[1] Diog.  IX. 12, 116.

    [2] Hyp. I. 222.

    [3] Following the Greek of Bekker.

Sextus’ references to Aenesidemus in connection with Heraclitus are very numerous, and it is absurd to suppose that he would have trusted entirely to some one who reported him for authority on such a subject.  Even were it possible that Sextus did not refer directly to the works of Aenesidemus, which we do not admit, even then, there had been many writers in the Sceptical School since the time of Aenesidemus, and they certainly could not all have misrepresented him.  We must remember that Sextus was at the head of the School, and had access to all of its literature.  His honor would not allow of such a mistake, and if he had indeed made it, his contemporaries must surely have discovered it before Diogenes characterised his books as [Greek:  kallista].  Whatever may be said against the accuracy of Sextus as a general historian of philosophy, especially in regard to the older schools, he cannot certainly be accused of ignorance respecting the school of which he was at that time the head.

The opinion of Ritter on this subject is that Aenesidemus must have been a Dogmatic.[1] Saisset contends[2] that Aenesidemus really passed from the philosophy of Heraclitus to that of Pyrrho, and made the statement that Scepticism is the path to the philosophy of Heraclitus to defend his change of view, although in his case the change had been just the opposite to the one he defends.  Saisset propounds as a law in the history of philosophy a fact which he claims to be true, that Scepticism always follows sensationalism, for which he gives two examples, Pyrrho, who was first a disciple of Democritus, and Hume, who was a disciple of Locke It is not necessary to discuss the absurdity of such a law, which someone has well remarked would involve an a priori construction of history.  There is no apparent reason for Saisset’s conjecture in regard to Aenesidemus, for it is exactly the opposite of what Sextus has reported.  Strange to say, Saisset himself remarks in another place that we owe religious respect to any text, and that it should be the first law of criticism to render this.[3] Such respect to the text of Sextus, as he himself advocates, puts Saisset’s explanation of the subject under discussion out of the question.

    [1] Ritter, Op. cit. p. 280.  Book IV.

    [2] Saisset, Op. cit. p. 206.

    [3] Saisset Op. cit. p. 206.

Hirzel and Natorp do not find such a marked contradiction in the two views presented of the theories of Aenesidemus, nor do they think that Sextus has misrepresented them.  They rather maintain, that in declaring the coexistence of contradictory predicates regarding the same object, Aenesidemus does not cease to be a Sceptic, for he did not believe that the predicates are applicable in a dogmatic sense of the word, but are only applicable