clusive. You have merely given the term which Christian Theology has adopted, not quite correctly, as the synonym of the Greek word. In fact, nothing could better elucidate the difference between the classical and Christian conception of this tendency of the human intellect, than a comparison of the two words with their collateral implications. What to the old Greek was merely free search or inquiry coupled with abstention from assertion, became to Christians a blameworthy deficiency of or even antagonism to true Belief.

ARUNDEL. The definition of Skepticism by means of positive terms is difficult. Philosophers are generally classed according to their tenets; but inasmuch as Skeptics deny the tenability of all tenets, it is obvious that some other method must be employed with regard to them. It is not easy to say what should be the positive characteristics of those who deliberately maintain they possess none, except negation and nothingness. Skeptics are in fact the cyphers and blanks of Philosophy.

TREVOR (smiling). True, Arundel. Cyphers because they add tenfold to the value of all other philosophical systems; and blanks, because their worth is indeterminate and unbounded.

HARRINGTON. Suppose we proceed by derivation: the word Skepto, first used of bodily eye-sight, and hence of prying, searching, &c., was afterwards applied to its psychical counterpart of mental inquiry and research. Its signification of doubt arises in an easily explicable manner from its second stage.

MISS LEYCESTER. Sight, Research, Reflection, Doubt -the main stages in the history of the word-seem typical of corresponding stages in the mental growth of the individual and in the history of philosophy.

TREVOR (warmly). I quite agree with you, Miss Leycester, and am glad to think that I have secured so important an auxiliary to my view of the question. . . . As to the meaning of the Greek word, we find that the Greek Skeptics employed a number of terms to signify what I may provisionally call the suspensive attitude of the human mind. I have drawn out lists-(1) of the terms employed to define

the method; (2) of maxims, axioms, and proverbs which they used as elementary principles of Skeptical science. Of the first I find no less than eighteen different terms; while of the second I have accumulated upwards of twelve:'-facts which sufficiently prove how thoroughly Greek philosophical thought was permeated by Skepticism. Leaving then the Greek technical terms for doubt, and turning to the word Skepticism as we mean to use it in our investigations, we must bear in mind that the word now covers in common acceptation a large space of ground. It may be taken as including every conceivable kind and degree of Un-faith; from pure disinterested inquiry to the most determined and self-contradictory suspense, on the one side; and from the faintest suspicion of the untrustworthiness of the senses to the extremest and most self-annihilating negation, on the other side. Our first task must therefore be to narrow our scope, for it is clear that if we were to include in our survey every skeptical inquirer, commonly so called, our undertaking would be an endless one.

HARRINGTON. There is moreover a further consideration. 'Skeptical' denotes a particular mental attitude which may be evinced in relation to any subject-matter of investigation; hence the term, as De Quincey remarked, cannot be used absolutely. A man, e.g. may be a Skeptic in History or Science as well as in Theology. Are we to divide Skeptics according to the subjects of their doubt, or are we to limit our inquiry to those usually so denominated, i.e. Religious Skeptics?

ARUNDEL. Such a division would, in my opinion, be untechnical and embarrassing; for, pace the authority of De Quincey and customary usage, nothing, as it appears to me, can be more thoroughgoing in its tendencies and operations

For these lists, see Appendix A.

2 Compare Life and Writings, by Page, vol. ii. pp. 60, 61. 'Sceptical, it strikes me, cannot be used absolutely, but only in relation to some assigned object known and indicated. . . .' 'It is true,' he adds, that the word is used absolutely in one colloquial case, viz., when we say, "Kant was a Sceptic; Hume was a Sceptic," but even then it is an elliptic expression. . . for we all understand Sceptic or doubter in the doctrines of Christianity.'

than genuine Skepticism. Tennyson's verse has in this respect a larger application than its author perhaps intended:--Unfaith in aught, is want of faith in all.'

We must, I think, divide Skeptics, not according to the objects of their unbelief, but according to the motiveinfluences by which they seem to be determined.

TREVOR. I agree with you that the division by subjects would be mechanical and illogical, but not as to the equal liability to unbelief of all subjects of human knowledge; for as a rule incredulity originates and thrives in direct ratio as the supposed knowledge to which it is related transcends our personal experience. . . . I have here drawn up a list of Skepticisms, if I may be allowed the word, by which we can guide ourselves in our investigations. Some of them we must reject because the essential attribute of Skepticism is wanting to them.

1. The first we may term the Skepticism of ignorance. This is the kind spoken of by Diderot in his Pensées :'Celui qui doute parce qu'il ne connait pas les raisons de crédibilité n'est qu'un ignorant.'2 It is this sort of Skepticism which forms the basis of much of the crude and noisy vapouring on the subject current among the lower orders in our large towns, and which is destined to entire extinction or large modification before the advance of education. With Skepticism such as this, uninformed and unenlightened, our enquiry can have nothing to do.

