recognise his eggs?

XXVII. But you have recourse to art, which you call in to the aid of the
senses. A painter sees what we do not see; and as soon as a flute-player
plays a note the air is recognised by a musician. Well? Does not this
argument seem to tell against you, if, without great skill, such as very
few persons of our class attain to, we can neither see nor hear? Then you
give an excellent description of the skill with which nature has
manufactured our senses, and intellect, and the whole construction of man,
in order to prevent my being alarmed at rashness of opinions. Can you
also, Lucullus, affirm that there is any power united with wisdom and
prudence which has made, or, to use your own expression, manufactured man?
What sort of a manufacture is that? Where is it exercised? when? why? how?
These points are all handled ingeniously, they are discussed even
elegantly. Let it be said even that they appear likely; only let them not
be affirmed positively. But we will discuss natural philosophy hereafter,
and, indeed, we will do so that you, who said a little while ago that I
should speak of it, may appear not to have spoken falsely.

However, to come to what is clearer, I shall now bring forward general
facts on which whole volumes have been filled, not only by those of our
own School, but also by Chrysippus. But the Stoics complain of him, that,
while he studiously collected every argument which could be brought
forward against the senses and clearness, and against all custom, and
against reason, when he came to reply to himself, he was inferior to what
he had been at first; and therefore that, in fact, he put arms into the
hands of Carneades. Those arguments are such as have been ingeniously
handled by you. You said that the perceptions of men asleep, or drunk, or
mad, were less vigorous than those of men awake, sober, and sane. How do
you prove that? because, when Ennius had awakened, he would not say that
he had seen Homer, but only that Homer had seemed to be present. And
Alcmaeon says--

My heart distrusts the witness of my eyes.

And one may say the same of men who are drunk. As if any one denied that
when a man has awakened he ceases to think his dreams true; and that a man
whose frenzy has passed away, no longer conceives those things to be real
which appeared so to him during his madness. But that is not the question:
the question is, how those things appear to us, at the time when they do
a