confessed to be by far the most accomplished of the philosophical amateurs of his time.

As to the nature of his own views, we shall be better able to form a judgment, if we look first at the man and his position. Cicero was much more of a modern Italian than of an ancient Roman. A novus homo, sprung from the Volscian municipium of Arpinum, he had none of that proud, self-centred hardness and toughness of character which marked the Senator of Rome. Nature had gifted him with the sensitive, idealistic temperament of the artist and the orator, and this had been trained to its highest pitch by the excellent education he had received. If he had been less open to ideas, less many-sided, less sympathetic, less conscientious, in a word, if he had been less human, he would have been a worse man, he would have exercised a less potent influence on the future of Western civilization, but he would have been a stronger and more consistent politician, more respected no doubt by the blood-and-iron school of his own day, as of ours. While his imagination pictured to him the glories of old Rome, and inflamed him with the ambition of himself acting a Roman part, as in the matter of Catiline, and in his judgment of Caesar, and while therefore he on the whole espoused the cause of the Senate, as representing the historic greatness of Rome, yet he is never fully convinced in his own mind, never satisfied either with himself or with the party or the persons with whom he is most closely allied.

And this indecision of his political views is reflected in his philosophy. Epicureanism indeed he condemns, as heartily as he condemns Clodius or Antony: its want of idealism, its prosaic regard for matter of fact,

M. P.

15

or rather its exclusive regard for the lower fact to the neglect of the higher, its aversion to public life, above all, perhaps, its contempt for literature, as such, were odious in his eyes. But neither is its rival quite to his taste. While attracted by the lofty tone of its moral and religious teaching, he is repelled by its dogmatism, its extravagance and its technicalities. Of the two remaining schools, the Peripatetic had forgotten the more distinctive portion of the teaching of its founder, until his writings were re-edited by Andronicus of Rhodes (who strangely enough is never mentioned by Cicero, though he must have been lecturing about the time of his consulship), and it had dwindled accordingly into a colourless doctrine of common sense, of which Cicero speaks with respect, indeed, but without enthusiasm. The Academy on the other hand was endeared to him as being lineally descended from Plato, for whose sublime idealism and consummate beauty of style he cherished an admiration little short of idolatry, and also as being the least dogmatic of systems, and the most helpful to the orator from the importance it attached to the use of negative dialectic.

In the Academica Cicero declares himself to be an adherent of the New Academy, as opposed to the reformed 'Old Academy' of Antiochus; but though he makes use of the ordinary sceptical arguments, he is scarcely more serious in his profession of agnosticism, than his professed pattern, the Platonic Socrates, is in his irony. All that he is anxious for is to defend himself from being tied down too definitely to any one system, and to protest against the overbearing dogmatism of the Stoics, or of such Old Academics as the strong-willed Brutus. He

is fond of boasting of the freedom of his school, which permits him to advocate whatever doctrine takes his fancy at the time; and, like Dr Johnson, he refuses to be bound by any reference to previous inconsistent utterances'. He even tries to make out that the sceptical arguments of Carneades were only meant to rouse men from the slumber of thoughtless acquiescence, and to lead them to judge of the truth of doctrines by reason and not by authority. Even in the Academica, the scepticism which he professes is hardly more than verbal. Let Antiochus consent to use the term probare instead of percipere or assentiri, let him adopt the courteous 'perhaps' (σxedov or lows) of Aristotle, and there seems no reason why the discussion should continue any longer3. Cicero has himself no real doubt as to the trustworthiness of the evidence of the bodily senses; and, beyond this sensible evidence, he recognizes a higher source of knowledge in the mind itself. Accepting, as he does, the Platonic and Stoic doctrine of the divine origin of the soul, he believes that it has in itself the seeds of virtue and knowledge, which would grow up to maturity of themselves, if it were not for the corrupting influences of society. We may see the unsophisticated working of nature in children; we may hear the voice of nature in the general consent of mankind, in the judgment of the wise and good, and above all in the teaching of old tradition handed down from our ancestors*. It is this natural

1 Tusc. v. 33, Off. III. 20, N. D. I. 47.

2 N. D. I. 4, 10.

3 Acad. II. 99, 112, Fin. v. 76.

Tusc. III. 2 sunt enim ingeniis nostris semina innata virtutum ; quae si adolescere liceret, ipsa nos ad beatam vitam natura perduceret ;

revelation (naturae lumen) which shows us the excellency of virtue, the dignity and freedom of man, and the existence of a Divine Being'.

