ITKK. 



SCHOOLS. 



339 



uncertainty uf human cience, is to be distinguished from Sanchez and 

 UM PyrrbonuU ; he was a peeud.Kseptic, and his evident design was 

 to depreciate human learning as inimical to divine wisdom, and to lead 

 men wholly to rely upon religious faith. 



Of a similar tendency is the celebrated work of I!ih<>p Htiet (' Kssai 

 nur la Kaibleaie de 1'Esprit humain'), in which, after exhibiting the 

 principal points of the sceptic philosophy as given in Sextus Empiricus 

 to prom UM insufficiency of human knowledge, he falls back upon the 

 ooanquent necessity of retiring within faith and being content with it. 

 So palpable is the pretence of his scepticism, that besides being a 

 devout and learned bishop, he was the author of ' Demonstrate 

 Evangelic*.' Yet with singular inconsistency he addressed thin 

 demonstration to the very understanding which he had so triumphantly 

 aaisrted could not attain truth. 



lUyle U, as Cousin remarks, the ideal of sceptics. [BAYI.E, in Bioo. 



. 



QlanvUl, whose ' Scepsis Scientific*, or Confest Ignorance the way to 

 Science,' " has hardly," says Hallam, " been seen by six living persons " 

 (Hallam, ' Lit of Europe,' iv.), is the systematic sceptic of the 17th 

 century, and bis work is altogether a curiosity from the rarity of its 

 notice, the extraordinary nature of its contents, and from its author 

 having been a clergyman and member of the Royal Society, and from 

 his having one year afterwards published a book in favour of witch- 

 craft. [GLAXVILL, JOSKPII, in Biou. Div.] 



Bishop Berkeley, so commonly classed with the philosophical 

 sceptics upon that misconception of the term we have before adverted 

 to be regarded simply as a believer in another system of 

 philosophy from that usually accepted. He denied the existence of an 

 external world. [BERKELEY, in Bioo. Div.] 



Hume was the greatest and the legitimate sceptic of the 18th 

 century. His was genuine Pyrrhonism. He attacked the very 

 foundations of our knowledge by contrasting with them the 

 contradictions. " The truth is,' observes Dugald Stewart, " that 

 whereas Berkeley was sincerely and bond Me an idealist, Hume's 

 leading object was plainly to inculcate unirmnl scepticism." (' Essays,' 

 ii., c. L) Hume accepted Berkeley's arguments in disproof of external 

 reality, but he went still farther ; after denying a substantive irorM 

 (consciousness being concerned only with ideas or representations), he 

 denied on the same ground a mbstantirc mind. Fur, he asks, as we 

 know but impressions and ideas, how can we know that there is any- 

 thing more than these .' These are the substance and limit of our 

 knowledge. The mind itself has no distinct, energetic, substantive 

 existence it is but a succession of ideas. This is the doctrine 

 expounded by Therctetus the Sophist, in Plato : " there can be nothing 

 true, nothing existent, distinct from the mind's own perceptions" (ra 

 faivopifm ixcurrtf ravra ral cTvoi). In truth the assumption of an 

 external reality upon any grounds hitherto proposed is gratuitous and 

 questionable. In the fact of perception it is assumed that there U 

 1, the consciousness; and, 2, the exciting external cause. But upon a 

 patient and rigid interrogation of consciousness, all we find in it, as a 

 fact, is a change in our state of being ; beyond this no other element 

 is ;/ire, but assumed. Now the question can never be whether we 

 art conscious of a change of being (since change is the condition of 

 consciousness, and the individual consciousness is proof of itself), but 

 whether, as the sceptic requires to know, we have or can have any 

 i-notc/fftye or nmscionsncs* of this external exciting cause in itself. 

 This we must give up. It being admitted that we are influenced by 

 externals mediately (that is, in representation), therefore our con- 

 sciousness is of the ideas, not of the objects themsdret. All that we 

 really know is our own consciousness our change of being but we 

 remain ignorant whether that change proceed from an evolution of being 

 ittdf, or from the correlation of being and an external object. The 

 reasonings of Held, Stewart, Brown, &c. against this doctrine are most 

 puerile. Stewart alone seems to have comprehended it in some of its 

 aspects, but he nowhere fairly exposes and refutes it. If Hume is to 

 be refuted, it must be, as Kant plainly saw, by a reconsideration of the 

 very elements of perception, and an investigation of the received 

 doctrines which Hume, assuming as established, employed as first 

 principles. This was the work of Kant. 



Comte, though he calls his system positivisme [COMTB, in Bioo. Div.] 

 may be considered a sceptic in its modern sense. Nothing, according 

 to him, can be believed that cannot be proved ; so he discards all 

 that is accepted as revealed as wholly unestablished, and nothing but 

 the positive facts of physical science are admitted. His own notions 

 of a new religion require a far greater amount of belief than the system 

 he attempts to discredit. 



