The poet Homer seem'd to stand before me.
And again in his Epicharmus he says—
For I seem'd to be dreaming, and laid in the tomb.
Therefore, as soon as we are awakened, we despise those things which we have seen, and do not regard them as we do the things which we have done in the forum.
XVII. But while these visions are being beheld, they assume the same appearance as those things which we see while awake. There is a good deal of real difference between them; but we may pass over that. For what we assert is, that there is not the same power or soundness in people when asleep that there is in them while waking, either in intellect or in sensation. What even drunken men do, they do not do with the same deliberate approbation as sober men. They doubt, they hesitate, they check themselves at times, and give but a feeble assent to what they see or agree too. And when they have slept off their drunkenness, then they understand how unreal their perceptions were. And the same thing is the case with madmen; that when their madness is beginning, they both feel and say that something appears to them to exist that has no real existence. And when their frenzy abates, they feel and speak like Alcmæon;—
But now my heart does not agree
With that which with my eyes I see.
But even in madness the wise man puts restraint upon himself, so far as not to approve of what is false as if it were true. And he does so often at other times, if there is by [pg 048] chance any heaviness or slowness in his senses, or if those things which are seen by him are rather obscure, or if he is prevented from thoroughly examining them by the shortness of the time. Although the whole of this fact, that the wise man sometimes suspends his assent, makes against you. For if there were no difference between his perceptions, he would either suspend it always or never.
But from the whole character of this discussion we may see the worthless nature of the argument of those men who wish to throw everything into confusion. We want judgment, marked with gravity, consistency, firmness, and wisdom: and we use the examples of men dreaming, mad, or drunk. I press this point, that in all this discussion we are speaking with great inconsistency. For we should not bring forward men sunk in wine or sleep, or deprived of sense, in such an absurd manner as at one time to say there is a difference between the perceptions of men awake and sober and sensible, and those of men in a different condition, and at other times that there was no difference at all.
They do not even perceive that by this kind of argument they are making out everything to be uncertain, which they do not wish to do. I call that uncertain which the Greeks call ἄδηλον. For if the fact be that there is no difference between the appearance that a thing presents to a madman and to a person in his senses, then who can feel quite sure of his own sanity? And to wish to produce such an effect as that is a proof of no ordinary madness. But they follow up in a childish manner the likenesses of twins, or of impressions of rings. For who of us denies that there are such things as likenesses, when they are visible in numbers of things? But if the fact of many things being like many other things is sufficient to take away knowledge, why are you not content with that, especially as we admit it? And why do you rather insist upon that assertion which the nature of things will not suffer, that everything is not in its own kind of that character of which it really is? and that there is a conformity without any difference whatever in two or more things; so that eggs are entirely like eggs, and bees like bees? What then are you contending for? or what do you seek to gain by talking about twins? For it is granted that they are alike; and you might be content with that. But you try to make [pg 049] them out to be actually the same, and not merely alike; and that is quite impossible.