[192] Since these things are so, those who do not shrink from facile affirmation or negation of anything whatsoever deserve to be held guilty of folly or rashness or imposture. For if the properties of things by themselves are beyond our ken, and if it is only the mixture formed by the contribution of many factors which is open to our vision; if, once more, it is as impossible to discern through the combinations the particular form of each of the contributing factors as it is to see them in their invisibility, what course is left to us but to suspend our judgement?
[193] And are we not warned against giving over-ready credence to uncertainties by other considerations? I allude to certain facts, the evidence for which is found practically over the whole world as known to us—facts which entail on Greek and barbarian alike the universal tendency to error which positive judgement brings. By these I mean of course ways of life from boyhood upwards, traditional usages, ancient laws, not a single one of which is regarded in the same light universally, but every country, nation and city, or rather every village and house, indeed every man, woman and infant child takes a totally different view of it.
[194] As a proof of this we see that what is base with us is noble with others, what is seemly and just with us is unseemly or unjust with them, our holy is their unholy, our lawful their unlawful, our laudable their blameworthy, our meritorious their criminal, and in all other matters their judgement is the opposite of ours.
[195] And why prolong the subject when our attention is called elsewhere by more vital matters? Still if anyone undistracted by some newer subject of contemplation should care to devote his leisure to the subject which has been before us, and to examine the ways of life, usages and customs of different countries, nations, cities and places, subjects and rulers, high and low, freemen and slaves, ignorant and learned, it will occupy not only a day or two, not only a month or a year, but his whole lifetime, even though his years be many, and all the same he will leave behind him many such questions, which he knows not of, unexamined, unconsidered and unheard.
[196] Since then the divers customs of divers persons are not distinguished merely by some slight difference, but exhibit an absolute contrast, amounting to bitter antagonism, it is inevitable that the impressions made upon the mind should differ and that the judgements formed should be at war with each other.