As have befallen each.
Heraclitus, too, says, “Let us not form conjectures at random, about things of the greatest importance.” And Hippocrates delivers his opinion in a very doubtful manner, such as becomes a man; and before them all Homer has said:—
Long in the field of words we may contend,
Reproach is infinite and knows no end.
And immediately after:—
Armed, or with truth or falsehood, right or wrong.
(So voluble a weapon is the tongue),
Wounded we wound, and neither side can fail,
For every man has equal strength to rail:[134]
Intimating the equal vigour and antithetical force of words. And the Sceptics persevered in overthrowing all the dogmas of every sect, while they themselves asserted nothing dogmatically; and contented themselves with expressing the opinions of others, without affirming anything themselves, not even that they did affirm nothing; so that even discarded all positive denial; for to say, “We affirm nothing,” was to affirm something. “But we,” said they, “enunciate the doctrines of others, to prove our own perfect indifference; it is just as if we were to express the same thing by a simple sign.” So these words, “We affirm nothing,” indicate the absence of all affirmation, just as other propositions, such as, “Not more one thing than another,” or, “Every reason has a corresponding reason opposed to it,” and all such maxims indicate a similar idea. But the phrase, “Not more one thing,” &c., has sometimes an affirmative sense, indicating the equality of certain things, as for instance, in this sentence, “A pirate is not worse than a liar.” But by the sceptics this is said not positively, but negatively, as for instance, where the speaker contests a point and says, “It was not Scylla, any more than it was Chimæra.” And the word “more,” itself, is sometimes used to indicate a comparison, as when we say, “That honey is more sweet than grapes.” And at other times it is used positively, and at the same time negatively, as when we say, “Virtue profits us more than hurts us;” for in this phrase we intimate that virtue does profit, and does not hurt us. But the Sceptics abolish the whole expression, “Not more than it;” saying, that “Prudence has not existence, any more than it has no existence.” Accordingly, then, expression, as Timon says in his Python, indicates nothing more than an absence of all affirmation, or of all assent of the judgment.