Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/511

SOKRATES NOT A SKErHC. 485 more afterwards, thought that they v?ere following the example of Sokrates and Cicero seems to have thought so too when they reasoned against everything; and when they laid it down as a system, that, against every ailirmativ<; position, an equal force of negative argument might be brought up as counterpoise. Now this view of Sokrates is, in my judgment, not merely partial, but incorrect. He entertained no such systematic distrust of the powers of the mind to attain certainty. lie laid down a clear, though erroneous line of distinction between the knowable and the unknowable. About physics, he was more than a skeptic ; he thought that man could know nothing ; the gods did not intend that man should acquire any such information, and there- fore managed matters in such a way as to be beyond his ken, for all except the simplest phenomena of daily wants ; moreover, not ccrtamcn instituit, non pcrtinachi nut studio vincendi (ut mihi quidcni vidctur), scd carum rerum obscuritate, quas ad confcssioncra ignorutionis adduxcrant Socratem, ct jam ante Socratcm, Democritum, Anaxagorara, Empcdoclcm, omncs penc vcteres ; qui mail cognosci, nihil pcrcipi, nihil sciri, posse, dixcrunt Itaque Arcesilas negabat, esse quidquara, quod sciri posset, no illud quidcm ipsum, quod Socrates sibi reliquisset: sic Dmma laterc in occulto." Compare Academ. Prior, ii, 23, 74: de Nat. Dcor. i, 5, 11. In another passage (Academ. Post, i, 4, 17) Cicero speaks (or rather introduces Varro as speaking) rather confusedly. He talks of " illam Socraticam dubitationcm de omnibus rebus, et nullii affirmationc adhibitu, consuctudincm disserendi ;" but a few lines before, he had said what implies that men might, in the opinion of Sokrates, come to learn and know what belonged to human conduct and human duties. Again (in Tusc. Disp. i, 4, 8), he admits that Sokrates had a positive ulterior purpose in his negative questioning : " vetus et Socratica ratio contra altcrius opinionem disserendi: nam ita facillimc, quid vcri similli- mum cssct, invcniri posse Socrates arbitrabntur." Tennemann (Gesch. der Philos. ii, 5, vol. ii, pp. 169-175) seeks to make out considerable analogy between Sokrates and Pyrrho. But it seems to me that the analogy only goes thus far, that both agreed in repudiating all speculations not ethical (see the verses of Timon upon Pyrrho, Diog. LaOrt. ix, G5). But in regard to ethics, the two differed materially. Sokrates maintained that ethics were matter of science, and the proper subject of tudy. Pyrrho, on the other hand, seems to have thought that speculation was just as useless, and science just as unattainable, upon ethics as upon physics ; that nothing was to be attended to except feelings, and nothing cultivated except good dispositions.