Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The same approach to the demonstration applies also to the third problem. Some say, then, that it is not possible for a single living thing to have several principles. Now it is not possible for principles of the same kind to be more than one in a single living thing, but there is nothing absurd in their differing in kind.
Against the Pyrrhonists.
If suspension of judgment claims that no certainty exists at all, then evidently, taking itself as the starting point, it will be the first thing it invalidates. Either, then, it grants that something is true and one need not suspend judgment about everything, or it insists that nothing is true — and it is plain that in that case it will not itself be true first of all. For either it itself is true or it is not true. But if it is true, it grants, unwillingly, that something is true; and if it is not true, it leaves as true the very things it wished to abolish. For in the very point at which the suspension that abolishes things is shown to be false, in that same point the things abolished are shown to be true — like the dream that says all dreams are false. For being destructive of itself, it becomes confirmatory of everything else. And in general, if it is true, it will make its beginning from itself, being a suspension not of something else but of itself first.
Furthermore, if someone apprehends that he himself is human, or apprehends that he is withholding assent, he evidently is not withholding assent. And how could he even have arrived at the outset at disputing about everything while suspending judgment about everything? And how could he even answer what is asked him? For about this very thing he plainly is not suspending judgment. Indeed, he even declares that he suspends judgment — for which reason, even if one must, in trusting them, suspend judgment about everything, we shall first suspend judgment about the suspension of judgment itself, as to whether one ought to trust it or not.
Further, if this very thing — not knowing the truth — is itself the truth, then not knowing the truth is not knowing the truth, and from the outset no truth at all is granted by that man. But if he will say that this too is disputable — the not knowing of the truth — then in this very point he grants that the truth is knowable, in that he plainly does not confirm the suspension of judgment concerning it.
A sect is an inclination toward doctrines, or, as some say, an inclination toward many doctrines that hold together with one another and with what appears, and that tend toward living well. And doctrine is a kind of rational apprehension, while apprehension is a settled disposition and assent of the understanding.
Not only those given to suspension of judgment, but every dogmatist too, is accustomed to suspend judgment in certain matters, either because of weakness of opinion, or because of the obscurity of the facts, or because of the equal strength of the opposing arguments.
The starting points and methods of inquiries lie about these matters and within them.
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