Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
There are two chief causes productive of suspension of judgment. One is the manifold and unstable character of human opinion, which is by nature generative of discord — whether the discord of people with one another, or of each person with himself. The second is the discord found among things themselves, which likewise has reasonably proved productive of suspension of judgment. For being unable, on account of this conflict, either to trust all our impressions, or to distrust all of them (since the very statement that all are untrustworthy, being itself one of the impressions, would then be included among the untrustworthy ones along with the rest), nor yet to trust some and distrust others because of their equal standing, we have been led down into suspension of judgment. And of these two most fundamental causes of suspension, the instability of the mind is productive of discord, while discord is the proximate cause of suspension itself. Hence life is full of law-courts and councils and assemblies, and in general of the choosing and avoiding of the things called good and bad — all of which are evidences of a mind that is at a loss and wavers before the equal weight of opposing arguments. And full too are the bookshelves and the treatises and the compositions of those who disagree in their doctrines and who have persuaded themselves that they know the truth about things that exist.
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