to the progress of philosophy, which was by that very freedom brought rapidly to maturity in Greece[[77]]. Wherever authority has loudly raised its voice, says Cicero, there philosophy has pined. Pythagoras[[78]] is quoted as a warning example, and the baneful effects of authority are often depicted[[79]]. The true philosophic spirit requires us to find out what can be said for every view. It is a positive duty to discuss all aspects of every question, after the example of the Old Academy and Aristotle[[80]]. Those who demand a dogmatic statement of belief are mere busybodies[[81]]. The Academics glory in their freedom of judgment. They are not compelled to defend an opinion whether they will or no, merely because one of their predecessors has laid it down[[82]]. So far does Cicero carry this freedom, that in the fifth book of the Tusculan Disputations, he maintains a view entirely at variance with the whole of the fourth book of the De Finibus, and when the discrepancy is pointed out, refuses to be bound by his former statements, on the score that he is an Academic and a freeman[[83]]. "Modo hoc, modo illud probabilius videtur[[84]]." The Academic sips the best of every school[[85]]. He roams in the wide field of philosophy, while the Stoic dares not stir a foot's breadth away from Chrysippus[[86]]. The Academic is only anxious that people should combat his opinions; for he makes it his sole
aim, with Socrates, to rid himself and others of the mists of error[[87]]. This spirit is even found in Lucullus the Antiochean[[88]]. While professing, however, this philosophic bohemianism, Cicero indignantly repels the charge that the Academy, though claiming to seek for the truth, has no truth to follow[[89]]. The probable is for it the true.
Another consideration which attracted Cicero to these tenets was their evident adaptability to the purposes of oratory, and the fact that eloquence was, as he puts it, the child of the Academy[[90]]. Orators, politicians, and stylists had ever found their best nourishment in the teaching of the Academic and Peripatetic masters[[91]]. The Stoics and Epicureans cared nothing for power of expression. Again, the Academic tenets were those with which the common sense of the world could have most sympathy[[92]]. The Academy also was the school which had the most respectable pedigree. Compared with its system, all other philosophies were plebeian[[93]]. The philosopher who best preserved the Socratic tradition was most estimable, ceteris paribus, and that man was Carneades[[94]].
In looking at the second great problem, that of the ethical standard, we must never forget that it was considered by nearly all the later philosophers as of overwhelming importance compared with the first. Philosophy was emphatically defined as the art of
conduct (ars vivendi). All speculative and non-ethical doctrines were merely estimable as supplying a basis on which this practical art could be reared. This is equally true of the Pyrrhonian scepticism and of the dogmatism of Zeno and Epicurus. Their logical and physical doctrines were mere outworks or ramparts within which the ordinary life of the school was carried on. These were useful chiefly in case of attack by the enemy; in time of peace ethics held the supremacy. In this fact we shall find a key to unlock many difficulties in Cicero's philosophical writings. I may instance one passage in the beginning of the Academica Posteriora[[95]], which has given much trouble to editors. Cicero is there charged by Varro with having deserted the Old Academy for the New, and admits the charge. How is this to be reconciled with his own oft-repeated statements that he never recanted the doctrines Philo had taught him? Simply thus. Arcesilas, Carneades, and Philo had been too busy with their polemic against Zeno and his followers, maintained on logical grounds, to deal much with ethics. On the other hand, in the works which Cicero had written and published before the Academica, wherever he had touched philosophy, it had been on its ethical side. The works themselves, moreover, were direct imitations of early Academic and Peripatetic writers, who, in the rough popular view which regarded ethics mainly or solely, really composed a single school, denoted by the phrase "Vetus Academia." General readers, therefore, who considered ethical resemblance as of far greater moment than dialectical
difference, would naturally look upon Cicero as a supporter of their "Vetus Academia," so long as he kept clear of dialectic; when he brought dialectic to the front, and pronounced boldly for Carneades, they would naturally regard him as a deserter from the Old Academy to the New. This view is confirmed by the fact that for many years before Cicero wrote, the Academic dialectic had found no eminent expositor. So much was this the case, that when Cicero wrote the Academica he was charged with constituting himself the champion of an exploded and discredited school[[96]].
Cicero's ethics, then, stand quite apart from his dialectic. In the sphere of morals he felt the danger of the principle of doubt. Even in the De Legibus when the dialogue turns on a moral question, he begs the New Academy, which has introduced confusion into these subjects, to be silent[[97]]. Again, Antiochus, who in the dialectical dialogue is rejected, is in the De Legibus spoken of with considerable favour[[98]]. All ethical systems which seemed to afford stability to moral principles had an attraction for Cicero. He was fascinated by the Stoics almost beyond the power of resistance. In respect of their ethical and religious ideas he calls them "great and famous philosophers[[99]]," and he frequently speaks with something like shame of the treatment they had received at the hands of Arcesilas and Carneades. Once he gives expression to a fear lest they should be the only true philosophers
after all[[100]]. There was a kind of magnificence about the Stoic utterances on morality, more suited to a superhuman than a human world, which allured Cicero more than the barrenness of the Stoic dialectic repelled him[[101]]. On moral questions, therefore, we often find him going farther in the direction of Stoicism than even his teacher Antiochus. One great question which divided the philosophers of the time was, whether happiness was capable of degrees. The Stoics maintained that it was not, and in a remarkable passage Cicero agrees with them, explicitly rejecting the position of Antiochus, that a life enriched by virtue, but unattended by other advantages, might be happy, but could not be the happiest possible[[102]]. He begs the Academic and Peripatetic schools to cease from giving an uncertain sound (balbutire) and to allow that the happiness of the wise man would remain unimpaired even if he were thrust into the bull of Phalaris[[103]]. In another place he admits the purely Stoic doctrine that virtue is one and indivisible[[104]]. These opinions, however, he will not allow to be distinctively Stoic, but appeals to Socrates as his authority for them[[105]]. Zeno, who is merely an ignoble craftsman of words, stole them from the Old Academy. This is Cicero's general feeling with regard to Zeno, and there can be no doubt that he caught it from Antiochus who, in stealing the doctrines of Zeno, ever stoutly maintained that Zeno had stolen them before. Cicero, however, regarded chiefly the ethics of Zeno with this feeling, while Antiochus so
regarded chiefly the dialectic. It is just in this that the difference between Antiochus and Cicero lies. To the former Zeno's dialectic was true and Socratic, while the latter treated it as un-Socratic, looking upon Socrates as the apostle of doubt[[106]]. On the whole Cicero was more in accord with Stoic ethics than Antiochus. Not in all points, however: for while Antiochus accepted without reserve the Stoic paradoxes, Cicero hesitatingly followed them, although he conceded that they were Socratic[[107]]. Again, Antiochus subscribed to the Stoic theory that all emotion was sinful; Cicero, who was very human in his joys and sorrows, refused it with horror[[108]]. It must be admitted that on some points Cicero was inconsistent. In the De Finibus he argued that the difference between the Peripatetic and Stoic ethics was merely one of terms; in the Tusculan Disputations he held it to be real. The most Stoic in tone of all his works are the Tusculan Disputations and the De Officiis.
With regard to physics, I may remark at the outset that a comparatively small importance was in Cicero's time attached to this branch of philosophy. Its chief importance lay in the fact that ancient theology was, as all natural theology must be, an appendage of physical science. The religious element in Cicero's nature inclined him very strongly to sympathize with the Stoic views about the grand universal operation of divine power. Piety, sanctity, and moral good, were impossible in any form, he thought, if the divine