THE SCEPTIC;

A PHILOSOPHICAL SATIRE.

ΝΟΜΟΝ ΠΑΝΤΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΑ.

PINDAR. ap. Herodot. lib. 3.

PREFACE.

(ut videbatur) sententias evertendas ?” etc. etc. Manuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic. Diss. 4.

The difference between the scepticism of the anThe sceptical philosophy of the ancients has been cients and the moderns is, that the former doubted as much misrepresented as the Epicurean. Pyrrho, for the purpose of investigating, as may be exempliperhaps, may have carried it to an irrational excess fied by the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, (though we must not believe, with Beattie, all the ab- while the latter investigate for the purpose of doubtsurdities imputed to this philosopher,) but it appears ing, as may be seen through most of the philosophical to me that the doctrines of the school, as stated by works of Hume.3 Indeed the Pyrrhonism of latter Sextus Empiricus,' are much more suited to the days is not only more subtle than that of antiquity, frailty of human reason, and more conducive to the but, it must be confessed, more dangerous in its tenmild virtues of humility and patience, than any of dency. The happiness of a Christian depends so those systems which preceded the introduction of much upon his belief, that it is natural he should feel Christianity. The Sceptics held a middle path be- alarm at the progress of doubt, lest it steal by degrees tween the Dogmatics and Academicians, the former into the region from which he is most interested in of whom boasted that they had attained the truth, excluding it

, and poison at last the very spring of his while the latter denied that any attainable truth ex- consolation and hope. Still, however, the abuses of isted: the Sceptics, however, without asserting or doubting ought not to deter a philosophical mind from denying its existence, professed to be modestly and indulging mildly and rationally in its use; and there anxiously in search of it; as St. Augustin expresses is nothing, I think, more consistent with the humble it, in his liberal tract against the Manicheans, “nemo spirit of Christianity, than the scepticism of him who nostrum dicat jam se invenisse veritatem ; sic eam quæ- professes not to extend his distrust beyond the circle ramus quasi ab utrisque nesciatur.”? From this habit of human pursuits, and the pretensions of human of impartial investigation, and the necessity which they knowledge. A philosopher of this kind is among the imposed upon themselves of studying, not only every readiest to admit the claims of Heaven upon his faith system of philosophy, but every art and science and adoration : it is only to the wisdom of this weak which pretended to lay its basis in truth, they neces- world that he refuses, or at least delays his assent; sarily took a wider range of erudition, and were it is only in passing through the shadow of earth that more travelled in the regions of philosophy than his mind undergoes the eclipse of scepticism. No those whom conviction or bigotry had domesticated follower of Pyrrho has ever spoken more strongly in any particular system. It required all the learning against the dogmatists than St. Paul himself, in the of dogmatism to overthrow the dogmatism of learn- First Epistle to the Corinthians; and there are pasing; and the Sceptics, in this respect, resembled that

sages in Ecclesiastes and other parts of Scripture ancient incendiary, who stole from the altar the fire which justify our utmost diffidence in all that human with which he destroyed the temple. This advantage reason originates. Even the sceptics of antiquity over all the other sects is allowed to them even by refrained from the mysteries of theology, and, in Lipsius, whose treatise on the miracles of the Virgo entering the temples of religion, laid aside their phiHallensis will sufficiently save him from all suspi- losophy at the porch. Sextus Empiricus thus declares cion of scepticism. “Labore, ingenio, memoria supra the acquiescence of his sect in the general belief of a omnes pene philosophos fuisse.—Quid nonne omnia aliorum secta tenere debuerunt et inquirere, si pote- 1 See Martin. Shoockius de Scepticismo, who endeavours, runt refellere ? res dicit. Nonne orationes varias, I think weakly, to refute this opinion of Lipsius.

2 Εστι δε τοις ευπορήσαι βουλομενοις προυργου το δια raras, subtiles inveniri ad tam receptas, claras, certas

Metaphys. lib. iii. 1 Pyrr. Hypoth. The reader may find a tolerably clear 3 Neither Hume, however, nor Berkeley, are to be judged abstract of this work of Sextus Empiricus in La Vérité by the misrepresentations of Beattie, whose book, however des Sciences, by Mersenne, liv. i. chap. ii. etc.

amiably intended, appears to me a most unphilosophical 2 Lib. contra Epist. Manichæi quam vocant Fundamenti, appeal to popular feelings and prejudices, and a continued Op. Paris, tom. vi.

