hold a belief, and that the same thing is thought sweet by some who taste it, and bitter by others, so that if all were ill or all were mad, and only two or three were well or sane, these would be thought ill and mad, and not the others. And again, many of the other animals receive about the same things impressions contrary to ours; and even to the senses of each individual, things do not always seem the same. Which, then, of these impressions are true and which are false is not obvious; for the one set is no more true than the other, but both are alike. And this is why Democritus, at any rate, says that either there is no truth or to us at least it is not evident. And in general it is because these thinkers suppose knowledge to be sensation, and this to be a physical alteration, that they say that what appears to our senses must be true; for it is for these reasons that Empedocles and Democritus and, one may almost say, all the others have fallen victims to opinions of this sort. For Empedocles says that when men change their condition they change their knowledge;
For wisdom increases in men according to their present state.[1]
And elsewhere he says:
So far as their nature changes, so far to them always
Come changed thoughts into mind.[2]
And Parmenides also expresses himself in the same way:
For as in each case the much-bent limbs are composed,
So is the mind of men; for in each and all men
'Tis one thing thinks — the substance of their limbs:
For that of which there is more is thought.[3]
A saying of Anaxagoras to some of his friends is also related, — that things would be for them such as they supposed them to be. And they say that Homer also evidently had this opinion, because he made Hector, when he was unconscious from the blow, lie 'thinking other thoughts', — which implies that even those who are bereft of thought have thoughts, though not the same. Evidently, then, if both are forms of thought, the real things also are at the same time 'so and not
