In like manner, you, when you are seeking to overturn a well-established system of philosophy, in the same way as those men endeavoured to overturn the republic, bring forward the names of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Parmenides, Xenophanes, and even Plato and Socrates. But Saturninus, (that I may name my own enemy rather than any one else,) had nothing in him resembling those ancient men; nor are the ungrounded accusations of Arcesilas to be compared to the modesty of Democritus. And yet those natural philosophers, though very seldom, when they have any very great difficulty, make loud and violent outcries, as if under the influence of some great excitement, Empedocles, indeed, does so to such a degree, that he appears to me at times to be mad, crying out that all things are hidden, that we feel nothing, see nothing, and cannot find out the true character of anything whatever. But for the most part all those men appear to me to affirm some things rather too positively, and to profess that they know more than they really do know. But if they then hesitated while discussing new subjects, like children lately born, are we for that reason to think that nothing has been explained in so many ages by the greatest genius and the most untiring industry? May we not say that, after the establishment of some wise and important schools of philosophy, then, as Tiberius Gracchus arose in an excellent constitution, for the purpose of throwing everything into confusion, so Arcesilas rose up to overturn the established philosophy, and to shelter himself under the authority of those men who asserted that nothing could be known or perceived; in which number we ought not to include Plato or Socrates; the one because he left behind him a most perfect school, namely, the Peripatetics and Academics, differing in name, but agreeing in all substantial matters: and from whom the Stoics themselves differ in words rather than in opinions. But Socrates, who always disparaged himself in arguing, attributed more knowledge to those whom he wished to refute. So, as he was speaking differently from what he really thought, he was fond of using that kind of dissimulation which the Greeks call { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}; which Fannius says Africanus also was in the habit of indulging in, and that that ought not be considered a bad habit in him, as it was a favourite practice of Socrates.