they cannot but assent to what is clear. Wherefore, if those things whereof we dispute are true; it is to no purpose to speak of assent. For he who apprehends or perceives any thing, assents immediately. Again, assent not only precedes the practice of vice; but of virtue, the steady performance whereof, and adherence to which, depend on what a man has assented to and approv’d. And it is necessary, that something should appear to us before we act, and that we should assent to that appearance. Wherefore he who takes away appearances and assent from man, destroys all action in him. The force of this reasoning manifestly extends to all the various judgments men make upon the appearances of things. And Cicero, as an Academick or Sceptick, must be suppos’d to extend necessity to every kind of judgment or assent of man upon the appearances (or as the Greeks call them Φιανομένα and himself the Visa) of things. Sextus Empiricus says,[1] they who say, the Scepticks take away appearances, have not convers’d with them, and do not understand them. For we destroy not the passions, to which our senses find themselves expos’d whether we will or no, and which force us
- ↑ Pyrrhon. Hypot. l. 2. c. 10.
