Michel de Montaigne, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
Pyrrhonism is the ancient teaching that on any question the arguments for and against are so evenly matched that the honest mind, finding no ground to tip the scales, suspends its judgment — and in that suspension discovers, so its adherents claimed, a kind of peace. The Pyrrhonist does not say "nothing is true"; that would be its own dogmatism, a new certainty smuggled in through the back door.
He says only: I cannot conclude, and I will not pretend otherwise. What I find, when I look at the ordinary conduct of human reason, is that Pyrrhonism describes something we practice without knowing it, and then deny. Men propounded with a question more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth — they leap past the question of whether a thing is so, straight to the question of how it is so, building causes and explanations for facts they have never verified.1
Our reason, I wrote, is able to create a hundred other worlds and to find out the beginnings and contexture of things; it needs neither matter nor foundation — let it but run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth.2 The Pyrrhonist at least has the honesty to stop before the building begins. And yet I know the social cost of that honesty.
I find that almost throughout we should say "there is no such thing," and should myself often make use of this answer — but I dare not, for they cry that it is an evasion produced from ignorance and weakness of understanding.3 So I juggle for company, prating of frivolous subjects and tales I believe not a word of, because a flat denial of a received fact is thought rude and quarrelsome, and someone will always produce a witness to stop our mouths.4
This is the human comedy that Pyrrhonism exposes: the world scuffles about a thousand questions of which both the Pro and the Con are false, and the man who says so is called a coward of the intellect.5 Cicero put the danger well — false things are so near the true that a wise man should not trust himself in a precipitous place.6 That is the Pyrrhonist's caution rendered in a sentence: the cliff is real, the footing uncertain, and the prudent move is not to run.
Whether the suspension of judgment brings peace, as Pyrrho promised, or merely a cleaner kind of vertigo, I leave to the reader's own trial.
men, in things propounded to them, more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth: they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes.The Essays, Complete
Our reason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the beginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation: let it but run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth, and with inanity as well as with matter.The Essays, Complete
I find that almost throughout we should say, 'there is no such thing,' and should myself often make use of this answer, but I dare not: for they cry that it is an evasion produced from ignorance and weakness of understanding.The Essays, Complete
I am fain, for the most part, to juggle for company, and prate of frivolous subjects and tales that I believe not a word of; besides that, in truth, 'tis a little rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny a stated fact; and few people but will affirm, especially in things hard to be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name witnesses whose authority will stop our mouths from contradiction.The Essays, Complete
the world scuffles about a thousand questions, of which both the Pro and the Con are false.The Essays, Complete
False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not trust himself in a precipitous place.The Essays, Complete