, lest anything in it escape me that may be for my side." "I will," I said, "and the more gladly because, while you think about this matter, you will eat little." "Do not," he said, "be confident on that score: for I have often noticed that many, and especially my father, eat the more, the more stuffed with cares they are. Besides, you too, thinking about those meters, I have not so experienced that my care leaves my table free of care. Which indeed I am wont to wonder at in myself: for what does it mean, that we then seek food more persistently when we bend the mind to something else? Or what is it that, while our hands and teeth are occupied, the mind becomes imperious for us?" "Hear rather," I said, "what you had asked about the Academics, lest, while you turn over those meters, I have to suffer you not only at table without meter, but also in our questions. But if I hide anything for my side, Alypius will betray it." "Your good faith is needed," said Alypius: "for if it is to be feared that you hide anything, I think it hard for him—from whom no one who knows me is ignorant that I learned these things—to be caught out by me, especially since in betraying the truth you will be consulting not so much for victory as for your own mind."

2. 5. 11. "I will act in good faith," I said, "since you prescribe it by right. For it pleased the Academics both that knowledge cannot come to a human being—at least of those things which pertain to philosophy; for the rest Carneades said he did not care about—and yet that a human being can be wise, and that the whole office of the wise man, as was discussed by you too, Licentius, in that conversation, is unfolded in the search for truth. From which it is concluded that the wise man assents to nothing at all: for he must necessarily err—which is forbidden to the wise man—if he assents to uncertain things. And they not only said all things were uncertain, but affirmed it with the most copious reasons. But that the truth cannot be grasped they seemed to have seized from that definition of the Stoic Zeno, who says that that can be perceived as true which is so impressed on the mind from the source whence it is, that it could not be from a source whence it is not. Which is said more briefly and plainly thus: the truth can be grasped by those marks which what is false cannot have. That this can in no way be found, they bent all their force most vehemently to establish. Thence the disagreements of philosophers, thence the deceptions of the senses, thence dreams and madnesses, thence the "liars" and the "sorites" flourished in the support of that cause. And since from the same Zeno they had received that nothing is baser than to opine, they most cunningly concluded that, if nothing could be perceived, and to opine was most base, the wise man would never approve anything."

2. 5. 12. "Hence great ill-will was stirred up against them: for it seemed to follow that he would do nothing who approved nothing. Whence the Academics seemed to describe their wise man as always asleep and a deserter of all his duties, since they judged that he approved nothing. Here they, introducing a certain "probable," which they also called "verisimilar," asserted that the wise man in no way ceases from his duties, since he has something to follow; but that the truth, whether on account of certain shadows of nature or on account of the likeness of things, lay hidden, either buried or confused. Although even that very reining-in and, as it were, suspension of assent they said was a great action of the wise man. I seem to myself to have set forth the whole briefly, as you wished, and to have departed in nothing from your prescription, Alypius—that is, to have acted, as the saying goes, in good faith. For if I said anything otherwise than it is, or perhaps did not say it, nothing was done by me on purpose. Good faith, then, is from the intention of the mind. For one human being ought to seem to another a false teacher to be taught, a deceiving one to be guarded against: of which the former needs a good teacher, the latter a cautious pupil."

2. 5. 13. Then Alypius said, "I am grateful, since both Licentius has been satisfied by you, and you have relieved me of the burden imposed on me. For you had no more to fear lest, for the sake of testing me, you say too little (for how else could it be done?) than I had, if it had been necessary to betray you in anything. Therefore please—that which is lacking, not so much to the inquiry as to the inquirer—do not be loath to set forth the difference between the new and the old Academy." "I confess," I said, "I am loath. So you will do me a kindness (for I cannot deny that what you mention pertains very much to the matter) if, while I rest a little, you will distinguish these names among yourselves and lay open the cause of the new Academy." "I would believe," he said, "that I too wished to call you away from your meal, did I not rather think you frightened a while ago by Licentius, and his request had so prescribed to us that whatever there was of this complication should be unraveled for him before the meal." And when he was about to say the rest, our mother (for we were now at home) began so to push us to the meal that there was no room for making speeches.

2. 6. 14. Then, when we had taken as much nourishment as was enough to check hunger, and had returned to the meadow, Alypius said, "I will obey your wish, and would not dare to refuse. For if nothing escapes me, I shall congratulate it both to your teaching and to my own memory. But if perhaps I go astray in anything, you will set it right, so that henceforth I may not dread a delegation of this kind. The split of the new Academy, I think, was stirred up not so much against the old—conceived as it was—as against the Stoics. Nor indeed should it be thought a split, since the new question raised by Zeno had to be resolved and discussed. For about not-perceiving, although agitated by no conflicts, yet the opinion, dwelling even in the minds of the old Academics, was not shamelessly held. Which is easy to prove even by the authority of Socrates himself and of Plato and the rest of the ancients, who believed themselves defended from error this far, if they had not rashly committed themselves to assent: although they did not introduce a proper discussion of this matter into their schools, nor was it ever clearly inquired by them whether the truth can be perceived or not. And when Zeno had brought this in as something raw and new, and contended that nothing can be perceived except what is so true that it is distinguished from the false by unlike marks, and that the wise man must not fall into opinion, and Arcesilaus heard this, he denied that anything of this kind could be found by a human being, and that the wise man's life must not be committed to the shipwreck of opinion. Whence he also concluded that assent must be given to nothing."

2. 6. 15. "But while the matter stood so, that the old Academy seemed rather augmented than assailed, there arose Antiochus, a hearer of Philo, who, as he seemed to some, more desirous of glory than of truth, brought the opinions of both Academies into rivalry. For he said that the new Academics had tried to introduce something unusual and most remote from the opinion of the ancients. For which matter he implored the trust of the old natural philosophers and other great philosophers; even attacking the Academics themselves, who contended that they followed the verisimilar, while they confessed they were ignorant of the truth itself. And he had gathered many arguments, which I think must now be passed over: yet 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—so that you may fully instruct Licentius—I would have asked it on behalf of both. But if it is as I have been able to say, carry through the discussion you have undertaken."

2. 7. 16. Then I said, "How long, Licentius, will you rest in this conversation of ours, longer than I thought? You have heard who your Academics are." But he, smiling bashfully and somewhat more disturbed by this address, said, "It repents me that I so greatly affirmed against Trygetius that the happy life consists in the inquiry into truth. For this question so disturbs me that I am all but wretched—who certainly, if you have any humanity, seem to you to be pitied. But why do I, fool that I am, torture myself? Or why do I shudder, propped up by so great a goodness of cause? I will not yield except to the truth." "Do the new Academics please you?" I said. "Very much," he said. "Then they seem to you to speak the truth?" Then he, when he was about to assent, made more cautious by Alypius's smile, hesitated somewhat. And then he said, "Repeat the little question." "Do the Academics seem to you to speak the truth?" I said. And again, when he had long been silent, "Whether it is true," he said, "I do not know: it is probable, however. For I see nothing more to follow." "Probable," I said, "do you know it is also called by them 'verisimilar'?" "So it seems," he said. "Then," I said, "the opinion of the Academics is verisimilar." "So," he said. "Now, I beg, attend more diligently," I said. "If anyone affirmed that your brother seemed like your father, and did not know your father himself, would he not seem to you insane or inept?" And here he was long silent. Then he said, "This does not seem to me absurd."

2. 7. 17. When I had begun to answer him, "Wait, I beg," he said, "a little." And then, smiling, "Tell me, I pray you," he said, "are you now certain of your victory?" Then I said, "Suppose me to be certain: yet you ought not therefore to desert your cause, especially since this discussion was undertaken among us for the sake of exercising you, and of provoking your mind to be refined." "Have I," he said, "either read the Academics, or been instructed in so many disciplines, as you come to me equipped with?" "The Academics," I said, "neither had those read them by whom that opinion was first defended. But if learning and an abundance of disciplines fail you, your wit ought nonetheless not to be so weak that, with no charge made, you should succumb to my very few words and questions. For I have now begun to fear lest Alypius succeed you sooner than I wish—an adversary with whom I shall not walk about so securely." "Then would," he said, "that I were already conquered, that I might at last hear you disputing, and—what is more—see it; than which spectacle nothing more happy can be set before me. For since it has pleased you to pour these things forth, rather than to pour them away—since what bursts from your mouth you catch with the pen, and do not let fall to the ground, as the saying goes (see Terence, The Self-Tormentor 242)—it will be permitted to read them too: but somehow, when the very same eyes are applied among which the conversation is carried on, a good disputation suffuses the mind, if not more usefully, at least more joyfully."

2. 7. 18. "I am grateful," I said: "but those sudden joys of yours have rashly forced you to abandon that opinion by which you said that no spectacle more happy could be set before you. For what if you shall see that father of yours—than whom surely no one, after so long a thirst, will drink in philosophy more ardently—seeking and disputing these things with us, when I shall never think myself more fortunate—what, after all, is it fitting for you to feel and say?" Here indeed he wept somewhat, and when he could speak, stretching out his hand and looking up to heaven, "And when, O God," he said, "shall I see this? But of you nothing is to be despaired." Here, when we had nearly all begun to be let down from the intent of disputation into tears, struggling with myself and scarcely collecting myself, I said, "Come rather, and return to your strength; which, that you might gather it from wherever you could, being about to be the Academy's patron, I had long warned: not, I think, that now, before the trumpet, a tremor should seize your limbs (see Virgil, Aeneid 11.424); or that, from desire to behold another's fight, you should so quickly wish yourself to be a captive." Here Trygetius, when he had attended well enough that our faces were now made serene, said, "Why should he not wish it, a man so holy that God has granted him this before his prayers? Believe it now, Licentius; for you who do not find what to answer, and still wish to be conquered, seem to me of little faith (see Matt 6:30; 8:26; 16:8)." We smiled. Then Licentius said, "Speak, you who are happy—not by finding the truth, but certainly by not seeking it."

