Note 90 — Chapter XXIII · THE NEW ACADEMY.

(b) Moral and religious view of life. Among questions about which the greatest possible certainty is felt to be desirable, Carneades, true to his whole position, gave a prominent place to principles of morals;90 life and action being the principal things with which the theory of probability has to do.91 We hear, therefore, that he thoroughly discussed the fundamental questions of Ethics, the question as to the highest Good.92 On this subject he distinguished six, or relatively four, different views. If the primary object of desire can in general only consist of those things which correspond with our nature, and which consequently call our emotions into exercise, the object of desire must be either pleasure, or absence of pain, or conformity with nature. In each of these three cases two opposite results are possible: either the highest Good may consist in the attainment of a purpose, or else in the activity which aims at its attainment. The latter is the view of the Stoics only, and arises from regarding natural activity or virtue as the highest Good. Hence the six possible views are practically reduced to four, which taken by themselves, or else in combination, include all existing views respecting the highest Good.93 But so ambiguously did Carneades express himself as to his particular preference of any one view, that even Clitomachus declared he was ignorant as to his real opinion.94 It was only tentatively and for the purpose of refuting the Stoics, that he propounded the statement that the highest Good consists in the enjoyment of such things as afford satisfaction to the primary impulses of nature.95 Nevertheless, the matter has often been placed in such a light as though Carneades had propounded this statement on his own account; and the statement itself has been quoted to prove that he considered the satisfaction of natural impulses apart from virtue as an end in itself.96 It is also asserted that he approximated to the view of Callipho, which does not appear to have been essentially different from that of the older Academy.97 The same leaning to the older Academy and its doctrine of moderation appears in other recorded parts of the Ethics of Carneades. The pain caused by misfortune he wished to lessen by thinking beforehand of its possibility;98 and after the destruction of Carthage he deliberately asserted before Clitomachus that the wise man would never allow himself to be disturbed, not even by the downfall of his country.99