large and broad culture, and conversant, as most of the Skeptics were, with all the knowledge of his time. It is interesting to learn that Homer was his favourite poet, and that he claimed to find some suggestions of Skepticism in his lines. He also studied the writings of Demokritos, whose doctrines agreed on so many points with the Sokratic teaching he had acquired at Megara. Whatever other success attended Pyrrhôn's teaching, it does not seem to have brought him wealth. His circumstances are described as being marked by extreme poverty, which, however, he bore with the unruffled serenity of mind becoming a philosopher. He was held in so great repute by his fellow-citizens that they made him their high-priest and erected statues in his honour. On the other hand, fables and ludicrous stories were circulated concerning the extremity to which he carried his principle of Skeptical indifference. He was said, e.g., to be generally attended by a bodyguard of disciples whose exertions were directed to protecting their master from falling over precipices, being bitten by mad dogs, run over by passing vehicles, or from other dangers to which his sublime indifference to the contingencies of life exposed him. But as more than one of his biographers have remarked, the half-insane man thus depicted could never have been chosen by the Elians as

It is a natural error of the vulgar to formulate all speculative ratiocinations and conclusions in some practical or sensuous form. Closely related as their own minds are to actual phenomena, and impatient of all abstractions, they cannot conceive an intellect finding pleasure in pure speculation for its own sake-watching with interest the birth, growth, and juxtaposition of its immaterial creations, or formulating hypotheses not easily reconciled with the conditions of actual material existence. The carnal mind is enmity,' not only against God,' but against ideal philosophy. Hence, whenever abstract thought seems to assume or involve concrete absurdity, such men hasten to overwhelm it in the ruins, as they think, of a reductio ad absurdum. Thus Pyrrhôn's contemporaries, perceiving the futility in practice of complete indifference, were eager to point out the ridiculous consequences involved in such a position. A satirist of the time might have written

'And coxcombs vanquish Pyrrhôn with a grin.'

Nor is it coxcombs only who indulge in this easy refutation of abstract philosophy. Dr. Johnson's reply to Berkeley's denial of matter, by striking his stick on the ground, was probably regarded by himself as conclusive. Even Goethe was ready with his dislike of transcendentalism to enjoy an argument of this kind; for when Fichte's house was attacked by riotous students, and his windows were broken, he remarked: 'Fichte might now convince himself in the most disagreeable way that it was possible for a Not-Me to exist externally to the Me.'

high-priest, nor made the object of so much honour and veneration as we know Pyrrhôn to have been; we are indeed assured by Ainesidemos that though he was skeptically undecided and indifferent in speculation, he was prompt and resolute in action-a combination which our researches will prove is by no means the impossibility that it is often thought. Pyrrhôn lived to be ninety years of age, so that if the effect of a philosophy in producing longevity is a proof of its salutary influence, Skepticism may claim a high rank. Nor is Pyrrhôn by any means an isolated example of a nonagenarian Skeptic. Indeed, I may incidentally remark that the length of days generally attained by the followers of those Greek sects who professed to cultivate Ataraxia-philosophic calm-is a convincing proof that the culture was not in vain.

Pyrrhon's teaching seems to have been carried on like that of Sokrates, entirely by conversation and oral instruction. He left no written works behind him; indeed, the only mention of a writing of his is an ode he is reported to have addressed to Alex. ander. We are therefore entirely dependent for our knowledge of his doctrine on the works of his disciples. Chiefest among these is Timon of Phlios, a poet and dramatist who himself earned a reputation as a Skeptical teacher second only to that of Pyrrhôn. He is styled by Sextos Empeirikos, 'the Interpreter (ó popýτns) of Pyrrhôn,' a relation which has been compared not very happily to that of Aaron to Moses. Accepting, then, the evidence of Timon as to the teaching of his master, we are told that the road of happiness-the supreme end of man-consists in the observance of the three following precepts:

1. We must consider what things are in their own nature or inherently.

2. We must consider what they are relatively to us.

3. We must observe the consequences or lessons of this relation. As to the first, Timon, after Pyrrhôn, determines that all things in their real nature are indifferent, indeterminable, indistinguishable, so that neither by our sensations nor by human opinion can we discriminate truth or error. The wise man, therefore, will not trust them, but undogmatically, impartially, and fearlessly will stand apart, and will admit of all things that they no more exist than they do not exist. With this definition of Skeptic wisdom agree other witnesses of the Pyrrhonic philosophy. Thus we learn from a certain Askanios of Abdera that Pyrrhôn maintained there was nothing (inherently) beautiful or ugly, right or wrong, and hence nothing that could be defined as absolute truth. Men were ruled in their conduct by laws and customs, and Ainesidemos assures us

that Pyrrhon determined nothing dogmatically on account of the equal balance of contradictories that existed in all subjects. In practical life he claimed to be guided by appearances. Another Skeptical position with which he was credited was that nothing was to be accepted as hypothetically true, and hence that the deliverances of the senses or the reason could not be assumed as indubitably certain. The utmost that might safely be affirmed was simply the actual appearance or presentation as such of any thought or idea to the individual himself. This position Pyrrhôn and his school exemplified by quoting the old proposition of Herakleitos and Demokritos: That honey is sweet I do not assert, that it seems to me to be so I admit.' The practical outcome of these Skeptical doctrines was naturally Epoché-abstention from all affirmation, or as it was called, with a retrospect to Pythagoras, Aphasia-Skeptical speechlessness. Assertion was to be limited to imperative deliverances of the senses or inward consciousness, and even thus was only to be regarded as a predication of appearance or seeming. As to the final result, Ataraxia would follow the suspense as certainly as its shadow clave to the substance, Ataraxia being in speculative questions that state of imperturbable serenity which in the inevitable ills of existence was denoted by a correlative term, equanimity (μerрionalεía).

