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.2 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 thus declares the acquiescence of his sect in the general belief of a divine and fore-knowing Power: - τῷ μὲν βίῳ κατακολουθοῦντες ἀδοξάστως φαμὲν εἶναι θεοὺς καὶ σέβομεν θεοὺς καὶ πрovóеLV AVTOús þaμev.3 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. 1 ἔστι δὲ τοῖσε ὑπορῆσαι βουλομένοις προύργου τὸ διαπορῆσαι καλῶς - Metaphys. lib. iii. cap. 1. 2 Neither Hume however nor Berkeley are to be judged by the misrepresentations of Beattie, whose book, however amiably intended, puts forth a most unphilosophical appeal to popular feelings and prejudices and is a continued petitio principii throughout. 3 Lib. iii. cap. 1. THE SCEPTIC. As the rose gay tint that decks the vernal Not in the flower but in our vision glows; 'Tis in our minds and not in Susan's eyes Or Marco's life the worth or beauty lies: For she in flat-nosed China would appear As plain a thing as Lady Anne is here; And one light joke at rich Loretto's dome Would rank good Marco with the damned at Rome. There's no deformity so vile, so base, That 't is not somewhere thought a charm, a grace; No foul reproach that may not steal a beam From other suns to bleach it to esteem.2 1 "The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really in them, whether any one perceives them or not, and therefore they may be called real qualities because they really exist in those bodies; but light, heat, whiteness or coldness are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensation of them; let not the eye see light or colors, nor the ears hear sounds; let the palate not taste nor the nose smell, and all colors, tastes, odors and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease.' -Locke, book ii. chap. 8. Bishop Berkeley, it is well known, extended this doctrine even to primary qualities, and supposed that matter itself has but an ideal existence. But, how are we to apply his theory to that period which preceded the formation of man, when our system of sensible things was produced, and the sun shone and the waters flowed without any sentient being to witness them? The spectator whom Whiston supplies will scarcely solve the difficulty: "To speak my mind freely," says he, "I believe that the Messias was there actually present." - See Whiston, "of the Mosaic Creation." 2 Boethius employs this argument of the Scep tics among his consolatory reflections upon the emptiness of fame. "quid quod diversarum gentium mores inter se atque instituta discordant, ut quod apud alios laude, apud alios supplicio dignum judicetur?"-Lib. ii. prosa 7. Many amusing instances of diversity, in the tastes, manners, and morals of different nations, may be found throughout the works of that amusing Sceptic, Le Mothe le Vayer.- See his "Opuscule Sceptique," his Treatise "De la Secte Sceptique," and, above all, those Dialogues, not to be found in his works, which he published under the name of Horatius Tubero. -The chief objection to these writings of Le Vayer (and it is a blemish which may be felt also in the Esprit des Loix), is the suspicious obscurity of the sources from whence he frequently draws his instances and the indiscriminate use made by him of the lowest populace of the library, those lying travellers and wonder-mongers, of whom Shaftesbury, in his "Advice to an Author," complains, as having tended in his own time to the diffusion of a very shallow and vicious sort of scepticism. - Vol. i. p. 352. The Pyrrhonism of Le Vayer, however, is of the most innocent and playful kind; and Villemandy, the author of "Scepticismus Debellatus," exempts him specially in the declaration of war which he denounces against the other armed neutrals of the sect, in consideration of the othodox limits within which he confines his incredulity. 1 3 This was the creed also of those modern Alas! they judge not by a purer light, Nor keep their fountains more untinged and bright: Habit so mars them that the Russian swain And cold disgust can find but wrinkles there, Where passion fancies all that 's smooth and fair. P****, who sees, upon his pillow laid, Will sigh for train-oil while he sips A face for which ten thousand pounds Epicureans, whom Ninon de l'Enclos collected around her in the Rue des Tournelles, and whose object seems to have been to decry the faculty of reason, as tending only to embarrass our wholesome use of pleasures, without enabling us, in any degree, to avoid their abuse. Madame des Houlières, the fair pupil of Des Barreaux in the arts of poetry and gallantry, has devoted most of her verses to this laudable purpose, and is even such a determined foe to reason, that, in one of her pastorals, she congratulates her sheep on the want of it. St. Evremont speaks thus upon the subject: “Un mélange incertain d'esprit et de matière Nous fait vivre avec trop ou trop peu de lumière. Nature, élève-nous à la clarté des anges, Had man been made at nature's birth Of only flame or only earth, Had he been formed a perfect whole Of purely that or grossly this, Then sense would ne'er have clouded soul, 1 See, among the fragments of Petronius, those verses beginning "fallunt nos oculi," etc. The most sceptical of the ancient poets was Euripides; and it would, I think, puzzle the whole school of Pyrrho to produce a doubt more startling than the following: that Epicurus should have been a dogmatist; and his natural temper would most probably have led him to the repose of scepticism had not the Stoics by their violent opposition to his doctrines compelled him to be as obstinate as themselves. Plutarch, indeed, in reporting some of his opinions, represents him as having delivered them with considerable hesitation. Επίκουρος οὐδὲν ἀπογινώσκει τούτων, ἐχόμενος τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου. 