y are acting up to
their principles.

In like manner, you, when you are seeking to overturn a well-established
system of philosophy, in the same way as those men endeavoured to overturn
the republic, bring forward the names of Empedocles, Anaxagoras,
Democritus, Parmenides, Xenophanes, and even Plato and Socrates. But
Saturninus, (that I may name my own enemy rather than any one else,) had
nothing in him resembling those ancient men; nor are the ungrounded
accusations of Arcesilas to be compared to the modesty of Democritus. And
yet those natural philosophers, though very seldom, when they have any
very great difficulty, make loud and violent outcries, as if under the
influence of some great excitement, Empedocles, indeed, does so to such a
degree, that he appears to me at times to be mad, crying out that all
things are hidden, that we feel nothing, see nothing, and cannot find out
the true character of anything whatever. But for the most part all those
men appear to me to affirm some things rather too positively, and to
profess that they know more than they really do know. But if they then
hesitated while discussing new subjects, like children lately born, are we
for that reason to think that nothing has been explained in so many ages
by the greatest genius and the most untiring industry? May we not say
that, after the establishment of some wise and important schools of
philosophy, then, as Tiberius Gracchus arose in an excellent constitution,
for the purpose of throwing everything into confusion, so Arcesilas rose
up to overturn the established philosophy, and to shelter himself under
the authority of those men who asserted that nothing could be known or
perceived; in which number we ought not to include Plato or Socrates; the
one because he left behind him a most perfect school, namely, the
Peripatetics and Academics, differing in name, but agreeing in all
substantial matters: and from whom the Stoics themselves differ in words
rather than in opinions. But Socrates, who always disparaged himself in
arguing, attributed more knowledge to those whom he wished to refute. So,
as he was speaking differently from what he really thought, he was fond of
using that kind of dissimulation which the Greeks call {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMAL