Note 45 — Chapter XXIII · THE NEW ACADEMY.

(b) Attack on the scientific knowledge of the time. (α) The physical views of the Stoics attacked. In these formal enquiries into the possibility of knowledge, Carneades had chiefly to deal with the Stoics, with whom he holds a common ground in his appeal to the senses. The Stoics were also his chief opponents in his polemic against the material results of the dogmatic philosophy. Natural science having throughout the period of the post-Aristotelian philosophy been subordinated to ethics, ethics likewise engaged more attention at the hands of Carneades than science.45 In as far as he studied Natural science, he appears to have been entirely opposed to the Stoic treatment of the subject, and to this circumstance we owe it, that better information is forthcoming regarding his scientific, or rather his theological, investigations than regarding his moral views. The Stoic theories of God and of final causes46 afforded ample scope for the exercise of his ingenuity, and from the ground he occupied it was not difficult for him to expose the weak points of that theory. The Stoics had appealed in support of the belief in God to the consensus gentium. How close at hand was the answer,47 that the universality of this belief was neither proved to exist, nor as a matter of fact did it exist, but that in no case could the opinion of an ignorant multitude decide anything. The Stoics thought to find a proof of divine providence in the manner in which portents and prophecies come true. To expose this delusion, no very expanded criticism of divination was necessary.48 Going beyond this, Carneades proceeded to call in question the cardinal point of the Stoic system—the belief in God, the doctrine of the soul and reason of the universe, and of the presence of design in its arrangements. How, he asks, is the presence of design manifested? Whence all the things which cause destruction and danger to men if it be true that God has made the world for the sake of man?49 If reason is praised as the highest gift of God, is it not manifest that the majority of men only use it to make themselves worse than brutes? In bestowing such a gift God must have been taking but little care of this majority.50 Even if we attribute to man direct blame for the misuse of reason, still, why has God bestowed on him a reason which can be so much abused?51 The Stoics themselves say that a wise man can nowhere be found. They admit, too, that folly is the greatest misfortune. How, then, can they speak of the care bestowed by God on men, when, on their own confession, the whole of mankind is sunk in the deepest misery?52 But allowing that the Gods could not bestow virtue and wisdom upon all, they could, at least, have taken care that it should go well with the good. Instead of this, the experience of hundreds of cases shows that the upright man comes to a miserable end; that crime succeeds; and that the criminal can enjoy the fruits of his misdeeds undisturbed. Where, then, is the agency of Providence?53 The facts being entirely different from what the Stoics suppose, what becomes of their inferences? Allowing the presence of design in the world, and granting that the world is as beautiful and good as possible, why is it inconceivable that nature should have formed the world according to natural laws without the intervention of God? Admitting, too, the connection of parts in the universe, why should not this connection be the result simply of natural forces, without a soul of the universe or a deity?54 Who can pretend to be so intimately acquainted with the powers of nature, as to be able to prove the impossibility of this assumption? Zeno argued that rational things are better than things irrational, that the world is the best possible, and must therefore be rational. Man, says Socrates, can only derive his soul from the world; therefore the world must have a soul. But what, replies the Academician,55 is there to show that reason is best for the world, if it be the best for us? or that there must be a soul in nature for nature to produce a soul? What man is not able to produce, that, argues Chrysippus, must have been produced by a higher being—by deity. But to this inference the same objection was raised by the Academicians as to the former one, viz. that it confounds two different points of view. There may, indeed, be a Being higher than man. But why must there needs be a rational man-like Being? Why a God? Why not nature herself?56 Nor did the argument seem to an Academician more conclusive, that as every house is destined to be inhabited, so, too, the world must be intended for the habitation of God. To this there was the obvious reply:57 If the world were a house, it might be so; but the very point at issue is whether it is a house constructed for a definite purpose, or whether it is simply an undesigned result of natural forces.