"
From this habit of impartial investigation and the necessity which it
imposed upon them of studying not only every system of philosophy but
every art and science which professed to lay its basis in truth, they
necessarily took a wider range of erudition and were far more travelled in
the regions of philosophy than those whom conviction or bigotry had
domesticated in any particular system. It required all the learning of
dogmatism to overthrow the dogmatism of learning; and the Sceptics may be
said to resemble in this respect that ancient incendiary who stole from
the altar the fire with which he destroyed the temple. This advantage over
all the other sects is allowed to them even by Lipsius, whose treatise on
the miracles of the Virgo Hallensis will sufficiently save him from all
suspicion of scepticism. "_labore, ingenio, memoria_," he says, "_supra
omnes pene philosophos fuisse.--quid nonne omnia aliorum secta tenere
debuerunt et inquirere, si poterunt refellere? res dicit nonne orationes
varias, raras, subtiles inveniri ad tam receptas, claras, certas (ut
videbatur) sententias evertendas?" etc.--"Manuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic."
Dissert_. 4.
Between the scepticism of the ancients and the moderns the great
difference is that the former doubted for the purpose of investigating, as
may be exemplified by the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, while the
latter investigate for the purpose of doubting, as may be seen through
most of the philosophical works of Hume.
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