to popular opinion, derived from our fallacious senses, and more
fallacious experience. And this consideration, DEMEA, may, I think,
fairly serve to abate our ill-will to this humorous sect of the sceptics.
If they be thoroughly in earnest, they will not long trouble the world
with their doubts, cavils, and disputes: If they be only in jest, they
are, perhaps, bad raillers; but can never be very dangerous, either to
the state, to philosophy, or to religion.

In reality, PHILO, continued he, it seems certain, that though a man, in
a flush of humour, after intense reflection on the many contradictions
and imperfections of human reason, may entirely renounce all belief and
opinion, it is impossible for him to persevere in this total scepticism,
or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours. External objects press
in upon him; passions solicit him; his philosophical melancholy
dissipates; and even the utmost violence upon his own temper will not be
able, during any time, to preserve the poor appearance of scepticism. And
for what reason impose on himself such a violence? This is a point in
which it will be impossible for him ever to satisfy himself, consistently
with his sceptical principles. So that, upon the whole, nothing could be
more ridiculous than the principles of the ancient PYRRHONIANS; if in
reality they endeavoured, as is pretended, to extend, throughout, the
same scepticism which they had learned from the declamations of their
schools, and which they ought to have confined to them.

In this view, there appears a great resemblance between the sects of the
STOICS and PYRRHONIANS, though perpetual antagonists; and both of them
seem founded on this erroneous maxim, That what a man can perform
sometimes, and in some dispositions, he can perform always, and in every
disposition. When the mind, by Stoical reflections, is elevated into a
sublime enthusiasm of virtue, and strongly smit with any species of