Sanchez, a Portuguese physician, published in 1583 a treatise entitled De multum nobili et mime universali Scicutia quod nihil ecitur ' (on the excellent and first universal science that nothing is known), a rare and extraordinary work, containing the leading arguments of the sceptics propounded in an extravagant manner; but after many sweeping assertions on the impossibility of all science, he at last admits the possibility of truth, and hints very plainly that be himself has attained it. It is an evidence of the restless spirit of the times and the growing servility to the authority of Aristotle and his followers. But nothwithetanding his natural confidence in his own exclusive perception of truth, Sanchez was a real sceptic. Jerom liernhaym, an abbot of Prague, on the other hand, who wrote a work De Typho Generis Hummel (on the vain glory of human nature), in • which he endeavours to expose the falsehood, presumption, and uncertainty of human science, is to be distinguished from Sanchez and the Pyrrbonista ; he was a pseudn.aceptic, and his evident design was to depreciate human learning as Inimical to divine wisdom, and to lead men wholly to rely upon religious faith.
Of a similar tendency is the celebrated work of Bishop 'filet (' Emal sus Is Faiblease de l'Esprit hummin'), in which, after exhibiting the Principal points of the sceptic philosophy as given in Sextus Empiricus to prove the insufficiency of human knowledge, ho falls back upon the consequent uent necessity of retiring within faith and being conteut with it.
So is the pretence of his scepticism, that besides being a devout and learned bishop, he was the author of Demoustratio Evangelica: Yet with singular inconsistency he addressed this demonstration to the very understanding which he had so triumphantly asserted could sot attain truth.
idyls is, as Cousin remarks, the ideal of sceptic!. [Mists, in Bioo. Div.
Glanvill, whose Seepsis Scientifica, or Confest Ignorance the way to Science,' " has hardly," says Hallam, " been seen by six living persons" (Hallam, Lit. of Europe,' iv.), is the systematic sceptic, of the 17th century, and his work is altogether a curiosity from the rarity of its notice, the extraordinary nature of its contents, and from its author having been a clergyman and member of the Royal Society, and from his having one year afterwards published a book in favour of witch craft. [G tasvitt, Jensen, in Thou. Div.] • Bishop Berkeley, so commonly classed with the philosophical I sceptics upon that misconception of the term we have before adverted to, is to be regarded simply as a believer in another system of philosophy from that usually accepted. He denied the existence of an external world. [BERKELEY, in Bmoo. Div.] Hume was the greatest and the legitimate sceptic of the 1Sth century. His was genuine Pyrrhonism. He attacked the very fouodations of our knowledge by contrasting with them their self. contradictions. "The truth is," observes Dugald Stewart, "that whereas Berkeley was sincerely and bond Pe an idealist, Hume's leading object was plainly to inculcate universal scepticism." (` Essays.' ii., c. L) Home accepted Berkeley's arguments iu disproof of external reality, but ho went still farther ; after denying a substantive world (consciousness being concerned only with ideas or representations), he denied on the same ground a substantive mind. For, he asks, as we know but impressions and ideas, how can we know that there is any thing more than these i These are the substance and limit of our knowledge. The mind itself has no distinct, energetic, substantive
existence—it is but a succession of ideas. This is the doctrine expounded by Theietetus the Sophist, in Plato : " there can be nothing true, nothing existent, distinct from the mind's own perceptions" (A cpaspdpieva isuerrre sais'ra eel (Teat). In truth the assumption of an external reality upon any grounds hitherto proposed is gratuitous and questionable. In the fact of perception it is assumed that there is 1, the consciousness; and, 2, the exciting external cause. But upon a patient and rigid interrogation of consciousness, all we find in it, as a fact, is a change in our state of being ; beyond this no other element is ;sires, but assumed. Now the question can never be—whether we are conscious of a change of being (since change is the condition of consciousness, and the individual consciousness is proof of itself), but whether, as the sceptic requires to know, we have or can have any knowledge or consciousness of this external exciting cause in itself. This we must give up. It being admitted that we are influenced by externals inediately (that is, in representation), therefore our con sciousness is of the ideas, not of the objects the-mselves. All that we really know is our own consciousness— our change of being—but we remain ignorant whether that change proceed from an evolution of being itself, or from the correlation of being and an external object. The reasonings of Reid, Stewart, Brown, &c. against this doctrine are most puerile. Stewart alone seems to have comprehended it in some of its aspects, but he nowhere fairly exposes and refutes it. If Hume is to be refuted, it must be, as Kant plainly saw, by a reconsideration of the very elements of perception, and an investigation of the received doctrines which flume, assuming as established, employed as first principles. This was the work of Kant.
Comte, though he calls his system positivism° [Cosire, in Bloc,. Div.], may be considered a sceptic in its modern sense. Nothing, according to him, can be believed that cannot be proved; so he discards all that is accepted as revealed as wholly unestablishod, and nothing but the positive facts of physical science are admitted. His own notions of a new religion require a far greater amount of belief than the system he attempts to discredit seErrm, from the Greek skeptron (ersiirrpor), a stall', or rod carried by princes as the ensign of judicial and sovereign power : whence in the Old Testament (Numbers xvii. 2), and in Homer the most solemn oaths are sworn by It. In the Perscpolitan sculptures the sceptre figures as a long walking staff, and in the sculpture found at Nineveh by Botta and Isayard, the great king is sometimes repre sented carrying a similar long staff; but the sceptres borne by the royal sceptre-bearers (and Xenophon mentions that Cyrus was always attended by 300 sceptre-bearers), are shorter and more ornamented. Among the Egyptians sceptres were also much ornamented; of their appearance the folloWill? group will give a notion.
The reader who desires to know the different forms in which the sceptre is represented upon ancient coins, may consult Rasche's Lexicon ltd Nummariie,' v. Sceptruin.' Lo Gendre tells us (` Nouvelle Histoiro de France,' Svcs, Paris, 1719, tom. p. 116) that with the kings of France of the first race the sceptre was a golden rod as tall as the king himself. The sceptre, as an ensign of royalty, is of greater antiquity than the crown.