SCEPTRE, from the Greek tkeptron (ntfprrfw), a staff, or rod 

 carried by princes as the ensign of judicial and sovereign J.MW.T : 

 whence in the Old Testament (Numbers xvii. 2), and in Homer the 

 most solemn oaths are sworn by it. In the Pereepolitan sculptures 

 the sceptre figures as a long walking staff, and in the sculpture found 

 at Nineveh by Botta and Layard, the great king is sometimes repre- 

 sented carrying a similar long staff; but the sceptres borne by the 

 royal sceptre-bearers (and Xenophon mentions that Cyrus was always 

 attended by 300 sceptre-bearers), are shorter and more ornamented. 

 Among the Egyptians sceptres were also much ornamented ; of their 

 appearance the following group will give a notion. 



The reader who desires to know the different forms in which the 



sceptre U represented upon ancient coins, may consult Rasche'a 

 Lexicon Hei Nummarfai,' v. ' Sceptrum.' Le Geudro tells us 



(' Nouvelle Histoire de France,' 8vo, Paris, 1719. torn, ii., p. 116) that 

 with the kings of France of the first race the sceptre was a golden rod 

 as tall as the king himself. The sceptre, as an ensign of royalty, U of 

 greater antiquity than the crown. 



SCHEELK'S GREEN. [COPPER.] 



SHILLING. [MOXKY.] 



SCHISM. SCHISMATICS. The Greek word schism (<rxlon<*) is 

 used several times in the New Testament in its literal sense of a rent 

 or rupture m one and the same object (Matt., ix. 16 ; xxvii. SI ; Hark, 

 i. 10; ii. 21; Luke, v. 36; xxiii. 45; John, xix. 24; xxi. 11); and 

 also in a figurative sense for a division of opinion among a number pf 

 persons considered collectively as constituting a whole (John, vii. 43 ; 

 ix. 16; x. 10; Acts, xiv. 4; xxiii. 7). In reference to the Christian 

 church, schism, in the abstract sense, is never mentioned. Schisms are 

 spoken of twice only (1 Cor., i. 10; xi. 18); and in a third passage, 

 where the union of the members of the church is compared to that of 

 the parts of the human body, the object of this union is stated to be, 

 "that there should be no schism in the body." (1 Cor., xii. 2 .!''>.) 

 From a comparison of these passages, it clearly appears that a . 

 in the New Testament sense, does not imply the open separation whk-h 

 exists between Christians and unbelievers, nor that between the mem- 

 bers of different Christian communions, but it denotes something 

 existing within one and the same church ; and further, it dons not 

 appear to designate any difference of . opinion respecting doctrines or 

 ceremonies or forms of government, but rather to refer to a state of 

 mind, to the absence of a spirit of united Christian love. (' Dissent 

 not Schism, 1 a discourse by T. Binney.) 



The common use of the word in ecclesiastical writers is different 

 from this. With them schism is nearly synonymous with separation ; 

 but in its stricter use schism is a separation from the communion of a 

 church on the part of certain of its members who do not differ from 

 its other members on any point of religious doctrine, Heresy consists 

 in a dissent from the doctrines of a church ; schi&m is a dissent fnmi 

 its government. From this definition it clearly appears that any attempt, 

 to enumerate the schisms of the Christian church would be fruitless, 

 since every community is considered schismatical by all the rest. 



The event which ecclesiastical historians call the great Schlm <>f the. 

 West occurred in the 14th and 15th centuries. After the death of 

 Gregory XI. (A.D. 1378), the cardinals, being compelled by the clamour 

 of the people of Rome to elect an Italian to the popedom, chose 

 Urban VI. ; but afterwards the leading members of the college retired 

 to Fondi in Naples, and elected Clement VII., who set up his court at 

 Avignon, while Urban remained at Rome. Clement was recogni*e<l i 

 pope by France, Spain, Scotland, Sicily, and Cyprus, and Urban by 

 the rest of Europe. This schism continued till the j-ear 1417, when 

 it was healed by the Council of Constance, which elected Martin V. to 

 the papacy. (Mosheim's ' Ecclesiastical History,' cent, xiv., pt. ii., c. ii., 

 sect. 15, Ac.; Waddington's ' Church History,' c. xxiii.) 



The other great schism is that between the Greek and Latin churches. 



[(illKT.K ( '111 



SCHISMA (from aylaiM, deft, division), an interval, used only in 

 mathematico-musical calculations, equal to half a comma. [COMMA.] 



SCHLIPPE'S SALT. The sulphantimoniate of sulphide of sodium. 

 [ A \ TI MOKY. PentaKiilphide of Antimony.] 



SCHOLIUM, 2x'iA">" (Mathematics), a name given in the older 

 mathematical writers to the remarks which follow a proposition. A 

 scholium must be distinguished from a corollary, inasmuch as the 

 latter necessarily contains some deduction from the demonstration 

 which precedes, which is not the case with the former. A scholium is 

 an appendix containing general remarks upon the scope of a propo- 

 sition, its application, or its history : everything, in short, which is not 

 an absolute corollary. The word is used by Cicero (' Ep. ad. Att.,' xvi. 

 7) in its general sense of remark, commentary, or explanation. 



SCHOOLS. The true Theory <,( l-jlm-ntinn can only be developed by 

 considering what the being is on whom it is designed to operate. Educa- 

 tion is, according to its etymology, the leading out or unfolding of the 

 human powers. It is obviously therefore a means for a certain purpose. 

 To learn what that purpose is we must refer to experience, and we must 



