270 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



feeling that, antecedently to experience, it must have been most pro- 

 bable, that some more candid, as well as more intelligent, reasoner, 

 impressed with a sense of our intellectual weakness, and disgusted with 

 unmeaning propositions, however magisterially delivered, and how- 

 ever disguised under a variety of pompous technicalities, would at 

 length draw the mortifying contrast between the boundless extent of 

 science, and the circumscribed powers of our understanding. It might 

 also have been expected, that his indignation would rise in proportion 

 as he saw more fully the effects of a system which substituted conjec- 

 ture for experiment and authority for proof ; or, as he observed more 

 frequently the efforts of its defenders in maintaining the most palpable 

 absurdities with as much pertinacity and violence, as if they were 

 contending for the most evident and the most important demonstrations. 

 It might also have been naturally supposed, that the vivacity of im- 

 patient genius might lead him, in his zeal against learned despotism, 

 to sacrifice strong arguments indiscriminately with weak, and to sink 

 from sober caution into a morbid state of complete distrust. But it 

 could hardly have been foreseen, that a sect would arise, the avowed 

 object of which would be to evince, by a long train of reasoning, that 

 all reasoning is fallacious, and to establish as its principle, that all the 

 principles of human knowledge are too dubious to command the 

 slightest degree of assent. That one man should be so perplexed by 

 cavils, and so confounded by difficulties and contradictions crossing 

 him in all the paths of literary or scientific research, as to deny at 

 once the evidence of his senses, is no extraordinary circumstance ; but 

 that a body of men should systematically profess to doubt, and labour 

 to persuade others to doubt, whether truth be discovered or discover- 

 able, must be regarded as one of the most striking phenomena which 

 the annals of philosophy present. 



Such, however, was that class of philosophers of whom we shall 

 endeavour succinctly to trace the rise and progress, and to delineate 

 the features and character, in connexion with our biographical notice 

 of the celebrated disciple who has collected their arguments, and illus- 

 trated their method. 



History of From the earliest ages of philosophy we may remark a frequent ex- 

 ' sm ' pression of doubt, bordering on despondency, in the language of its 

 most distinguished followers. 1 They seem nearly all, at some time, 

 to have made the melancholy confession, that ** whatever we look upon 

 within the amplitude of heaven and earth is evidence of human igno- 

 rance." To imagine, however, that such reflections materially influ- 

 enced their opinions and pursuits, is to deny the tenour of their 

 general reasoning. We are far, therefore, from supposing, what Huet 

 has laboured to prove, 2 that a system of scepticism existed in the most 

 ancient times : his conclusions are drawn from a few partial facts, hastily 

 recorded by writers who were more anxious to enliven their meagre 



1 See Diog. Laert. in Vit. Pyrrhon. 



2 Traite" Philosophique de la Foiblesse de 1' Esprit Humain. 



