MARCUS TULLIUS CICEEO. 219 



ignorance, which Socrates had used against the sophists on physical 

 questions, for an actual scepticism on points connected with morals, he 

 fell into the opposite extreme, and declared, first, that nothing could 

 be known, and therefore, secondly, nothing should be advanced. 1 



Whatever were his private sentiments (for some authors affirm his 

 esoteric doctrines to have been dogmatic 2 ), he brought forward these 

 sceptical tenets in so unguarded a form, that it required all his argu- 

 mentative powers, which were confessedly great, to maintain them 

 against the obvious objections which were pressed upon him from all 

 quarters. On his death, therefore, as might have been anticipated, 

 his school was deserted for those of Zeno and Epicurus ; and during 

 the lives of Lacydes, Evander, and Hegesinus, who successively filled 

 the Academic chair, being no longer recommended by the novelty of 

 its doctrines, 3 or the talents of its masters, it became of little consider- 

 ation amid the wranglings of more popular philosophies. Carneades, 4 Carneades. 

 therefore, who succeeded Hegesinus, found it necessary to use more 

 cautious and guarded language; and, by explaining what was paradox- 

 ical, by reservations and exceptions, in short, by all the arts which an 

 acute and active genius could suggest, he contrived to establish its 

 authority without departing, as far as we have the means of judging, 

 from the principle of universal scepticism which Arcesilas had so perti- 

 naciously advocated. 5 



The New Academy, 6 then, taught with Plato, that all things in 

 their own nature were fixed and determinate ; but that, through the 

 constitution of the human rnind, it was impossible for its to see them 

 in their simple and eternal forms, to separate appearance from reality, 

 truth from falsehood. 7 For the conception we form of any object is 

 altogether derived from and depends on the sensation, the impression, 

 it produces on our own minds (jradog gvepyemg, fyavracria). Reason 

 does but deduce from premises ultimately supplied by sensation. Our 

 only communication, then, with actual existences being through the 

 medium of our own impressions, we have no means of ascertaining Modified 

 the correspondence of the things themselves with the ideas we enter- Jhe P New m f 

 tain of them ; and therefore can in no case be certain of the fidelity Academy. 



1 " Arcesilas negabat esse quidquam, quod sciri posset, ne illud quidem ipsum 

 quod Socrates sibi reliquisset. Sic omnia latere censebat in occulto, neque esse 

 quicquam quod cerni, quod intelligi, posset; quibus de causis nihil oportere neque 

 profiteri neque affirmare quenquam, neque assertione approbare, &c." (Acad. 

 Qurcst. i. 12.) [" Arcesilas affirmed that there was nothing that could be known, 

 not even excepting what Socrates had reserved. He regarded all things as hid in 

 obscurity, and nothing as capable of being perceived or understood ; for which 

 reasons he denied the right of any man to aver or affirm anything, or to confirm 

 anything by assertion, &c." Editor.'] See also Lucullus, 9 and 18. They were 

 countenanced in these conclusions by Plato's doctrine of ideas. Lucullus, 4b. 



2 Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hypot. i. 33 ; Diogenes Laertius, lib. iv. in Arcesil. 



3 Lucullus, 6. 4 Augustin. adv. Acad. iii. 17. 



5 Lucullus, 18, 24 ; Augustin. in Acad. iii. 39. 



6 See Sext. Empir. adv. Mathem. lib. vii. 



7 Acad. Qua;st. i. 13 ; Lucullus, 23, 38; de Xat. Deor. i. 5; Orat. 71. 



