282 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



Puerile 

 sophisms. 



Treatise: 

 against the 

 Mathema- 

 ticians. 



if we know not his essence, says the Sceptic, we cannot know his 

 attributes. As well might he argue, that because we are utterly 

 ignorant of the essence of matter and of spirit, that we are therefore 

 ignorant of their properties and their operations. It cannot but excite 

 a smile to observe the ridiculous contradictions into which the habit of 

 cavilling will lead even men of considerable penetration : it is impious, 

 says Sextus, to believe in God, because it is impious to allow, as we 

 must, in consequence of such a belief, allow, that he has either not 

 the will, or not the power to remedy existing evils ; but what is the 

 meaning of impiety ? is it not want of reverence towards the Deity, 

 which is an assumption of his existence ? l If there be no Deity, there 

 can be no impiety ; and if there be, it cannot be impiety to assert his 

 existence. 



But these sophisms are plausible in comparison with many which 

 occur in other parts of the work, and which were, surely, rather 

 intended as playful means of tormenting the Dogmatists, than as serious 

 objections. For instance, his arguments against a cause: a cause 

 cannot be posterior to its effect, neither can it be anterior, for it would 

 then be a cause before it produced an effect, that is, a cause without 

 being a cause, since it is a cause only, inasmuch as it produces an 

 effect : or, his arguments against motion : if a thing be moved, it is 

 either moved in the place in which it is, or in that in which it is not ; 

 but not in the place in which it is ; for if it be in it, it continues in it ; 

 nor in the place in which it is not, for where a thing is not there it 

 cannot act or be acted upon. 



After having urged a variety of cavils not very dissimilar from the 

 egregious trifling which we have just noted (and which we should 

 have passed over with the contempt it merits, were it not calculated 

 to give a view of ancient Pyrrhonism), on our notions of augmentation, 

 diminution, subtraction, addition, generation, corruption, place, time, 

 and number, Sextus examines the grounds of the ethical part of 

 philosophy, and attempts to annihilate the essential difference between 

 right and wrong, by showing that there is nothing in itself good, bad, 

 or indifferent. His arguments are nearly the same as those which 

 modern writers have urged as disproving the existence of a moral 

 sense, and are replete with a rich variety of facts, illustrative of the 

 customs of antiquity, and of the sentiments of pagan philosophers. 

 He concludes, by confessing that he has employed reasoning sometimes 

 strong, and sometimes comparatively weak, in order to adapt himself 

 to the capacities of mankind in his attempt to check the temerity, and 

 to humble the arrogance of the Dogmatists. 



The treatise against the mathematicians, or professors of any kind of 

 knowledge, is a work of greater extent, containing a copious collection 

 of extracts, explanatory of the systems of the different schools in every 

 branch of ancient literature and science. Objections are successively 

 directed against the grammarians, rhetoricians, geometers, arithmeti- 

 1 See Crousaz, Examen du Pyrrhonisme. 



