SCEPTICISM (1e6pir), doubt, deliberation, circumspection. There are two significations to this word : the one denoting doubt of an explanation of phenomena ; the other the more precise indication of a certain class of philosophers who have continued sceptics, whose system of thought in its fundamental points ever remained sceptical. To this latter we alone direct ourselves.
Socrates has been commonly called the founder of this sect by the enunciation of his famous tenet,—all he knew was that be knew nothing. But this was more a limitation of the confidence of the Dogmatists and Sophists, and a confession of the weakness of the human understanding, than any fundamental scepticism, such as was sub sequently embraced by Pyrrho and others; for though Socrates, more obcupied with pulling down than building up, advanced few speculative opinions of his own, yet we agree with Schleiennacher in awarding to him the merit of having first posited the true idea of science (as the in tercommunion of dialectics, physics, and ethics); and this one positive principle in his philosophy is sufficient alone to demarcate him from the sceptics. As well might Bacon be accused of scepticism, his posi tion in the 'History of Philosophy' bekg very similar to that of Socrates. How different this is from the scepticism of Pyrrho, whose whole philosophy consisted in a suspension of judgment, or perpetual negation [Perm:1o, in BIOG. Div.], may be seen by a com parison with some definitions of scepticism by the philosophers them selves. Sextus Empiricus, the historian of the sect, defines it as " the power (66vauts) of opposing in all their contradiction the sensuous repre.
sentations and the conceptions of the mind (cpcurousva re nal voo6asva), and thus to induce perfect suspension of judgment " (Sextus Emp. Pyrrho. Hypot., f. 1, 4); and Carneades denied the possibility of real knowledge of anything from the twofold relations of the representa tion (image-idea, .parracrht) to the object cpcivraar4v), and to the mind (6 apa,rasto6nssar), as the mind had no criterion of the truth : all that could be affirmed was the mere probability (TJ riOav6v). ,Euesi detnus defines it as the recollection of opinions from the testimony of the senses or other evidence, by which means one dogma was opposed to another, and upon comparison all found useless and confused.
(Brucker, • Instit. Philos.; c. 14, § 7.) From the fallaciousness of sense, the differences of sensuous perceptions in different organisations, the weakness of understanding, and the impossibility of diving beneath the appearances to the real causes of things, the sceptics deduced a system of indifference which became equally difficult to accept or refute. They maintained that every proposition requires a prior pro
position to support it, and so on ad infinitum ; or else it assumes some axiom which cannot be proved, and is to be taken for granted without demonstration, and consequently may be denied with the same force with which it is assumed. Further, that nothing can be known by means of itself, nor by means of something else, whilst that other remains unknown, and that other must either be unknown or known by means of something else, and so on ad infinitum. (Sextus Emp., 1.
15.) This last Is extremely subtle, and in itself is irresistible; but as Kant profoundly remarked, there is this fundamental flaw in absolute scepticism, that it gives out everything for appearance. It therefore distinguishes appearance from truth, and of course must have a mark of distinction; consequently presupposes•a knowledge of the truth, thus contradicting itself." Tho careful avoidance of any expression savouring of certainty—the using of the term seems for is—which was adopted by this sect, has been inimitably ridiculed with all his wit and vivacity by Moli&e (' Manage Force; act. i., sc. 8); and indeed a system so unsatisfactory never could and never has taken much root except in minds of a very peculiar and indolent nature. The abnega tion of man's proudest faculty, reason, the perpetual indecision on every point, so little accords with the fertile and prodigious activity and creative power of the mind, that the real professors of scepticism have been universally indolent, easy-natured, sensual men, with whom the speculative doubting was stimulus enough. Murhoff (' Polyhistor; ii., lib. c. 6, and 1. ii., c. ix.) gives an account of all the sceptical writers in his dull laborious way ; Brucker and Endfield (` Hist. of Philos.,' i., b. ii. c. 16) give a more detailed account of their tenets. [Pesten°, in thou. Div.] Of modern scepticism it is remarkable, that it differs little from the ancient, and that whatever strides philosophy may havo taken in other departments, it has made little or none in that of doubt. The same clenching subtle arguments occurred to a Theretetus as to a Hume. I However we will proceed to give a brief historical account of the attempts made to revive it.