Suspending judgment › Tranquility and Its Limits

Sextus reports that the original inquirer hoped to attain tranquility by settling which impressions or accounts were true. Instead, encountering equally persuasive opposition led to suspension, and tranquility followed as if by chance (I.12; I.25–26). The reported sequence reverses the expectation that peace requires finally winning the argument.

His explanation emphasizes beliefs about what is good or bad by nature. Someone who regards a possession as naturally good may become intensely anxious about obtaining it and then about losing it. The skeptic's withholding of that judgment removes a source of added disturbance in Sextus' account (I.27–28). This is his philosophical explanation, not a controlled psychological finding about how everyone responds to uncertainty.

Sextus illustrates the unexpected arrival of tranquility with a story about the painter Apelles. Unable to paint a horse's foam, the painter supposedly threw a sponge at the picture and produced the desired effect. Sextus reports the story as an analogy (I.28–29); we need not treat it as independently verified biography. Its point is the unexpected result of abandoning an unsuccessful route, not a prescription to stop examining arguments.

The qualification about unavoidable feelings is essential. Sextus explicitly denies that the skeptic is wholly untroubled in every circumstance (I.29–30). Confusing the removal of an added judgment with immunity to pain turns his account into a promise it does not make. A present-day reader can question the reported connection between suspension and calm without first attributing that stronger promise to him.