66
Plutarch Against Colotes 1109a-1121e,
excerpts/-29
[1-29](1109a) ... Anyway, he [Colotes] who even held that nothing is any
more like this than like that, is using Epicurus' doctrine that all presenta-
tions received through the senses are true. (1109b) For if when two
people speak and one person says that the wine is dry and the other says
that it is sweet, and neither is wrong about his sense-perception, how
can the wine be dry rather than sweet? And again, you can see that some
people treat a bath as though it were hot and that others treat the same
bath as though it were cold. For some ask for cold water to be poured
in and others ask for hot. They say that a lady from Sparta came to see
Berenike, the wife of Deiotaurus, and when they got close to each other
they both turned away, the one nauseated by the [smell of] perfume, the
other by the [smell of] butter. So if the one sense-perception is no more
true than the other, it is likely both that the water is no more cold than
hot and (1109c) that the perfume and the butter are no more sweet-
smelling than foul-smelling. For if someone says that the same object of
presentation is different for different people, he has missed the fact that
he is saying that [the object] is both [at once].
And the much discussed symmetries and harmonies of the pores in
the sense organs and the compound mixtures of seeds which they say
produce different sense-perceptions of quality in different people by
being distributed in all flavours and odours and colours, do these not
immediately force things into being 'no more [this than that]' for them?
For they reassure those who think that sense-perception deceives on the
grounds that they see the same things having opposite effects on per-
ceivers, and instruct them [as follows]: (1109d) since everything is com-
bined and blended together and since different things are designed by
nature to fit into different [pores], it is not possible for everyone to touch
and grasp the same quality; nor does the object [of sense-perception]
affect everyone the same way with all of its parts, but all of them only
experience those parts [of an object] with which their sense-organs are
symmetrical; so they are wrong to quarrel about whether the object is
good or bad or white or not white, supposing that they are supporting
their own sense-perceptions by undermining those of other people; but
one must not quarrel with even one sense-perception, since all sense-
perceptions make contact with something, (1109e) each drawing what is
compatible and suitable to itself from the compound mixture as though
from a spring; and must not assert [things] about the whole when one
is in contact with [mere] parts, nor think that everyone has the same