Sextus claims that all things can be included in these Tropes, whether sensible or intellectual.[1] For whether, as some say, only the things of sense are true, or as others claim, only those of the understanding, or as still others contend, some things both of sense and understanding are true, a discord must arise that is impossible to be judged, for it cannot be judged by the sensible, nor by the intellectual, for the things of the intellect themselves require a proof; accordingly, the result of all reasoning must be either hypothetical, or fall into the regressus in infinitum or the circulus in probando.[2] The reference above to some who say that only the things of sense are true, is to Epicurus and Protagoras; to some that only the things of thought are true, to Democritus and Plato; and to those that claimed some of both to be true, to the Stoics and the Peripatetics.[3] The three new Tropes added by Agrippa have nothing to do with sense-perception, but bear entirely upon the possibility of reasoning, as demanded by the science of logic, in contrast to the earlier ones which related almost entirely, with the exception of the tenth, to material objects. Sextus claims that these five Tropes also lead to the suspension of judgment,[4] but their logical result is rather the dogmatic denial of all possibility of knowledge, showing as Hirzel has well demonstrated, far more the influence of the New Academy than the spirit of the Sceptical School.[5] It was the standpoint of the older Sceptics, that although the search for the truth had not yet succeeded, yet they were still seekers, and Sextus claims to be faithful to this old aim of the Pyrrhonists. He calls himself a seeker,[6] and in reproaching the New Academy for affirming that knowledge is impossible, Sextus says, "Moreover, we say that our ideas are equal as regards trustworthiness and untrustworthiness."[7] The ten Tropes claim to establish doubt only in regard to a knowledge of the truth, but the five Tropes of Agrippa aim to logically prove the impossibility of knowledge. It is very strange that Sextus does not see this decided contrast in the attitude of the two sets of Tropes, and expresses his approval of those of Agrippa, and makes more frequent use of the fifth of these, ό διάλληλος, in his subsequent reasoning than of any other argument.[8]
[1] Hyp. I. 169.
[2] Hyp. I. 170-171.
[3] Adv. Math. VIII. 185-186; VIII. 56; VII. 369.
[4] Hyp. I. 177.
[5] Hirzel Op. cit. p. 131.
[6] Hyp. I. 3, 7.
[7] Hyp. I. 227.
[8] See Index of Bekker's edition of Sextus' works.
We find here in the Sceptical School, shortly after the time of Aenesidemus, the same tendency to dogmatic teaching that—so far as the dim and shadowy history of the last years of the New Academy can be unravelled, and the separation of Pyrrhonism can be understood, at the time that the Academy passed over into eclecticism—was one of the causes of that separation.