Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/401

SKEPTICISM OF GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY. 388 lie out of the reach of science in its largest compass. Gradu- ally, indeed, subjects more special and limited, and upon which experience, or deductions from experience, could be brought to hear, were added to the list of quasita, and examined with great profit and instruction: but the old problems, with new ones, alike unfathomable, were never eliminated, and always occupied a prominent place in the philosophical world. Now it was this disproportion, between questions to be solved and means of solu- tion, which gave rise to . that conspicuous characteristic of Gre- cian philosophy, the antagonist force of suspensive skepticism, passing in some minds into a broad negation of the attainability of general truth, which it nourished from its beginning to its end ; commencing as early as Xenophanes, continuing to manifest itself seven centuries afterwards in ^Enesidemus and Sextus Empiricus, and including in the interval between these two extremes some of the most powerful intellects in Greece. The present is not the time for considering these Skeptics, who bear an unpopular name, and have not often been fairly appreciated; the more so, as it often suited the purpose of men, themselves essentially skeptical, like Sokrates and Plato, to denounce pro- fessed skepticism with indignation. But it is essential to bring; them into notice at the first spring of Grecian philosophy under Thales, because the circumstances were then laid which so soon afterwards developed them. Though the celebrity of Thales in antiquity was great and universal, scarcely any distinct facts were known respecting him : it is certain that he left nothing in writing. Extensive travels in Egypt and Asia are ascribed to him, and as a general fact these travels are doubtless true, since no other means of acquiring knowledge were then open. At a time when the brother of the Lesbian Alkgeus was serving in the Babylonian army, we may easily conceive that an inquisitive Milesian would make his way to that wonderful city wherein stood the temple- observatory of the Chaldaean priesthood ; nor is it impossible that he may have seen the still greater city of Ninus, or Nine- veh, before its capture and destruction by the Medes. How great his reputation was in his lifetime, the admiration expressed by his younger contemporary, Xenophanes, assures us ; and Hcrakleitus, in the njext generation, a severe judge of all other