237 
eager delight with which the sceptic enunciates some startling 
inference arises not so much from the value of that inference to 
true philosophy as from its presumed contrariety to something 
which believers hold to be the revelation of God. This delight, 
however, is no true pleasure. The mind refuses to be satisfied' 
with the love of that which is not, while it longs for the know- 
ledge of that which is. 
In this we may see, I think, a reason for the shiftiness 
and disposition to vary the ground which we cannot fail to 
remark as we review the history and development of the 
various sceptical schools. They will tell us, of course, that 
new discoveries have widened the field of human inquiry and 
knowledge; that this shifting of ground is only the occupying 
of more commanding heights from whence to attack super- 
stition, not the abandonment of the old posts as untenable, nor 
the restless relinquishment of them as unsatisfactory to those 
seekers after change to whom that which is is distasteful 
because it is. They will tell us this ; but we shall reply that 
they are unquiet because they cannot be quiet ; that the sorrow 
of negation clings to them like the tunic of Nessus to Hercules, 
as a torment which they may sigh under, but arc powerless to 
cast away. 
II. 7 he Sorrow of Doubt . — As the intellect cannot be satisfied 
with negation alone, and seeks for affirmation, so does it also 
long for Assent, and refuse to be contented with Doubt. A 
pure Pyrrhonism is as inconsistent with mental satisfaction as 
the absence of a definite centre would be with mechanical 
revolution. There cannot possibly be any acquiescence, on the 
part of a rightly-ordered intellect, in a system of teaching 
which consists either of a number of contrariant propositions 
of equally low probability, or of a continual assertion of the 
imperfect probability of another system. Yet such is really 
the character of sceptical doctrine. Either we have it laid 
down for us that it is vain to try to determine which is the fact, 
A, B, or C, all being nearly equally improbable,— this I should 
term pure scepticism ; — or we are told that whatever may be the 
real fact, one thing is certain, that our assent must be withheld 
from C (Christianity). 
By Doubt I do not here mean that which Descartes con- 
siders as the primary position from which all true philosophy 
springs. The two are often confused together, — one cannot help 
thinking sometimes of set purpose, — by those who wish to allege 
the authority of a great name in favour of their own unhappy 
system. But Descartes was no sceptic. His doubt w r as never 
intended to be a part of his philosophical system. It cleared 
