whereof and adherence to which depend on what a man has assented to and approved. And it is necessary that something should appear to us before we act, and that we should assent to that appearance. Wherefore he who takes away appearances and assent from man, destroys all action in him.” The force of this reasoning manifestly extends to all the various judgments men make upon the appearance of things. And Cicero, as an academic or sceptic, must be supposed to extend Necessity to every kind of judgment, or assent, of man upon the appearances (or as the Greeks call them Φαινομένα and himself the Visa) of things. Sextus Empiricus says,[1] “they who say the sceptics take away appearances, have not conversed with them, and do not understand them. For we destroy not the passions, to which our senses find themselves exposed whether we will or no, and which force us to submit to appearances. For when it is asked us whether objects are such as they appear, we deny not their appearances nor doubt of them, but only question whether the external objects are like the appearances.”
3. Willing is the third action of man which I propose to consider. It is matter of daily experience that we begin or forbear, continue or end, several actions barely by a thought, or preference of the mind, ordering the doing or not doing, the continuing or ending, such or such actions. Thus, before we think or deliberate on any subject, as before we get on horseback, we do prefer those things to anything else in competition with them. In like manner, if we forbear these actions when any of them are offered to our thoughts, or if we continue to proceed in any one of these actions once begun, or if at any time we make an end of prosecuting them, we do forbear, or continue, or end them on our preference of the forbearance to the doing of them, of the continuing of them to the ending them, and of the ending to the continuing them. This
- ↑ Pyrrhon. Hypot. l. 2, c. 10.