2. 7. 19. When, at this cheerfulness of the young men, we were the merrier, I said, "Attend to the question, and return to the road firmer and stronger, if you can." "Here I am," he said, "as much as I can be." "For what if that viewer of my brother should have learned by report that he is like his father—can he be insane or inept if he believes it?" "Can he," I said, "at least be called foolish?" "Not at once," he said, "unless he should contend that he knows it. For if, as something probable, he follows what frequent report has spread abroad, he can be accused of no rashness." Then I said, "Let us consider the matter itself a little, and, as it were, set it before our eyes. See, suppose that man, whatever he is, whom we are describing, to be present: your brother arrives from somewhere; there this man says, 'Whose son is this boy?' It is answered, 'A certain Romanianus's.' But this man: 'How like his father he is! how not rashly had report brought me this!' Here you, or someone else: 'Do you know Romanianus, good fellow?' 'I do not know him,' he says: 'yet he seems to me like him.' Could anyone hold his laughter?" "In no way," he said. "Then," I said, "you see what follows." "I have long seen it," he said. "But yet I want to hear the conclusion itself from you: for you ought to begin to nourish the one you have captured." "Why should I not," I said, "conclude? The matter itself cries out that your Academics are to be laughed at in like manner, who say they follow in life a likeness of truth, while they are ignorant of what the truth itself is."

2. 8. 20. Then Trygetius said, "Far different, it seems to me, is the caution of the Academics from the ineptitude of this man you have described. For they attain by reasonings what they say is verisimilar; but this inept fellow followed report, than whose authority nothing is cheaper." "As if, indeed," I said, "he would not be more inept if he said, 'I do not at all know his father, nor have I learned by report how like his father he is, and yet he seems to me like him.'" "More inept, certainly," he said. "But to what end is this?" "Because such," I said, "are those who say: 'The truth indeed we do not know; but this which we see is like that which we do not know.'" "They say 'probable,'" he said. To which I said, "How do you say that? Do you deny that they say 'verisimilar'?" And he said, "I wanted to say it for this reason, to exclude that likeness. For it seemed to me that report had wickedly rushed into your question, when the Academics trust not even human eyes, much less report—not, indeed, with a thousand eyes, as the poets feign, but with monstrous ones. For who, after all, am I, a defender of the Academy? Or do you, in this question, envy my security? Behold, you have Alypius, whose arrival, I beg, may give us a holiday—whom we think you have long, not in vain, dreaded."

2. 8. 21. Then, silence being made, both turned their eyes upon Alypius. Then he said, "I would wish indeed, as far as my strength allows, to aid your side somewhat, were not your omen a terror to me. But this dread, unless hope deceive me, I will easily put to flight. For at the same time it consoles me that the present assailant of the Academics has nearly taken up the burden of the conquered Trygetius, and now, by your confession, it is probable that he is the victor. This I rather fear, lest I be unable to avoid both the negligence of a deserted office and the shamelessness of an invaded one. For I do not believe you have forgotten that the office of judge was conferred on me." Here Trygetius said, "That is one thing, and this another; so we ask that you suffer yourself at last to be a private person." "Let me not refuse," he said; "lest, while I desire to avoid shamelessness or negligence, I fall into the snares of pride—than which vice nothing is more monstrous—if I should hold the honor granted me by you longer than you permit."

2. 9. 22. "Accordingly, I would have you set forth to me, good accuser of the Academics, your office; that is, in whose defense you assail these men. For I fear lest, in refuting the Academics, you wish to prove yourself an Academic. For of accusers," I said, "I think you know well there are two kinds: for if it was most modestly said by Cicero that he was the accuser of Verres in such a way that he was the defender of the Sicilians, for that reason it is necessary that he who accuses someone has another whom he defends." And he said, "But have you at least anything in which your opinion now stands firmly founded?" "It is easy," I said, "to answer this question, especially for me, to whom it is not sudden: I have already dealt with this whole matter within myself, and long and much turned it over in mind. Therefore 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 skirmished with these young men, where philosophy has gladly, as it were, jested with us. Therefore let childish little tales be taken from our hands. The matter at issue is our life, our morals, our mind; which presumes that it will overcome the enmities of all deceptions, and, the truth being grasped, as if returning to the region of its origin, will triumph over lusts, and, having taken temperance as a spouse, will so reign that it will return more securely to heaven. Do you see what I say? Let us now take away all these things from the midst: arms must be made for a keen man (Virgil, Aeneid 8.441); nor have I ever wished anything less than that among those who have lived much together, and conversed much, anything should arise from which a new conflict, as it were, should rise up. But for the sake of memory, which is an unfaithful guardian of things thought out, I wanted to be set down in writing what we have often discussed among ourselves, and at the same time that these young men might both learn to attend to these matters, and try to approach and undergo them."

2. 9. 23. "Then do you not know that I have nothing certain yet which I hold, but am hindered from seeking it by the arguments and disputations of the Academics? For somehow they have made in my mind a certain probability (to use their word, that I may not yet depart from it) that a human being cannot find the truth: whence I had become sluggish and altogether idle, nor dared to seek what most keen and most learned men were not permitted to find. Unless, then, I shall first have persuaded myself that the truth can be found, as much as they persuaded themselves that it cannot, I will not dare to seek, nor have I anything to defend. And so remove that question, if you please, and rather let us discuss among ourselves, as shrewdly as we can, whether the truth can be found. And for my part I seem to myself to have already many things by which I strive to lean against the reasoning of the Academics: between whom and me just now there is no difference, except that to them it seemed probable that the truth cannot be found; but to me it is probable that it can be found. For the ignorance of the truth is either peculiar to me, if they were pretending, or at least common to both of us."

2. 10. 24. Then Alypius said, "Now I will walk on secure: for I see you will be not so much an accuser as a helper. And so, that we may not go too far, let us see, I beg, first, lest through this question—in which I seem to have succeeded those who yielded to you—we fall into a controversy of words, which, on your own suggestion and by that Tullian authority, we have often confessed to be most base. For when, unless I am mistaken, Licentius said that the Academics' opinion about probability pleased him, you added what he without doubt confirmed—whether he knew that this is also called by them 'verisimilitude.' And I know well, since these things are known to me from you, that the opinions of the Academics are not without you. Since these, as I said, are fixed in your mind, I do not know why you pursue words." "It is not," I said, "believe me, a great controversy of words, but of the things themselves: for I do not think those men were such as did not know how to impose names on things; but they seem to me to have chosen these words both to conceal their opinion from the slower and to signify it to the more vigilant. Why and how this seems so to me I will set forth, when I have first discussed those things which men think were said by them as enemies, as it were, of human knowledge. And so I am very glad that our conversation has today advanced this far, that it stands open and clear enough what was being sought between us. For those men seem to me to have been altogether grave and prudent men. But if there is anything we shall now dispute, it will be against those who have believed the Academics opposed to the finding of truth. And lest you think me frightened, even against those very men I will not unwillingly arm myself, if they defended—not for the sake of concealing their opinion, lest by minds rashly profaned, and, as it were, unhallowed, certain sacred things of truth should be betrayed—but from their heart, those things which we read in their books. This I would do today, did not the sun's setting now compel us to return home." Thus far was it disputed that day.

2. 11. 25. The next day, although a day no less mild and tranquil had dawned, we scarcely extricated ourselves from domestic affairs. For we had consumed a great part of it especially in the writing of letters. And when scarcely two hours were left, we went forth to the meadow. For the great serenity of the sky invited us, and it pleased us not to suffer even that time which remained to perish. And so, when we had come to the usual tree, and had stayed in the place, I said, "I would have you, young men—since today no great matter is to be taken up—recall to my memory how Alypius answered yesterday the little question that disturbed you." Here Licentius said, "It is so brief that it is no trouble to recall it; but how slight it is you may see. For, as I think, he forbade you, since the matter was agreed, to raise a question about words." And I said, "This very thing—what it is, and what force it has—have you noticed enough?" "I seem to myself," he said, "to see what it is; but I beg you to set it forth a little. For I have often heard from you that it is base for disputants to linger over a question of words, when no contest about things remains. But this is too subtle for it to be demanded of me to explain."

2. 11. 26. "Hear, then," I said, "what it is, all of you. The Academics call that 'probable' or 'verisimilar' which can invite us to act without assent. But by 'without assent' I mean: that we do not opine that what we do is true, or think that we know it, yet we do it. For example, if someone should ask us whether, after last night so clear and pure, today the sun would rise so cheerful: I believe we would deny that we knew it, yet we would say it seemed so. 'Such,' says the Academic, 'seem to me all the things which I thought ought to be called probable or verisimilar; which, if you wish to call by another name, I do not fight. For it is enough for me that you have now well understood what I mean—that is, on what things I impose these names. For it does not befit the wise man to be a maker of words, but an inquirer into things' (see Cicero, Varro, frag. 33). Have you understood well enough how those playthings, with which I was harassing you, have been struck from my hands?" Here, when both had answered that they understood, and by their very look demanded my answer, I said, "What do you think? That Cicero, whose these words are, was so poor in the Latin tongue as to impose on things he perceived names less fitting?"

2. 12. 27. Then Trygetius said, "It now pleases us, since the matter is known, to stir no calumnies about words. So see rather what you answer to this man who freed us, upon whom, driven on, you try again to rush." And Licentius said, "Wait, I beg: for something, I know not what, gleams faintly upon me, by which I see that so great an argument ought not to have been so easily snatched from you." And when, fixed in thought, he had been silent for a while, "I ask," he said, "nothing seems more absurd than to say that he follows the verisimilar who is ignorant of what the truth is: nor does that simile of yours confound me. For when I am rightly asked whether, from this temperate state of the sky, no rain is forced for tomorrow, I answer that it is verisimilar, I who do not deny that I know something true. For I know that this tree cannot now become silver, and many such true things I say I know without shamelessness, of which I see that those things are like which I call verisimilar. But you, Carneades, or whatever other Greek plague—that I may spare our own (for why should I hesitate to cross to this side, to him to whom I am owed a captive by the right of victory?)—you, then, when you say you know nothing true, whence do you follow this verisimilar? 'But I could impose no other name on it.' Why, then, must we dispute with one who cannot even speak?"

2. 12. 28. "I will not," said Alypius, "fear deserters: how much less that Carneades, against whom—moved by I know not whether youthful or boyish levity—you thought that curses rather than any weapon should be hurled? For he, to strengthen his opinion, which was always founded only on the probable, would for the moment easily have this against you: that we are placed so far from the finding of truth that you yourself can be a great argument for it, who were so dislodged from your place by one little question that you wholly knew not where you should stand. But these things, and your knowledge, which a little while ago you confessed impressed upon you about this tree, let us defer to another time. For although you have now chosen the other side, yet you must be diligently taught what I said a little while ago. For we had not yet, I think, advanced into that question in which it is asked whether the truth can be found: but I thought only this should be prescribed in the very vestibule of my defense—in which I had seen you weary and prostrate—namely, that whether 'verisimilar,' or 'probable,' or by whatever other name it can be called, which the Academics say is enough for them, must not be inquired into. 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."

