77. Sextus Empiricus. -- At the close of the second century A.D., SEXTUS EMPIRICUS recapitulated, in lengthy treatises (especially the Pyrrhonic Hypotyposes), the extensive work of the sceptical school: these form a repertory, rich in documents, but not very orderly, of arguments against all forms of dogmatism.

Sextus attacks both the formal methods of science and its real contents. Its methods are powerless, for there is neither an infallible criterion of truth, nor any legitimate means of demonstration. Its contents are hollow and useless, for the concept of cause can give no information about any external reality. Even Ethics itself is not a science: the contradictory views of philosophers on the nature of the good, are enough to show that nothing is good in itself. All these theses are supported by prolix commentaries, of unequal value, in which Sextus very often merely repeats the views of Aenesidemus and of the New Academy. Since every enunciation may be met by another based on arguments of equal force (isostheneia tôn logôn), we must only remain in doubt and suspend our judgment (epochê).

Although our knowledge, being relative, cannot tell us what external things are, it is capable of guiding our practical life and leading us to happiness.

This scepticism, like the eclecticism which enjoyed a parallel development, plainly confined itself to repetitions of the past: an evidence of the philosophic bankruptcy of the epoch. Still, Grecian genius was yet to take one last flight, by changing for a fourth time the general orientation of its intellectual activity.