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Patrick, Mary Mills, 1850-1940

"Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism"

It cannot be doubted, 22
as it is based upon susceptibility and involuntary feeling.
Hence no one doubts, perhaps, that an object appears so and so,
but one questions if it is as it appears. Therefore, as we
cannot be entirely inactive as regards the observances of daily
life, we live by giving heed to phenomena, and in an
unprejudiced way. But this observance of what pertains to the 23
daily life, appears to be of four different kinds. Sometimes it
is directed by the guidance of nature, sometimes by the
necessity of the feelings, sometimes by the tradition of laws
and of customs, and sometimes by the teaching of the arts. It is
directed by the guidance of nature, for by nature we are 24
capable of sensation and thought; by the necessity of the
feelings, for hunger leads us to food, and thirst to drink; by
the traditions of laws and customs, for according to them we
consider piety a good in daily life, and impiety an evil; by the
teaching of the arts, for we are not inactive in the arts we
undertake. We say all these things, however, without expressing
a decided opinion.


CHAPTER XII.

_What is the aim of Scepticism?_
It follows naturally in order to treat of the aim of the 25
Sceptical School. An aim is that for which as an end all things
are done or thought, itself depending on nothing, or in other
words, it is the ultimatum of things to be desired. We say,
then, that the aim of the Sceptic is [Greek: ataraxia] in those
things which pertain to the opinion, and moderation in the
things that life imposes.


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