l 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 them
out to be actually the same, and not merely alike; and that is quite
impossible.

Then you have recourse to those natural philosophers who are so greatly
ridiculed in the Academy, but whom you will not even now desist from
quoting. And you tell us that Democritus says that there are a countless
number of worlds, and that there are some which are not only so like one
another, but so completely and absolutely equal in every point, that there
is no difference whatever between them, and that they are quite
innumerable; and so also are men. Then you require that, if the world be
so entirely equal to another world that there is absolutely not the
slightest difference between them, we should grant to you that in this
world of ours also there must be something exactly equal to something
else, so that there is no difference whatever or distinction between them.
For why, you will say, since there not only can be, but actually are
innumerable Quinti Lutatii Catuli formed out of those atoms, from which
Democritus affirms that everything is produced, in all the other worlds,
which are likewise innumerable,--why may not there be a second Catulus
formed in this identical world of ours, since it is of such a size as we
see it?

XVIII. First of all I reply, that you are bringing me to the arguments of
Democritus, with whom I do not agree. And I will the more readily refute
them, on account of that doctrine which is laid down very clearly by the
more refined natural philosophers,