Introduction to the Philosophy of Saint Augustine (continued)
tragedies words which you do not understand. But I suggest that you go, if you wish, and drink something and then return to our school, provided the Hortensius and philosophy still mean something to you. To her you have already dedicated the tender first fruits of your mind in your recent discussion—a discussion which inflamed you even more than does poetry for the knowledge of great and truly fruitful things. But while I endeavor to bring you back to the circle of those studies by which the mind is developed, I fear lest it become a labyrinth to you, and I almost repent of having held you back from your first impulse."
Licentius blushed and went away to drink. He was very thirsty. Moreover, he could thus avoid me, who seemed likely to have more and sharper things to say to him.
8. When he had come back, I began as follows, while all paid close attention: "Alypius, can it be that we disagree on a matter which to me seems really very evident?"
"It is not surprising," he said, "if what you say is manifest to you should be obscure to me. After all, many things evident enough in themselves can be more evident to some than to others; so, too, some things obscure in themselves can be still more obscure to some people. For, believe me, that if this matter is evident to you, there is some one else to whom it is even more evident, and still another person to whom it is more obscure than it is to me.
But I beg you to make what is evident still more evident, so that you may cease to regard me as a diehard in argument."
"Please, listen closely," I said, "and do not bother for the moment to reply to my question. Knowing you and myself well, I feel that with a little attention my point will become clear and one of us will quickly convince the other. Now, then, did you not say—or, perhaps, I did not hear rightly—that the wise man thought that he knew wisdom?"
He said that this was so. "Let us," I said, "forget about the wise man for the moment. Are you yourself wise or are you not?"
"I am anything but that," he replied. "But," said I, "do give me your own personal opinion about the Academic wise man. Do you think that he knows wisdom?"
He replied: "Is thinking that one knows the same as, or different from, knowing? I am afraid lest confusion on this point might afford cover to either of us."
9. "This," I said, "has become what they call a Tuscan argument: for this is the name they gave to an argument when instead of answering the difficulty, a man proposes another. It was this that our poet—let us win the attention of Licentius for a moment —in his Eclogues judged fairly to be rustic and downright countryish: when one asks the other, where the heavens are no more than three ells broad, the other replies: 'In what lands do flowers grow engraved with the names of kings?' Please, Alypius, do not think that we can allow ourselves that merely because we are on the farm! At least, let these little baths serve you as a reminder of the decorum that is expected in places of learning. Kindly answer my question: Do you think that the Academic wise man knows wisdom?"
"Not to lose ourselves," he replied, "parrying words with words—I think that he thinks that he knows wisdom."
"Therefore," I said, "you think that he does not know wisdom? I am not asking you what you think the wise man thinks, but if you think that the wise man knows wisdom. You can, I take it, say either yes or no, here and now."
"I do wish," he returned, "that the matter were either as easy for me as it is for you or as difficult for you as it is for me; and that you were not so insistent and put such great store in these points. For, when you asked me what I thought about the Academic wise man, I replied that in my opinion it seemed to him that he knew wisdom: I did not wish to assent rashly that I knew or, what would be just as rash, say that he knew."
"I shall be greatly obliged," I said, "if you will be good enough, first, to answer the question I put to you, and not those you yourself put to yourself. Secondly, you may disregard for the moment what satisfaction I expect to receive from this: I know that you are as interested in it as in your own expectations. Obviously, if I deceive myself by this line of questioning, I shall promptly come over to your side and we shall finish the dispute. Finally, banish the anxiety which I note is somehow gripping you, and pay close attention so that you will have no trouble in understanding what I want you to reply.
"Now, you said that you did not give your assent or denial— but this is just what you should do with my question—for the reason that you did not wish to state rashly that you knew what you did not know. As if I were to ask you what you know, and not what you think! And now I ask the same question more plainly—if, indeed, I can ask it any more plainly: is it, or j opinion that the wise man knows wisdom?" s it not, your "If it is possible," he replied, "to find a wise man such as reason conceives of, I can believe that he knows wisdom."
"Reason, therefore," I said, "indicated to you that the wise man is such that he knows wisdom. So far you are right. You could not properly have held any other opinion."
10. "And now I ask you if the wise man can be found. If he can, then he can also know wisdom and our discussion is finished.
But if you say that he cannot be found, then the question will be, not if the wise man knows anything, but rather if any one can be a wise man. Answering this in the affirmative, we must take leave of the Academics, and go over this point with you as far as we can, and with great care and attention. For the Academics maintained, or rather opined, at one and the same time that the wise man could exist, but that, nevertheless, man could not attain to knowledge. Therefore, they actually claimed that the wise man knows nothing. But you believe that he knows wisdom, which cer- . tainly is not identical with knowing nothing. For we are agreed, as are all the ancients and even the Academics themselves, that no one can know what is not true. Accordingly, there remains now that you either maintain that wisdom is nothing, or admit that the wise man as described by the Academics is such as is unknown to reason, and then, dropping that question, agree to investigate if man can possess such wisdom as is conceived by reason. For there is no other wisdom which we should, or can, rightly call by that name."
