in the sceptic philosophy, denotes that state of the mind wherein we neither assert nor deny anything positively, but only speak of things as seeming or appearing to us in such a manner. The aoristia is one of the great points or terms of scepticism to which the philosophers of that denomination had continual recourse by way of explication or subterfuge. Their adversaries, the dogmatists, charged them with dogmatizing, and asserting the principles and positions of their sect to be true and certain.

ASTA, a duchy of Piedmont, separated by the Alps from Savoy and the Valais, and bounded on the east and south by the Navarese and the provinces of Biella and Vercelli. The country is in general mountainous; but there are several valleys of great extent, particularly the Val d'Aosta. By the industry of the inhabitants these low grounds are very fruitful in wine, oil, and pasture; and the mountains abound in iron and copper.

ASTA, the chief town of the foregoing duchy, and the see of a bishop. It is situated on the river Doria, at the foot of the Alps, where the great commercial roads from Savoy and the Valais to Piedmont, over the Great and Little St Bernard, meet each other. The town, though large, is meanly built and thinly peopled. It is remarkable for several monuments of the Romans, and for being the birthplace of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury. Long. 7. 33. E. Lat. 45. 58. N.

APÆDUSIA denotes ignorance or unskilfulness in what relates to learning and the sciences. Hence also persons uninstructed and illiterate are called apædeute. The term apædeute was particularly used among the French in the time of Huet, when the men of wit at Paris were divided into two factions, one called by way of reproach apædeute, and the others eruditi. The apædeute are represented by Huet as persons who, finding themselves either incapable or unwilling to undergo a severe course of study in order to become truly learned, conspire to decry learning, and turn the knowledge of antiquity into ridicule, thus making a merit of their own incapacity. The apædeute in effect were the men of pleasure, the eruditi the men of study. The apædeute in every thing preferred the modern writers to the ancient, to supersede the necessity of studying the latter. The eruditi derided the moderns, and valued themselves wholly on their acquaintance with the ancients.