2. 13. 29. Here I, when Licentius bashfully dreaded the onset of Alypius, said, "You preferred, Alypius, to say anything rather than how we must dispute with those who do not know how to speak." And he said, "Since both long ago, to me and to all, it was known, and now by your own profession you sufficiently indicate that you are skilled in speaking, I would have you explain first the usefulness of this inquiry of yours, which is either superfluous, I think—and to answer it is much more superfluous—or, if it shall seem advantageous and cannot be explained by me, I would obtain of you, as a suppliant, that you not be loath to do the office of a teacher." "You remember," I said, "that I promised yesterday to deal with these words afterward. And now that sun warns that the playthings I set out for the boys I should put back into their boxes; especially since I now set them out rather to display than to sell them. Now, before the darkness, which is wont to be the patroness of the Academics, takes hold of our pen, I want it to be fully agreed among us today to what question we must rise in the morning to unfold. So answer, I beg: whether it seems to you that the Academics held a certain opinion about the truth, and were unwilling to betray it rashly to unknown or unpurged minds; or whether they really felt as their disputations stand."

2. 13. 30. Then he said, "What was in their mind I will not rashly affirm. For, as far as can be gathered from the books, you know better in what words they were wont to bring out 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 by my opinion grown ingrained, which you have nearly always noticed, but also by the authority of great and more excellent philosophers, to whom to yield our necks either our own weakness or their shrewdness somehow compels us—beyond which it must be believed that nothing more can now be found." "This," I said, "is what I wanted. For I feared lest, when this seemed to you too which seems so to me, our discussion should remain maimed, no one existing who would force the matter to come to grips from the other side, so that it might be diligently, as far as we can, turned over. And so, if that had happened, I was prepared to ask you to take up the part of the Academics in such a way that they should seem to you not only to have disputed, but to have felt, that the truth cannot be grasped. It is asked, then, between us, whether by their arguments it is probable that nothing can be perceived and that assent must be given to nothing. If you maintain this, I will gladly yield: but if I shall be able to show that it is much more probable both that the wise man can come to the truth, and that assent must not always be withheld, you will have nothing, I think, why you should not suffer yourself to cross over to my opinion." When this had pleased him and the rest who were present, now overshadowed by evening, we returned home.

3. 1. 1. When, after that conversation which the second book contains, we had on another day sat down in the baths—for the day was too gloomy for us to be willing to go down to the meadow—I began thus: "I think you have now noticed well enough on what matter the question has been set up to be discussed among us. But before I come to my own part, which pertains to unfolding it, hear gladly, I beg, a few things—not foreign to the matter—about our hope, our life, our resolve. I judge our business no light or superfluous one, but necessary and supreme: to seek the truth greatly. On this Alypius and I agree. For both the other philosophers thought their wise man had found it, and the Academics professed that it must be sought by their wise man with the utmost effort, and that he does this diligently; but because the truth lay either buried or, confused, did not stand out, for the conduct of life he follows that which occurs as probable and verisimilar. This too was settled by your earlier debate. For when one asserted that a human being is made happy by the truth being found, the other only by its being diligently sought, none of us doubts that nothing is to be set by us before this business. Therefore, how, I ask, do we seem to you to have spent yesterday? For you were permitted to live in your studies. For both you, Trygetius, delighted yourself in the songs of Virgil, and Licentius was at leisure to compose verses, by love of which he is so smitten that I thought I must bring in this discourse especially for his sake—by which, in his mind, philosophy (for now is the time) may claim and vindicate for itself the greater part, not only over poetry, but over any other discipline whatever."

3. 2. 2. "But I ask you: did you not pity us, when the day before we had gone to bed so as to rise to nothing but the deferred question, and altogether to nothing else, since on account of so great a domestic matter, necessarily to be carried through, there arose such things that, wholly occupied with these, we could scarcely breathe again into ourselves in the two last hours of the day? Therefore it has always been my opinion that the wise man, now made such, needs nothing; but that, in order to become wise, fortune is most necessary—unless something else seems so to Alypius." Then he said, "How much right you assign to fortune I do not yet know well. For if you think that, for despising fortune, fortune itself is needed, I too give you my company in this opinion. But if you concede nothing else to fortune than those things which cannot, except with fortune willing, supply the body's need, I do not feel so. For either it is permitted—even with the same fortune resisting and unwilling—for one not yet wise, but desirous of wisdom, to take those things which we confess necessary to life; or it must be conceded that even in the whole life of the wise man she lords it, since the wise man himself cannot but stand in need of those things necessary to the body."

3. 2. 3. "You say, then," I said, "that fortune is necessary to one zealous for wisdom, but you deny it to the wise man." "It is not beside the point to repeat the same things," he said. "And so now too I ask of you whether you reckon that fortune helps anything toward the despising of fortune itself. And if you think so, I say that the one desirous of wisdom greatly needs fortune." "I think so," I said, "since through her he will become such as can despise her. Nor is it absurd: for thus, even to us as little ones, the breasts are necessary, by which it is brought about that afterward we can live and be strong without them." "If the conception of our minds does not disagree," he said, "it is clear to me that our opinions agree; unless perhaps it seems to someone that we must discuss this—that it is not the fortune or the breasts themselves, but some other thing, that makes us despisers either of fortune or of the breasts." "It is no great thing," I said, "to use another simile. For just as without a ship, or any vehicle, or altogether—lest I should even fear Daedalus himself—without any instruments suited to this matter, or some more hidden power, no one crosses the Aegean Sea, though he propose nothing else than to arrive; which, when it has happened to him, he is ready to throw away and despise all those things by which he was carried: so whoever has wished to come to the harbor of wisdom, and, as it were, to its most firm and most quiet soil—since, to omit other things, if he be blind and deaf he cannot, which lies in the power of fortune—seems to me to have fortune necessary for that which he has desired. Which, when he has obtained it, although he be thought to stand in need of certain things pertaining to the body's health, yet this is agreed: that he needs these not in order to be wise, but in order to live among human beings." "Nay," he said, "if he be blind and deaf, both the attaining of wisdom and that very life for the sake of which wisdom is sought, in my opinion, he will rightly despise."

3. 2. 4. "Yet," I said, "since our very life, while we live here, is in the power of fortune, and no one can become wise except living: must it not be confessed that we need her favor, by which we are conveyed to wisdom?" "But since wisdom," he said, "is necessary only to the living, and, life being removed, there is no need of wisdom, I dread fortune not at all in the prolonging of life. For because I live, therefore I want wisdom; not because I desire wisdom, do I want life. Whence, if fortune takes my life from me, she will take away the cause of seeking wisdom. Therefore I have nothing why, in order to become wise, I should either wish for fortune's favor or dread its hindrances—unless perhaps you bring forward something else." Then I said, "Then you do not think that one zealous for wisdom can be hindered by fortune from coming to wisdom, even if she does not take his life from him?" "I do not think so," he said.

3. 3. 5. "I want," I said, "you to lay open for me a little what difference seems to you to be between the wise man and the philosopher." "The wise man," he said, "I think differs in nothing from the lover of wisdom, except that of the things of which there is in the wise man a certain settled state (habitus), in the lover of wisdom there is only an ardent longing." "What, after all, are those things?" I said. "For to me nothing else seems to be at issue, except that the one knows wisdom, the other desires to know it." "If you determine 'knowledge' by a modest limit," he said, "you have stated the matter more plainly." "In whatever way I determine it," I said, "this pleased everyone—that there can be no knowledge of false things." "Here," he said, "I thought a prescription should be set against you, lest by my unconsidered consent your speech ride easily over the fields of that principal question." "Plainly," I said, "you have left me nowhere I might ride. For unless I am mistaken, what I have long been contriving, we have come to the very end. For if, as you said subtly and truly, there is no difference between the lover of wisdom and the wise man, except that the one loves, the other has the discipline of wisdom—whence too you did not hesitate to express the very word, that is, a certain settled state; but no one can have a discipline in his mind who has learned nothing; and no one has learned anything who knows nothing; and no one can know the false: therefore the wise man knows the truth, whom you yourself have now confessed to have in his mind the discipline of wisdom, that is, a settled state." "I do not know," he said, "of what shamelessness I should be, if I should wish to deny that I confessed there is in the wise man a settled state of the inquiry into things divine and human. But why it should not seem to you a settled state of probable findings, I do not see." "Do you grant me," I said, "that no one knows false things?" "Easily indeed," he said. "Say now, if you can," I said, "that the wise man does not know wisdom." "What?" he said. "Do you with this boundary enclose all things, 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—which now I rejoice was concluded not by me, but offered to me of your own accord. For when I had said that this is the difference between me and the Academics—that to them it seemed probable that the truth cannot be grasped; but to me it seems that, though not yet found by me, it can nonetheless be found by the wise man: now you, when you were pressed by my question whether the wise man does not know wisdom, said, 'It seems to him that he knows.'" "What then, afterward?" he said. "Because if," I said, "it seems to him that he knows wisdom, it does not seem to him that the wise man can know nothing. Or, if wisdom is nothing, I want you to affirm it."

