disputes of the schools; and thus the natural instinct of self-preservation impelled them to strengthen themselves by the re-union of philosophy, just as in our own days the same motive may be seen in aspirations after the re-union of Christendom.

Before speaking in detail of the Romans, we must say a word as to the signs of eclecticism in the two remaining schools. It has been mentioned that the activity of the later Peripatetics was mainly of the commentatorial kind, but, in the spurious treatise De Mundo, which is included in the works of Aristotle, but was probably written in the middle of the 1st century B. C., we find a decided admixture of Stoic elements, especially where it treats of the action of the Deity on the world. Again, even among the Epicureans, in spite of their hostility to the other schools and their own proverbial conservatism, we have already noticed a departure from the teaching of their founder, in the writings of Philodemus and others, Ist as regards the greater importance attributed to art and science and literature', 2ndly in the recognition, to a greater or less extent, of a Divine government of the world, 3rdly in the abandonment of the old cynical repudiation of higher motives. Cicero tells us that this was especially the case in regard to the relation between bodily and mental pleasure, and to the selfish theory of friendship3.

1 See above, p. 184, n. 3.

2 See above, p. 199, n. 2.

3 Cic. Fin. 1. 55 'there are many Epicureans who think erroneously that mental pleasure need not be dependent on bodily pleasure;' § 69 'there are some weak brethren among the Epicureans who are ashamed to confess that our own pleasure is the sole ground of friendship;' compare Hirzel .c. p. 168 foll. and my note on N. D. I. III.

The four last mentioned schools, i.e. the Academy, the Lyceum, the Porch and the Garden were, and had long been, the only recognized schools at the time when Cicero was growing up to manhood. Cicero was personally acquainted with the most distinguished living representatives of each. In his 19th year, B. C. 88, he had studied under Phaedrus the Epicurean and Philo the Academic at Rome; in his 28th year, B. C. 79, he attended the lectures of the Epicureans Phaedrus and Zeno, as well as of Antiochus, the eclectic Academic, at Athens, and in the following year those of Posidonius, the eclectic Stoic, at Rhodes. Diodotus the Stoic was for many years the honoured inmate of his house. He had also a high esteem for the Peripatetic Cratippus, whom he selected as the tutor for his son at, what we may call, the University of Athens. Nor did he only attend lectures: his letters show that he was a great reader of philosophical books, and he left behind him translations or adaptations of various dialogues and treatises of Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Crantor, Carneades, Panaetius, Antiochus, Posidonius and others'. In a word he was

1 He translated the Oeconomicus of Xenophon and the Protagoras and Timaeus of Plato, whom he also imitates in the Leges and Respublica. The last is in part borrowed from Aristotle's Politics. Other treatises in which he follows Aristotle are the Hortensius, probably written on the model of Aristotle's πротрεπTIKÓS, and the Topica, professedly a reminiscence of Aristotle's treatise bearing the same name. The Laelius is said to be founded on the Tepi pilías of Theophrastus; the Consolatio was mainly taken from Crantor's Teρl Tév0ovs; but the materials for the great majority of his books are derived from Panaetius, Posidonius, Clitomachus and Antiochus, when he is treating of the orthodox schools, and probably from Zeno, Phaedrus or Philodemus, where he gives the Epicurean doctrines.

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' (σxedóv 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.

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