e
persuaded of anything. Since then Colotes, even after those adorations
he performed to Epicurus, became not one of the sages, let him first
make these questions and interrogatories his own: How is it that being
hungry he eats meat and not hay, and that he puts a robe about his body
and not about a pillar, since he is not indubitably persuaded either
that a robe is a robe or that meat is meat? But if he not only does
these things, but also passes not over rivers, when they are great and
high, on foot, and flies from wolves and serpents, not being irrevocably
persuaded that any of these things is such as it seems, but yet doing
everything according to what appears to him; so likewise the opinion of
Socrates concerning the senses was no obstacle to him, but that he might
in like manner make use of things as they appeared to him. For it is not
likely that bread appeared bread and hay hay to Colotes, because he had
read those holy rules of Epicurus which came down from heaven, while
Socrates on account of his vanity imagined that hay was bread and bread
hay. For these wise men use better opinions and reasons than we; but to
have sense, and to receive an impression from objects as they appear, is
common as well to the ignorant as to the wise, as proceeding from causes
where there needs not the discourse of reason. And the proposition which
affirms that the natural senses are not perfect, nor certain enough to
cause an entire belief, hinders not that everything may appear to us;
but leaving us to make use of our senses in our actions according to
that which appears, it permits us not so to give credit to them as if
they were exactly true and without error. For it is sufficient that in
what is necessary and commodious for use there is nothing better. But as
for the science and knowledge which the soul of a philosopher desires to
have concerning everything, the senses have it not.

But as to this, Colotes will farther give us occasion to speak of
it hereafter, for he brings this objection against several others.
Furthermore, whereas he profusely derides and despises Socrates for
asking what man is, and in a youthful bravery (as he terms it) affirming
that he was ignorant of it, it is manifest that he himself, who scoffs
at it, never so much as thought of this matter; but Heraclitus on the
contrary, as having done some great and worthy thing, said, I have
been seeking myself. And of the sentences that were written in Apollo's
t