280 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



to mention other instances, will prove that the disbeliever in religion 

 is often a believer in divination and astrology. And even in the works 

 of professed Sceptics, in Sextus Empiricus, 1 in La Mothe le Vayer, 

 in Huet,'in Glanvile, we discern an extreme facility in admitting re- 

 ports, which would have been rejected with pointed ridicule by men 

 but little inclined to indulge in unreasonable doubts. But if perfect 

 Scepticism were really attainable, still the conflict of our passions and 

 our opinions would disturb and poison the sources of enjoyment ; or, 

 even granting that the appearances of pain would be then incapable 

 of inflicting pain, the Sceptic must admit, by parity of reasoning, that 

 the appearances of pleasure would be unable to excite pleasure ; and 

 if our hopes must be sacrificed with our fears, and our joys with our 

 sorrows if all our feelings, in short, must be deadened into a state of 

 torpid lethargy, it can hardly be supposed that the happiness of life 

 would be eventually promoted. Such are the obvious faults of ex- 

 cessive Pyrrhonism. 



objections It cannot be denied, however, that when the Sceptic expatiated on 

 our tota ^ ^g 110 ^ 1106 f tne essence of matter, and when he laboured to 

 prove that the sensible qualities of bodies are not inherent, but only 

 secondary and relative to the perceptions of the mind, his arguments 

 were no less ingenious than forcible and just. It must also be 

 remarked, that though he often resorted to puerile devices in order to 

 elude the sober arguments of common reasoners, yet he sometimes 

 stated objections to the distempered theories of the Dogmatists, which 

 seem worthy of the better Scepticism introduced in after times by 

 Descartes, as a necessary preparative to philosophical investigation. 

 He discarded with profound contempt the prevalent practice of suffer- 

 ing the mind to be preoccupied by hypothesis ; of alleging reasons 

 neither self-evident nor demonstrated ; of ascribing to one single cause 

 phenomena which might arise from several joint causes ; of attributing 

 a series of regular effects to the operation of unconnected and unob- 

 served causes ; of drawing a false analogy between the visible and the 

 invisible world ; of offering explanations inconsistent with their own 

 principles; and of seeking reasons for facts before they were well 

 assured of the facts themselves. 



Observations It would be inconsistent with our plan to enter into a detailed 



two^BoSof accoimt f tne l as t two books of this singular work, it will be sufficient 



Pyirhonic to state their general design. The second book treats chiefly of 



ltes> dialectics : it is employed in proving, in opposition to the opinions of 



the logicians, that there is no method by which truth can be discovered. 



Sextus returns continually to his favourite objection : there is no 



1 The works of Sextus teem with tales which would hardly be equalled by the 



anecdotes of the most credulous : e. g. that Deinophon was cold in the sunshine 



and warm in the shade ; that the Tentyrites in Egypt are not hurt by crocodiles ; 



that the elephant flies from the ram, the lion from the cock, and whales from the 



crackling of bruised beans, &c. (book i. c. 13 and 14). Sir Thomas Brown might 



have enriched his Treatise on Vulgar Errors by having added Sextus to the writers 



whom he consulted. 



