[794] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 32, p. 40, C; p. 41, B.
[795] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 30, p. 39, C.
[796] Plato, Krito, c. 2, 3, seq.
[797] Plato, Phædon, c. 77, p. 84, E.
[798] Plato, Phædon, c. 155, p. 118, A.
[799] Cicero, Academ. Post. i, 12, 44. “Cum Zenone Arcesilas sibi omne certamen instituit, non pertinaciâ aut studio vincendi (ut mihi quidem videtur), sed earum rerum obscuritate, quæ ad confessionem ignorationis adduxerant Socratem, et jam ante Socratem, Democritum, Anaxagoram, Empedoclem, omnes pene veteres; qui nihil cognosci, nihil percipi, nihil sciri, posse, dixerunt.... Itaque Arcesilas negabat, esse quidquam, quod sciri posset, no illud quidem ipsum, quod Socrates sibi reliquisset: sic omnia latere in occulto.” Compare Academ. Prior. ii, 23, 74; de Nat. Deor. i, 5, 11.
In another passage (Academ. Post. i, 4, 17) Cicero speaks (or rather introduces Varro as speaking) rather confusedly. He talks of “illam Socraticam dubitationem de omnibus rebus, et nullâ affirmatione adhibitâ, consuetudinem disserendi;” but a few lines before, he had said what implies that men might, in the opinion of Sokratês, come to learn and know what belonged to human conduct and human duties.
Again (in Tusc. Disp. i, 4, 8), he admits that Sokratês had a positive ulterior purpose in his negative questioning: “vetus et Socratica ratio contra alterius opinionem disserendi: nam ita facillime, quid veri simillimum esset, inveniri posse Socrates arbitrabatur.”
Tennemann (Gesch. der Philos. ii, 5, vol. ii, pp. 169-175) seeks to make out considerable analogy between Sokratês and Pyrrho. But it seems to me that the analogy only goes thus far, that both agreed in repudiating all speculations not ethical (see the verses of Timon upon Pyrrho, Diog. Laërt. ix, 65). But in regard to ethics, the two differed materially. Sokratês maintained that ethics were matter of science, and the proper subject of study. Pyrrho, on the other hand, seems to have thought that speculation was just as useless, and science just as unattainable, upon ethics as upon physics; that nothing was to be attended to except feelings, and nothing cultivated except good dispositions.
[800] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 7, p. 22, A. δεῖ δὴ ὑμῖν τὴν ἐμὴν πλάνην ἐπιδεῖξαι, ὥσπερ τινὰς πόνους πονοῦντος, etc.