3. 3. 6. "I would truly believe," he said, "that we had come to the lime and the end; but suddenly, when you interposed our right hands, I see that we are most disjoined and have advanced into a long course: namely, because yesterday no other question seemed to be set up by us than this—that the wise man can come to the grasping of truth, you affirming, I denying. But now I think I have conceded nothing to you except that it can seem to the wise man that he has attained the wisdom of probable things: yet that I have placed this wisdom in the investigation of things divine and human, I think is doubtful to none of us." "It is not," I said, "because you wrap it up, that you escape: for you now seem to me to dispute for the sake of exercising yourself. And because you know well that these young men can scarcely yet discern what is discussed keenly and subtly, you abuse, as it were, the ignorance of the judges, so that you may speak as long 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 it seemed to him that he knows. To him, then, to whom it seems that the wise man knows wisdom, it surely does not seem that the wise man knows nothing. For this cannot be contended unless someone dare to say that wisdom is nothing. From which it follows that this seems to you which also seems to me: for it seems to me that the wise man knows something, and to you, I think—to whom it is pleasing—it seems that it seems to the wise man that the wise man knows wisdom." Then he said, "I do not think I wish to exercise my wit more than you; and at this I wonder, for you have no need of any exercise in this matter. For to me, perhaps still blind, there seems to be a difference between 'it seems to him that he knows' and 'he knows'; and between the wisdom which is placed in investigation and the truth: which, when either of the two is spoken of by us, how they square with each other I do not find." Then I, when we were now called to the meal, said, "I am not displeased that you resist so much: for either we both do not know what we are saying, and effort must be given that we be not so base; or one of us does, which it is no less base to leave and neglect. But in the afternoon hours we will return to one another. For when it seemed to me that we had now come to the lime, you mixed in fists too." Here, when they had smiled, we departed.

3. 4. 7. And when we had returned, we found Licentius—to whom, never thirsting, would Helicon have come—gaping after the contriving of verses. For from nearly the middle of the meal—although the beginning of our meal was the same as its end—he had secretly risen, and had drunk nothing. To him I said, "I wish indeed for you that you may someday embrace that poetry which you have desired: not that this perfection delights me too much, but because I see you have so caught fire that you cannot escape from this love except by satiety; which is wont easily to come about after perfection. Then, since you are well tuneful, I would rather you dinned your verses into our ears than that, in those Greek tragedies, after the manner of the little birds we see shut up in cages, you chant words you do not understand. Yet I advise you to go on and drink, if you will, and return to our school, if Hortensius and philosophy now deserve anything of you—to which you have already, by that conversation of yours, offered the sweetest first-fruits, which had moved you more vehemently than this poetry to the knowledge of great and truly fruitful things. But while I desire to call you back to those disciplines by which minds are cultivated, I fear lest it become a labyrinth for you, and I almost repent of having checked you from that impulse." He blushed, and went off to drink. For he was both very thirsty, and the occasion was given of avoiding me, who would perhaps say more and harsher things.

3. 4. 8. And when he had returned, all attentive, I began thus: "Is it so, Alypius, that about a matter now, as it seems to me, most manifest, we do not agree?" "It is no wonder," he said, "if what you assert is ready to hand for you is obscure to me: since most manifest things can be more manifest to others, and likewise certain obscure things more obscure to some. For if even this is truly manifest to you, believe me, there is someone else to whom even this manifest thing of yours is more manifest; and likewise another to whom my obscure thing is more obscure. But lest you think me too combative, I would beg that you set forth this manifest thing more manifestly." "Attend, I beg, diligently," I said, "and lay aside a little your care for answering. For if I know you and myself well, what I say will, by an effort given, easily grow clear, and one will quickly persuade the other. Did you say at last—or perhaps I had grown deaf—that it seems to the wise man that he knows wisdom?" He nodded. "Let us leave that wise man aside a little," I said. "Are you yourself wise, or not?" "Nothing less," he said. "Yet I want," I said, "you to 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' or 'he knows,'" he said, "do you think it one thing or different? For I fear lest this confusion offer some refuge to one of us."

3. 4. 9. "This," I said, "is that Tuscan wrangle, as it is wont to be called, when to a question raised not its solution but the raising of another seems to heal it. Which our poet too (that I may give myself a little to Licentius's ears) judged in the Bucolic poem to be becoming, this rustic and plainly pastoral way, when one asks the other where the space of heaven opens no wider than three ells; but the other,
Tell me in what lands the flowers spring up inscribed with the names of kings (Virgil, Eclogues 3.105–6).
And I beg, Alypius, that you not think this permitted us in the country: surely let even these little baths make some recollection of the comeliness of the gymnasia: to that, if you please, which I ask, answer. Does the Academics' wise man seem to you to know wisdom?" "Lest, by returning words for words, we go on at length," he said, "it seems that it seems to him that he knows." "Then," I said, "it seems to you 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. Here, I think, you can either affirm or deny." "O that," he said, "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 hope for anything in these matters. For when you asked me what seemed to me about the Academic wise man, I answered, 'It seems to me that it seems to him that he knows wisdom,' lest either I rashly affirm that I know, or rashly say that he knows." "I beg you, grant me as a great kindness," I said, "first, that you deign to answer what I, not what you yourself, ask. Then, that you set aside a little now my hope, which I know is no less a care to you than your own. Certainly, if I deceive myself in this question, I will quickly cross to your side, and we will end the controversy. Finally, that, with some anxiety driven off by which I see you touched, you attend more diligently, that you may easily understand what I want answered me by you. For you said you did not affirm or deny—which must surely be done for what I ask—lest you rashly say you know what you do not know: as if, indeed, I had asked what you know, and not what seems to you. And 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 seem so?" "If the wise man," he said, "such as reason sets forth, can be found, he can seem to me to know wisdom." "Reason, then," I said, "sets forth to you that the wise man is such as does not not know wisdom: and rightly so. For it was not fitting that it should otherwise seem to you."

3. 4. 10. "I ask, then, now, whether the wise man can be found. For if he can, he can also know wisdom, and the whole question between us is resolved. 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. And this being settled, we must now depart from the Academics, and this question must be turned over with you diligently and cautiously, as far as we are able. For it pleased them, or rather it seemed to them, both that a human being can be wise, and yet that knowledge cannot fall upon a human being. Therefore 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 pleased us at the same time—as also all the ancients, and the Academics themselves—that no one can know false things: whence this now remains, that you either contend that wisdom is nothing, or confess that such a wise man is described by the Academics as reason does not allow."

3. 5. 11. "And these things being set aside, you would consent that we inquire whether such wisdom as reason sets forth can come to a human being. For we ought not, nor can we, rightly call anything else wisdom. Even if I grant," he said, "what I see you greatly striving for—that wisdom is known by the wise man, and that something has been caught between us which the wise man can perceive—yet by no means does the whole intent of the Academics seem to me overthrown. For I foresee that no small place for defense is reserved for them, and that suspension of assent is not cut off, since by this very thing they cannot fail their own cause by which you think them convicted. For they will say that so far is nothing grasped, and assent to be given to nothing, that even this about nothing being perceived—which through nearly their whole life, up to your time, they had probably persuaded themselves—has now, by this conclusion, been wrung from them: so that, whether then or then the force of this argument is unconquered, whether by the slowness of my wit or really by its own strength, it cannot move them from their place, since they can still boldly affirm that not even now is consent to be given to anything. For perhaps at some time something can be found, even by themselves or by another, against this too, which is keenly and probably said: and they ought to notice their own image, and as it were a certain mirror, in that Proteus, who is reported to be wont to be caught by that whereby he was least caught, and his investigators never to have held him fast except by the index of some kind of divine power. May it be present, and deign to demonstrate to us that truth which is so great a care; then I too, even against their will—which I least think—will confess that they are overcome."

3. 5. 12. "It is well," I said; "I have wished for nothing more at all. For see, I beg, 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 remains to them for defense except what cannot happen. For who could either in any way understand or believe this—that one who has been conquered should, by the very thing whereby he has been conquered, boast himself the conqueror? Then, if any conflict now remains with them, it is not from what they say—that nothing can be known—but from what they contend, that assent must be given to nothing. Now, therefore, we are in agreement. For as to me, so also to them, it seems that the wise man knows wisdom. But yet they warn that one must abstain from assent. For they say only that it seems so to them, but that they know it in no way: as if I professed that I know. I too say that it seems so to me: for I am foolish, as they too are, if they do not know wisdom. But that we ought to approve something, I think—that is, the truth. About which I consult them whether they deny it—that is, whether it pleases them that assent must not be given to the truth. They will never say this, but will assert that it cannot be found. Therefore here too in some part they hold me as an ally, since to both it is not displeasing—nay, necessarily pleasing—that assent must be given to the truth. 'But who will demonstrate it?' they say. Here I will not care to contend with them; it is enough for me that it is now not probable that the wise man knows nothing, lest they be forced to say a most absurd thing—either that wisdom is nothing, or that the wise man does not know wisdom."

3. 6. 13. "But who can show the truth was said by you, Alypius—from whom I must greatly labor not to dissent. For you said that some divine power alone can show a human being what the truth is: which was said both briefly and piously. And so in this conversation of ours I have heard nothing more gladly, nothing weightier, nothing more probable, and—if that divine power, as I trust, be present—nothing more true. For with what loftiness of mind was that Proteus mentioned by you, with what intent toward the best kind of philosophy! For that Proteus—that you young men may see that the poets are not wholly to be despised by philosophy—is brought in as an image of truth. Of truth, I say, Proteus displays and sustains the role in the poems, which no one can hold who, deceived by false images, has either loosened or let go the knots of his grasp. For these are the images which, by the habit of corporeal things, through these senses by which we use what is necessary to this life, contrive to deceive and mock us even when the truth is held, and as it were is had in our hands. This, then, is the third good that has come to me, which I do not find at what to value. For my most intimate friend agrees with me not only about the probability of human life, but also about religion itself, which is the most manifest sign of a true friend. Since indeed friendship has been most rightly and most holily defined as agreement about things human and divine, with benevolence and love (Cicero, On Friendship 6.20)."

3. 7. 14. "Nevertheless, lest either the arguments of the Academics seem to spread certain fogs over us, or we seem proudly to resist for some the authority of most learned men—among whom Cicero especially cannot but move us—if it please you, I will first say a few things against those points by which those disputations seem to be opposed to the truth. Then, as it seems to me, I will show what cause the Academics had for concealing their opinion. And so, Alypius, although I see you wholly on my side, yet take up their part a little, and answer me." "Since today," he said, "you have set out, as they say, with good auspices, I will not hinder your fullest victory, and those parts—since they are imposed on you by me—I will now try to take up more securely; if only this, which you signify you will do by questions, you would, if it is convenient for you, prefer to turn into continuous speech; lest truly, like a stubborn adversary—which is most far from your humanity—I, now your captive, be tortured by those little darts of yours."

