IX. It is most likely then, that the most rigid sceptics, and those who were truly and _bona fide_ such, admitted of some exceptions to the universality of their system, or understood it in some determined sense, which limited or restrained it. Socrates, whom some look upon as the primitive father of the sceptics, said of himself, that he knew nothing with certainty, except it was his ignorance of all things. This however, was placing some sort of limitation to the system, although it was but a very small one. But I am of opinion, that Socrates, who was a very modest man, only meant to say, that what he knew amounted to but a small matter, and that therefore we ought to understand his declaring himself totally ignorant, as an hyperbolical expression. Saint Justin the martyr, and other fathers who highly applauded that philosopher, would not have done it, if they had taken him for a rigid sceptic, which would have amounted to the same, as his having been an impious man; because it is evident, that he who doubts of every thing, cannot be a person of any religious principles; but he was so far from such a kind of man, that it is most probable, the Athenians condemned him to death, because he affirmed the existence of one only God. It is at least certain, that he treated the multifarious number of the heathen gods with great derision; from whence we should conclude, that he knew this important truth, that the Godhead admits of no multiplication. X. Other sceptics, who said that they doubted of every thing, and that we ought to doubt of every thing, did not perhaps mean to exclude all certainty, but only scientific and demonstrative certainty, which except in mathematical cases, we must confess is very rare to be found. Even many mathematical demonstrations, and especially those which are very complicated, are not exempt from the suspicion, of there being some occult fallacy contained in them, on which account they ceased to be true demonstrations. How many have presumed to demonstrate they could square the circle, whose modes of doing it, and their reasonings upon the subject, when they came to be submitted to rigorous examination, have been found to have some sophism involved in them, or to have been built upon some supposition which was taken for certain, when in reality it was not so. The geometrical demonstrations, with which they prove the infinite divisibility of the continued quantity, are sufficiently simple; notwithstanding which, there are authors, who because the infinite divisibility of the quantity is imperceptible, suspect, that there is some occult sophistry involved in those demonstrations.