CHAPTER 5 The Question of Assent 11. "Even though I should concede," he said, "what you are so anxiously striving for, namely, that the wise man knows wisdom and that between us we have discovered something which the wise man can know, nevertheless, I do not at all think that the whole case of the Academics has been undermined. Indeed, I notice that they can fall back on a stronghold that is by no means weak and that their line of retreat has not been cut off. They can still withold assent. In fact, the very point in which you think they have been vanquished helps their cause. For they will say that it is so true that nothing can be known and that assent must be withheld from everything, that even this their principle of not being able to know anything, which practically from the very beginning until you came along, they had maintained as probable, is now wrested from them by your argument. Your argument may be in fact invincible or may seem so to me in my stupidity, but as before, so now, it cannot dislodge them, when they can still with confidence assert that even now assent must be withheld from everything. It is possible, they will say, that perhaps some day they themselves or some one else will discover some argument which can be urged with point and probability against this second principle of theirs also. They would have us notice that their behavior is illustrated and mirrored, so to speak, by that of Proteus who, it is said, could be caught only by means which invariably did not result in his capture. His pursuers were never sure that what they had was still he, unless some divinity informed them. May that divinity be present to us and may he deign to show us that truth for which we strive so hard! I, too, shall then confess, even if the Academics do not agree—though I think they will—that they have been overcome."
12. "Good!" I said, "that was all I wanted. For look, I beg you, at all the great gains I have made! First, we can say that the Academics are so far vanquished that they have now no defense left except the impossible. Indeed, who could in any way understand or believe that a man who is beaten, by the very fact that he has been beaten, boasts that he has won. And so, if we have any further dispute with them, if it is not on the score of their assertion that nothing can be known but on the score of their maintaining that one must not assent to anything.
"Consequently, we are now in agreement. For both they and I believe that the wise man knows wisdom. But they advise, all the same, that assent should not be given to this. They say that they believe only but do not at all know. As if I should profess that I know! I say that I also believe this. If they do not know wisdom, then they, and I with them, are stupid. But I think that we should approve of something, namely, truth. I ask them if they deny this, that is to say, if they declare that one must not assent to truth. They will never say this; but they will maintain that truth cannot be found. Consequently, in this I am to a great extent at one with them in so far as both of us do not object and, therefore, necessarily agree to the proposition that one must assent to truth.
""But who will indicate truth for us?' " they ask. "On that point I shall not trouble to dispute with them. I am satisfied, since they consider it no longer probable that the wise man knows nothing. Otherwise, they would be forced to maintain a most absurd proposition, that either wisdom is nothing, or the wise man does not know wisdom."
CHAPTER 6 Truth Revealed only by a Divinity 13. "You, Alypius, have told us who it is that can point out truth—and I must take pains to disagree with you as little as possible. You remarked that only some divinity could reveal truth to man, Your words were brief but full of piety. There has been nothing in our discussion which has given me more delight, nothing more profound, nothing more probable, and, provided, so I trust, that divinity be present to us, nothing more true. With what profound understanding and sensitiveness to what is best in philosophy did you direct our attention to Proteus! Proteus, of whom you all know, is introduced as a symbol of truth. You will see, young men, from this that the poets are not entirely despised by philosophy. Proteus, as I say, plays in poetry the role of truth which no one can hold if, deceived by false representations, he slackens or lets loose the bonds of understanding. It is these representations which, because of our association with corporeal things, do their best to fool and deceive us through the senses which we use for the necessities of this life, even when we have already grasped truth and hold it, so to speak, within our hands.
"Here, then, is the third blessing which has come upon me, and I cannot find words to express how highly I value it. I find my most intimate friend agreeing with me not only on probability as a factor in human life but also on religion itself—a point which is the clearest sign of a true friend; for friendship has been rightly and with just reverence defined as 'agreement on things human and divine combined with goodwill and love.'"
CHAPTER 7 Augustine's Refutation of the New Academy 14 "Nevertheless, lest the arguments of the Academics should seem somewhat to cloud the issue, or we ourselves seem to some to dispute arrogantly the authority of highly learned men, among whom Tullius especially must always have weight with us, I shall with your leave first put forward a few considerations against those who would believe that the arguments referred to stand in the way of truth. Then I shall show why, as it seems to me, the Academics concealed their real doctrine. Now, then Alypius, although I see that you are entirely on my side, nevertheless take a brief for them for a few moments, and answer my question."
"Since," he replied, "you have, as they say, got off on the right foot today, I shall not do anything to hinder your complete victory. I shall with the greater confidence attempt to defend their side, seeing that the task is one imposed by yourself. All the same, I would prefer you, if you find it convenient, to achieve the result you aim at rather by means of an uninterrupted discussion than by this questioning, lest, although already your prisoner, I should be tormented, as being in fact an unyielding enemy, by the rack