The Complete Essays (88 page)

How many disciplines are there which actually profess to be based on conjecture rather than on knowledge, and which, being unable to distinguish truth from falsehood, merely follow what seems likely? Pyrrhonians say that truth and falsehood exist: within us we have means of looking for them, but not of making any lasting judgement: we have no touchstone.

We would be better off if we dropped our inquiries and let ourselves be moulded by the natural order of the world. A soul safe from prejudice has made a wondrous advance towards peace of mind. People who judge their judges and keep accounts of what they do fail to show due submissiveness. Among people who are amenable to the legitimate teachings of religion and politics, there are more simple and uninquisitive minds than minds which keep a schoolmasterly eye on causes human and divine. –

[A] No system discovered by Man has greater usefulness nor a greater appearance of truth [than Pyrrhonism] which shows us Man naked, empty, aware of his natural weakness, fit to accept outside help from on high: Man, stripped of all human learning and so all the more able to lodge the divine within him, annihilating
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his intellect to make room for faith; [C] he is no scoffer, [A] he holds no doctrine contrary to established custom; he is humble, obedient, teachable, keen to learn – and as a sworn enemy of heresy he is freed from the vain and irreligious opinions introduced by erroneous sects. [B] He is a blank writing-tablet, made ready for the finger of God to carve such letters on him as he pleases. The more we refer ourselves to God, commit ourselves to him and reject
ourselves, the greater we are worth. Ecclesiastes says: ‘Accept all things in good part, just as they seem, just as they taste, day by day. The rest is beyond thy knowledge’:
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[C]
‘Dominus novit cogitationes hominum, quoniam vanae sunt’
[The Lord knoweth the thoughts of men, that they are vanity].

[A] And so two out of the three generic schools of Philosophy make an express profession of doubt and ignorance; it is easy to discover that most who belonged to the third school, the Dogmatists, put on an assured face merely because it looks better. They did not really think that they had established any certainties, but wanted to show us how far they had advanced in their hunt for Truth, [C]
‘quam docti fingunt, magis quam norunt’
[which the learned feign rather than know]. When Timaeus had to reveal to Socrates what he knew about the Gods, the world and mankind, he determined to speak of such things as one man to another: it would be enough if the reasons he gave had as much probability as anyone else’s, since precise reasons were neither in his grasp nor in the grasp of any mortal man.
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One of the followers of his school imitated him in these words:
‘Ut potero, explicabo: nec tamen, ut Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa, quae dixero; sed, ut homunculus, probabilia conjectura sequens’
[I will unravel things as best I may. What I shall say is neither fixed nor certain: I am no Pythian Apollo; I am a little man seeking the probable through conjecture]. Yet he was merely treating a common, not supernatural theme: contempt for death! In another place he translates Timaeus directly from Plato:
‘Si forte, de deorum natura ortuque mundi disserentes, minus id quod habemus animo consequimur, haud erit mirum. Aequum est enim meminisse et me qui disseram, hominem esse, et vos qui judicetis; ut, si probabilia dicentur, nihil ultra requiratis’
[If we are unable to achieve what we have in mind to do when we set out to treat the nature of the Gods and the origin of the world, that will not be surprising. It is right to remember that both I who am speaking and you who are judging are men. If what I say is probable, you can demand nothing more].
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[A] Aristotle regularly piles up many different opinions and beliefs, so as to evaluate his own against them. He shows how much farther he has
gone and how much nearer he has approached to probability – Truth not being something we should accept on authority or from the testimony of others. [C] (That is why Epicurus scrupulously avoided citing such evidence in his writings.) [A] Aristotle is the Prince of the Dogmatists; and yet it is from him we learn that greater knowledge leads to further doubt. You can often find him hiding behind a deliberate obscurity,
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so deep and impenetrable that you cannot make out what he meant. In practice it is Pyrrhonism cloaked in affirmation.

[C] Just listen to this assertion of Cicero, explaining to us another’s notion by his own:
‘Qui requirunt quid de quaque re ipsi sentiamus, curiosius id faciunt quant necesse est. Haec in philosophia ratio contra omnia disserendi nullamque rem aperte judicandi, profecta. Socrate, repetita ab Arcesila, confirmata a Carneade, usque ad nostram viget aetatem. Hi sumus qui omnibus veris falsa quaedam adjuncta esse dicamus, tanta similitudine ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et assentiendi nota.’
[Those who want to know what my personal opinions are on each of these subjects are more inquisitive than they ought to be. Up to now it has been a principle of philosophy to argue against anything but to decide nothing. This principle was established by Socrates; Arcesilaus repeated it; Carneades strengthened it further… I am one of those who hold that there is, in all truths, an admixture of falsehood so like Truth that there is no way of deciding or determining anything whatever with complete certainty.]
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[B] Not only Aristotle but most philosophers aim at being hard to understand; why? – if not to emphasize the vanity of their subject-matter and to give our minds something to do! Philosophy is a hollow bone with no flesh on it: are they providing us with a place to feed in, where we can chew on it?
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[C] Clitomachus maintained that he could not tell from Carneades’ books what his opinions were.
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[B] That is why Epicurus avoided perspicuity in his writings and why Heraclitus was surnamed
‘Dark’. Difficulty is a coin [C] which the learned conjure with, so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and [B] which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment.

Clarus, ob obscuram linguam, magis inter inanes,
Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque
Inversis quae sub verbis latitantia cernunt
.

