Where should we find a modern writer who is consistent in all his statements?  Could we read the works of Aenesidemus, we might better understand the connection between the apparently contradictory ideas in his teaching, but the inconsistencies in statement would probably remain.  It is necessary to remember the position of Aenesidemus in breaking away from the Academy and in founding a new school, the full significance of which he could not foresee.  There must necessarily be some crudeness in pioneer work, and some failure to see the bearing of all its parts, and a compiler like Sextus could point out the inconsistencies which the two centuries since the time of Aenesidemus had made plain.  Aenesidemus was too positive a character to admit of absolute Sceptical consistency.  He was nevertheless the greatest thinker the Sceptical School had known since the age of Pyrrho, its founder.  In claiming a union between Pyrrhonism and the philosophy of Heraclitus, he recognised also the pre-Socratic tendency of the Sceptical School.  The name of Socrates was all powerful in the Academy, but Aenesidemus comprehended the fact that the true spirit of Pyrrhonism was of earlier origin than the Academic Scepsis.

CHAPTER V.

Critical Examination of Pyrrhonism.

The distinct philosophical movement of which Pyrrho was the author bore his name for five centuries after his death.  It had an acknowledged existence as a philosophical tendency, if indeed not a sect, for a great part of that time.  Yet, when we carefully analyse the relation of Pyrrhonism, as presented to us by Sextus, to the teachings of Pyrrho himself, in so far as they can be known, we find many things in Pyrrhonism for which Pyrrho was not responsible.

The foundation elements of the movement, the spirit of Empirical doubt that lay underneath and caused its development in certain directions rather than others, are due to Pyrrho.  The methods of the school, however, were very foreign to anything found in the life or teachings of Pyrrho.  Pyrrho was eminently a moralist.  He was also to a great degree an ascetic, and he lived his philosophy, giving it thus a positive side wanting in the Pyrrhonism presented to us by Sextus.  Timon represents him as desiring to escape from the tedious philosophical discussions of his time—­

       [Greek: 
       o geron o Purrhon, pos e pothen ekdusin heures
       latreies doxon te kenophrosunes te sophiston;]

and again he speaks of his modest and tranquil life—­

[Greek:  touto moi, o Purrhon, himeiretai etor akousai pos pot’ aner et’ ageis panta meth’ hesuchies mounos d’anthropoisi theou tropon hegemoneueis ..... pheista meth’ hesuchies aiei aphrontistos kai akinetos kata tauta me prosech’ indalmois hedulogou sophies.][1]

Pyrrho wished more than anything else to live in peace, and his dislike of the Sophists[2] may well have made