he thus tries to prove: 'When anyone says that a number, e.g. the number 10, is divisible into 1, 2, 3, and 4, it is not the number 10 that is so divisible, for directly one part, viz. the unit, is taken away, what is really left is not 10 but 9. Hence the subtraction and division are of other numbers, not of the ten, which differ according to each subtraction. Perhaps therefore the division of the whole into parts is impossible, for if the whole be divisible into parts, the parts should be comprehended in the whole before the division; but perhaps they are not so comprehended, for 10 is divisible into 9+1, but also into 8+2, 7+3, 6+4, and 5+5, and adding these together we might say that 55 is contained in 10, which is absurd.'

I have adduced these arguments, not so much for their intrinsic merit, as being examples of extreme Skeptical Eristic, and in order to show how the whole of Greek Free-thought is permeated by the same spirit. Sextos Empeirikos does no more than carry on the methods of the Eleatics, of Protagoras, and of the Sophists. He applies to all subjects alike the elenchus of Sokrates, and offers incontrovertible proofs of the truth of Plato's dictum, that unscrupulous Dialectic is invincible. Nor is this all: Sextos also resembles his predecessors in combating phenomena as such, and endeavouring by penetrating beneath them to discover their hidden causes and meanings. But it is not only with Hellenic thinkers that Sextos in his attack on logical methods can claim kindred. Many of his proofs of the intrinsic imperfections of logic have been insisted on by modern teachers of the science, especially by John Stuart Mill. Thus he points out that the syllogism in most of its approved forms is merely a petitio principii, that definition only expresses and formulates knowledge already attained and in no sense adds to it, that induction can only be held to possess a completely conclusive character when it is exhaustive, and this in all large generalizations it obviously cannot be.

More interesting for us are the physical and ethical portions of his work, which are comprehended in the third book. The first chapter commences with an inquiry concerning God, whom the majority of men regard as the most effective cause of all things.' Sextos begins the subject by warning his readers that, following the ordinary opinions of men undogmatically, he not only admits the existence of the gods, but he worships them, and believes in their providence. But this admission of acquiescence in customary belief does not make him less resolute in dealing with Dogmatists on the subject. We have already noticed the usual Skeptical ratiocination on the point, so that the briefest summary of Sextos's

arguments must here suffice us. His first objection is based on our inability to conceive, except in accordance with the evidence of our senses, or knowledge otherwise acquired. Next he appeals to the diversity of opinions among renowned thinkers. He then points out that we cannot know enough of God to attribute to him qualities, e.g. immortality or blessedness, which are only reflections or contrasts of human properties. Even were we able to conceive God by the intellect, yet we should be content to remain in suspense concerning him in our inevitable incertitude as to the truth of our conception. He who demonstrates God's existence must do so by what is manifest or by what is obscure, but neither of these alternatives is possible. Again, God is manifest either by himself or by something else, but here too both processes are affirmed to be inconclusive. An additional element of doubt is added when we examine the attributes commonly assigned to God, e.g. his providence, for the question immediately arises, If he exercises foresight, is it over some beings, or over all? If the latter, what is the meaning of the evil in the world? Another difficulty arises from his omnipotence. If God possesses that attribute and does not bestow good on all, it must be because he is jealous of some of his creatures. Such are the arguments by which Sextos opposes not so much a customary undogmatic belief in deity as an elaborate certitude on the matter. He next treats of cause, but we need not take his reasoning on that point into consideration, as he only reproduces the argument of Ainesidemos, which we have already noticed. Other physical objects of attack are material principles,' the comprehensibility of bodies, their composition, &c. Against the possibility of motion he has an elaborate argument, in which, however, he avoids the negative pitfall of denying its possibility, as did the Eleatics, saying that Skeptics regarded motion as existent in phenomena, but as nonexistent in the philosophic reason.' Similar arguments are employed to destroy the dogmas contained in 'natural change,' in 'generation and corruption,' in the persistency of material bodies. Against the last he employs the Herakleitean flux, which he elsewhere charges with being Dogmatic. He concludes the physical part of his work by an examination of space, time, and number, which, regarded as real entities and not as mere phenomena, he concludes to be indemonstrable.

Of the third or ethical portion of his thesis it will be enough to say that he disproves the existence of intrinsic universal good and evil by the same methods that he uses against other supposed truths or existences. He urges the diversity of definitions used by the

Dogmatists of the supreme good, of pleasure and pain, &c., ending with the usual conclusion, that in nature nothing is either good or evil; but he diminishes the force of his argument by proceeding, with his customary exuberant Dialectic, to show that in nature the indifferent also does not exist! His ratiocination on this subject is, however, purely speculative, and does not touch the ordinary obligations of men considered as social or patriotic duties.

