ebeian[93]. The philosopher who best preserved the Socratic tradition was
most estimable, _ceteris paribus_, and that man was Carneades[94].

In looking at the second great problem, that of the ethical standard, we
must never forget that it was considered by nearly all the later
philosophers as of overwhelming importance compared with the first.
Philosophy was emphatically defined as the art of conduct (_ars vivendi_).
All speculative and non-ethical doctrines were merely estimable as
supplying a basis on which this practical art could be reared. This is
equally true of the Pyrrhonian scepticism and of the dogmatism of Zeno and
Epicurus. Their logical and physical doctrines were mere outworks or
ramparts within which the ordinary life of the school was carried on. These
were useful chiefly in case of attack by the enemy; in time of peace ethics
held the supremacy. In this fact we shall find a key to unlock many
difficulties in Cicero's philosophical writings. I may instance one passage
in the beginning of the _Academica Posteriora_[95], which has given much
trouble to editors. Cicero is there charged by Varro with having deserted
the Old Academy for the New, and admits the charge. How is this to be
reconciled with his own oft-repeated statements that he never recanted the
doctrines Philo had taught him? Simply thus. Arcesilas, Carneades, and
Philo had been too busy with their polemic against Zeno and his followers,
maintained on logical grounds, to deal much with ethics. On the other hand,
in the works which Cicero had written and published before the _Academica_,
wherever he had touched philosophy, it had been on its ethical side. The
works themselves, moreover, were direct imitations of early Academic and
Peripatetic writers, who, in the rough popular view which regarded ethics
mainly or solely, really composed a single school, denoted by the phrase
"Vetus Academia." General readers, therefore, who considered ethical
resemblance as of far greater moment than dialectical difference, would
naturally look upon Cicero as a supporter of their "Vetus Academia," so
long as he kept clear of dialectic; when he brought dialectic to the front,
and pronounced boldly for Carneades, they would naturally regard him as a
deserter from the Old Academy to the New. This view is confirmed by the
fact that for many years before Cicero wrote, the Academic dialectic had
found no eminent expositor. So much was this the case, that when Cicero
w