3. 7. 15. And I, when I noticed that the others too expected this, as if entering on another beginning, said, "I will humor you. And although, after that labor of the rhetorical school, I had presumed that in this light armor I would rest somewhat, so as to do these things by questioning rather than by speaking; yet, both because we are very few, so that I need not strain my voice against my health, and because I wished this pen, for the sake of the same health, to be, as it were, the charioteer and moderator of my speech, lest I be carried away by my mind more swiftly than care for the body demands: hear in continuous speech, as you wish, what I feel. But first let us see of what sort it is on which the lovers of the Academics are wont to boast too much. For there is in Cicero's books, which he wrote in patronage of this cause, a certain passage, seasoned, as it seems to me, with wondrous urbanity, but, as to some, even strengthened with firmness. It is altogether difficult that anyone should not be moved by what is said there: that to the Academic wise man the second place is given by all of the other sects who seem to themselves wise, since each must necessarily 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 rest."

3. 7. 16. "For suppose, for example, that a Stoic wise man is present; for against them especially the Academics' wit blazed. Therefore, if Zeno or Chrysippus be asked who the wise man is, he will answer that he is the one whom he himself described. On the contrary, Epicurus or some other of the adversaries will deny it, and will rather contend that his own most skilled hunter of pleasures is the wise man. Thence to a quarrel: Zeno cries out, and that whole Porch is in tumult, that a human being is born for nothing else than honorableness; that it draws minds to itself by its own splendor, with no advantage at all set without and, as it were, pandering as a reward; and that that pleasure of Epicurus is common only to the beasts among themselves, into whose fellowship to thrust both man and the wise man is wicked. On the other side, that one, having summoned from his little gardens to his aid a crowd, like that of Bacchus, of drunkards—seeking, however, someone whom, raving with unkempt nails and rough mouth, they may tear apart—pressing hard, exalting, with the people as witness, the name of pleasure, sweetness, repose, insists keenly that without these no one can seem to be happy. If the Academic should run into their brawl, he will hear both dragging him to their sides; but if he should go over to these or to those, he will be cried out by those he deserts as insane, unskilled, rash. And so, when he has diligently applied his ear both this way and that, being asked what seems to him, he will say he doubts. Now ask the Stoic who is better—Epicurus, who cries that he is raving, or the Academic, who pronounces that he must still deliberate about so great a matter? No one doubts that the Academic will be preferred. Again turn yourself to that other one, and ask whom he loves more: Zeno, by whom he is called a beast, or Arcesilaus, from whom he hears, 'You perhaps speak the truth, but I will inquire more diligently.' Is it not plain that that whole Porch seems insane, but the Academics, beside them, modest and cautious men, to Epicurus? (Cicero, Varro, frag. 34) Thus, about nearly all sects equally, Cicero most copiously affords a most delightful spectacle, as it were, to his readers, showing, as it were, that there is none of them who, when he has given himself the first place—which is necessary—does not say he gives the second to him whom he has beheld not resisting, but doubting. In which I will oppose nothing, nor take from them any glory. Let it indeed seem to whomever pleases that Cicero here did not jest, but wished to follow and gather certain empty and windy things—which is foreign to the levity of those very little Greeks."

3. 8. 17. Let it indeed seem to whomever pleases that Cicero here did not jest, but wished to follow and gather certain empty and windy things, which is foreign to the levity of those very little Greeks. For what hinders me—if I should wish to resist this vanity—from easily showing how much less an evil it is to be unlearned than unteachable? Whence it comes about that, when that boastful little Academic has given himself to each, as it were, as a pupil, and no one has been able to persuade him of what he thinks he knows, he is afterward, by their great consensus, laughed at. For now each one will judge any other of his adversaries to have learned nothing, but this man to be able to learn nothing. From which thereafter he will be thrown out of the schools of all—not with rods, which would be more disgraceful than troublesome, but with the cudgels and clubs of those cloaked fellows. For it will be no great business, against the common pest, to demand, as it were, certain Herculean aids of the Cynics. But if it pleases me to contend with them about this cheapest glory—which must be granted with easier pardon to me, now indeed philosophizing, but not yet wise—what will they have that they can refute? For see, let us suppose that I and an Academic have rushed into those quarrels of the philosophers: let all be present, let them briefly, as the time allows, set forth their opinions. Let it be asked of Carneades what he thinks. He will say he doubts. And so each one will prefer him to the rest. Therefore all to all: great glory indeed, and most lofty. Who would not wish to imitate him? And so I too, asked, will answer the same; the praise will be equal. In that glory, then, does the wise man rejoice, in which the fool is made equal to him? What if he even easily surpasses? For shame does nothing? For I will hold that Academic now departing from the judgment. For folly is more greedy of victory of this kind. Therefore, holding him back, I will betray to the judges what they do not know, and will say: 'I, best of men, have this in common with this man, that I doubt which of you follows the truth. But we have also opinions of our own, about which I ask you to judge. For to me it is uncertain indeed, though I have heard your decrees, where the truth is: but for this reason, that I do not know who among you is wise. But this man denies that even the wise man himself knows anything—not even that very wisdom from which he is called wise.' Who would not see whose the palm is? For if my adversary says this, I shall win by glory; but if, blushing, he confesses that the wise man knows wisdom, I shall win by opinion."

3. 9. 18. "But let us now withdraw from this litigious tribunal into some place where no crowd is troublesome to us; and would that into the very school of Plato, which is said to have received its name from this, that it was secluded from the people. Here let us now discuss, as far as we are able among ourselves, not about glory, which is light and childish, but about life itself, and about some hope of a happy mind. The Academics deny that anything can be known. Whence did this please you, men most studious and most learned? 'Zeno's definition moved us,' they say. Why, I ask? For if it is true, he who knows even it knows something true; but if it is false, it ought not to have moved most steadfast men. But let us see what Zeno says: namely, that such a presentation can be grasped and perceived as, when true, has no marks in common with the false. Did this move you, Platonic man, so that with all your forces you should drag the studious back from the hope of learning, so that they might desert the whole business of philosophizing, with the help also, as it were, of a certain groaning torpor of mind?"

3. 9. 19. "But how would it not move him deeply, if both 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 fall upon a human being, than that the wise man does not know why he lives, does not know how he lives, does not know whether he lives; finally—than which nothing more perverse and more delirious and insane can be said—that he is at once wise and ignorant of wisdom. For which is harder: that a human being cannot be wise, or that the wise man does not know wisdom? Nothing need be disputed here, if the matter, so placed, is not enough for deciding. But that, perhaps, if it were said, would turn human beings utterly away from philosophizing: but now they are to be led on by the sweetest and most holy name of wisdom, so that, when, their lifetime worn away, they have learned nothing, they may afterward pursue you with the bitterest curses—you whom, having at least left the pleasures of the body, they followed to the torments of the mind."

3. 9. 20. "But let us see by which one they are rather deterred from philosophy. By the one who said: 'Hear, friend; philosophy is called not wisdom itself, but the study of wisdom; to which if you betake yourself, you will not indeed, while you live here, be wise (for wisdom is with God, nor can it come to a human being), but when you have sufficiently exercised and cleansed yourself by such study, your mind will easily enjoy these things after this life—that is, when you have ceased to be a human being'? Or by the one who said: 'Come, mortals, to philosophy; great is the fruit here: for what is dearer to a human being than wisdom? Come, then, that you may be wise—and may not know wisdom'? 'It will not be said so by me,' he says. 'That is to deceive, for nothing else will be found with you.' Thus it comes about that, if you say this, they flee as from a madman; if in another way you lead them to this, you make them mad. But let us believe that, on account of either opinion, human beings equally are unwilling to philosophize. If Zeno's definition forced philosophy to say something pernicious, my good man, was that to be said to a human being by which he should grieve, or that by which he should laugh at you?"

3. 9. 21. "Yet what Zeno defined, let us discuss, fools as we are. He says that that presentation can be grasped which so appears that the false cannot appear. It is manifest that nothing else comes into perception. 'This,' says Arcesilaus, 'I too see, and by this very thing I teach that nothing is perceived. For nothing of the kind can be found.' Perhaps by you and by other fools: but by the wise man, why can it not? Although even to a fool himself I think nothing can be answered, if he should say to you that, by that memorable keenness of yours, you should refute this very definition of Zeno, and show that it too can be false: which if you cannot do, you have this very thing as something you perceive; but if you refute it, you have nothing by which you are hindered from perceiving. I do not see that it can be refuted, and judge it altogether most true. And so, when I know it, fool though I am, I know something. But suppose it yields to your cunning. I will use a most secure complex: it is either 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. 'Whence,' he says, 'can it?' Most truly, then, did Zeno define, nor did whoever agreed with him even in this err. Or shall we think it a definition of small praise and sincerity which, against those who were going to say many things against perception, while it designated of what sort that was which could be perceived, showed itself to be such? And so there is both a definition and an example of comprehensible things. 'Whether,' he says, 'it itself too is true I do not know: but because it is probable, therefore, following it, I show that nothing is of the kind which it expressed could be grasped.' You show it perhaps besides it, and you see, I think, what follows. For if of even that we are uncertain, knowledge does not so desert us; for we know that it is either true or false: therefore we do not know nothing. Although it will never bring it about that I should be ungrateful; I altogether judge that definition most true. For either even false things can be perceived—which the Academics vehemently fear, and which is really absurd—or even those which are most like false things cannot: whence that definition is true. But now let us see the rest."

3. 10. 22. "Although these things, unless I am mistaken, may be enough for victory, yet perhaps not enough for satiety of victory. There are two things which are said by the Academics, against which, as far as we are able, we have resolved to come: that nothing can be perceived, and that assent must be given to nothing. About assenting presently; now we will say a few other things about perception. Do you say that nothing at all can be grasped? Here Carneades awoke: for none of those men slept less deeply than he, and he looked around at the evidence of things. And so, I believe, speaking with himself, as happens: 'Are you, then, Carneades,' he says, 'going to say that you do not know whether you are a human being or an ant? Or shall Chrysippus triumph over you? Let us say that we do not know those things which are inquired into among philosophers; the rest do not pertain to us, so that, if I have tottered in the daily and common light, I may appeal to those shadows of the unlearned, where only certain divine eyes see: who, even if they have beheld me trembling and falling, cannot betray me to the blind, especially the arrogant, and such as are ashamed to be taught anything.' Splendidly indeed, O Greek industry, girt and ready you go forth; but you do not regard that that definition was both invented by a philosopher, and fixed and founded in the vestibule of philosophy. If you try to cut it down, the axe will return upon your own legs: for, with it shaken, not only can something be perceived, but even that can be which is most like the false, if you do not dare to overthrow it. For it is your lurking-place, whence you violently burst and leap out upon the incautious wishing to cross over: some Hercules will strangle you, in your own cave, like the half-human Cacus, and crush you with its very masses, teaching that there is something in philosophy which, like a thing similar to the false, cannot be made uncertain by you. Certainly I was hastening to other things; whoever presses this point does you, Carneades, great insult—you whom he thinks can, by me, like one dead, be overcome anywhere or from anywhere. But if he does not think so, he is merciless, who forces me everywhere to desert my defenses and to contend with you in the field: into which, when I had begun to descend, frightened by your name alone, I drew back my foot, and from the higher ground hurled I know not what—whether it reached you, or what it did, let those see under whose examination we fight. But why do I fear, fool that I am? If I remember well, you are dead, and Alypius does not now rightly fight for your tomb: God will easily help me against your shade."