But though nature gives us light, so far as is needed for action and for life, it does not satisfy our curiosity on speculative matters: it does not tell us, for instance, what is the form or the abode of the Deity, or whether the soul is material or immaterial. Cicero however believes, in common with all but the Epicureans, that God is eternal, all-wise, all-powerful and all-good; he believes with Plato and the Stoics that the world was formed and is providentially governed by Him for the good of man; he believes, in accordance with Plato but in opposition to the Stoics, that God is pure Spirit3; and he thinks that

Fin. v. 59 (natura homini) dedit talem mentem quae omnem virtutem accipere posset, ingenuitque sine doctrina notitias parvas rerum maximarum et quasi instituit docere et induxit in ea quae inerant tanquam elementa virtutis; ib. v. 61 indicant pueri, in quibus, ut in speculis, natura cernitur; Leg. 1. 24 animum esse ingeneratum a deo...ex quo efficitur illud, ut is agnoscat deum, qui unde ortus sit quasi recordetur ac noscat; Tusc. I. 35 omnium consensus naturae vox est ; ib. 1. 65, 70, V. 70, Consol. fr. 6, De Fato 23 foll., Tusc. Iv. 65, 79.

1 Tusc. I. 27, 30, 66, Rep. VI. 13, Leg. I. 59 qui se ipse norit, primum aliquid se habere sentiet divinum, ingeniumque in se suum sicut simulacrum aliquod dicatum putabit, tantoque munere deorum semper dignum aliquid et faciet et sentiet ei intelliget quem ad modum a natura subornatus in vitam.venerit, quantaque instrumenta habeat ad obtinendam adipiscendamque sapientiam, quoniam principio rerum omnium quasi adumbratas intellegentias animo ac mente conceperit, quibus illustratis sapientia duce bonum virum et ob eam ipsam causam cernat se beatum fore.

2 Tusc. I. 70, N. D. 1. 60.

3 Tusc. I. 66 nec vero deus ipse qui intellegitur a nobis alio modo intellegi potest, nisi mens soluta quaedam et libera, segregata ab omni concretione mortali, omnia sentiens et movens ipsaque praedita motu

the same is true also of the soul, which is an emanation from Him and which, as we have been taught by our ancestors, and as Plato and Xenophon have shown by many excellent arguments,' is destined to enjoy a blissful immortality in the case of the wise and good'. Perhaps that which has most weight with Cicero is the practical consideration, ‘if we give up our faith in an over-ruling Providence, we cannot hope to retain any genuine piety or religion; and if these go, justice and faith and all that binds together human society, must go too".' He is also fully convinced that reverence is due to what is old and long established, and that it is the duty of a good citizen to conform to the established church, to accept the tenets of the national religion and observe its customs, except so far as they might be inconsistent with the plain rules of morality, or so flagrantly opposed to reason as to come under the head of superstition. Thus, while he is himself a disbeliever in divination, and argues convincingly against it in his book on the subject, yet, as a statesman, he approves the punishment of certain consuls who had disregarded the auspices. "They ought,' he says, 'to have submitted to the rule of the established religion. He cannot approve of the in

sempiterno; Rep. VI. 26 foll. possibility of the Stoic view, nature, Tusc. I. 65.

Yet he does not altogether deny the that God is of a fiery or ethereal

1 Tusc. I. 70, Lael. 13, Cato 77 foll.

2 See N. D. 1. 4 with the passages cited in my note, 11. 153, Leg.

11. 16.

3 Divin. II. 71 parendum fuit religioni, nec patrius mos tam contumaciter repudiandus, and just before, retinetur et ad opinionem vulgi et ad magnas utilitates reipublicae mos, religio, disciplina, jus, augurium, collegii auctoritas.