[Clear was his fame, especially among the empty-headed, simply because his language lacked clarity: for stupid people are filled with awe and wonder when they find ideas wrapped up in words turned inside out.]
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[C] Cicero reproached some of his friends with being accustomed to give more time than they were worth to such subjects as astrology, law, dialectic and geometry: it kept them away from the more useful and honourable of life’s duties. The Cyrenaic philosophers held physics and dialectic in equal contempt. At the very beginning of his books on the
Republic
Zeno pronounced all liberal disciplines to be useless. [A] Chrysippus said that what Plato and Aristotle wrote about logic must have been written for sport or as an exercise; he could not believe that they had anything serious to say on so empty a subject. [C] Plutarch makes a similar remark about metaphysics.
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[A] Epicurus would have spoken similarly about rhetoric, grammar, [C] poetry, mathematics and all subjects of study other than physics – [A] and Socrates, about every one of them, with the sole exception of the study of how we should behave in this life. [C] Whatever question Socrates was asked, he first made the speaker give a detailed account of his way of life, both present and past; he made that the basis of his inquiries and judgements, believing as he did that any other approach was secondary to that and superfluous.

‘Parum mihi placeant eae literae quae ad virtutem doctoribus nihil profuerunt’
[I take no pleasure in the kind of writings which do not increase the virtue of those who teach them].
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[A] Learning
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itself has despised most disciplines, but men have thought it not inappropriate to train and entertain their minds even by studying subjects where nothing solid is to be gained. Moreover, some have classified Plato as. Dogmatist; some, as a Doubter; others as both, depending on the subject.

[C] Socrates, who takes the lead in the
Dialogues
, always asks questions
designed to provoke discussion: he is never satisfied and never reaches any conclusion. He says that the only thing he knew how to do was to make objections.

All schools of philosophy derive their foundations from Homer, but it was a matter of indifference to him what direction we then took; to show that, he gave equally good foundations to all of them. They say that ten distinct schools sprang from Plato. And indeed, as I see it, if his teachings are not faltering and unaffirmative, then I do not know whose are!
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Socrates said that midwives were
Sage-women
who stop producing children of their own once they help others to do so; when, therefore, the gods conferred the title
Sage
on him, he too gave up his capacity for producing brain-children of his own by acts of manly love, in order to encourage and help other men to deliver theirs: he opened the genitals of their minds, lubricated the passages and made it easier for their child to issue forth; he then made an appreciation of that child, washed it, nursed it, strengthened it, swaddled it up and circumcised it. He used and exercised his own ingenuity: the others faced the perils and the risks.
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[A] What I said just now is true of most other philosophers in the third category, [B] as the Ancients already noted in the writings of Anaxagoras, Democritus, Parmenides, Zenophanes and others: [A] their substance induces doubt; their purpose is inquiry rather than instruction, even though, in their works, they do at times interlard
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[C] their style with Dogmatic cadences. Is that not equally true of both Seneca and Plutarch? Go into it closely and you see they are constantly talking from different points of view. As for those jurisconsults whose task it is to harmonize the various legal authorities, they first ought to harmonize each authority with himself.

Plato seems to me to have quite knowingly chosen to treat philosophy in the form of dialogues: he was better able to expound the diversity and variety of his concepts by putting them appropriately into the mouths of divers speakers. Variety of treatment is as good as consistency. Better in fact: it means being more copious and more useful.

Let us take one example from our own society. The highest degree of dogmatic and conclusive speaking is reached in parliamentary rescripts. Of the judicial decrees which French Parliaments hand down to the people, the ones which are most exemplary (and the most proper to encourage the respect which is rightly due to such high office, mainly on account of the ability of those who exercise it) do not draw their beauty from their decisions as such. Decisions are everyday affairs, common to all judges. Their beauty lies in the disquisitions and that pursuit of varied and opposing arguments which legal matters can so well accommodate.

When philosophers find fault with each other, their widest field of action lies in the internal contradictions and inconsistencies which entangle them all – either deliberately (so as to show the vacillations of the human mind over any subject whatever) or else quite unintentionally, because all matters are shifting and elusive.

[A] What else can that refrain mean: ‘In slippery, shifting places, let us suspend our judgement’? For, as Euripides said, ‘The works of God, in divers ways, perplex us,’
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[B] which is similar to the words which Empedocles strewed throughout his books when he was shaken as by divine mania and compelling truth: ‘No, no! We feel nothing: we know nothing! All things are hidden from us: we can determine the nature of nothing whatsoever,’ [C] words which conform to that holy saying:
‘Cogitationes mortalium timidae et incertae adinventiones nostrae et providentiae’
[For the thoughts of mortal men are timorous, and our devices and foresight prone to fail].
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[A] We ought not to find it strange that people who despair of the kill should not renounce the pleasure of the hunt: study is, in itself, a delightful occupation, so delightful that, among the forbidden pleasures which need to be held on a tight rein, the Stoics include pleasure arising from exercising the mind.
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[C] They find intemperance in knowing too much.

[A] Democritus ate some figs which tasted of honey. He at once began to rack his brains to try and explain this unusual sweetness. He was about to abandon his dinner and set out to trace and examine the place where the figs had been picked, when his servant-girl heard the cause of the
commotion and began to laugh; she told him to stop worrying about all that, since she had put the figs in a jar which had previously held honey. He flew into a rage with her because she had deprived him of the chance of finding things out for himself and had robbed his curiosity of something to work on: ‘Go away,’ he said, ‘you have offended me. I shall continue to look for the cause as though it were to be found in Nature.’ [C] And he did manage to find some sort of ‘true’ explanation for a false and imaginary fact!