And for what reason impose on himself such a
violence? This is a point in which it will be impossible for him
ever to satisfy himself, consistently with his sceptical
principles. So that, upon the whole, nothing could be more
ridiculous than the principles of the ancient P/YRRHONIANS\; if
in reality they endeavoured, as is pretended, to extend,
throughout, the same scepticism which they had learned from the
declamations of their schools, and which they ought to have
confined to them.
In this view, there appears a great resemblance between the
sects of the S/TOICS\ and P/YRRHONIANS\, though perpetual
antagonists; and both of them seem founded on this erroneous
maxim, That what a man can perform sometimes, and in some
dispositions, he can perform always, and in every disposition.
When the mind, by Stoical reflections, is elevated into a sublime
enthusiasm of virtue, and strongly smit with any species of
honour or public good, the utmost bodily pain and sufferings will
not prevail over such a high sense of duty; and it is possible,
perhaps, by its means, even to smile and exult in the midst of
tortures. If this sometimes may be the case in fact and reality,
much more may a philosopher, in his school, or even in his
closet, work himself up to such an enthusiasm, and support in
imagination the acutest pain or most calamitous event which he
can possibly conceive. But how shall he support this enthusiasm
itself? The bent of his mind relaxes, and cannot be recalled at
pleasure; avocations lead him astray; misfortunes attack him
unawares; and the philosopher sinks by degrees into the plebeian.
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