e pains rather to benefit as many people as
possible?

And I think, that not only is the glory of those men not diminished, but
that it is even increased by our adding to their popular and notorious
praises these also which are less known and less spoken of. Some people
also deny that those men who are introduced in our writings as disputants
had any knowledge of those affairs which are the subjects of discussion.
But they appear to me to be showing their envy, not only of the living but
also of the dead.

III. There remains one class of critics who disapprove of the general
principles of the Academy. Which we should be more concerned at if any one
approved of any school of philosophy except that which he himself
followed. But we, since we are in the habit of arguing against every one
who appears to himself to know anything, cannot object to others also
dissenting from us. Although our side of the question is an easier one,
since we wish to discover the truth without any dispute, and we seek for
that with the greatest anxiety and diligence. For although all knowledge
is beset with many difficulties, and there is that obscurity in the things
themselves and that infirmity in our own judgment, that it is not without
reason that the most learned and ancient philosophers have distrusted
their power of discovering what they wished; yet they have not been
deficient in any respect, nor do we allow ourselves to abandon the pursuit
of truth through fatigue; nor have our discussions ever any other object
except that of, by arguing on each side, eliciting, and as it were,
squeezing out something which may either be the truth itself, or may at
least come as near as possible to it. Nor is there any difference between
us and those people who fancy that they know something, except that they
do not doubt at all that those doctrines which they uphold are the truth,
while we account many things as probable which we can adopt as our belief,
but can hardly positively affirm.

And in this we are more free and unfettered than they are, because our
power of judging is unimpeached, and because we are not compelled by any
necessity to defend theories which are laid upon as injunctions, and, if I
may say so, as commands. For in the first place, those of the other
schools have been bound hand and foot before they were able to judge what
was best; and, secondly, before their age or their understanding had come
to maturity, they have either follow