The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers Diogenes Laërtius (first ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Besides these disciples, Pyrrho also had Hecateus of Abdera, and Timon the Phliasian, who wrote the Silloi and whom we shall speak of hereafter; and also Nausiphanes of Teos, who, as some say, was the master of Epicurus.

All these men were called Pyrrhoneans from their master; and also doubters, and skeptics, and ephectics, or suspenders of their judgment, and investigators, from their principles. And their philosophy was called investigatory, from their investigating or seeking the truth on all sides; and skeptical from their being always doubting (σκέπτομαι), and never finding; and ephectic, from the disposition which they encouraged after investigation, I mean the suspending of their judgment (ἐποχὴ); and doubting, because they asserted that the dogmatic philosophers only doubted, and that they did the same. [And they were called Pyrrhoneans from Pyrrho himself.]

But Theodosius, in his Chapters on Skepticism, contends that we ought not to call the Pyrrhonean school skeptical; for since, says he, the motion and agitation of the mind in each individual is incomprehensible to others, we are unable to know what was the disposition of Pyrrho; and if we do not know it we ought not to be called Pyrrhoneans. He also adds that Pyrrho was not the original inventor of Skepticism, and that he had no particular dogma of any kind; and that, consequently, it can only be called Pyrrhonism from some similarity. Some say that Homer was the original founder of this school; since he at different times gives different accounts of the same circumstance, as much as anyone else ever did; and since he never dogmatizes definitively respecting affirmation; they also say that the maxims of the seven wise men were skeptical; such as that “Seek nothing in excess,” and that “Suretyship is near calamity;” which shows that calamity follows a man who has given positive and certain surety; they also argue that Archilochus and Euripides were Skeptics; and Archilochus speaks thus:

And now, O Glaucus, son of Leptines,
Such is the mind of mortal man, which changes
With every day that Jupiter doth send.

And Euripides says:

Why then do men assert that wretched mortals
Are with true wisdom gifted; for on you
We all depend; and we do everything
Which pleases you.

Moreover, Xenophanes, and Zeno the Eleatic, and Democritus were also Skeptics; of whom Xenophanes speaks thus:

And no man knows distinctly anything,
And no man ever will.

And Zeno endeavors to put an end to the doctrine of motion by saying: “The object moved does not move either in the place in which it is, or in that in which it is not.” Democritus, too, discards the qualities, where he says: what is cold is cold in opinion, and what is hot is hot in opinion; but atoms and the vacuum exist in reality. And again he says: “But we know nothing really; for truth lies in the bottom.” Plato, too, following them, attributes the knowledge of the truth to the Gods and to the sons of the Gods, and leaves men only the investigation of probability. And Euripides says:

Who now can tell whether to live may not
Be properly to die. And whether that
Which men do call to die, may not in truth
Be but the entrance into real life?

And Empedocles speaks thus:

These things are not perceptible to sight,
Nor to the ears, nor comprehensible
To human intellect.

And in a preceding passage he says:

Believing nothing, but such circumstances
As have befallen each.

Heraclitus, too, says, “Let us not form conjectures at random about things of the greatest importance.” And Hippocrates delivers his opinion in a very doubtful manner, such as becomes a man; and before them all Homer has said:

Long in the field of words we may contend,
Reproach is infinite and knows no end.

And immediately after:

Armed, or with truth or falsehood, right or wrong.
(So voluble a weapon is the tongue),
Wounded we wound, and neither side can fail,
For every man has equal strength to rail:134

Intimating the equal vigour and antithetical force of words. And the Skeptics persevered in overthrowing all the dogmas of every sect, while they themselves asserted nothing dogmatically; and contented themselves with expressing the opinions of others, without affirming anything themselves, not even that they did affirm nothing; so that they even discarded all positive denial, for to say “We affirm nothing” was to affirm something. “But we,” said they, “enunciate the doctrines of others, to prove our own perfect indifference; it is just as if we were to express the same thing by a simple sign.” So these words⁠—“We affirm nothing”⁠—indicate the absence of all affirmation, just as other propositions, such as: “Not more one thing than another” or “Every reason has a corresponding reason opposed to it,” and all such maxims indicate a similar idea. But the phrase “Not more one thing,” etc., has sometimes an affirmative sense, indicating the equality of certain things, as for instance in this sentence: “A pirate is not worse than a liar.” But by the skeptics this is said not positively, but negatively, as for instance where the speaker contests a point and says: “It was not Scylla, any more than it was Chimaera.” And the word “more” itself is sometimes used to indicate a comparison, as when we say: “That honey is more sweet than grapes.” And at other times it is used positively, and at the same time negatively, as when we say: “Virtue profits us more than hurts us;” for in this phrase we intimate that virtue does profit, and does not hurt us. But the Skeptics abolish the whole expression “Not more than it;” saying, that “Prudence has not existence, any more than it has no existence.” Accordingly, then, expression, as Timon says in his Python, indicates nothing more than an absence of all affirmation, or of all assent of the judgment.

Also the expression “Every reason has a corresponding reason,” etc., does in the same manner indicate the