3. 10. 23. "You say nothing in philosophy can be perceived. And, to spread your speech far and wide, you seize on the brawls and disagreements of philosophers, and think they furnish you arms against those very men. For how shall we decide the quarrel between Democritus and the earlier natural philosophers about one world and innumerable ones, since between him and his heir Epicurus concord could not remain? For that luxurious fellow, when he permits the atoms—his little maidservants, as it were, that is, the little bodies which he gladly embraces in the dark—not to hold their own way, but to swerve here and there of their own accord into others' borders, has squandered his whole patrimony, even through quarrels. But this is nothing to me. For if it pertains to wisdom to know any of these things, it cannot lie 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 natural matters. For I hold it certain that either there is one world, or not one; and if not one, that the number is either finite or infinite. Let Carneades teach that this opinion is like the false. Likewise I know that this world of ours is so arranged 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 origin in time, but will have an end; or both began to abide and will not abide forever: and innumerable natural things I know in this way. For these disjunctions are true, nor can anyone confound them by any likeness of the false. 'But assume something,' says the Academic. I will not: for this is to say, 'Leave what you know, say what you do not know.' But the statement hangs in suspense. Certainly it better hangs than falls: surely it is plain; surely it can now be called either false or true. This, then, I say I know. You, who both deny that these things pertain to philosophy and assert that nothing of them can be known, show that I do not know these things: say that these disjunctions are either false, or have something in common with the false, by which they cannot be distinguished at all."

3. 11. 24. "'Whence,' he says, 'do you know that this world exists, if the senses are deceived?' Your reasonings could never so refute the force of the senses as to convince us that nothing seems to us; nor have you ever at all dared to attempt that: but you have insisted vehemently on persuading us that a thing can be other than it seems. So I call this whole, whatever it is, that contains and nourishes us—this, I say, which appears to my eyes and is sensed by me to have earth and sky, or as-it-were earth and as-it-were sky—I call the world. If you say nothing seems to me, I shall never err. For he errs who rashly approves what seems to him. For you say that what is false can seem to those sensing; you do not say that nothing seems. For the whole cause of all disputation will surely be taken away, where you wish to reign, if not only do we know nothing, but also nothing seems to us. But if you deny that this which seems to me is a world, you make a controversy about a name, since I said that it is called by me 'world.'"

3. 11. 25. "'Even,' you will say, 'if you are asleep, is that a world which you see?' It has already been said that whatever appears to me of the kind I call the world. But if it pleases you to call 'world' only that which is seen by the waking, or even by the sane, contend, if you can, that those who are asleep and raving do not rave and sleep in the world. Therefore I say this: that this whole mass and machine of bodies in which we are—whether asleep, or raving, or waking, or sane—is either one or not one. Explain how that opinion can be false. For if I am asleep, it can be that I have said nothing; or, if even words have escaped a sleeper's mouth, as is wont to happen, it can be that I have not said it here, not sitting thus, not with these listening: but that this should be false, cannot be. Nor do I say I have perceived this while awake. For you can say that this could have seemed to me even asleep; and therefore this can be most like the false. But if there is one world and six worlds, that there are seven worlds, however I am affected, is manifest, and that I know it I affirm not shamelessly. Therefore show either this connection or those disjunctions above to be able, by sleep or madness or vanity of the senses, to be false; and if, awakened, I remember these things, I will grant that I am conquered. For I believe it is now clear enough what things seem false through sleep and madness—namely, those which pertain to the bodily senses: for that three times three is nine, and the square of intelligible numbers, must be true even if the human race be snoring. Although I see that much can be said even on behalf of the senses themselves, which we do not find reprehended by the Academics. For I believe the senses are not accused either because the raving suffer false imaginations, or because we see false things in dreams. For if they reported true things to the waking and sane, it is nothing to them what the mind of a sleeping or insane man feigns to itself."

3. 11. 26. "It remains to ask whether, when they themselves report, they report the truth. Come, if some Epicurean should say: 'I have nothing to complain of about the senses: for it is unjust to demand of them more than they can; but whatever the eyes can see, they see truly.' Then is what they see of the oar in the water true? Wholly true. For, a cause being added why it should so appear, if the oar plunged in the wave appeared straight, I would rather accuse my eyes of false reporting. For they would not see what, such causes existing, ought to be seen. What need of many words? This can be said of the movement of towers, of the little feathers of birds, of countless other things. 'Yet I am deceived if I assent,' says someone. Do not assent more than to persuade yourself that it so appears to you; and there is no deception. For I do not see how the Academic refutes him who says: 'This I know, that this seems white to me; this, that my hearing is delighted by this; this, that this smells pleasantly to me; this, that this tastes sweet to me; this, that this is cold to me.' Say rather whether the leaves of the wild olive, which the goat so persistently seeks, are bitter in themselves. O shameless man! is not the goat himself more modest? I do not know how they are to the flock; to me they are bitter: what more do you ask? But perhaps there is even some human being to whom they are not bitter. Do you press into trouble? Did I say they are bitter to all? I said to me, and this I do not always affirm. For what if at one time and another time, for one cause and another, now something sweet, now something bitter, be sensed in the mouth? This I say: that a human being can, when he tastes something, in good faith swear that he knows by his own palate that this is sweet to him, or the contrary, nor can he be led away from this knowledge by any Greek calumny. For who would be so shameless as to say to me, savoring something with delight, 'Perhaps you do not taste, but this is a dream'? Do I resist? But yet that would delight me even in dreams. Therefore that which I said I know, no likeness of false things confounds. And the Epicurean, or the Cyrenaics, may say many other things perhaps on behalf of the senses, against which I have learned nothing was said by the Academics. But what is that to me? If they wish these things, and if they can, even with me favoring, let them tear them down. For whatever is disputed by them against the senses does not avail against all philosophers. For there are those who confess that all those things which the mind receives by the bodily sense can beget opinion, but deny that they beget knowledge; which yet they wish to be contained by understanding, and, removed from the senses, to live in the mind. And perhaps among their number is that wise man whom we seek. But of this elsewhere. Now let us go on to the rest, which on account of these things now said we shall, unless I am mistaken, explain in few words."

3. 12. 27. "For what does the bodily sense either help or hinder one inquiring about morals? Unless perhaps those very men who placed the highest true good of a human being in pleasure—nothing hinders, neither the dove's neck, nor the uncertain voice, nor a weight heavy to a human being that is light to camels, nor six hundred other things—from saying that they know they are delighted by that by which they are delighted, or offended by that by which they are offended (which I do not see can be refuted); will they move him who embraces the end of good with his mind? Which of these do you choose? If you ask what seems to me, I think the highest good of a human being is in the mind. But now we are inquiring about knowledge. Therefore ask the wise man, who cannot be ignorant of wisdom: yet to me—slow and foolish as I am—it is meanwhile permitted to know that the end of human good, in which the happy life dwells, is either none, or in the mind, or in the body, or in both. Convince me, if you can, that I do not know this; which those most famous reasonings of yours by no means do. But if you cannot—for you will not find anything to which it is like the false—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 that source?"

3. 12. 28. "But he fears, perhaps, lest he choose the highest good while asleep. There is no danger: when he has awakened, he will reject it if it displeases him, hold it if it pleases. For who will rightly blame him because he saw something false in dreams? Or will you perhaps dread this—lest the sleeper lose wisdom, if he approves the false as true? This now not even a sleeper dares to dream: that he call the waking man wise, and deny it if he sleeps. These things can be said of madness too: but the discourse hastens to other things. Yet these I do not leave without a most secure conclusion. For either wisdom is lost in madness, and then he will no longer be wise—whom you cry out to be ignorant of the truth: or his knowledge remains in the understanding, even if the rest of his mind imagines, as if in dreams, that which it has received from the senses."

3. 13. 29. "There remains dialectic, which the wise man certainly knows well, and no one can know the false. But if he does not know it, the knowledge of it does not pertain to his wisdom, without which he could be wise; and superfluously do we ask whether it is true or can be perceived. Here perhaps someone may say to me: 'You, fool, are wont to betray what you know: could you know nothing of dialectic?' I indeed know more than of any part of philosophy. For first, it taught me that all those propositions which I used above are true. Then, through it, I have come to know many other true things. Count them, if you can, how many they are. 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 human being cannot be at once both happy and wretched. Here the sun does not at once shine and it be night. We are now either awake or asleep. That which I seem to myself to see is either a body or not a body. These, and many others which it would be very long to recall, I have learned through it to be true, in themselves true, however our senses are affected. It taught me that, if the antecedent part of any of those things which I just now set forth by connection is assumed, it necessarily draws after it that which is annexed. But those things which I stated by opposition or disjunction have this nature: that, when the rest are removed, whether one or more, there remains something that is confirmed by their removal. It taught me also that, when the matter for which words are spoken is agreed, one ought not to contend about words: and that whoever does this, if he does it from ignorance, must be taught; if from malice, deserted; if he cannot be taught, warned to do something else rather than consume time and labor on superfluous things; if he does not obey, neglected. About captious and deceptive little reasonings, the precept is brief: if they are inferred by ill conceding, one must return to the things conceded. If the true and the false conflict in one conclusion, what is understood must be accepted from it, what cannot be unraveled left alone. But if the measure (modus) of some matters lies wholly hidden from a human being, the knowledge of it must not be sought. These things indeed I have from dialectic, and many others which it is not necessary to recall. For I ought not to be ungrateful. But that wise man either neglects these, or—if perfected dialectic is itself the knowledge of truth—so knows it that he, despising and not pitying that most beggarly calumny of theirs, 'If it is true, it is false; if it is false, it is true,' starves it to death. Enough, I think, has been said about perception, for this reason, that when I shall have begun to speak about assenting, the whole cause will there again be turned over."

