Note 100 — Chapter XXIII · THE NEW ACADEMY.

Putting all these statements together, we obtain a view not unworthy of Carneades, and certainly quite in harmony with his position. That philosopher could not, consistently with his sceptical principles, allow scientific certainty to any of the various opinions respecting the nature and aim of moral action; and in this point he attacked the Stoics with steady home-thrusts. Their inconsistency in calling the choice of what is natural the highest business of morality, and yet not allowing to that which is according to nature a place among goods,100 was so trenchantly exposed by him that Antipater is said to have been brought to admit that not the objects to which choice is directed, but the actual choice itself is a good.101 He even asserted that the Stoic theory of Goods only differed in words from that of the Peripatetics; to this assertion he was probably led by the fact that the Stoic morality appeals to nature only, or perhaps by the theory therewith connected of things to be desired and things to be eschewed.102 If there were any difference between the two, Stoicism, he thought, ignored the real wants of nature. The Stoics, for instance, called a good name a thing indifferent; Carneades, however, drove them so much into a corner because of this statement that they ever after (so Cicero assures us) qualified their assertion, attributing to a good name at least a secondary value among things to be desired (προηγμένα).103 Chrysippus, again, thought to find some consolation for the ills of life in the reflection that no man is free from them. Carneades was, however, of opinion that this thought could only afford consolation to a lover of ill; it being rather a matter for sorrow that all should be exposed to so hard a fate.104 Believing, too, that man’s happiness does not depend on any theory of ethics,105 he could avow without hesitation that all other views of morality do not go beyond probability; and thus the statement of Clitomachus, as far as it refers to a definite decision as to the highest good, is without doubt correct. But just as the denial of knowledge does not, according to the view of Carneades, exclude conviction in general on grounds of probability, no more does it in the province of ethics. Here, then, is the intermediate position which was attributed to him—a position not only suggested by the traditions of the Academic School, but remaining as a last resource to the sceptical destroyer of systems so opposite as Stoicism and the theory of pleasure. The inconsistency of at one time identifying the satisfaction of natural instincts with virtue, and at another time distinguishing it from virtue, which is attributed to Carneades, is an inconsistency for which probably Cicero is alone responsible. The real meaning of Carneades can only be that virtue consists in an activity directed towards the possession of what is according to nature, and hence that it cannot as the highest Good be separated from accordance with nature.106 For the same reason, virtue supplies all that is requisite for happiness.107 Hence, when it is stated that, notwithstanding his scepticism on moral subjects, Carneades was a thoroughly upright man,108 we have not only no reason to doubt this statement as to his personal character, but we can even discern that it was a practical and legitimate consequence of his philosophy. It may appear to us inconsistent to build on a foundation of absolute doubt the certainty of practical conduct; nevertheless, it is an inconsistency deeply rooted in all the scepticism of post-Aristotelian times. That scepticism Carneades brought to completeness, and in logically developing his theory, even its scientific defects came to light.