Ipctitio principii throughou..

πόρησαι καλως.

cap.

1.

superintending Providence: To μev Buy Karakoλov- | Ask, who is wise?—you'll find the self-same man θούντες αδοξας ως φαμεν ειναι θεους και σεβομεν θεους A sage in France, a madman in Japan ; Kaι прovoεlv avтous papɛv. Lib. iii. cap. 1. In short, And here some head beneath a mitre swells, it appears to me that this rational and well-regulated Which there had tingled to a cap and bells: scepticism is the only daughter of the schools that Nay, there may yet some monstrous region be, can be selected as a handmaid for piety: he who dis- Unknown to Cook, and from Napoleon free, trusts the light of reason will be the first to follow a Where C*stl*r**gh would for a patriot pass, more luminous guide; and if, with an ardent love for And mouthing M*lgr*ve scarce be deem'd an ass! truth, he has sought her in vain through the ways of "List not to reason," Epicurus cries, this life, he will turn with the more hope to that bet"But trust the senses, there conviction lies:"—1 ter world, where all is simple, true, and everlasting: for there is no parallax at the zenith-it is only near Alas! they judge not by a purer light, our troubled horizon that objects deceive us into Nor keep their fountains more untinged and bright : Habit so mars them, that the Russian swain vague and erroneous calculations. Will sigh for train-oil while he sips champagne; And health so rules them, that a fever's heat Would make even Sh*r*d*n think water sweet!

THE SCEPTIC.

As the gay tint that decks the vernal rose,'
Not in the flower, but in our vision glows;
As the ripe flavour of Falernian tides
Not in the wine, but in our taste resides;
So when, with heartfelt tribute, we declare
That Marco's honest and that Susan's fair,
"Tis in our minds, and not in Susan's eyes
Or Marco's life, the worth or beauty lies:
For she, in flat-nosed China, would appear
As plain a thing as Lady Anne is here;
And one light joke, at rich Loretto's dome
Would rank good Marco with the damn'd at Rome.

There's no deformity so vile, so base,
That 'tis not somewhere thought a charm, a grace;
No foul reproach that may not steal a beam
From other suns, to bleach it to esteem!?

1 "The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really in them, whether any one perceive them or not, and therefore they may be called real qualities, because they really exist in those bodies; but light, heat, whiteness, or coldness, are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensation of them; let not the eye see light or colours, nor the ears hear sounds, let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell, and all colours, tastes, odours, and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease."-Locke, book ii. chap. 8.

Bishop Berkeley, it is well known, extended this doctrine even to primary qualities, and supposed that matter itself has but an ideal existence. How shall we apply the bishop's theory to that period which preceded the formation of man, when our system of sensible things was produced, and the sun shone, and the waters flowed, without any sentient being to witness them? The spectator, whom Whiston supplies, will scarcely solve the difficulty: "To speak my mind free-a ly," says he, "I believe that the Messias was there actually present."-See Whiston, of the Mosaic Creation.

Just as the mind the erring sense2 believes,
The erring mind, in turn, the sense deceives,

352. The Pyrrhonism of Le Vayer, however, is of the most innocent and playful kind; and Villemandy, the author of Scepticismus Debellatus, exempts him specially in the declaration of war which he denounces against the other armed neutrals of the sect, in consideration of the orthodox limits within which he has confined his incredulity.

1 This was also the creed of those modern Epicureans, whom Ninon de l'Enclos collected around her in the Rue Ides Tournelles, and whose object seems to have been to decry the faculty of reason, as tending only to embarrass our use of pleasures, without enabling us, in any degree, to avoid their abuse. Madame des Houlières, the fair pupil of Des Barreaux in the arts of poetry and voluptuousness, has devoted most of her verses to this laudable purpose, and is such a determined foe to reason, that, in one of her pastorals, she congratulates her sheep on the want of it. St. Evremont speaks thus upon the subject:

"Un mélange incertain d'esprit et de matière
Nous fait vivre avec trop ou trop peu de lumière.

Nature, élève-nous à la clarté des anges,
Ou nous abaise au sens des simples animaux."
Which sentiments I have thus ventured to paraphrase:
Had man been made, at Nature's birth,
Of only flame, or only earth,
Had he been form'd a perfect whole

Of purely that, or grossly this,
Then sense would ne'er have clouded soul,
Nor soul restrain'd the sense's bliss.
Oh happy! had his light been strong,
Or had he never shared a light,
Which burns enough to show he's wrong,

Yet not enough to lead him right!

