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to doubt upon any subject. But the new academy dog 

 matized in their scepticism, and held it as their tenet. 

 Although this method bje more honest than arbitrary deci 

 sion (for its followers allege that they by no means con 

 found all inquiry, like Pyrrho and his disciples, but hold 

 doctrines which they can follow as probable, though they 

 cannot maintain them to be true), yet when the human 

 mind has once despaired of discovering truth, everything 

 begins to languish. Hence men turn aside into pleasant 

 controversies and discussions, and into a sort of wandering 

 over subjects rather than sustain any rigorous investigation. 

 But as we observed at first, we are not to deny the authority 

 of the human senses and understanding, although weak, but 

 rather to furnish them with assistance. 



LXYIII. We have now treated of each kind of idols, 

 and their qualities, all of which must be abjured and re 

 nounced with firm and solemn resolution, and the under 

 standing must be completely freed and cleared of them, so 

 that the access to the kingdom of rnan, which is founded 

 on the sciences, may resemble that to the kingdom of 

 heaven, where no admission is conceded except to children. 



LXIX. Vicious demonstrations are the muniments and 

 support of idols, and those which we possess in logic, merely 

 subject and enslave the world to human thoughts, and 

 thoughts to words. But demonstrations are in some man 

 ner themselves systems of philosophy and science; for such 

 as they are, and accordingly as they are regularly or un 



equally held that knowledge was probable only as it related to our faculties, 

 but they stopped there, and did not, like the sophist, dogmatize about the un 

 known. The works of Protagoras were condemned for their impiety, and 

 publicly burned by the sediles of Athens, who appear to have discharged the 

 ffice of common hangmen to the literary blasphemers of their day. Ed. 



