The Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius

called into question. Even the existence of axioms—those unperverted and spontaneous conceptions of the mind, those self-luminous pillars of all knowledge—are treated with ridicule and contempt. Bishop Berkeley, who, amidst all his eccentricities, possessed great penetration regarding some of the most interesting subjects of speculation, saw this evil advancing in his time with giant strides. He very acutely ascribed its origin to the obsession with experimentation and its introduction into our great seminaries of learning.

For when a principal part of a university education is made to consist in believing that nothing is real which the eye does not see and the hand cannot grasp—which, in short, does not fall under the cognizance of the senses—what else can be expected but that even truths which men in all ages (both the unlearned and the learned, the wise and the ignorant) have invariably acknowledged to be self-evident, should be considered as worthless because they cannot be brought to the test of experiment? What else can be expected but Pyrrhonism A school of radical skepticism. in