3. 14. 30. "Now then let us come to that part in which Alypius still seems to doubt. And first let us examine of what sort that is which moves you most keenly and most cautiously. For if this finding of yours, by which we are forced to confess that it is much more probable that the wise man knows wisdom, overthrows the Academics' opinion, strengthened (for so you said) by so many and so great reasons, by which it pleased them that the wise man knows nothing, then assent must rather be withheld. For by this very thing it is shown that nothing can be persuaded, however copious and subtle the arguments, to which, from the contrary side, if there be wit, there is not resisted no less keenly, or perhaps more keenly. From this it comes about that, when the Academic is conquered, he has conquered. O that he be conquered! He will never bring it about, by any Pelasgian art, that he depart from me at once both conquered and conqueror. Certainly let nothing else be found that can be said against these things, and of my own accord I profess myself conquered. For we are not dealing with the acquiring of glory, but with the finding of truth. It is enough for me somehow to surmount that mass which sets itself against those entering philosophy, and, hiding the darkness in I know not what receptacles, threatens that the whole of philosophy is such, and does not permit one to hope that any light will be found in it. But what more I should desire, I have nothing, if it is now probable that the wise man knows something. For there was no other cause why it seemed verisimilar that he ought to withhold assent, except that it was verisimilar that nothing could be grasped. This being taken away—for the wise man perceives even, as is now conceded, wisdom itself—no cause will now remain why the wise man should not assent even 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."

3. 14. 31. "For, I beg, let us set, as it were, before our eyes such a spectacle, if we can—a certain brawl of the wise man and wisdom. What else does wisdom say than that she is wisdom? But on the contrary that one says, 'I do not believe it.' Who says to wisdom, 'I do not believe you are wisdom'? Who, except the one with whom she could speak, and in whom she deigned to dwell—namely, the wise man? Go now, and seek me, who fight with the Academics: you now have a new contest, the wise man and wisdom fight with themselves. The wise man does not wish to consent to wisdom; I, with you, await secure. For who would not believe that wisdom is unconquered? Yet let us fortify ourselves with some complex. For either in this contest the Academic will conquer wisdom: and he will be conquered by me, because he will not be wise: or he will be overcome by her; and we shall teach that the wise man consents to wisdom. Either, then, 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 verisimilar that even the perception of wisdom herself falls upon the wise man, and there is no cause why he should not assent to that which can be perceived, I see what I wanted to be verisimilar—namely, that the wise man will assent to wisdom. If you ask where he may find wisdom herself, 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, then no longer with the Academics, but with you, whoever you are who feel this, we shall discuss in another conversation. For when they dispute these things, they surely dispute about the wise man. Cicero cries out that he himself is a great opiner, but that he inquires about the wise man (Cicero, Lucullus 20.66). And if this is still unknown to you, young men, surely you have read in the Hortensius: If, then, there is nothing certain, and it is not the part of the wise man to opine, the wise man will never approve anything (Cicero, Hortensius, frag. 100). From which it is manifest that, in those disputations of theirs against which we strive, they inquire about the wise man."

3. 14. 32. "I think, then, that to the wise man wisdom is certain—that is, that the wise man has perceived wisdom; and on this account he does not opine, when he assents to wisdom: for he assents to that thing which, had he not perceived it, he would not be wise. Nor do those men affirm that anyone ought not to assent except to things which cannot be perceived. But wisdom is not nothing. Since, then, he both knows wisdom and assents to wisdom, he neither knows nothing nor assents to nothing. What more do you want? Or do we inquire something about that error which they say is utterly avoided, if assent turns the mind toward nothing? For he errs, they say, whoever approves not only a false thing, but even a doubtful one, however true it be: but I find nothing that is not doubtful. But the wise man finds wisdom herself, as we were saying."

3. 15. 33. "But from this now you perhaps wish me to depart. Most secure things are not easily to be left, when we deal with most cunning men: yet I will humor you. But what shall I say here? What? What indeed? That old thing, surely, must be said, where they too have what they can say. For what shall I do, whom you thrust forth from my camp? Shall I implore the aid of the learned, with whom, if I cannot conquer, I shall perhaps be less ashamed to be conquered? I will therefore hurl, with what force I can, a dart smoky indeed and rough, but, unless I am mistaken, most strong: whoever approves nothing does nothing (see Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 7.158). O rustic fellow! And where is the probable? Where is the verisimilar? This is what you wanted. Do you hear how the Greek-fashioned shields ring? It has been caught—that which is indeed most robust: but with what hand did we hurl it? And these clients of mine suggest to me nothing more powerful; nor have we, as I see, made any wound. I will turn myself to those things which the country house and the field supply: they burden me rather than prepare me."

3. 15. 34. "For when, at leisure, I had long thought in this countryside how the probable or verisimilar could defend our acts from error, at first it seemed to me, as it was wont to seem when I sold such things, prettily roofed and fortified. Then, when I looked round the whole more cautiously, I seemed to myself to have seen one entrance by which error might rush in upon the secure. For I think that not only he errs who follows a false way, but also he who does not follow the true one. Let us suppose two travelers going to one place, of whom one has resolved to believe no one, the other is too credulous. They have come to some fork in the road: here that credulous one says to a shepherd who was present, or to some countryman, 'Hail, good fellow; tell me, I pray, by which way one goes well to that place.' It is answered: 'If you go this way, you will not err at all.' And he to his companion: 'He speaks the truth; let us go this way.' The most cautious man laughs, and most wittily mocks the assent so quickly given, and meanwhile, as the other departs, stays fixed at the fork: and now it begins to seem disgraceful to delay, when behold, from another arm of the road a certain elegant and urbane man, sitting on a horse, comes into view and begins to draw near; this man rejoices. Then, to the one arriving and greeted, he shows his purpose, asks the way; he tells even the cause of his remaining, to make him more benevolent, preferring him to the shepherd. But that man was by chance a deceiver, of those whom the crowd now calls "samardoci." The wretched fellow kept his custom even for nothing. '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 that direction as true,' he says, 'but because it is verisimilar. And to be idle here is neither honorable nor useful; let me go this way.' Meanwhile that one who erred by assenting, thinking so quickly that the shepherd's words were true, was already refreshing himself in the place to which they were going; but this man, not erring—since he follows the probable—wanders round I know not what woods, and does not yet find anyone to whom that place is known to which he had purposed to come. Truly I will tell you: when I thought of these things, I could not hold my laughter, that by the Academics' words it somehow comes about that he errs who holds the true way even by chance; but that he who has been led probably through pathless mountains, and has not found the region he sought, does not seem to err. So that, even granting that I rightly condemn rash consent, both err more easily than this man does not err. Henceforth, more vigilant against these words, I began to consider the very deeds and morals of human beings. Then indeed so many and so capital things against these men came into my mind that I no longer laughed, but was partly indignant, partly grieved that men most learned and most keen had rolled down into so great wickednesses and disgraces of opinions."

3. 16. 35. "For certainly—perhaps not everyone who errs sins; yet everyone who sins is granted either to err or to do something worse. What then, if some young man, when he has heard these men saying, 'It is base to err, and therefore we ought to consent to nothing; but yet, when anyone does what seems to him probable, he neither sins nor errs: let him only remember this, that whatever occurs either to the mind or to the senses is not to be approved as true'—hearing this, then, that young man will lie in wait for the chastity of another's wife. You, you I consult, Marcus Tullius: we are dealing with the morals and life of young men, for whose rearing and instruction all those writings of yours kept watch (see Cicero, On Divination 2.2.4). What else are you going to say than that it is not probable to you that the young man should do this? But to him it is probable. For if we live by another's probable, then you too ought not to have administered the republic, because it seemed to Epicurus that it ought not to be done. That young man, then, will commit adultery with another's wife: and if he be caught, where will he find you to be defended by? Although, even if he should find you, what will you say? You will surely deny it. What if it is so plain that you deny in vain? You wish, no doubt, to persuade—as if in the Cumaean gymnasium, or rather the Neapolitan—that he has not sinned, nay, that he has not even erred. For he did not persuade himself, as true, that adultery ought to be done; the probable occurred, he followed it, he did it: or perhaps he did not do it, but only seemed to himself to have done it. But that husband, foolish man, throws everything into confusion with lawsuits, crying out for his wife's chastity—with whom by chance he is now sleeping, and does not know. If the judges understand this, they will either neglect the Academics, and punish the man as a most certain crime; or, obeying these same men, will verisimilarly and probably condemn the man—so that now this patron does not at all know what he is doing. For he will have no one to be angry at, since all say they have erred in nothing, since by not assenting they have made probable that which seemed so. He will, then, lay aside the role of patron, and take up that of philosopher-consoler: and so he will easily persuade the young man, who has now made so much progress in the Academy, to think himself condemned as if in a dream. But you think I am jesting: I am ready to swear by all that is divine that I do not at all know in what way this man has sinned, if whoever does what seems probable does not sin. Unless perhaps they say that to err is wholly one thing, to sin another; and that they gave those precepts that we might not err, but reckoned it no great thing to sin."

3. 16. 36. "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 few words, and—what is graver—before the wisest judges: 'I consented to nothing, and therefore I did not err. But how should I not do what seemed probable?' But those who think these things cannot be probably persuaded—let them read Catiline's speech, by which he persuaded the parricide of his fatherland, in which alone all crimes are contained. Now who does not laugh at this? They themselves say that in acting they follow nothing but the probable, and they greatly seek the truth, while it is probable to them that it cannot be found. O wondrous monster! But let us pass this by; it pertains less to us, less to the peril of our life, less to the danger of our fortunes. That is capital, that is to be dreaded, that is to be feared by every best man: that every wickedness, if this reasoning of the probable shall hold, when it shall have seemed probable to anyone that it ought to be done—provided he assent to nothing as if to a truth—he commits not only without blame of crime, but even without blame of error. What then? Did they not see these things? Nay, most skillfully and most prudently they saw them; nor would I in any way arrogate so much to myself as to follow Marcus Tullius in any part in industry, vigilance, wit, learning: to whom yet, asserting that a human being can know nothing, if this only were said—'I know that it so seems to me'—he would have nothing whence to refute it."