2 See those verses upon the fallaciousness of the senses, beginning "Fallunt nos oculi," etc. among the fragments of Petronius. The most sceptical of the ancient poets was Euripides, and I defy the whole school of Pyrrho to produce more ingenious doubt than the following:

Τις δ' οίδεν ει ζην τουθ' ο κεκληται θάνειν, Το ζην δε θνησκειν εστι. See Laert. in Pyrrh. 2 Boetius employs this argument of the Sceptics, among his Socrates and Plato were the grand sources of ancient consolatory reflections upon the emptiness of fame. "Quid scepticism. Cicero tells us (de Orator. lib. iii.) that they quod diversarum gentium mores inter se atque instituta dis- supplied Arcesilas with the doctrines of the Middle Acadecordant, ut quod apud alios laude, apud alios supplicio dig- my; and how much these resembled the tenets of the Scepnum judicetur?" Lib. ii. prosa. 7.-Many amusing instances tics, may be seen even in Sextus Empiricus, (lib. i. cap. 33.) of diversity, in the tastes, manners, and morals of different who, with all his distinctions, can scarcely prove any differnations, may be found throughout the works of that interest- ence. One is sorry to find that Epicurus was a dogmatist; ing sceptic Le Mothe le Vayer.-See his Opuscule Sceptique, and I rather think his natural temper would have led him to his treatise "de la Secte Sceptique," and, above all, those the repose of scepticism, if the Stoics, by their violent oppoDialogues, not to be found in his works, which he published sition, had not forced him to be as obstinate as themselves. under the name of Horatius Tubero.-The chief objection to these writings of Le Vayer (and it is a blemish which, I think, may be felt in the Esprit des Loix,) is the suspicious obscurity of the sources from which he frequently draws his instances, and the indiscriminate use which he makes of the lowest populace of the library, those lying travellers and wonder mongers, of whom Shaftesbury complains, in his Advice to an Author, as having tended in his own time to the diffusion of a very vicious sort of scepticism. Vol. i. p.

Indeed Plutarch, in reporting some of his opinions, represents him as delivering them with considerable hesitation. Επίκουρος ουδεν απογινωσκει τούτων, εχόμενος του ενδεχο evou. De Placit. Philosoph. lib. ii. cap. 13. See also the 21st and 22d chapters. But that the leading characteristics of the sect were self-sufficiency and dogmatism, appears from what Cicero says of Velleius, De Natur. Deor.-"Tum Velleius, fidentur sane, ut solent isti, nihil tam verens quam ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur "'

A face for which ten thousand pounds were paid,
Can tell, how quick before a jury flies

The spell that mock'd the warm seducer's eyes!

Self is the medium least refined of all
Through which opinion's searching beam can fall;
And, passing there, the clearest, steadiest ray
Will tinge its light and turn its line astray.
Th' Ephesian smith a holier charm espied
In Dian's toe, than all his heaven beside;'
And true religion shines not half so true
On one good living as it shines on two.
Had W-lc-t first been pension'd by the Throne,
Kings would have suffer'd by his praise alone;
And P-ine perhaps, for something snug per ann.,
Had laugh'd, like W-11-sly, at all Rights of Man!
But 'tis not only individual minds

That habit tinctures, or that interest blinds;
Whole nations, fool'd by falsehood, fear, or pride,
Their ostrich-heads in self-illusion hide :
Thus England, hot from Denmark's smoking meads,
Turns up her eyes at Gallia's guilty deeds;
Thus, selfish still, the same dishonouring chain
She binds in Ireland, she would break in Spain ;
While praised at distance, but at home forbid,
Rebels in Cork are patriots at Madrid!
Oh! trust me, Self can cloud the brightest cause,
Or gild the worst ;-and then, for nations' laws!
Go, good civilian, shut thy useless book;
In force alone for laws of nations look.
Let shipless Danes and whining Yankees dwell
On naval rights, with Grotius and Vattel,
While C-bb-t's 2 pirate code alone appears
Sound moral sense to England and Algiers !
Woe to the Sceptic, in these party days,
Who burns on neither shrine the balm of praise!
For him no pension pours its annual fruits,
No fertile sinecure spontaneous shoots;

Not his the meed that crown'd Don H-kh-m's
rhyme,

Nor sees he e'er, in dreams of future time,
Those shadowy forms of sleek reversions rise,
So dear to Scotchmen's second-sighted eyes!

