Note 1 — Chapter XXII · PYRRHO.

(2) Causes producing it. More than one point of departure was offered to Scepticism by the earlier philosophy. The Megarian criticism and the Cynic teaching had taken up a position subversive of all connection of ideas, and of all knowledge. Pyrrho, too, had received from the School of Democritus an impulse to doubt.1 In particular, the development of the Platonic and Aristotelian speculations by those who were not able to follow them, had made men mistrustful of all speculation, until they at last doubted the possibility of all knowledge. Not seldom do Sceptical theories follow times of great philosophical originality. A stronger impulse was given in the sequel by the Stoic and Epicurean systems. Related to Scepticism by their practical tone, it was natural that these systems should afford fuel to Scepticism. At the same time the unsatisfactory groundwork upon which they were built, and the contrast between their moral and physical teaching, promoted destructive criticism. If, according to the Stoics and Epicureans, the particular and the universal elements in the personal soul, the isolation of the individual as an independent atom, and his being merged in a pantheistic universe, are contrasted without being reconciled; among the Sceptics this contrast has given place to neutrality. Neither the Stoic nor the Epicurean theory can claim our adherence; neither the unconditional value of pleasure, nor yet the unconditional value of virtue; neither the truth of the senses nor the truth of rational knowledge; neither the Atomist’s view of nature, nor the Pantheistic view as it found expression in Heraclitus. The only thing which remains certain amid universal uncertainty is abstract personality content with itself, personality forming at once the starting-point and the goal of the two contending systems.