How are we to ascertain the exactitude of the accordance of these Appearances with the Things of which they are Appearances? We know full well that Things appear differently to us at different times; appear differently to different individuals; appear differently to different animals. Are any of these Appearances true? If so, which are? and how do you know which

are true?

Moreover, reflect on this: We have five senses, each of which reveals to us a different quality in the object. Thus an Apple is presented to us: we see it, smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it bitten; and the sight, smell, feeling, taste, and sound, are five dif ferent Appearances-five different Aspects under which we perceive the Thing. If we had three Senses more, the Thing would have three qualities more; it would present three more Appearances: if we had three Senses less, the Thing would have but three qualities less. Are these qualities wholly and entirely dependent upon our Senses, or do they really appertain to the Thing? And do they all appertain to it, or only some of them! The differences of the impressions made on different people seem to prove that the qualities of things are dependent on the Senses. These differences at any rate show that things do not present one uniform series of Appearances.

All we can say with truth is, that Things appear to us in such and such a manner. That we have Sensations is true; but we cannot say that our Sensations are true images of the Things. That the Apple we have is brilliant, round, odorous, and sweet, may be very true, if we mean that it appears such to our senses; but, to keener or duller vision, scent, tact, and taste, it may be dull, rugged, offensive, and insipid.

Amidst this confusion of sensuous impressions, Philosophers pretend to distinguish the true from the false; they assert that Reason is the Criterium of Truth: Reason distinguishes. Plato and Aristotle are herein agreed. Very well, reply the Skeptics, Reason is your Criterium. But what proof have you that this Criterium itself distinguishes truly? You must not return to

Sense that has been already given up; you must rely upon Reason; and we ask you what proof have you that your Reason never errs? what proof have you that it is ever correct? A Criterium is wanted for your Criterium; and so on ad infinitum.

The Skeptics maintain, and justly, that because our knowledge is only the knowledge of Phenomena, and not at all of Noumena, -because we only know Things as they appear to us, not as they really are, all attempt to penetrate the mystery of Existence must be vain; for the attempt can only be made on appearances. But, although absolute Truth is not attainable by man, although there cannot be a science of Being, there can be a science of Appearances. The Phenomena, they admit, are true as Phenomena. What we have to do is therefore to observe and classify Phenomena; to trace in them the resemblances of coexistence and succession, to trace the connections of cause and effect; and, having done this, we shall have founded a Science of Appearances adequate to our wants.

But the age in which the Skeptics lived was not ripe for such a conception: accordingly, having proved the impossibility of a science of Being, they supposed that they had established the impossibility of all Science, and had destroyed all grounds of certitude. It is worthy of remark that modern Skeptics have added nothing which is not implied in the principles of the Pyrrhonists. The arguments by which Hume thought he destroyed all the grounds of certitude are differently stated from those of Pyrrho, but not differently founded; and they may be answered in the same way.

The Skeptics had only a negative doctrine; consequently, only a negative influence. They corrected the tendency of the mind towards accepting in conclusions as adequate expressions of the facts; they served to moderate the impetuosity of the speculative spirit; they showed that the pretended Philosophy of the day was not so firmly fixed as its professors supposed. It is curious, indeed, to have witnessed the gigantic efforts of a Socrates, a Plato, and an Aristotle, towards the reconstruction of Philos

ophy, which the Sophists had brought to ruins—a reconstruction, too, on different ground-and then to witness the hand of the iconoclast smiting down that image, to witness the pitiless logic of the Skeptic undermining that laboriously-constructed edifice, leaving nothing in its place but another heap of ruins, like that from which the edifice was built; for, not only did the Skeptics refute the notion that a knowledge of Appearances could ever become a knowledge of Existence, not only did they exhibit the fallacious nature of sensation, and the want of certitude in the affirmations of Reason, they also attacked and destroyed the main positions of that Method which was to supply the ground of certitude; they attacked Induction and Definitions.

Of Induction, Sextus, in one brief, pregnant chapter, writes thus:"Induction is the conclusion of the Universal from individual things. But this Induction can only be correct in as far as all the individual things agree with the Universal. This universality must therefore be verified before the Induction can be made: a single case to the contrary would destroy the truth of the Induction." "*

We will illustrate this by an example. The whiteness of swans shall be the Induction. Swans are said to be white because all the individual swans we may have seen are white. Here the Universal (whiteness) seems induced from the particulars; and it is true in as far as all particular swans are white. But there are a few black swans; one of these particular black swans is sufficient to destroy the former Induction. If, therefore, says Sextus, you are not able to verify the agreement of the universal with every particular, i. e. if you are not able to prove that there is no swan not black, you are unable to draw a certain and accurate Induction. That you cannot make this verification is obvious.

In the next chapter Sextus examines Definitions. He pronounces them perfectly useless. If we know the thing we define,

* Pyrrhon. Hypot. vol. ii. c. xv. p. 94. The edition we use is the Paris folio of 1621, the first of the Greek text.

we do not comprehend it because of the definition, but we impose on it the definition because we know it; and if we are ignorant of the thing we would define, it is impossible to define it.

Although the Skeptics destroyed the dogmatism of their predecessors, they did not substitute any dogmatism of their own in its place. The nature of their skepticism is happily characterized by Sextus in his comparison of them with Democritus and Protagoras. Democritus had insisted on the uncertainty of sense-knowledge; but he concluded therefrom that objects had no qualities at all resembling those known to us through sensation. The Skeptics contented themselves with pointing out the uncertainty, but did not pronounce decisively whether the qualities existed objectively or not.

Protagoras also insisted on the uncertainty, and declared man to be the measure of truth. He supposed that there was a constant relation between the transformations of matter and those of sensation; but these suppositions he affirmed dogmatically; to the Skeptic they are uncertain.

This general incertitude often betrayed the Skeptics into ludicrous dilemmas, of which many specimens have been preserved. Thus they said, "We assert nothing-no, not even that we assert nothing." But if the reader wishes to see this distinction between a thing seeming and a thing being, ridiculed with a truly comic gusto, he should turn to Molière's Mariage Forcé, act i. sc. 8. Such follies form no portion of our subject, and we leave them with some pleasure to direct our attention to more worthy efforts of human ingenuity.

12*

CHAPTER II.

THE EPICUREANS.

§ I. EPICURUS.

THE Epicureans are condemned in their names. We before noticed how the meaning attached to the name of Sophist inadvertently gives a bias to every judgment of the Sophist School, and renders it extremely difficult to conceive the members of that School otherwise than as shameless rogues. Equally difficult is it to shake off the influence of association with respect to the Epicureans; although historians are now pretty well agreed in believing Epicurus to have been a man of pure and virtuous life, and one whose doctrines were moderate and really inculcating abstemiousness.

Epicurus was born Ol. 109 (B. c. 342), at Samos, according to some; at Gargettus, in the vicinity of Athens, according to others. His parents were poor, his father a teacher of grammar. At a very early age, he tells us, his philosophical career began: so early as his thirteenth year. But we must not misunderstand this statement. He dates his career from those first questionings which occupy and perplex most young minds, especially those of any superior capacity. He doubtless refers to that period when, boy-like, he puzzled his teacher with a question beyond that teacher's power. Hearing the verse of Hesiod wherein all things are said to arise from Chaos, Epicurus asked, " And whence came Chaos ?"

"Whence came Chaos?" Is not this the sort of question to occupy the active mind of a boy? Is it not by such questions that we are all led into philosophy? To philosophy he was re