The Sceptic being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the Dogmatists. So, just as the physicians who cure bodity ailments have remedies which differ in strength, and apply the severe ones to those whose ailments are severe and the milder to those mildly affected—so too the Sceptic propounds arguments which differ in strength, and employs those which are weighty and capable by their stringency of disposing of the Dogmatists’ ailment, self-conceit, in cases where the mischief is due to a severe attack of rashness, which he employs the milder arguments in the case of those whose ailment is superficial and easy to cure, and whom it is possible to restore to health by milder methods of persuasion.
ATTRIBUTION:
Sextus Empiricus (2nd or 3rd cent., A.D.), Pyrrhonian skeptic. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, bk. III, ch. xxxii, Loeb Library edition, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge (1939).