'De Placit. Philosoph." lib. ii. cap. 13. See also the 21st and 22d chap ters. But that the leading characteristics of the sect were self-sufficiency and dogmatism, appears from what Cicero says of Velleius, "De Natur. Deor."-"tum Velleius, fidenter sanè, ut solent isti, nihil tam verens quam ne dubitare aliquâ de re videretur." 2 Acts, chap. xix. "For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen." Thus England, hot from Denmark's smoking meads, Turns up her eyes at Gallia's guilty deeds; Thus, self-pleased still, the same dishonoring chain She binds in Ireland she would break in Spain; While praised at distance, but at home forbid, Rebels in Cork are patriots at Madrid. If Grotius be thy guide, shut, shut the book, In force alone for Laws of Nations look. Let shipless Danes and whining Yankees dwell On naval rights, with Grotius and Vattel, While Cobbet's pirate code alone appears Sound moral sense to England and Algiers. Woe to the Sceptic in these party days Who wafts to neither shrine his puffs of praise! For him no pension pours its annual fruits, No fertile sinecure spontaneous shoots; Not his the meed that crowned Don Hookham's rhyme, Nor sees he e'er in dreams of future time Those shadowy forms of sleek reversions rise, So dear to Scotchmen's second-sighted difficulties which impede the discovery of the longitude at sea; and the tumult and hurry of life are equally unfavorable to that calm level of mind which is necessary to an inquirer after truth. In the meantime, our modest Sceptic, in the absence of truth, contents himself with probabilities, resembling in this respect those suitors of Penelope who on finding that they could not possess the mistress herself very wisely resolved to put up with her maids; τῇ Πηνελόπῃ πλησιάζειν μὴ δυνάμενοι, ταῖς ταύτης ἐμίγνυντο θεραπαίναις. - Plutarch, Περὶ Παίδων ̓Αγωγής. 3 See a curious work, entitled "Reflections upon Learning," written on the plan of Agrippa's "De Vanitate Scientiarum," but much more honestly and skilfully executed. 4 This historian of the Irish rebellions has outrun even his predecessor in the same task, Sir John Temple, for whose character with respect to veracity the reader may consult Carte's Collection of Ormond's Original Papers, p. 207. See also Dr. Nalson's account of him, in the introduction to the second volume of his Historic. Collect. 6 That flexibility of temper and opinion which the habits of scepticism are so calculated to produce are thus pleaded for by Mr. Fox, in the very sketch of Monmouth to which I allude; and this part of the picture the historian may be thought to have drawn from himself. "One of the most conspicuous features in his character seems to have been a remarkable, and, as some think, a culpable degree of flexibility. That such a disposition is preferable to its opposite extreme will be admitted by all who think that modesty even in excess is more nearly allied to wisdom than conceit and self-sufficiency. He who has attentively considered the political, or indeed the general concerns of life, may possibly go still further, and may rank a willingness to be convinced, or, in some cases, even without conviction, to concede our own opinion to that of other men, among the principal ingredients in the composition of practical wisdom." It is right to observe, however, that the Sceptic's readiness of concession arises rather from uncertainty than conviction, more from a suspicion that his own opinion may be wrong, than from any persuasion that the opinion of his adversary is right. "It may be so, was the courteous and sceptical formula, with which the Dutch were accustomed to reply to the statements of ambassadors. See Lloyd's "State Worthies," art, Sir Thomas Wyat. 1 Descartes, who is considered as the parent of modern scepticism, says, that there is nothing in the whole range of philosophy which does not admit of two opposite opinions, and which is not involved in doubt and uncertainty, "in Philosophia nihil adhuc reperiri, de quo non in utramque partem disputatur, hoc est, quod non sit incertum et dubium." Gassendi is likewise to be added to the list of modern Sceptics, and Wedderkopff, in his Dissertation "De Scepticismo profano et sacro" (Argentorat. 1666), has denounced Erasmus also as a follower of Pyrrho, for his opinions upon the Trinity, and some other subjects. To these if we add the names of Bayle, Malebranche, See grave Theology, when once she strays From Revelation's path, what tricks she plays; What various heavens, all fit for bards to sing, Have churchmen dreamed, from Papias,3 down to King! * Dryden, Locke, etc., I think there is no one who need be ashamed of doubting in such company. 2 See this gentleman's Academic Questions." 66 3 Papias lived about the time of the apostles, and is supposed to have given birth to the heresy of the Chiliastæ, whose heaven was by no means of a spiritual nature, but rather an anticipation of the Prophet of Hera's elysium. See Eusebius, Hist. Ecclesiast." lib. iii. cap. 33, and Hie"de Scriptor. Ecclesiast." From all I can find in these authors concerning Papias, it seems hardly fair to impute to him those gross imaginations in which the believers of the sensual millennium indulged. ronym. 4 King, in his "Morsels of Criticism," vol. i., supposes the sun to be the receptacle of blessed spirits. |