THE SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 



that the One is both in itself and in other 

 things, both at rest and in motion, both the 

 same with itself and different from itself. That 

 is, while his first demonstration denies both of 

 two opposite and mutually destructive proposi- 

 tions, his second affirms them both. 



There is no doubt that after Plato's time the 

 Greeks felt, though they did not distinctly com- 

 prehend, the futility of such inquiries. By the 

 successors of Plato, philosophy was brought 

 into a state of more or less complete scepticism 

 as to the possibility of any trustworthy know- 

 ledge whatever. " We assert nothing, not even 

 that we assert nothing," was the extravagant 

 dictum of one of the later schools of Greek phi- 

 losophy.^ And finally philosophy ceased from 

 its independent inquiries, being merged in the- 

 ology by Proklos, who, hopeless of attaining 

 absolute knowledge by any exertion of the in- 

 tellectual powers, was driven to assert the exist- 

 ence of a divine supernatural light, by which the 

 soul being irradiated might thus alone catch 

 glimpses of the external reality. 



The later career of philosophy furnishes us 

 with the same kind of illustrations as its earlier 



^ [See Windelband's History of Philosophy (Tufts' Trans- 

 lation), p. 202. See also Zeller, Philosophie d. Griechen, 

 Th. III. Abth. II. p. 59 (3d ed.). The position in ques- 

 tion is that of Pyrrho, ^nesidemus, Sextus Empiricus, and 

 their group of sceptics.] 



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