Note 1419 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

Sceptics.—Pope.

Pyrrho and his followers held that we can only know things as they appear, and not as they are. Thence they maintained that appearances must be absolutely indifferent, and that we could be equally happy in all conditions,—in sickness, for instance, Cicero, Fin. ii. 13, as in health. The one reality which Pyrrho admitted was virtue, and this he said (Cicero, Fin. iv. 16), was the supreme good which he who possessed had nothing left to desire.