CHAPTER nil. 



SCEPTICISM. 



\ I. Scepticism is, as was shown in the last 

 chapter, the development of Agnosticism, which 

 passes into it as necessarily as Positivism passed 

 into Agnosticism. It is^related^ to Agnosticism as 

 the whole to the part ; it both refutes and completes 

 it ; for it is Agnosticism perfected and purified from 

 prejudice. By Scepticism we mean the denial of the 

 possibility of knowledge, based on rational grounds. 

 For the psychological scepticism, so frequent now- 

 a-days, which is distracted by doubt, not because 

 nothing is worthy of belief, but because the mind has 

 lost the faculty of belief,, is indeed one of the most 

 serious and distressing symptoms of our times,, but 

 belongs rather to the pathology of the human mind. 

 True Scepticism, does not arise from a morbid 

 flabbinesssof the intellectual fibre, but is vigorously 

 aggressive and dogmatic. For though it sometimes 

 affects to doubt rather than to. deny the possibility 

 of knowledge, the real intention of the doubt is yet 

 to deny and to destroy the practical certainty of 

 knowledge.. If Scepticism did not succeed in 

 producing any practical effect, if its doubt of the 

 possibility of knowledge were theoretically ad- 

 mitted but practically ignored, it would feel that it 

 had failed.. 



§ 2. In pursuance of its object of proving the 



