lly wont to do. For though
these things follow from the sayings of the Cyrenaics, yet he ought to
have declared the fact as they themselves teach it. For they affirm that
things then become sweet, bitter, lightsome, or dark, when each thing
has in itself the natural unobstructed operation of one of these
impressions. But if honey is said to be sweet, an olive-branch bitter,
hail cold, wine hot, and the nocturnal air dark, there are many beasts,
things, and men that testify the contrary. For some have an aversion for
honey, others feed on the branches of the olive-tree; some are scorched
by hail, others cooled with wine; and there are some whose sight is
dim in the sun but who see well by night. Wherefore opinion, containing
itself within these sensations, remains safe and free from error; but
when it goes forth and attempts to be curious in judging and pronouncing
concerning exterior things, it often deceives itself, and opposes
others, who from the same objects receive contrary sensations and
different imaginations.

And Colotes seems properly to resemble those young children who are but
beginning to learn their letters. For, being accustomed to learn them
where they see them in their own horn-books and primers, when they see
them written anywhere else, they doubt and are troubled; so those very
discourses, which he praises and approves in the writings of Epicurus,
he neither understands nor knows again, when they are spoken by others.
For those who say that the sense is truly informed and moulded when
there is presented one image round and another broken, but nevertheless
permit us not to pronounce that the tower is round and the oar broken,
confirm their own sensations and imaginations, but they will not
acknowledge and confess that the things without are so affected. But
as the Cyrenaics must say that they are imprinted with the figure of
a horse or of a wall, but refuse to speak of the horse or the wall; so
also it is necessary to say that the sight is imprinted with a figure
round or with three unequal sides, and not that the tower is in that
manner triangular or round. For the image by which the sight is affected
is broken; but the oar whence that image proceeds is not broken. Since,
then, there is a difference between the sensation and the external
subject, the belief must either remain in the sensation, or else--if
it maintains the being in addition to the appearing--be reproved and
convinced of untruth. And wh