[Greek:  phantasiai]. Totidem verbis:  of course with a view to showing that nothing really corresponded to the definition.  Carneades largely used the reductio ad absurdum method. Contineant ... quaestionem:  cf. 22 and T.D. IV. 65 una res videtur causam continere. Quae ita:  it is essential throughout this passage to distinguish clearly the sensation (visum) from the thing which causes it.  Here the things are meant; two things are supposed to cause two sensations so similar that the person who has one of the sensations cannot tell from which of the two things it comes.  Under these circumstances the sceptics urge that it is absurd to divide things into those which can be perceived (known with certainty) and those which cannot. Nihil interesse autem:  the sceptic is not concerned to prove the absolute similarity of the two sensations which come from the two dissimilar things, it is enough if he can show that human faculties are not perfect enough to discern whatever difference may exist, cf. 85. Alia vera sunt:  Numenius in Euseb. Pr.  Ev. XIV. 8, 4 says Carneades allowed that truth and falsehood (or reality and unreality) could be affirmed of things, though not of sensations.  If we could only pierce through a sensation and arrive at its source, we should be able to tell whether to believe the sensation or not.  As we cannot do this, it is wrong to assume that sensation and thing correspond.  Cf.  Sext. P.H. I. 22 [Greek:  peri men tou phaisthai toion e toion to hypokeimenon] (i.e. the thing from which the appearance proceeds) [Greek:  oudeis isos amphisbetei, peri de tou ei toiouton estin hopoion phainetai zeteitai].  Neither Carneades nor Arcesilas ever denied, as some modern sceptics have done, the actual existence of things which cause sensations, they simply maintained that, granting the existence of the things, our sensations do not give us correct information about them. Eiusdem modi:  cf. 33 eodem modo. Non posse accidere:  this is a very remarkable, and, as Madv. (D.F. I. 30) thinks, impossible, change from recta oratio to obliqua.  Halm with Manut. reads potest.  Cf. 101.

Sec.41. Neque enim:  a remark of Lucullus’ merely. Quod sit a vero:  cf.  Munio on Lucr.  II. 51 fulgor ab auro. Possit:  for the om. of esse cf. n. on I. 29.

Sec.42. Proposita:  cf. [Greek:  protaseis] passim in Sext. In sensus:  = in ea, quae ad sensus pertinent cf.  I. 20. Omni consuetudine:  “general experience” [Greek:  empeiria], cf. N.D. I. 83. Quam obscurari volunt:  cf.  I. 33. quod explanari volebant; the em. of Dav. obscurare is against Cic.’s usage, that of Christ quam observari nolunt is wanton without being ingenious. De reliquis:  i.e. iis quae a sensibus ducuntur. In singulisque rebus:  the word rebus must mean subjects, not things, to which the words in minima dispertiunt would hardly apply. Adiuncta:  Sext. A.M. VII. 164 (R. and P. 410) [Greek:  pasei te dokousei alethei kathestanai eurisketai tis aparallaktos pseudes], also VII. 438, etc.