beautiful woman-the first live mouse behind the wainscot suffices to dissolve the connexion. TREVOR. My reasons for defining Plato a Skeptic were briefly these: 1. Every consistent scheme of Idealism must be founded (as Harrington has just hinted) on the forcible and persistent repression of all extraneous knowledgemethods and results. 2. He himself admits that Dialectic in ultimate ratiocination is nugatory. 3. The general character borne by his writings in the history of philosophy. ARUNDEL. But surely the fundamental axiom of Sokratic teaching, Γνώθι σεαυτὸν, ought to have preserved Plato and all his disciples from immoderate and dogmatic Idealism. HARRINGTON. No doubt, had they always been careful to confine it within Sokratic limits. As it was, the σɛautòv became by idealistic perversion a synonym of the Universe. The chief of the Florentine Platonists, Picus Mirandula, thus interprets the maxim, Qui se cognoscit, omnia in se cognoscit': 'Who knows himself, knows all things in himself.' So that what Sokrates regarded as the justification and method of Nescience became to subsequent Platonists a claim of Omniscience. TREVOR. Not exactly; the omnia in se of Mirandula merely expressed the subjective limitation of the thinker, and was not an equivalent for objective Omniscience. Whatever be our opinion of Idealism, we must admit in ordinary fairness, as well as in harmony with the saw of Protagoras, that individual knowledge must of necessity be individual all-knowledge-it must imply a totality of cognition. But it is getting late, and I therefore propose that we adjourn. ... 1 Pic. Mir. De hominis Dignitate, Op. Om. i. p. 320. Τοῦτο μοι, ὦ Πύῤῥων, ἱμείρεται ἦτορ ἀκοῦσαι Timon of Phlios. Ye Powers, why did you man create If you'd endow him with no more estate, With reall hunger, and Phantastic meat.' 'I had always a humble opinion of my own powers as an original thinker, except in abstract science . . . but thought myself much superior to most of my contemporaries in willingness and ability to learn from everybody; as I found hardly any one who made such a point of examining what was said in defence of all opinions, however new or however old, in the conviction that even if they were errors there might be a substratum of truth underneath them, and that in any case the discovery of what it was that made them plausible would be a benefit to truth.' J. S. MILL, Autobiography, p. 242. 'Incertainties now crown themselves assured.' SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet cvii. EVENING IV. PYRRHON TO SEXTOS EMPEIRIKOS. MISS LEYCESTER. Our forthcoming discussion will bring us to the very citadel of Greek Skepticism. Pyrrhôn, Ainesidemos, and Sextos Empeirikos we must take as its extremest exponents. TREVOR. Not altogether, Miss Leycester; if, at least, we are to keep to the primary meaning of Skepticism as complete mental equipoise or suspense: of that the most influential teacher in Greek philosophy is Sokrates. ARUNDEL. But do you really maintain that Sokrates was more Skeptical than Pyrrhôn? TREVOR. Distinguo!' as the Schoolman would say when pressed by a dilemma. The position of Sokrates, as we saw, was Nescience, Skeptical equipoise-a determination not to affirm or dogmatize on any matter in which a conflict of views was reasonable or possible. Now this suspense is the climax, or, I might say, the only form of pure Skepticism, and must be carefully discriminated from negative dogma as well as positive dogma. But Pyrrhôn, or rather his followers, do not seem to have always maintained that rigidly judicial attitude. They fell occasionally into that determined negation which I regard as the next stage in the development of Greek Skepticism subsequent to its first distinct expression by Sokrates. HARRINGTON. Well, Doctor, I cannot see what other development we could have expected. The proposition, 'I doubt,' or 'Je ne sçay,' once propounded though only personally as a lex credendi, cannot be accepted as definitive. It immediately raises the question of the reason why, the relation of the doubter with brother-thinkers, and you are incontinently launched into absolute negation. TREVOR. That tendency I have already admitted in my remarks on Sokrates. The facilis descensus from personal doubt to absolute Skepticism or dogmatic negation is easily accounted for. Man possesses an uncontrollable instinct to conjugate every personal verb; thus nescio,' once confessed, drags in its train 'nescis,' 'nescit,' or 'nescitis,' nesciunt.' The peculiar excellency of Sokratic wisdom partly consisted in this, that he did not care to prove mankind at large partakers in his Nescience, though no doubt he thought the extension of such a conviction among men highly desirable. ARUNDEL. The standpoint of personal Nescience that refuses to take cognizance of its implications appears to me unnatural and for most men impossible. Nor can I concede that Nescience is the middle term of which the extremes are positive affirmation and negation. Regarded as a startingpoint, Nescience has much greater affinity for negation than for affirmation. Look, e.g. at the Greek Skeptics, from Pyrrhôn to Sextos (Sokrates, I admit, is more persistently neutral): what they attack are affirmative dogmas. TREVOR. Many reasons might be given for that. First, there is the proverbial difficulty of demonstrating a negation. Secondly, affirmations are not only more distinct and tangible, but more obtrusive and polemical, than negations. Thirdly, They are infinitely more prevalent and more mischievous. Skepticism, as I have more than once said, is produced as a reaction from or antithetical to dogma; but conceive all dogmas in existence to be negative and expressed in negative terms, and Skepticism would not lose its functions, but would be considerably impeded in their exercise. A medieval warrior, given the choice, would much rather grapple with an earthborn, material foe, than with a disembodied spirit or emissary of the evil one, though he would regard it as his duty to combat either. Besides, the warfare which Skeptics wage against dogmatic affirmation is for the most part defensive, though it bears so often the semblance of an exclusively offensive polemic as to be confounded with it. (This, I may parenthetically remark, is the reason of the common confusion of Skepticism with negation.) What the Skeptic says to the dogmatist is not 'There is no truth,' but I de |