369

Memory is necessary for all the operations of reason.

370

[Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

A thought has escaped me.  I wanted to write it down.  I write instead, that it has escaped me.]

371

[When I was small, I hugged my book; and because it sometimes happened to me to ... in believing I hugged it, I doubted....]

372

In writing down my thought, it sometimes escapes me; but this makes me remember my weakness, that I constantly forget.  This is as instructive to me as my forgotten thought; for I strive only to know my nothingness.

373

Scepticism.—­I shall here write my thoughts without order, and not perhaps in unintentional confusion; that is true order, which will always indicate my object by its very disorder.  I should do too much honour to my subject, if I treated it with order, since I want to show that it is incapable of it.

374

What astonishes me most is to see that all the world is not astonished at its own weakness.  Men act seriously, and each follows his own mode of life, not because it is in fact good to follow since it is the custom, but as if each man knew certainly where reason and justice are.  They find themselves continually deceived, and by a comical humility think it is their own fault, and not that of the art which they claim always to possess.  But it is well there are so many such people in the world, who are not sceptics for the glory of scepticism, in order to show that man is quite capable of the most extravagant opinions, since he is capable of believing that he is not in a state of natural and inevitable weakness, but, on the contrary, of natural wisdom.  Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

375

[I have passed a great part of my life believing that there was justice, and in this I was not mistaken; for there is justice according as God has willed to reveal it to us.  But I did not take it so, and this is where I made a mistake; for I believed that our justice was essentially just, and that I had that whereby to know and judge of it.  But I have so often found my right judgment at fault, that at last I have come to distrust myself, and then others.  I have seen changes in all nations and men, and thus after many changes of judgment regarding true justice, I have recognised that our nature was but in continual change, and I have not changed since; and if I changed, I would confirm my opinion.

The sceptic Arcesilaus,[151] who became a dogmatist.]

376

This sect derives more strength from its enemies than from its friends; for the weakness of man is far more evident in those who know it not than in those who know it.

377

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain, and of humility in the humble.  So those on scepticism cause believers to affirm.  Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.  We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.