was more sceptical than the first, and that the third seems to have been more sceptical than the second. Of the Peripatetics or disciples of Aristotle I shall merely signalise his immediate successor, Theophrastus, who ably expounded the opinions of his master. Some of his writings have come down to us, but they relate principally to physics. Among them, however, is a small work of more general interest, entitled 'Ethical Characters.' It contains many vivid but coarsely-painted portraits, and presents curious illustrations of the manners of the time.
7. Contemporary with these four sects there was a fifth, of which some mention must now be made. This was the Sceptical school of philosophy. The founder of this sect was Pyrrho, a native of Elis in the Peloponnesus. When he was born is uncertain, but as he is said to have accompanied the expedition of Alexander the Great into India, it is probable that his birth took place near the middle of the fourth century B.C., and that he flourished about 300 B.C. Pyrrho, as the founder of the Sceptics, was thus contemporary, or nearly so, with Zeno and Epicurus, and but little later than the early Academics and Peripatetics. We may regard the five schools as existing simultaneously.
8. Pyrrho left no writings behind him, at least none that have come down to our times. Indeed, if we except a few incidental notices which occur in the
