The Bridge Between Two Errors

So does wisdom exist nowhere at all? It did exist among them — but nobody saw it. Some thought that everything could be known, and these were plainly not wise. Others thought that nothing at all could be known, and these were not wise either. The first credited a human being with too much, the second with too little. Neither side found the limit. Where, then, is wisdom? It lies in thinking neither that you know everything, which belongs to God, nor that you know nothing whatever, which is the condition of an animal. What belongs to a human being is something in between: knowledge joined and mixed with ignorance. The knowledge in us comes from the soul, which has its origin in heaven; the ignorance comes from the body, which is from the earth. So we have something in common with God and something in common with the animals. We are put together out of these two elements, one of them furnished with light and the other with darkness, and so a share of knowledge has been given to us and a share of ignorance. Across this bridge, so to speak, we can pass without any danger of falling. Everyone who has leaned to one side or the other, to the left hand or to the right, has gone over the edge. [a]

Let me say how each side went wrong. The Academics took their argument from subjects that are obscure and used it against the natural philosophers, to prove that there is no knowledge at all. They were satisfied with a handful of examples of things nobody can get hold of, and they embraced ignorance as though they had done away with knowledge entirely, when they had only done away with part of it. The natural philosophers went the other way. They drew their argument from things that lie open, and concluded that everything can be known; satisfied with what is obvious, they held on to knowledge, as though they had defended the whole of it because they had defended a piece of it. So the one side never saw what is clear, and the other never saw what is obscure. Each party fought with everything it had, one to keep knowledge and the other to take it away, and neither of them noticed that something would be set down in the middle that could have led them to wisdom.

Arcesilaus is the man who teaches that there is no knowledge. He was attacking Zeno, the head of the Stoics, and he wanted to bring philosophy down altogether on the authority of Socrates; so he took up the position that nothing can be known. In this way he overturned the verdict of the philosophers, who had believed that the truth had been dug out and discovered by their own talents. It happened like this. That wisdom of theirs was a mortal thing. It had been set up only a few generations before, and by now it had reached its full growth, so that it necessarily had to age and perish. Then the Academy suddenly appeared — philosophy’s old age, you might say — to finish off the withering thing. Arcesilaus saw rightly that people are arrogant, or rather stupid, who imagine that knowledge of the truth can be arrived at by guesswork. But no one can refute a man who is speaking falsely unless he has first come to know what is true; and Arcesilaus tried to do exactly that without knowing the truth. So he brought in a kind of philosophy that we may call unstable, or inconsistent. For nothing to be known, something has to be known. If you know nothing whatever, then even the knowledge that nothing can be known is taken away from you. So the man who lays it down as his considered opinion that nothing is known is claiming a conclusion he has already reached and knows. Therefore it is possible for something to be known.

There is a puzzle of the same kind that the schools like to set as an example of the fallacy they call asystaton: a man dreamt that he should not believe dreams. If he does believe the dream, it follows that he ought not to believe dreams. If he does not believe it, it follows that he ought to believe them. In the same way, if nothing can be known, then this at least has to be known — that nothing is known. But if it is known that nothing can be known, then the statement that nothing can be known must, as a consequence, be false. What you get is a position at odds with itself, and destructive of itself. This shifty man wanted to take learning away from the other philosophers so that he could keep it hidden at his own house. A man who asserts something in order to take learning away from others is certainly not taking it away from himself. But he does not get away with it: learning shows itself, and gives away the man who stole it. How much more wisely and truthfully he would have acted if he had made an exception and said that only the causes and workings of the heavens, or of nature, cannot be known, because they are hidden and there is no one to teach them — and that they ought not to be inquired into either, because inquiry cannot find them out. If he had brought that exception forward, he would have warned the natural philosophers off searching into matters that go beyond the reach of human thought; he would have cleared himself of the ill will his slander earned him; and he would at least have left us something to follow. As it is, he has pulled us back from following anyone else, so that we should not want to know more than we are capable of knowing — and he has pulled us back from himself just as far. Who would want to work hard in order not to know anything? Who would take up a course of study of this kind and end by losing even the ordinary knowledge he had? If such learning exists at all, it must consist of knowledge; and if it does not exist, who is fool enough to think a thing worth learning in which either nothing is learned or something is actually unlearned? So if not everything can be known, as the natural philosophers thought, and not nothing, as the Academics taught, then philosophy is snuffed out altogether.

Now let us go on to the other part of philosophy, the part they themselves call moral. This is where the method of the whole of philosophy is contained, since natural philosophy offers nothing but delight, while this one offers usefulness as well. And because a mistake here is more dangerous — it is a matter of arranging the terms of a life and forming a character — we must take more care, so that we know how we ought to live. In that other subject a certain indulgence can be granted. If they say something, they do us no good; and if they rave like fools, they do us no harm. But in this subject there is no room for a difference of opinion, and none for error. Everyone has to hold the same views, and philosophy itself has to give its instructions with a single mouth, so to speak, because if a mistake is made here, life is wrecked completely. In that other part there is less danger and more difficulty, because the obscurity of the subject forces us into different and conflicting opinions. In this part there is more danger and less difficulty, because the actual use we make of these matters, and the experiments of daily life, are able to teach us what is truer and better. [g]

So let us see whether they agree, and what help they give us toward running our lives better. There is no need to go through every question. Let us pick out one, and let it be the chief and principal one, the point on which the whole of wisdom turns as on a hinge. Epicurus holds that the highest good is pleasure of the mind; Aristippus, that it is pleasure of the body. Callipho and Dinomachus joined virtue to pleasure; Diodorus joined it to freedom from pain; Hieronymus placed the highest good in freedom from pain by itself. The Peripatetics, again, placed it in the goods of the mind, the body and fortune together. For Herillus the highest good is knowledge; for Zeno, to live in agreement with nature; for certain Stoics, to follow virtue. Aristotle placed it in uprightness and virtue. Those are the views of very nearly all of them.

With opinions as far apart as that, whom do we follow? Whom do we believe? They all carry the same authority. If we are able to pick out the better one, it follows that we have no need of philosophy at all, since we are wise already — we are passing judgment on the opinions of the wise. But we came here for the sake of learning wisdom. How are we to judge, when we have not yet begun to be wise? And all the while the Academic is standing right there, tugging us back by the cloak and forbidding us to believe anybody, without ever bringing forward anything of his own for us to follow.