Scepticism.—­Each thing here is partly true and partly false.  Essential truth is not so; it is altogether pure and altogether true.  This mixture dishonours and annihilates it.  Nothing is purely true, and thus nothing is true, meaning by that pure truth.  You will say it is true that homicide is wrong.  Yes; for we know well the wrong and the false.  But what will you say is good?  Chastity?  I say no; for the world would come to an end.  Marriage?  No; continence is better.  Not to kill?  No; for lawlessness would be horrible, and the wicked would kill all the good.  To kill?  No; for that destroys nature.  We possess truth and goodness only in part, and mingled with falsehood and evil.

386

If we dreamt the same thing every night, it would affect us as much as the objects we see every day.  And if an artisan were sure to dream every night for twelve hours’ duration that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king, who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was an artisan.

If we were to dream every night that we were pursued by enemies, and harassed by these painful phantoms, or that we passed every day in different occupations, as in making a voyage, we should suffer almost as much as if it were real, and should fear to sleep, as we fear to wake when we dread in fact to enter on such mishaps.  And, indeed, it would cause pretty nearly the same discomforts as the reality.

But since dreams are all different, and each single one is diversified, what is seen in them affects us much less than what we see when awake, because of its continuity, which is not, however, so continuous and level as not to change too; but it changes less abruptly, except rarely, as when we travel, and then we say, “It seems to me I am dreaming.”  For life is a dream a little less inconstant.

387

[It may be that there are true demonstrations; but this is not certain.  Thus, this proves nothing else but that it is not certain that all is uncertain, to the glory of scepticism.]

388

Good sense.—­They are compelled to say, “You are not acting in good faith; we are not asleep,” etc.  How I love to see this proud reason humiliated and suppliant!  For this is not the language of a man whose right is disputed, and who defends it with the power of armed hands.  He is not foolish enough to declare that men are not acting in good faith, but he punishes this bad faith with force.

389

Ecclesiastes[152] shows that man without God is in total ignorance and inevitable misery.  For it is wretched to have the wish, but not the power.  Now he would be happy and assured of some truth, and yet he can neither know, nor desire not to know.  He cannot even doubt.

390

My God!  How foolish this talk is!  “Would God have made the world to damn it?  Would He ask so much from persons so weak?” etc.  Scepticism is the cure for this evil, and will take down this vanity.