312 /l/-27
for they are the chief proponents of this side of the quarrel We say that
when Plato pronounces on forms or the existence of providence or the
[claim that] the virtuous life is more worth choosing than the life of vice,
either he assents to their existence-in which case he is dogmatizing, or
he opts for one as more plausible than the other, since he expresses a
preference on the basis of trustworthiness or untrustworthiness-in
which case he steps out of sceptical character. For it is self-evident from
what has been said before that this is alien to our [approach].
- And even if Plato does make some sceptical utterances when, as
they say, he is writing propaideutics, he will not on account of this
become a sceptic. For whoever dogmatizes about one thing, or at all
prefers one presentation to another on the basis of trustworthiness or
untrustworthiness, or pronounces on something non-evident, assumes
the character of a dogmatist, as Timon makes clear through what he said
about Xenophanes. 224. For praising him in many respects, so that
he even dedicated his Satires to him, he describes him as lamenting
and saying:
Would that I, through indecision, had hit upon the benefit
of a well-stocked mind, but a treacherous path deceived me.
Being old and untutored in total scepticism,
wherever I turned my mind everything dissolved into one
and the same. Everything always drawn up in every
way rested in one self-same nature.For this reason, at least, he calls him, half-vain, and not perfectly without
vanity, because of which he says:
Xenophanes, half-vain, derider of deceiving Homer,
Fashioned a god apart from men self-identical in every way,
stout, unscathed, thought greater than thought.He said that he was half-vain, being without vanity in some respect and
'derider of deceiving Homer' since he derided the deceptions in Homer.
- But Xenophanes held dogmas contrary to the basic grasps of other
men, viz. that everything is one, and that god is naturally [immanent]
in everything, is spherical, impassible, unchangeable and rational. From
this, it is easy to show the difference between Xenophanes and us. Yet,
it is self-evident from what has already been said that should Plato puzzle
over some things he would still not be a sceptic, since in some [dialogues]
he either appears to make pronouncements about the existence of non-