The Sceptical Philosophy of the Ancients has been no less misrepresented
than the Epicurean. Pyrrho may perhaps have carried it to rather an
irrational excess;--but we must not believe with Beattie all the
absurdities imputed to this philosopher; and it appears to me that the
doctrines of the school, as explained by Sextus Empiricus, are far more
suited to the wants and infirmities of human reason as well as more
conducive to the mild virtues of humility and patience, than any of those
systems of philosophy which preceded the introduction of Christianity. The
Sceptics may be said to have held a middle path between the Dogmatists and
Academicians; the former of whom boasted that they had attained the truth
while the latter denied that any attainable truth existed. The Sceptics
however, without either asserting or denying its existence, professed to
be modestly and anxiously in search of it; or, as St. Augustine expresses
it, in his liberal tract against the Manichaeans, "_nemo nostrum dicat jam
se invenisse veritatem; sic eam quoeramus quasi ab utrisque nesciatur_."
From this habit of impartial investigation and the necessity which it
imposed upon them of studying not only every system of philosophy but
every art and science which professed to lay its basis in truth, they
necessarily took a wider range of erudition and were far more travelled in
the regions of philosophy than those whom conviction or bigotry had
domesticated in any particular system. It required all the learning of
dogmatism to overthrow the dogmatism of learning; and the Sceptics may be
said to resemble in this respect that ancient incendiary who stole from
the altar the fire with which he destroyed the temple. This advantage over
all the other sects is allowed to them even by Lipsius, whose treatise on
the miracles of the Virgo Hallensis will sufficiently save him from all
suspicion of scepticism. "_labore, ingenio, memoria_," he says, "_supra
omnes pene philosophos fuisse.--quid nonne omnia aliorum secta tenere
debuerunt et inquirere, si poterunt refellere? res dicit nonne orationes
varias, raras, subtiles inveniri ad tam receptas, claras, certas (ut
videbatur) sententias evertendas?" etc.--"Manuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic."
Dissert_. 4.
Between the scepticism of the ancients and the moderns the great
difference is that the former doubted for the purpose of investigating, as
may be exemplified by the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, while the
latter investigate for the purpose of doubting, as may be seen through
most of the philosophical works of Hume. Indeed the Pyrrhonism of latter
days is not only more subtle than that of antiquity, but, it must be
confessed, more dangerous in its tendency. The happiness of a Christian
depends so essentially upon his belief, that it is but natural he should
feel alarm at the progress of doubt, lest it should steal by degrees into
that region from which he is most interested in excluding it, and poison
at last the very spring of his consolation and hope. Still however the
abuses of doubting ought not to deter a philosophical mind from indulging
mildly and rationally in its use; and there is nothing surely more
consistent with the meek spirit of Christianity than that humble
scepticism which professes not to extend its distrust beyond the circle of
human pursuits and the pretensions of human knowledge. A follower of this
school may be among the readiest to admit the claims of a superintending
Intelligence upon his faith and adoration: it is only to the wisdom of
this weak world that he refuses or at least delays his assent;--it is only
in passing through the shadow of earth that his mind undergoes the eclipse
of scepticism. No follower of Pyrrho has ever spoken more strongly against
the dogmatists than St. Paul himself, in the First Epistle to the
Corinthians; and there are passages in Ecclesiastes and other parts of
Scripture, which justify our utmost diffidence in all that human reason
originates. Even the Sceptics of antiquity refrained carefully from the
mysteries of theology, and in entering the temples of religion laid aside
their philosophy at the porch. Sextus Empiricus declares the acquiescence
of his sect in the general belief of a divine and foreknowing Power:--In
short it appears to me that this rational and well-regulated scepticism is
the only daughter of the Schools that can safely be selected as a handmaid
for Piety. He who distrusts the light of reason will be the first to
follow a more luminous guide; and if with an ardent love for truth he has
sought her in vain through the ways of this life, he will but turn with
the more hope to that better world where all is simple, true and
everlasting: for there is no parallax at the zenith;--it is only near our
troubled horizon that objects deceive us into vague and erroneous
calculations.