Pyrrho wished more than anything else to live in peace, and his dislike of the Sophists[2] may well have made him try to avoid dialectic; while, on the contrary, in the Pyrrhonean School of later times discussion was one of the principal methods of contest, at least after the time of Agrippa. Pyrrhonism seems to have been originally a theory of life, like the philosophy of Socrates, to whom Pyrrho is often compared,[3] and Pyrrho, like Socrates, lived his philosophy. Our knowledge of Pyrrho is gained from Aristocles, Sextus Empiricus, and Diogenes, and from the Academic traditions given by Cicero. Diogenes gives us details of his life which he attributes to Antigonus of Carystius, who lived about the time of Pyrrho.[4] Pyrrho was a disciple and admirer of Democritus,[5] some of whose teachings bore a lasting influence over the subsequent development of Pyrrhonism. He accompanied Alexander the Great to India, where he remained as a member of his suite for some time, and the philosophical ideas of India were not without influence on his teachings. Oriental philosophy was not unknown in Greece long before the time of Pyrrho, but his personal contact with the Magi and the Gymnosophists of the far East, apparently impressed upon his mind teachings for which he was not unprepared by his previous study and natural disposition. In his indifference to worldly goods we find a strong trace of the Buddhistic teaching regarding the vanity of human life. He showed also a similar hopelessness in regard to the possibility of finding a satisfactory philosophy, or absolute truth. He evidently returned from India with the conviction that truth was not to be attained.[6] [1] Diog. IX. 11, 65. Given from Mullach's edition of Timon by Brochard, _Pyrrhon et le Scepticism primitive_, p. 525. [2] Diog. IX. 11, 69. [3] Lewes _Op. cit._ p. 460. [4] Diog. IX. 11, 62. [5] Diog. IX. 11, 67. [6] Compare Maccoll _Op. cit._