Note 110 — Chapter XXIII · THE NEW ACADEMY.

Taking all things into account, the philosophic importance of Carneades and the School of which he was the head cannot be estimated at so low a value as would be the case were the New Academy merely credited with entertaining shallow doubts, and Carneades’ theory of probabilities deduced from rhetorical rather than from philosophical considerations.110 For the last assertion there is no ground whatever; Carneades distinctly avowed that a conviction resting on probabilities seemed indispensable for practical needs and actions. On this point he is wholly in accord with all the forms of Scepticism, not only with the New Academy, but also with Pyrrho and the later Sceptics. He differs from them in the degree of accuracy with which he investigates the varieties and conditions of probability; but a question of degree can least of all be urged against a philosopher. Nor should doubts be called shallow which the ancients even in later times could only very inadequately dissipate, and which throw light on several of the deepest problems of life by the critical investigations they occasioned. No doubt, in the despair of attaining to knowledge at all, and in the attempt to reduce everything to opinion more or less certain, indications may be seen of the exhaustion of the intellect, and of the extinction of philosophic originality. Nevertheless it must never be forgotten that the scepticism of the New Academy was not only in harmony with the course naturally taken by Greek philosophy as a whole, but that it was pursued with an acuteness and a scientific vigour leaving no doubt that it was a really important link in the chain of philosophic development.