THREE:Thus we find Pyrrho competing with the dogmatists as a practical moralist, and offering to secure the inward tranquillity at which they too aimed by an easier method than theirs. The last eminent representative of the sceptical school, Sextus Empiricus, illustrates its pretensions in this respect by the well-known story of Apelles, who, after vainly endeavouring to paint the foam on a horses mouth, took the sponge which he used to wipe his easel, and threw it at the picture in vexation. The mixture of colours thus accidentally applied produced the exact effect which he desired, but at which no calculation could arrive. In like manner, says Sextus, the confusion of universal doubt accidentally resulted in the imperturbability which accompanies suspense of judgment as surely as a body is followed by its shadow.229 There was, however, no accident about the matter at all. The abandonment of those studies which related to the external world was a consequence of the ever-increasing attention paid to human interests, and that these could be best consulted by complete detachment from outward circumstances, was a conclusion inevitably suggested by the negative or antithetical moment of Greek thought. Hence, while the individualistic and apathetic tendencies of the age were shared by every philosophical school, they had a closer logical connexion with the idealistic than with the naturalistic method; and so it is among the successors of Protagoras that we find them developed with the greatest distinctness; while their incorporation with142 Stoicism imposed a self-contradictory strain on that system which it never succeeded in shaking off. Epicureanism occupied a position midway between the two extremes; and from this point of view, we shall be better able to understand both its inherent weakness as compared with the other ancient philosophies, and the admiration which it has attracted from opposite quarters in recent years. To some it is most interesting as a revelation of law in Nature, to others as a message of deliverance to mannot merely a deliverance from ignorance and passion, such as its rivals had promised, but from all established systems, whether religious, political, or scientific. And unquestionably Epicurus did endeavour to combine both points of view in his theory of life. In seeking to base morality on a knowledge of natural law he resembles the Stoics. In his attacks on fatalism, in his refusal to be bound down by a rigorously scientific explanation of phenomena, in his failure to recognise the unity and power of Nature, and in his preference of sense to reason, he partially reproduces the negative side of Scepticism; in his identification of happiness with the tranquil and imperturbable self-possession of mind, in his mild humanism, and in his compliance with the established religion of the land, he entirely reproduces its positive ethical teaching. On the other hand, the two sides of his philosophy, so far from completing, interfere with and mar one another. Emancipation from the outward world would have been far more effectually obtained by a total rejection of physical science than by the construction of a theory whose details were, on any scientific principles, demonstrably untrue. The appeal to natural instinct as an argument for hedonism would, consistently followed out, have led to one of two conclusions, either of which is incompatible with the principle that imperturbability is the highest good. If natural instinct, as manifested by brutes, by children, and by savages, be the one sure guide of action, then Callicles was right, and the habitual143 indulgence of passion is wiser than its systematic restraint. But if Nature is to be studied on a more specific and discriminating plan, if there are human as distinguished from merely animal impulses, and if the higher development of these should be our rule of life, then Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics were right, and the rational faculties should be cultivated for their own sake, not because of the immunity from superstitious terrors which they secure. And we may add that the attendance on public worship practised by Epicurus agreed much better with the sceptical suspense of judgment touching divine providence than with its absolute negation, whether accompanied or not by a belief in gods who are indifferent to sacrifice and prayer.
Ad has dicat ridens consetetur, eos eu option persius. Mollis cotidieque conclusionemque per id, ne nam alienum liberavisse.
TWO:Bacon begins by demanding that throughout the whole range of experience new facts should be collected on the largest scale, in order to supply materials for scientific generalisation. There can be no doubt that he is here guided by the example of Aristotle, and of Aristotle alone. Such a storehouse of materials is still extant in the History of Animals, which evidently suggested the use of the word History in this sense to Bacon, and which, by the way, is immensely superior to anything that he ever attempted in374 the same line. The facts on which Aristotles Politics is based were contained in another vast descriptive work of the same kind, now unhappily lost. Even the Stagirites more systematic treatises comprise a multitude of observations, catalogued according to a certain order, but not reduced to scientific principles. What Bacon did was to carry out, or to bid others carry out, the plan so suggested in every department of enquiry. But if we ask by what method he was guided in his survey of the whole field to be explored, how he came by a complete enumeration of the sciences, arranged according to their logical order,the answer is still that he borrowed it from the Peripatetic encyclopaedia. As the last of the same family who died came and took his place, age after age, on this ladder, it followed inevitably that they all successively reached the depth of hell. The holy man who beheld this thing, asked the reason of this terrible damnation, and especially how it was that the seigneur whom he had known and who had lived a life of justice and well-doing should be thus punished. And he heard a voice saying,80 It is because of certain lands belonging to the church of Metz, which were taken from the blessed Stephen by one of this mans ancestors, from whom he was the tenth in descent, and for this cause all these men have sinned by the same avarice and are subjected to the same punishment in eternal fire.157
