But it is evident, whenever our arguments lose this advantage,
and run wide of common life, that the most refined scepticism
comes to be upon a footing with them, and is able to oppose and
counterbalance them. The one has no more weight than the other.
The mind must remain in suspense between them; and it is that
very suspense or balance, which is the triumph of scepticism.
But I observe, says C/LEANTHES\, with regard to you,
P/HILO\, and all speculative sceptics, that your doctrine and
practice are as much at variance in the most abstruse points of
theory as in the conduct of common life. Wherever evidence
discovers itself, you adhere to it, notwithstanding your
pretended scepticism; and I can observe, too, some of your sect
to be as decisive as those who make greater professions of
certainty and assurance. In reality, would not a man be
ridiculous, who pretended to reject N/EWTON\'s explication of the
wonderful phenomenon of the rainbow, because that explication
gives a minute anatomy of the rays of light; a subject, forsooth,
too refined for human comprehension? And what would you say to
one, who, having nothing particular to object to the arguments of
C/OPERNICUS\ and G/ALILEO\ for the motion of the earth, should
withhold his assent, on that general principle, that these
subjects were too magnificent and remote to be explained by the
narrow and fallacious reason of mankind?
There is indeed a kind of brutish and ignorant scepticism,
as you well observed, which gives the vulgar a general prejudice
against what they do not easily understand, and makes them reject
every principle which requires elaborate reasoning to prove and
establish it.
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