Sec.47. Confuse loqui:  the mark of a bad dialectician, affirmed of Epicurus in D.F. II. 27. Nulla sunt:  on the use of nullus for non in Cic. cf.  Madv. Gram. 455 obs. 5.  The usage is mostly colloquial and is very common in Plaut. and Terence, while in Cic. it occurs mostly in the Letters. Inaniter:  cf. 34.  There are two ways in which a sensation may be false, (1) it may come from one really existent thing, but be supposed by the person who feels it to be caused by a totally different thing, (2) it may be a mere [Greek:  phantasma] or [Greek:  anaplasma tes dianoias], a phantom behind which there is no reality at all. Quae in somnis videantur:  for the support given by Stoics to all forms of divination see Zeller 166, De Div. I. 7, etc. Quaerunt:  a slight anacoluthon from dicatis above. Quonam modo ... nihil sit omnino:  this difficult passage can only be properly explained in connection with 50 and with the general plan of the Academics expounded in 41.  After long consideration I elucidate it as follows.  The whole is an attempt to prove the proposition announced in 41 and 42 viz. omnibus veris visis adiuncta esse falsa.  The criticism in 50 shows that the argument is meant to be based on the assumption known to be Stoic, omnia deum posse.  If the god can manufacture (efficere) sensations which are false, but probable (as the Stoics say he does in dreams), why can he not manufacture false sensations which are so probable as to closely resemble true ones, or to be only with difficulty distinguishable from the true, or finally to be utterly indistinguishable from the true (this meaning of inter quae nihil sit omnino is fixed by 40, where see n.)? Probabilia, then, denotes false sensations such as have only a slight degree of resemblance to the true, by the three succeeding stages the resemblance is made complete.  The word probabilia is a sort of tertiary predicate after efficere ("to manufacture so as to be probable").  It must not be repeated after the second efficere, or the whole sense will be inverted and this section placed out of harmony with 50. Plane proxime:  = quam proxime of 36.

Sec.48. Ipsa per sese:  simply = inaniter as in 34, 47, i.e. without the approach of any external object. Cogitatione:  the only word in Latin, as [Greek:  dianoia] is in Greek, to express our “imagination.” Non numquam:  so Madv. for MSS. non inquam.  Goer. after Manut. wrote non inquiunt with an interrogation at omnino. Veri simile est:  so Madv. D.F. III. 58 for sit.  The argument has the same purpose as that in the last section, viz to show that phantom sensations may produce the same effect on the mind as those which proceed from realities. Ut si qui:  the ut here is merely “as,” “for instance,”