1 See Acts, chap. xix.; where every line reminds one of those reverend craftsmen who are so ready to cry out"The church is in danger!"

"For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen:

"Whom he called together, with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth:

Yet who, that looks to time's accusing leaf,
Where Whig and Tory, thief opposed to thief,
On either side in lofty shame are seen,1
While Freedom's form hangs crucified between-
Who, B-rd-tt, who such rival rogues can see,
But flies from both to honesty and thee?

If, giddy with the world's bewildering maze,2
Hopeless of finding, through its weedy ways,
One flower of truth, the busy crowd we shun,
And to the shades of tranquil learning run,
How many a doubt pursues! how oft we sigh,
When histories charm, to think that histories lie!
That all are grave romances, at the best,
And M-sgr-ve's+ but more clumsy than the rest!
By Tory Hume's seductive page beguiled,
We fancy Charles was just and Strafford mild;"
And Fox himself, with party pencil, draws
Monmouth a hero, "for the good old cause !"'"
Then, rights are wrongs, and victories are defeats,
As French or English pride the tale repeats;
And, when they tell Corunna's story o'er,
They'll disagree in all, but honouring Moore !

1 This I have borrowed from Ralph-Use and Abuse of Parliaments, p. 164.

2 The agitation of the ship is one of the chief difficulties which impede the discovery of the longitude at sea; and the tumult and hurry of life are equally unfavourable to that calm level of mind which is necessary to an inquirer after truth.

In the mean time, our modest Sceptic, in the absence of truth, contents himself with probabilities, resembling in this respect those suitors of Penelope, who, when they found that they could not possess the mistress herself, very wisely resolved to put up with her maids; т ПveλTY HAIRY μη δυναμένοι, ταις ταύτης εμίγνυτο θεραπαιναις.-Ρίαtarch Περ. Παιδων Αγωγης.

3 See a curious work, entitled, "Reflections upon Learning," written on the plan of Agrippa's "De Vanitate Scientiarum," but much more honestly and skilfully executed.

4 This historian of the Irish rebellions has outrun even his predecessor in the same task, Sir John Temple, for whose character with respect to veracity the reader may consult Carte's Collection of Ormond's Original Papers, p. 207. See also Dr. Nelson's account of him, in the Introduction to the second volume of his Historic. Collect

5 He defends Strafford's conduct as "innocent and even

laudable." In the same spirit, speaking of the arbitrary sentences of the Star Chamber, he says "The severity of the Star Chamber, which was generally ascribed to Laud's passionate disposition, was perhaps, in itself, somewhat blameable."-See Towers upon Hume.

6 That flexibility of temper and opinion, which the habits of scepticism are so calculated to produce, are thus pleaded for by Mr. Fox, in the very sketch of Monmouth to which I allude; and this part of the picture the historian may be thought to have drawn for himself. "One of the most conspicuous features in his character seems to have been a remarkable, and, as some think, a culpable degree of flexibility. That such a disposition is preferable to its opposite extreme will be admitted by all, who think that modesty, even in excess, is more nearly allied to wisdom than conceit and self-sufficiency. He who has attentively considered the political, or indeed the general concerns of life, may possibly go still further, and may rank a willingness to be convinced, or, in some cases, even without conviction, to concede our own opinion to that of other men, among the principal in2 With most of this writer's latter politics I confess I feel gredients in the composition of practical wisdom."-The a most hearty concurrence, and perhaps, if I were an Eng- Sceptic's readiness of concession, however, arises more from lishman, my pride might lead me to acquiesce in that system uncertainty than conviction, more from a suspicion that his of lawless, unlimited sovereignty, which he claims so boldly own opinion may he wrong, than from any persuasion that for his country at sea; but, viewing the question somewhat the opinion of his adversary is right. "It may be so," was more disinterestedly, and as a friend to the common rights the courteous and sceptical formula, with which the Dutch of mankind, I cannot help thinking that the doctrines which were accustomed to reply to the statements of ambassadors. he maintained upon the Copenhagen expedition, and the-See Lloyd's State Worthies, art. Sir Thomas Wiat. differences with America, would establish a species of maritime tyranny, as discreditable to the character of England, as it would be galling and unjust to the other nations of the world.