One unfortunate result of Pyrrhôn's having left behind him no written work is our ignorance of the full scope of his Skeptical teachings. So great was his influence on all subsequent Skeptics that theories and arguments were often attributed to him, sometimes even called after his name, in the initiation or development of which he had no concern. Thus it is a disputed point whether we may ascribe to him or to some disciple of his the first enunciation of the celebrated Ten Tropoi,' or modes of withholding assent, which might be described as the Decalogue of the Greek Skeptics. They are evidently some of the most ancient of the systematic formulæ contained in their writings, and in that particular bear a close resemblance to the Decalogue of uncertain date found in the Books of Moses. They appear to belong to the age of Pyrrhôn, are frequently called by his name, but they cannot be so immediately traced to his authorship or authority as to be actually attributable to him. Probably he put them forth in some elementary form, or he may have collected and arranged the instances and illustrations on which their classification is based, and they were afterwards elaborated by a later Skeptic. The majority of critics, with whom I agree, assign them to Ainesidemos. I have accordingly reserved their consideration until we come to speak of that thinker.

Confining ourselves to the more authoritative indications of his

teaching, we perceive that Pyrrhonic Skepticism inculcates a position of reticence or suspense, passing into negation, on all subjects of speculation. But we must by no means extend Pyrrhôn's doubt or denial to the dictates of morality or to the ordinary relations of a citizen to the State in which he lived. Pyrrhôn clearly evinced the faculty of Sokrates for discriminating between what was speculatively uncertain and what was practically expedient or imperative. Among the latter he placed the ordinary ethical duties that men owe to each other. Cicero gives it as a maxim of Pyrrhôn's that, 'excepting virtue, nothing was worth having;' in other words, morality was not only the highest but the only good. He is also said to have explained his frequent fits of reverie by saying that he studied how to become virtuous. Indeed his special position as high-priest, as well as the customary deference of all Skeptics to the laws and observances required by the State, demanded a strict insistence on moral obligations. This was further enforced by the pure, unselfish example of his own life. The veneration in which he was held by his fellow-townsmen, not only during his life but long after his death, is only reconcilable with his exemplification of the highest personal social and civic virtues. By his disciples he was almost worshipped. Timon celebrates in glowing verses his freedom from blind reverence for opinion, from the inane puerilities of Sophists, from the seductions of a deceptive rhetoric, from the trivial pursuits of those who cultivate physical science. He wants to learn Pyrrhôn's secret of living in a passionless serenity far above ordinary mortals, and worthy only of the gods. Nor was this high estimate confined to disciples and personal friends. He is said to have won over to his disposition-the equable tenor of his life-men who refused to accept his philosophy, such as, e.g. Epikouros and Nausiphanes. The sublime development of Ataraxia that procured for Pyrrhôn this renown was alleged by contemporaries to be the product of his intercourse with Hindu mystics, but a more obvious mode of accounting for it is to attribute it to his assiduous imitation of Sokrates.

With the materials now before us we are in a position to award Pyrrhôn his due place among the Free-thinkers of Greece. Ordinarily he is classified as the first of Greek Skeptics. This can only mean that he first systematized the principles of Free-thought that were current in Hellenic speculation from its earliest commencement. The first Greek Skeptic is Sokrates, in virtue of his enunciation of Nescience as the static and normal condition of the philosophic thinker; and we have already seen that principles and methods more or less implying Skepticism were current long prior even to Sokrates. What Pyrrhôn, therefore, accomplished for Free

thought was to carry to their legitimate conclusion and consolidate the traditions and methods of free-inquirers from the earliest infancy of Greek speculation. Setting aside the systematic arrangement and terminology, there is nothing in Pyrrhonism that we have not already met with in tracing the course of Hellenic Skepticism. If Pyrrhôn denied the validity of the senses as an attestation of absolute truth, the denial was as old as Greek thought. If he mistrusted the processes of the reason, this was no more than the Eleatics had done. If he made a distinction between individual and relative truth on the one hand, and general or absolute truth on the other, this had long been established by Protagoras. If he maintained Epoché to be the highest mark of philosophic wisdom, this was only the substitution of a general method or procedure for the personal conviction of ignorance which Sokrates asserted. If he laid stress on Ataraxia as the wise man's goal, both the thing and the term had been already affirmed by prior philosophers, notably by Demokritos. No doubt he and his school went beyond all former doubters so far as they suffered neutrality or equipoise to be transmuted into Negation, and the personal experience of the individual to become an indisputable law of the universe; but it seems likely that this step in advance of true Skepticism was taken unconsciously, it was undoubtedly combined with an appreciation of suspense or reticence as the normal standpoint of the Skeptic.

Besides its development in the direction of Negation, Pyrrhôn represents another advance in Greek Skepticism. He not only organized its procedures, but he named and classified them. To his school we must ascribe the numerous terms and formulas by which suspense or dissidence continued to be denoted among Greek Freethinkers during the next five centuries. Sokrates, as we have seen, did not care to define. Probably no teacher ever existed less solicitous to formulate fixed rules and methods, whether for thought or conduct. The only philosophical prescription that can be fairly associated with his name is the celebrated Know thyself,' and perhaps a simple assertion of Nescience. But with Pyrrhôn we reach the technical stage of Skeptical evolution. In his school, if not by himself, was sown the seed of that wonderful harvest of technical terms, axioms, formulas, and definitions that we find in the writings of subsequent Skeptics. Considering its scope, no school of Greek thinkers possesses such an armoury of weapons, offensive and defensive. Every phase and degree of Skepticism, incipient doubt, Nescience, suspense, indifference, apathy, Ataraxia, is the subject of a lavish nomenclature and of a varied and reiterated definition. There seems, we must admit, no inconsiderable