At some risk of wearying you with Skeptical technicalities and puerilities, I have thought it right to place before you a fairly complete account of the greatest product of Greek Skepticism. The work is of importance, not only as a collection of Skeptical arguments, but as revealing the intellectual idiosyncrasy of its author. Sextos was clearly a Skeptical Eclectic; for, though his primary tenet was Pyrrhonic suspense, he appreciated and employed all the methods of preceding Skeptics, especially in attacking Dogmatists. Thus we find in his pages the Eristic of the Sophists, the Nescience of Sokrates, the Epoché of Pyrrhôn, the dogmatic Negation of his disciples, the Idealism of the Eleatics and of Plato, the Probabilism of Karneades, the doctrines of Ainesidemos-whatever method, in short, had ever been employed by his countrymen to encounter dogma. But though his energies are thus diffused over the whole field of Greek Free-thought, his arguments are often, perhaps unavoidably, monotonous. Bearing in mind his favourite processes, we might without much difficulty anticipate his treatment of any given subject-matter. The following seem to me his chief Skeptical weapons: 1. The disjunctive syllogism. 2. Extreme analysis, sometimes real, sometimes verbal, dividing the whole into parts, and each part into fractions, and placing these in mutual antagonism. 3. Nominalism. 4. Employing the plea ad infinitum in all continuous existences, e.g. in causation, space, time, number, God, &c. 5. Appeal to diversity of opinions, and exaggerating their discordances. Nor can it be denied that his ratiocination not unfrequently departs from the judicial equipoise that ought to mark the true Skeptic, the devotee of mental Ataraxia, and has the disagreeable characteristics of ordinary controversial pleading. Thus we find occasional self-contradictions, equivocations, evasions, and sophisms of all kinds. Nothing comes amiss as a refutation or contradiction of Dogmatism. He is clearly of opinion that, on the principle of any stick serving to beat a dog, any argument suffices to destroy a dogma. On the other hand, we must bear in mind, first, that this unscrupulous Eristic is an indissoluble part of Hellenic controversy-the Eleatics and Sokrates employ the same weapons as zealously and unscrupulously as Sextos himself;

the method approved itself to the inborn love of freedom which marked the Greek intellect, and which made them fond of intellectual gymnastics, verbal jugglery, &c. for their own sakes; and secondly, we must never lose sight of the real standpoint of Sextos and his fellow-Skeptics. The commentators on his works have liberally bespattered them with complaints of the mingled audacity and childishness of his arguments. That a man should set himself in earnest to overthrow such certitudes as time, space, number, the elementary rules of arithmetic, the axioms of Euclid, seems to them a strong argument for his defective sanity. They are eager to overthrow his reasoning, by methods like that of Diogenes, who refuted Zenon's proof of the non-existence of motion by getting up and walking. But these critics ought first of all to be certain that they thoroughly understand the position and aim of such reasoners as Sextos. It might occur to them that men like Sokrates, Pyrrhôn, and Sextos, and in our own day John Stuart Mill, who dispute conventional dogmas, are not altogether the idiots they are apt to suppose. They might at least credit such powerful thinkers with the supposition that they must have some occult method of reconciling their ratiocination with the facts of the world and the dictates of common-sense, of which they themselves are ignorant. In point of fact these Skeptics have just as little inclination to question phenomena as such, as Zenon had to doubt the walking power of Diogenes or any other man. They have not the slightest doubt as to the apparent reality of space or time. They do not dispute the fact of causation. For them the phenomenal world of their daily and hourly existence is as much an actuality, a regula vivendi, as it is for anyone else. But when they are told that they must perforce regard these external things and their relations as absolute truths; when they are commanded to accept the properties of numbers, or the axioms of geometry, or the customary ideas of space, time, and causation as not only true for them, but true for all reasoning beings, no matter where placed, or under what conditions their ratiocinative faculties are exercised; when they are assured that the veracity of such conventional opinions is unrelated to or dependent upon their own faculties; in other words-for this is the outcome of the argument that their senses and experience are infallible tests of absolute truth, they instinctively demur. They are willing to consider their knowledge true apparent knowledge, but they feel a natural diffidence in pronouncing it infallible, or deeming it all possible or conceivable cognition. They are the less inclined to admit these high claims for the conclusions of their senses or their

reason from their own repeated experience of the fallibility of their deliverances. The sole quality that could justify pretensions to absolute knowledge would be omniscience, and that they are far from believing themselves to possess. Besides, a persistent attention to the bounds of their experience and the ordinary processes of knowledge-acquisition has taught them the limited nature of their faculties. What they see and know of external things are phenomenal—the appearances they present to them, but it is quite conceivable, nay, even probable, that those external things have relations and properties in and for themselves, and irrespectively of the way in which they are compelled to apprehend them. The sweetness of honey and the fragrance of the violet, for instance, are conditioned by our possession of the senses of taste and smell; but the thinker asks, Are they qualities inherent in their several objects as well as apparent to us? Are our senses absolute tests not only of phenomenal but of real existence? What, in other words, are things in themselves'? To take the case of number, which Sextos attacks vigorously in both of his works. We know the apparent properties of numbers and their combinations. But what are numbers in themselves? What are they in distant portions of the universe? What are they also to higher intelligences? We know that many of the combinations of arithmetic as well as the conclusions of geometry appear to be self-contradictory; in any case, we cannot offer a satisfactory reason-why of even the simplest of them. Accordingly thinkers like Sextos come to the conclusion that the verities of arithmetic are not necessarily absolute and unconditional. They can imagine numerical properties and combinations other than those we possess; and what they can easily imagine they must hold to be conceivable, and what is conceivable may, for aught they know, really exist. To such intellects truth is conceived as separable from their personal perceptions or experience. It has a scope infinitely greater than the range even of the whole aggregate of human knowledge. It is conceived as absolute, unconditional, unchangeable, and eternal.

Now this very conception of truth-hypothetical as it ismay easily have the effect of intensifying the transitory, vacillating, or doubtful aspects of phenomena. The more changeable things seen, the more unchangeable are things unseen. The very mutability of phenomena seems of itself an argument for the immutability of real existence; the contradictions in numbers, e.g. appear to imply the existence of absolute number, in which such contradictions are impossible. Our inability to define causation, or to apprehend space and time, reveals the fact that we know