Nor

is always on the watch for difficulties or exceptions, which may lead to an extension or modification of his theory; the orator prefers to select topics which admit of broad and simple statements and are calculated to excite emotion both in himself and his audience. So with Cicero : : perhaps no man was ever more sensitive to the loftiness and beauty of Plato's idealism; but he had neither leisure nor taste for a prolonged piece of close technical argumentation, such as we find in the Parmenides or in Aristotle's metaphysical works. again did he ever take the pains to trace out the inner connexion of a philosophical system, so as to see its several parts combined into a consistent whole. In spite therefore of his delight in Plato, he has not, as far as I am aware, contributed anything to our present understanding of Plato, very little even to our knowledge of Plato's surroundings, which we should not have learnt from other sources. On the contrary any reader who derived his notion of Plato's, and still more of Aristotle's system, exclusively from Cicero, would undoubtedly form a very erroneous notion of what Plato and Aristotle really were. Notwithstanding his protest against the theoretical positiveness of Antiochus, Cicero seems to have had no scruple in accepting his utterly uncritical view of the previous history of philosophy. He usually speaks of Aristotle and Plato as if their differences were scarcely more than those of style and manner of expression, and attributes to them doctrines which belong to later schools, such as the triple division of philosophy, and even the Stoic cosmopolitanism and humanitarianism, the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, and the definition of the summum bonum as a life in accor

dance with nature'. It is a little remarkable that though Cicero knew much less of Aristotle than he did of Plato, yet he has really added to our knowledge of the former by preserving to us some interesting fragments of his lost dialogues.

But it is in the 3rd or post-Aristotelian period that Cicero becomes an authority of first-rate importance. The original writers for this period have all disappeared, leaving only a few fragments behind them; but their best thoughts still survive in a nobler form in the pages of Cicero. Even here, it may be doubted whether Cicero himself had read several of the earlier treatises, such as those of Zeno and Cleanthes, to which we find references in his works. But these post-Aristotelian schools were still flourishing when he wrote: he had heard their doctrines discussed by living expositors; he was personally acquainted with the authors of the most popular manuals, and he was himself a sincere believer in that common basis of practical philosophy to which all were more or less rapidly gravitating, in proportion as they were influenced by the eclectic spirit of their age.

We may therefore in the main accept Cicero as a

1 See Acad. I. 19 foll. with Reid's notes. Though Antiochus is responsible for much of Cicero's inaccuracy, yet the latter's translation of the Timaeus shows that it was possible for him occasionally to go wrong through misinterpretation of the Greek, see Gedike Ciceronis historia philosophiae antiquae pp. 164, 171 foll. and K. F. Hermann De Interpretatione Timaei. Again he often loses the point of an argument through carelessness and over-haste, see the notes on the N. D. 1. 25 si di possunt &c. § 26 Anaximenes, § 31 Xenophon, § 33 replicatione, and especially § 87 quid? solus &c. also Madvig's note and excursus on Fin. II. 34.

2 See the quotation given above, p. 142.

M. P.

16

trustworthy witness of the doctrines taught in the schools of his time; and, if we make allowance for the growth of eclecticism, we may further accept these as representing fairly the views of the same schools during the earlier part of this period, except where they have been confused by the harmonizing treatment of Antiochus. One instance of this confusion has been already noticed, where Cicero identifies the Stoic prima naturae i. e. the objects of the instinctive, prae-moral impulses of childhood, with the prima constitutio, the rudimentary constitution of Antiochus, involving the seeds of all virtues, and makes this a part of the Summum Bonum, a dogma which he also ascribes to Aristotle and the early Academics'. But the larger part of Cicero's philosophical works is, as he modestly confesses, merely paraphrased from the Greek"; and when he is reproducing a treatise of Panaetius or Posidonius or Clitomachus or the Epicurean Zeno, we are tolerably safe from the disturbing influence of Antiochus. And I venture to think there are few remains of antiquity which are more worthy the attention of one who is interested in the development of human thought in its relation to the highest subjects, than the treatise of Panaetius on Duty, and the arguments and counterarguments of Posidonius and Clitomachus on Natural Theology and Divination, preserved to us in the De Natura Deorum and De Divinatione; or perhaps, above all, than the exposition of the Stoic conception of Law in the 1st book of the De Legibus. Yet even in these we have to pay something for the beautiful form

1 See Madvig Excursus IV. on the De Finibus.

2 Ad Att. XII. 52 åπóypapa sunt; minore labore fiunt; verba tantum affero, quibus abundo.

which Cicero has given to the clumsy Greek of the 1st century B. C. The argument has not always been understood; the connexion is often broken; sometimes different treatises will have been somewhat carelessly pieced together; scarcely ever do we find a rounded whole dominated by a single conception with all the parts in due subordination and harmony.

It remains still to ask what Cicero himself has contributed to philosophy, independently of translations and paraphrases in which he has embalmed for us the thoughts of others. And the first thing to be said is, that he has not only given a new form, but he has breathed a new spirit into the dry bones of this later philosophy. The same wide experience of practical life which made him indifferent to subtle distinctions of thought, brought its compensation by enabling him to give life and reality to the bare abstractions of the schools. We feel that he is animated by a genuine enthusiasm when, amid the furious party-strife and the self-seeking lawlessness which marked the close of the Republic, he comes forward to preach of that supreme Law by which all Nature is governed, and which is written in the heart and conscience of each individual of our race, thus forming a common bond of brotherhood, which knits all mankind together and engages those who own that bond to love each other as they love themselves'. Whether he was actually the first to give prominence to this conception of an original revelation written on the heart of man, is not absolutely certain: he is at any rate the first writer in whom we find it distinctly expressed. Even Plato only spoke of our having beheld the ideas in a previous state of existence; 1 Leg. 1. 28 foll., N. D. I. 121.

L

Cicero supposes them to be implanted in us at our birth, and to grow with our growth, when they are not blighted by ungenial influences'. Another characteristic which adds a charm to the works of Cicero is his fondness for tracing in the ancient worthies of Rome the unconscious operation of those principles of generosity and fairness, which had been brought out into the distinct light of consciousness by Plato and the Stoics. Thus his moral treatises, even when they are most defective in logical arrangement, form a treasure-house in which the best sayings and doings of the best men of antiquity are set forth in the noblest language for the delight and instruction of posterity. However it may please some writers of our time to vaunt their ingratitude to Cicero, it cannot be denied that to none of those great writers and thinkers, who 'like runners in the torch-race have passed from hand to hand the light of civilisation,' is the world more indebted than it is to him; that it was he who first made the thoughts of the mighty masters of old the common property of mankind; that he, beyond all others, raised the general standard of sentiment and morality in his own age; and that his writings kept alive through the Dark Ages, to be rekindled with a fresh glow in the Humanists of the Renaissance, the recollection of a glorious past, and a tradition of sound thinking and judging unfettered by the terrors of church authority.

1 See Fin. v. 59 (natura homini) dedit talem mentem, quae omnem virtutem accipere posset, ingenuitque sine doctrina notitias parvas rerum maximarum, et quasi instituit docere et induxit in ea quae inerant tanquam elementa virtutis. Sed virtutem ipsam inchoavit, nihil amplius; also Leg. I. 33, Tusc. III. 2 quoted by Zeller p. 659.