Empedocles appears to you to be mad; but to me he seems to utter words very worthy of the subjects of which he speaks. Does he then blind us, or deprive us of our senses, if he thinks that there is but little power in them to judge of those things which are brought under their notice? Parmenides and Xenophanes blame, as if they were angry with them, though in no very poetical verses, the arrogance of those people who, though nothing can be known, venture to say that they know something. And you said that Socrates and Plato were distinct from these men. Why so? Are there any men of whom we can speak more certainly? I indeed seem to myself to have lived with these men; so many of their discourses have been reported, from which one cannot possibly doubt that Socrates thought that nothing could be known. He excepted one thing only, asserting that he did know that he knew nothing; but he made no other exception. What shall I say of Plato? who certainly would never have followed up these doctrines in so many books if he had not approved of them; for there was no object in going on with the irony of the other, especially when it was so unceasing. XXIV. Do I not seem to you, not, like Saturninus, to be content with naming illustrious men, but also sometimes even to imitate them, though never unless they are really eminent and noble? And I might have opposed to you men who are annoying to you, but yet disputants of great accuracy; Stilpo, Diodorus, and Alexinus: men who indulged in far-fetched and pointed sophisms; for that was the name given usually to fallacious conclusions. But why need I enumerate them, when I have Chrysippus, who is considered to be the great support of the portico of the Stoics? How many of the arguments against the senses, how many against everything which is approved by ordinary practice, did he not refute! It is true that I do not think very much of his refutations; but still, let us grant that he did refute them. Certainly he would never have collected so many arguments to deceive us with their excessive probability, unless he saw that it was not easily possible to resist them. What do you think of the Cyrenaic School? philosophers far from contemptible, who affirm that there is nothing which can be perceived externally; and that they perceive those things alone which they feel by their inmost touch, such as pain, or pleasure. And that they do not know what colour anything is of, or what sound it utters; but only feel that they themselves are affected in a certain manner.