2. Closely akin, yet governed by another cause, is the Skepticism of cynicism. This is the Incredulity of men who, though not unacquainted with the methods and results of scientific reasearch, are from mere intellectual indolence, or, more rarely, from unaffected contempt, utterly indifferent to the existence or reality of Truth and Knowledge. Diderot terms this 'l'indolence du Sceptique.'

3. The Skepticism of pure inquiry: in other words, the 1 Compare Cousin, Etudes sur Pascal, p. 47. En effet, comme l'a dit M. Royer-Collard: "On ne fait point au scepticisme sa part," il est absolu ou il n'est pas; il triomphe entièrement ou il périt tout entier.' But see below, chapter on 'Twofold Truth,' vol. ii. Evening I.

2 Pensées philosophiques, Eur. comp., Ed. Garnier, i. p. 137.

provisional acceptance of certain Truths as such, while searching and waiting for further enlightenment. This, as has often been remarked, is the necessary attitude of Scienceindeed progressive Science is inconceivable without it. Most of the so-called Skepticism which distinguishes the leading Scientists of our day is of this kind-a cautious reception of such scientific facts and hypotheses as seem to have most warrant for them, rather than a conscious and decisive adherence to suspense for its own sake.

4. The Skepticism of negation.; by which I mean the continued denial of all the facts of experience and existence, until the unbeliever gradually reduces himself to semi-extinction or half-consciousness. This is generally the form which Doubt and Free-speculation have taken in India when they are found combined with Pessimism:-The philosophical denial of the facts of existence as uncertain, together with a morbid estimate of them considered as positive ills, passing into a stage in which existence itself becomes the greatest of evils, and requiring to be abrogated as far as possible by an excessive self-abnegation which is called knowledge, but which is in reality self-annihilation. Of course, this complete negation may easily assume the aspect of Dogmatism: because, as the Greek Skeptics truly saw, negation can be as haughtily self-satisfied, imperious, and exacting as the most rigid and tyrannical affirmation.

5. The Skepticism of suspense or genuine Pyrrhonism; by which I mean, either (1) the deliberate assertion of premisses and principles which inevitably, though it may be unconsciously, lead to open and confessed uncertainty; or (2) the distinct adoption, wholly or partially, and after full enquiry, of intellectual suspense as the only possible goal of philosophic research.

The last is properly speaking the only species with which our proposed inquiry is concerned, though we may find it needful to include sometimes the Skepticism of pure inquiry. ... Whether our scheme is to comprehend the Skepticism of negation will depend on our starting point. Shall we commence with a complete survey of ancient Skepticism, or confine our attention chiefly to modern Skepticism, i.e. from

the Christian era? In the latter case we shall not require to investigate at any length pure negation, as that is a form of speculation to which the Indo-Germanic races of Europe are averse; though even among our modern Skeptics we sometimes find philosophical Skepticism passing into a profound, intuitive, and unquestioning mysticism.

HARRINGTON. For several reasons I think we must limit our inquiry to the moderns. Besides the fuller interest attaching to names which come nearest our own time, modern Skepticism is as a rule less defiant and extravagant, and therefore, to the modern intellect, less repellent, than the complete suspense of the Greeks, or the extreme negation of the Hindoos. . . Perhaps, however, an outline of Pre-Christian Skepticism would enable us better to appreciate the contrast between the unbeliefs of the old and those of the modern world.

TREVOR. That I would engage to furnish; indeed, any detailed examination of modern Skeptics which did not include a survey of their predecessors among other races and religions would be obviously imperfect.

ARUNDEL. I also think we must confine ourselves chiefly to the moderns. The field is amply sufficient for amateur philosophers as we are to start with, and it is a mistake for young beginners in Philosophy-culture as in Agri-culture-to take too large a farm. . . . Recurring to your classification of Skepticisms. While I think it intelligible and useful, there is one exception which I must take to it. In your 5th or genuine Skeptic class you appear to include unconscious unbelievers. You surely cannot be in earnest in this, for if we are to pronounce Skeptics all who unknowingly maintain irreconcilable beliefs, our survey will include the majority of the human race. ought to be careful in this as in other cases, when, e.g. heresy is impugned, not to impute to any one tenets which he does not openly avow.

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TREVOR. I don't think you quite comprehend my definition: what I mean is, that we should regard as virtual Skeptics, not only those who profess to be doubters, but those also who, whether consciously or not, assert principles which can only lead legitimately to Skeptical conclusions.

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