ONE:The sceptical philosophy, already advocated in the Middle Ages by John of Salisbury, was, like every other form of ancient thought, revived at the Renaissance, but only under419 the very superficial form which infers from the co-existence of many divergent opinions that none of them can be true. Even so, however, it led Montaigne to sounder notions of toleration and humanity than were entertained by any of his contemporaries. With Bacon, and still more with Descartes, it also appears as the necessary preparation for a remodelling of all belief; but the great dogmatic systems still exercised such a potent influence on both those thinkers that their professed demand for a new method merely leads up to an altered statement of the old unproved assumptions.
ONE:"This? Nothing, sir, nothing."The inquest was sensational from the very start. After the dead man's landlady of the house by the docks and her landlord's agent proved the handwriting of the deceased, Sergeant Prout told the story of the missing banknotes. A good few of the packed audience knew Bruce by sight, and as the evidence proceeded he found the scrutiny of so many eyes quite trying.
ONE:We need not follow Platos investigations into the meaning of knowledge and the causes of illusion any further; especially as they do not lead, in this instance, to any positive conclusion. The general tendency is to seek for truth within rather than without; and to connect error partly with the disturbing influence of sense-impressions on the higher mental faculties, partly with the inherent confusion and instability of the phenomena whence those impressions are derived. Our principal concern here is to note the expansive power of generalisation which was carrying philosophy back again from man to Naturethe deep-seated contempt of Plato for public opinionand the incipient differentiation of demonstrated from empirical truth.