3. 17. 37. "Why, then, did it please men so great to deal, by perpetual and stubborn contentions, that the knowledge of the truth might seem to fall upon no one? Hear now a little more attentively—not what I know, but what I think: for I had reserved this to the last, that I might explain, if I could, of what sort the whole counsel of the Academics seems to me to be. Plato, the wisest and most learned man of his times, who both so spoke that whatever he said became great, and spoke such things that, however he said them, they did not become small, is said, after the death of his master Socrates, whom he had singularly loved, to have learned much also from the Pythagoreans. But Pythagoras, not content with Greek philosophy—which then was either almost nothing, or at least most hidden—after, moved by the disputations of a certain Pherecydes the Syrian, he believed the mind immortal, had heard many wise men, traveling far and wide. So Plato, adding to the charm and subtlety of Socrates, which he had in moral matters, the skill in natural and divine things, which he had diligently received from those I mentioned; and joining, as the shaper of those parts and their judge, dialectic, which is either wisdom itself, or that without which wisdom cannot at all be: is said to have composed a perfect discipline of philosophy, about which it is not now the time to discourse. For it is enough for what I want, that Plato felt there are two worlds: one intelligible, in which the truth itself dwells; but this sensible one, which it is manifest we sense by sight and touch. And so that the former is true, this verisimilar and made to the image of that one. And therefore that from the former, in the soul which knew itself, truth was, as it were, polished and as it were made serene; but from this, in the minds of the foolish, not knowledge but opinion could be begotten. Yet whatever was done in this world by those virtues which he called civil—like the other true virtues, which, except to a few wise men, were unknown—could not be named except verisimilar."

3. 17. 38. "These and other things of this kind seem to me to have been preserved among his successors, as far as they could, and guarded as mysteries. For either these things are not easily perceived except by those who, cleansing themselves from all vices, have vindicated themselves into a certain more-than-human manner of life; or he sins not lightly who, knowing them, has wished to teach any human beings whatever. And so I suspect that Zeno, prince of the Stoics, when, having heard and believed certain things, he had come to the school left by Plato, which Polemo then held, was held suspect, and did not seem such a man to whom those, as it were, sacrosanct decrees of Plato should easily be betrayed and committed, before he had unlearned those things which he had brought into that school, received from others. Polemo dies, Arcesilaus succeeds him—a fellow-pupil indeed of Zeno, but under the teaching of Polemo. Therefore, when Zeno was delighting in a certain opinion of his own about the world, and especially 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 that nothing is done in it except by body; for he thought God himself fire—most prudently and most usefully, it seems to me, Arcesilaus, when that evil was creeping widely, hid the opinion of the Academy utterly, and, like gold to be found sometime, buried it for posterity. Therefore, since the crowd is more prone to rush into false opinions, and, by the habit of bodies, all things are most easily, but harmfully, believed to be corporeal, that most keen and most humane man resolved rather to unteach those whom he found ill-taught than to teach those whom he did not judge teachable. Thence were born all those things which are attributed to the new Academy, of which the ancients had no need."

3. 17. 39. "But if Zeno had at some time been awakened, and had seen both that nothing can be grasped except what is such as he himself defined, and that nothing of the kind can be found in bodies, to which he attributed all things; long since indeed this kind of disputations, which blazed up by great necessity, would have been extinguished. But Zeno, deceived—as it seemed to the Academics themselves, and as it does not also not seem to me—by an image of constancy, was stubborn: and that pernicious trust in bodies somehow lived on into Chrysippus, who (for he most could) gave it great strength of spreading itself more widely; had not, on that side, Carneades, keener and more vigilant than all the rest before, so resisted that I wonder that opinion availed anything even afterward. For Carneades first laid aside that, as it were, shamelessness of caviling, by which he saw Arcesilaus not a little defamed, lest he should seem to wish to speak against all things, as if for the sake of ostentation: but he set himself to overthrow and destroy properly the Stoics themselves, and Chrysippus."

3. 18. 40. "Then, when he was pressed on all sides—that if he assented to nothing, the wise man would do nothing (O wondrous man! and yet not wondrous, for it flowed from the very fountains of Plato!)—he attended wisely what actions those men approved, and seeing them like to certain true ones, named that which in this world he might follow for acting 'verisimilar.' To what it was like he both skillfully knew and prudently concealed, and this he also called 'probable.' For whoever beholds its model approves an image well. How, then, does the wise man approve, or how does he follow what is like the true, when he is ignorant of what the truth itself is? Therefore those men knew, and approved false things in which they noticed a praiseworthy imitation of true things. But because it was neither lawful nor easy to show this to the profane, they left to posterity, and to those whom they could at that time, a certain sign of their opinion. But those who were good dialecticians they forbade, insulting and mocking, to raise a question about words. On these accounts Carneades is said to have been also the prince and author of the third Academy."

3. 18. 41. "Then this conflict lasted down to our Cicero—now plainly wounded, and about to inflate Latin letters with its last breath. For nothing seems to me more inflated than to say so many things so most copiously and most ornately, not feeling so. By which winds, however, that hay-stuffed Platonic, Antiochus, was, as it seems to me, sufficiently scattered and dispersed. For the flocks of the Epicureans set their sunny stalls in the minds of delight-loving peoples. For Antiochus, a hearer of Philo—a man, as I think, most circumspect, who had now, as it were, begun to open the gates to the retreating enemy, and to recall the Academy to the authority and laws of Plato (although Metrodorus too had before tried to do this, who is said first to have confessed that it had not pleased the Academics by decree that nothing could be grasped, but that they had necessarily taken up arms of this kind against the Stoics): Antiochus, then, as I had begun to say, having heard Philo the Academic and Mnesarchus the Stoic, had crept into the old Academy—as if empty of defenders, and as if secure with no enemy—like a helper and citizen, bringing in I know not what evil from the ashes of the Stoics, by which to violate the threshold of Plato. But against him, those arms being seized again, both Philo resisted until he died, and our Cicero suppressed all his remnants, impatient that, while he lived, anything he had loved should be shaken or contaminated: so that, after those times, no long interval after, all stubbornness and obstinacy being dead, that face of Plato, which in philosophy is most purified and most lucid, the clouds of error being dispersed, flashed forth, especially in Plotinus—a Platonic philosopher judged so like him that one would think they lived at the same time; but so great is the interval of time that he must be thought to have revived in this man."

3. 19. 42. "And so now we do not nearly see philosophers, except either Cynics, or Peripatetics, or Platonists: and Cynics indeed, because a certain freedom and license of life delights them. But as for what pertains to learning and doctrine, and to the morals by which the soul is cared for, because there have not been lacking most keen and most skillful men, who taught by their disputations that Aristotle and Plato so accord with each other that to the unskilled and less attentive they seem to disagree—through many ages indeed and many contentions, but yet there has been filtered out, as I think, one discipline of the truest philosophy. For it is not that philosophy of this world, which our sacred rites most deservedly detest, but of the other, intelligible world; to which souls, blinded by the manifold darkness of error and besmeared with the deepest filth from the body, that most subtle reasoning would never recall, had not the highest God, by a certain popular clemency, bent down and lowered the authority of the divine intellect even to the human body itself; by whose precepts—and not only precepts, but deeds too—souls, roused, could return into themselves and recover their fatherland, even without the wrangling of disputations."

3. 20. 43. "This about the Academics I have for the meantime probably, as I could, persuaded myself. If it is false, it is nothing to me, for whom it is now enough not to think that the truth cannot be found by a human being. But whoever thinks that the Academics felt thus, let him hear Cicero himself. For he says it was their custom to conceal their opinion, and not to be wont to lay it open to anyone except one who had lived with them up to old age (see Cicero, Varro, frag. 35). But what that opinion is, God will see; I think, however, that it was Plato's. But that you may briefly grasp my whole purpose: in whatever way human wisdom stands, I see that I have not yet perceived it. But since I am in my thirty-third year of age, I do not think I ought to despair that I shall someday attain it. For, all the other things which mortals think good being despised, I have resolved to give myself to seeking it out. And since the reasonings of the Academics were deterring me not a little from this business, I am, I think, sufficiently fortified against them by this discussion. But it is doubtful to none that we are impelled to learning by a twofold weight, of authority and of reason. To me, then, it is certain never at all to depart from the authority of Christ: for I find none more powerful. But as for what is to be pursued by most subtle reasoning—for I am now so disposed that I impatiently desire to apprehend what is true not by believing only, but also by understanding—I trust that for the meantime I shall find among the Platonists what does not conflict with our sacred rites."

3. 20. 44. Here, after they saw that I had made an end of speaking, although it was now night, and something had been written even after the lamp was brought in, yet those young men were most intently waiting to see whether Alypius would promise to answer on another day. Then he said, "I am prepared to affirm that nothing ever came out so to my mind as that I depart from today's discussion overcome. Nor do I think this joy ought to be only mine. I will therefore share it with you, my fellow contenders, or our judges. For perhaps the Academics themselves wished to be conquered in this way by their own posterity. For what could seem or be shown to us more delightful than this charm of speech, more weighed than this gravity of opinions, more ready than this benevolence, more skilled than this learning? I altogether cannot worthily marvel that things so harsh were treated so wittily, things so desperate so bravely, things so confuted so moderately, things so obscure so clearly. Therefore now, my companions, turn your expectation—by which you were provoking me to answer—with me, with surer hope, toward learning. We have a leader who will lead us into the very secret places of truth, God now showing the way."

3. 20. 45. Here I, when those young men, with a certain boyish eagerness, showed by their faces that they felt cheated, as it were, because Alypius did not seem about to answer, said, smiling, "Do you envy my praises? But since, now secure about Alypius's constancy, I fear nothing from him, so that you too may give me thanks, I equip you against him who has offended so great an intentness of your expectation. Read the Academics; and when you have found there Cicero the victor (for what is easier?) of these trifles, let him be compelled by you to defend this conversation of ours against those unconquered ones. This hard reward, Alypius, I render you for my false praise." Here, when they had smiled, we made an end of so great a conflict—whether a most firm one I do not know, yet more modestly and more quickly than I had hoped.