Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​To these they reply: "Concerning the things that we experience passively as human beings, we agree; for that it is day and that we are alive and many other things among the phenomena of life we do discern. But concerning the things about which the Dogmatists make firm assertions by reason, claiming to have apprehended them, concerning these we suspend judgment as being non-evident, and we recognize our passive experiences alone. For that we see, we admit, and that we think this or that, we recognize; but how we see or how we think, we are ignorant. And that this appears white, we state narratively, not firmly asserting that it also really is so. And concerning the utterance 'I determine nothing' and similar ones, we speak of them as not being dogmas;

​for they are not similar to saying that the universe is spherical. For the latter is non-evident, whereas the former are admissions. In saying, therefore, that we determine nothing, we do not even determine this very thing." Again, the Dogmatists say that they abolish even life itself, in that they cast out everything of which life is composed. But the Skeptics say that they are lying: "For we do not abolish seeing, but we do not know how we see. For indeed we posit the phenomenon, but not as being also really such. And that fire burns, we perceive; but whether it possesses a burning nature, we suspend judgment.

​And that someone moves, we see, and that he perishes; but how these things happen, we do not know. We only resist, then," they say, "the non-evident things that are set alongside the phenomena. For indeed when we say that a painting has projections, we are making clear what appears; but whenever we say that it does not have projections, we are no longer stating what appears, but something else." Hence Timon also says in his *Python* that he has not stepped outside of ordinary custom. And in the *Images* he says thus: "Yet the phenomenon has strength everywhere, wherever it comes." And in *On the Senses* he says: "That honey is sweet I do not posit, but that it appears so, I admit."

​Aenesidemus too, in the first book of the *Pyrrhonean Discourses*, says that Pyrrho determines nothing dogmatically on account of the contradiction, but follows the phenomena. He says the same things both in *Against Wisdom* and in *On Inquiry*. Moreover, Zeuxis the acquaintance of Aenesidemus in *On Double Arguments*, Antiochus of Laodicea, and Apellas in the *Agrippa* posit the phenomena alone. The phenomenon, then, is the criterion according to the Skeptics, as Aenesidemus also says; and so too says Epicurus. But Democritus said that none of the phenomena exists, and that they do not exist.

​Against this criterion of the phenomena, the Dogmatists say that whenever different presentations strike us from the same objects—as from a tower, either round or square—the Skeptic, if he prefers neither, will be inactive; but if he follows one of them, he will no longer, they say, assign equipollence to the phenomena. To them the Skeptics reply that whenever different presentations strike us, we shall say that each of them "appears"; and on this account we posit the phenomena because they appear. And the Skeptics say that the end is suspension of judgment, which, in the manner of a shadow, is attended by tranquil serenity, as those around Timon and Aenesidemus say;

"for we shall neither choose these things nor avoid those, as many as are in our power; but those things that are not in our power, but happen by necessity, we cannot avoid, such as being hungry, being thirsty, and feeling pain; for it is not possible to remove these by argument." And when the Dogmatists ask how the Skeptic will be able to live while not avoiding, if ordered, carving up his own father, the Skeptics say that he will be able to live by suspending judgment concerning dogmatic inquiries, but not concerning matters of life and observation. "So that we both choose something according to custom and avoid it, and we make use of laws." Some also say that the Skeptics stated the end to be freedom from passion, while others say mildness of temper.