" So that not only this our craft is likely to be set at nought, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised," etc. etc.

To the historical fragment of Mr. Fox, we may apply what Pliny says of the last unfinished works of celebrated artists-"In lenocinio commendationis dolor est manus, cum id ageret, extinctæ."-Lib. xxxv. cap. 2.

Nay, future pens, to flatter future courts,

See grave Theology, when once she strays May cite perhaps the Park-guns' gay reports, From Revelation's path, what tricks she plays ! To prove that England triumph'd on the morn How many various heavens hatlı Fancy's wing Which found her Junot's jest and Europe's scorn! Explored or touch'd from Papias' down to King !?

And hell itself, in India nought but smoke,"
In science too-how many a system, raised

In Spain 's a furnace, and in France—a joke.
Like Neva's icy domes, awhile hath blazed
With lights of fancy and with forms of pride, Hail, modest ignorance! thou goal and prize,
Then, melting, mingled with the oblivious tide!

Thou last, best knowledge of the humbly wise ! Now Earth usurps the centre of the sky,

Hail, sceptic ease! when error's waves are past, Now Newton puts the paltry planet by ;

How sweet to reach thy tranquil porto at last, Now whims revive beneath Descartes's' pen, And, gently rock'd in undulating doubt, Which now, assail'd by Locke's, expire again: Smile at the sturdy winds which war without! And when, perhaps, in pride of chemic powers, There gentle Charity, who knows how frail We think the keys of Nature's kingdom ours, The bark of Virtue, even in summer's gale, Some Davy's magic touch the dream unsettles, Sits by the nightly fire, whose beacon glows And turns at once our alkalis to metals !

For all who wander, whether friends or foes !

There Faith retires, and keeps her white sail furl'd, Or, should we roam, in metaphysic maze,

Till call'd to spread it for a purer world;
Through fair-built theories of former days,
Some Dr-mm—d? from the north, more ably skill'd, And, mutely waiting till the storm be o'er,

While Patience lingers o'er the weedy shore,
Like other Goths, to ruin than to build,
Tramples triumphant through our fanes o’erthrown, To some blue spot, just breaking in the sky!

Turns to young Hope, who still dire
Nor leaves one grace, one glory of his own!
Oh Learning.! Learning! whatsoe'er thy boast,

These are the mild, the blest associates given
Unletter'd minds have taught and charm'd us most:

To him who doubts, and trusts in nought but Heaven The rude, unread Columbus was our guide

1 Papias lived about the time of the Apostles, and is supTo worlds, which learn'd Lactantius had denied,

pused to have given birth to the heresy of the Chiliastæ, whose And one wild Shakspeare, following Nature's lights, heaven was by no means of a spiritual nature, but rather an Is worth whole planets, fill'd with Stagyrites !

anticipation of the Prophet of Hera's elysium. See Eusebius Hist. Ecclesiast. lib. iii. cap. 33, and Hieronym. de

Scriptor. Ecclesiast.-though, from all that I can find in 1 Descartes, who is considered as the parent of modern these authors concerning Papias, it seems hardly fair to imscepticism, says, that there is nothing in the whole range of pute to him those gross imaginations in which the believers philosophy which does not admit of two opposite opinions, of the sensual millennium indulged. and which is not involved in doubt and uncertainty. “In 2 King, in his Morsels of Criticism, vol. i. supposes the Philosophia nihil adhuc reperiri, de quo non in utramque sun to be the receptacle of blessed spirits. partem disputatur, hoc est, quod non sit incertum et dubi- 3 The Indians call hell "The House of Smoke.” See

Gassendi is another of our modern sceptics, and Picart upon the Religion of the Banians. The reader who Wedderkopff, in bis Dissertation “De Scepticismo profano is curious about infernal matters may be edified by consultet sacro" (Argentorat. 1666) has denounced Erasmus as a sing Rusca de Inferno, particularly lib. ii. cap. 7, 8, where he follower of Pyrrho, for his opinions upon the Trinity, and will find the precise sort of fire ascertained in which wicked some other subjects. To these if we add the names of spirits are to be burned hereafter. Bayle, Mallebranche, Dryden, Locke, etc. etc. I think there 4."Chère Sceptique, douce pâture de mon ame, et is no one who need be ashamed of doubting in such company. l'unique port de salut à an esprit qui aime le repos 2 See this gentleman's Academic Questions.

his eye