recollects all the dogmas of Epicurus;
therefore they are all true. For all I care, they may be; but you also
must either admit that they are so, and that is the last thing in your
thoughts, or else you must allow me memory, and grant that there is plenty
of room for it, even if there be no comprehension or perception.

What then is to become of the arts? Of what arts? of those, which of their
own accord confess that they proceed on conjecture more than on knowledge;
or of those which only follow what appears to them, and are destitute of
that art which you possess to enable them to distinguish between truth and
falsehood?

But there are two lights which, more than any others, contain the whole
case; for, in the first place, you deny the possibility of any man
invariably withholding his assent from everything. But that is quite
plain; since Panaetius, almost the greatest man, in my opinion, of all the
Stoics, says that he is in doubt as to that matter, which all the Stoics
except him think absolutely certain, namely as to the truth of the
auspices taken by soothsayers, and of oracles, and dreams, and prophecies;
and forbears to express any assent respecting them. And why, if he may
pursue this course concerning those matters, which the men of whom he
himself learnt considered unquestionable, why may not a wise man do so too
in all other cases? Is there any position which a man may either approve
or disapprove of after it has been asserted, but yet may not doubt about?
May you do so with respect to the sorites whenever you please, and may not
he take his stand in the same manner in other cases, especially when
without expressing his assent he may be able to follow a probability which
is not embarrassed by anything?

The second point is that you declare that man incapable of action who
withholds his assent from everything. For first of all we must see in what
assent consists. For the Stoics say that the senses themselves are
assents; that desire comes after them, and action after desire. But that
every thing is at an end if we deny perception.

XXXIV. Now on this subject many things have been said and written on both
sides, but the whole matter may be summed up in a few words. For although
I think it a very great exploit to resist one's perceptions, to withstand
one's vague opinions, to check one's propensity to give assent to
propositions,--and though I quite agree with Clitomachus, when he writes
that Carneades achi