Note 17 — Chapter XXII · PYRRHO.

B. Teaching of Pyrrho. (1) Impossibility of knowledge. The little which is known of Pyrrho’s teaching may be summed up in the three following statements: We can know nothing as to the nature of things: Hence the right attitude towards them is to withhold judgment: The necessary result of suspending judgment is imperturbability. He who will live happily—for happiness is the starting-point with the Sceptics—must, according to Timon, take these things into consideration: What is the nature of things? What ought our attitude to things to be? What is the gain resulting from these relations?17 To the first of these three questions Pyrrho can only reply by saying that things are altogether inaccessible to knowledge, and that whatever property may be attributed to a thing, with equal justice the opposite may be predicated.18 In support of this statement Pyrrho appears to have argued that neither the senses nor reason furnish certain knowledge.19 The senses do not show things as they are, but only as they appear to be.20 Rational knowledge, even where it seems to be most certain, in the sphere of morals, does not depend upon real knowledge, but only upon tradition and habit.21 Against every statement the opposite may be advanced with equal justice.22 If, however, neither the senses nor reason alone can furnish trustworthy testimony, no more can the two combined, and thus the third way is barred, by which we might possibly have advanced to knowledge.23 How many more of the arguments quoted by the later Sceptics belong to Pyrrho it is impossible to say. The short duration and diffusion of Pyrrho’s School renders it probable that with him Scepticism was not far advanced. The same result appears to follow from its further development in the Academy. The ten τρόποι, or aspects under which sceptical objections were grouped, cannot with certainty be attributed to any one before Ænesidemus.24 Portions of the arguments used at a later day may be borrowed from Pyrrho and his pupils,25 but it is impossible to discriminate these portions with certainty.