if we were awake.
So that half of our life being passed in sleep, we have on our own
admission no idea of truth, whatever we may imagine. As all our
intuitions are then illusions, who knows whether the other half of our
life, in which we think we are awake, is not another sleep a little
different from the former, from which we awake when we suppose ourselves
asleep?

[And who doubts that, if we dreamt in company, and the dreams chanced to
agree, which is common enough, and if we were always alone when awake,
we should believe that matters were reversed? In short, as we often
dream that we dream, heaping dream upon dream, may it not be that this
half of our life, wherein we think ourselves awake, is itself only a
dream on which the others are grafted, from which we wake at death,
during which we have as few principles of truth and good as during
natural sleep, these different thoughts which disturb us being perhaps
only illusions like the flight of time and the vain fancies of our
dreams?]

These are the chief arguments on one side and the other.

I omit minor ones, such as the sceptical talk against the impressions of
custom, education, manners, country, and the like. Though these
influence the majority of common folk, who dogmatise only on shallow
foundations, they are upset by the least breath of the sceptics. We have
only to see their books if we are not sufficiently convinced of this,
and we shall very quickly become so, perhaps too much.

I notice the only strong point of the dogmatists, namely, that, speaking
in good faith and sincerely, we cannot doubt natural principles. Against
this the sceptics set up in one word the uncertainty of our origin,
which includes that of our nature. The dogmatists have been trying to
answer this objection ever since the world began.

So there is open war among men, in which each must take a part, and side
either with dogmatism or scepticism. For he who thinks to remain neutral
is above all a sceptic. This neutrality is the essence of the sect; he
who is not against them is essentially for them. [In this appears their
advantage.] They are not for themselves; they are neutral, indifferent,
in suspense as to all things, even themselves being no exception.

What then shall man do in this state? Shall he doubt everything? Shall
he doubt whether he is awake, whether he is being pinched, or whether he
is being burned? Shall he doubt whether he doubts? Shall he doubt
whether he exi