3. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 9.71-9.76 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
| 9.71. Some call Homer the founder of this school, for to the same questions he more than anyone else is always giving different answers at different times, and is never definite or dogmatic about the answer. The maxims of the Seven Wise Men, too, they call sceptical; for instance, Observe the Golden Mean, and A pledge is a curse at one's elbow, meaning that whoever plights his troth steadfastly and trustfully brings a curse on his own head. Sceptically minded, again, were Archilochus and Euripides, for Archilochus says:Man's soul, O Glaucus, son of Leptines,Is but as one short day that Zeus sends down.And Euripides:Great God! how can they say poor mortal menHave minds and think? Hang we not on thy will?Do we not what it pleaseth thee to wish? 9.72. Furthermore, they find Xenophanes, Zeno of Elea, and Democritus to be sceptics: Xenophanes because he says,Clear truth hath no man seen nor e'er shall knowand Zeno because he would destroy motion, saying, A moving body moves neither where it is nor where it is not; Democritus because he rejects qualities, saying, Opinion says hot or cold, but the reality is atoms and empty space, and again, of a truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well. Plato, too, leaves the truth to gods and sons of gods, and seeks after the probable explanation. Euripides says: 9.73. Who knoweth if to die be but to live,And that called life by mortals be but death?So too Empedocles:So to these mortal may not list nor lookNor yet conceive them in his mind;and before that:Each believes naught but his experience.And even Heraclitus: Let us not conjecture on deepest questions what is likely. Then again Hippocrates showed himself two-sided and but human. And before them all Homer:Pliant is the tongue of mortals; numberless the tales within it;andAmple is of words the pasture, hither thither widely ranging;andAnd the saying which thou sayest, back it cometh later on thee,where he is speaking of the equal value of contradictory sayings. 9.74. The Sceptics, then, were constantly engaged in overthrowing the dogmas of all schools, but enuntiated none themselves; and though they would go so far as to bring forward and expound the dogmas of the others, they themselves laid down nothing definitely, not even the laying down of nothing. So much so that they even refuted their laying down of nothing, saying, for instance, We determine nothing, since otherwise they would have been betrayed into determining; but we put forward, say they, all the theories for the purpose of indicating our unprecipitate attitude, precisely as we might have done if we had actually assented to them. Thus by the expression We determine nothing is indicated their state of even balance; which is similarly indicated by the other expressions, Not more (one thing than another) 9.76. But the Sceptics even refute the statement Not more (one thing than another). For, as forethought is no more existent than non-existent, so Not more (one thing than another) is no more existent than not. Thus, as Timon says in the Pytho, the statement means just absence of all determination and withholding of assent. The other statement, Every saying, etc., equally compels suspension of judgement; when facts disagree, but the contradictory statements have exactly the same weight, ignorance of the truth is the necessary consequence. But even this statement has its corresponding antithesis, so that after destroying others it turns round and destroys itself, like a purge which drives the substance out and then in its turn is itself eliminated and destroyed. |
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