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In the former of those two, Lucullus argues against, and Cicero for, the Academic sect, in the presence of Catulus and Hortensius; in the latter, Varro pursues the history of philosophy from Socrates to Arcesilas, and Cicero continues it down to the time of Carneades. In the second edition the style was corrected, the matter condensed, and the whole polished with extraordinary care and diligence.

Can anything show stupidity in a greater degree? Zeno, being pressed by Arcesilas, who pronounced all things to be false which are perceived by the senses, said that some things were false, but not all. Epicurus was afraid that if any one thing seen should be false, nothing could be true; and therefore he asserted all the senses to be infallible directors of truth.

You lie down with him looking out upon the sea at Comæ, or sit with him beneath the plane-tree of Crassus, and listen while he tells you of this doctrine and the other. So Arcesilas may be supposed to have said, and so Carneades laid down the law. It was that and no more. But when he tells you of the place assigned to you in heaven, and how you are to win it, then he is in earnest.

As regards those who are naturalists because they know no better, they are certainly not to be blamed. They follow common sense, without parading their ignorance as a method which is to teach us the wonderful secret, how we are to find the truth which lies at the bottom of the well of Democritus. Quod sapio satis est mihi, non ego curo Esse quod Arcesilas aerumnosique Solones.

But with regard to banishment, if we examine the nature of things, not the ignominy of the name, how little does it differ from constant travelling! in which some of the most famous philosophers have spent their whole life, as Xenocrates, Crantor, Arcesilas, Lacydes, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Antipater, Carneades, Panætius, Clitomachus, Philo, Antiochus, Posidonius, and innumerable others, who from their first setting-out never returned home again.

In like manner, I suppose, Arcesilas would not have handled logic as Aristotle, nor Aristotle have criticized poets as Plato; yet reasoning and poetry are subject to scientific rules.

Quæst. i. 10, etc.; Lucullus, 5; de Legg. i. 20; iii. 3, etc. Acad. Quæst. i. 4, 12, 13; Lucullus, 5 and 23; de Nat. Deor. i. 5; de Fin. ii. 1; de Orat. iii. 18. Augustin. contra Acad. ii. 6. Plutarch, in Colot. 26. "Arcesilas negabat esse quidquam, quod sciri posset, ne illud quidem ipsum quod Socrates sibi reliquisset.

Or did Plato's happiness exceed that of Xenocrates, or Polemo, or Arcesilas? Or is that city to be valued much that banishes all her good and wise men? Demaratus, the father of our King Tarquin, not being able to bear the tyrant Cypselus, fled from Corinth to Tarquinii, settled there, and had children. Was it, then, an unwise act in him to prefer the liberty of banishment to slavery at home?

Carneades, therefore, who succeeded Hegesinus, found it necessary to use more cautious and guarded language; and, by explaining what was paradoxical, 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 pertinaciously advocated.

Since, then, English has had its great writers for a term of about three hundred years,—as long, that is, as the period from Sappho to Demosthenes, or from Pisistratus to Arcesilas, or from Æschylus and Pindar to Carneades, or from Ennius to Pliny,—we should have no right to be disappointed if the classical period be close upon its termination.