So far does Cicero carry this freedom, that in the fifth book of the Tusculan Disputations, he maintains a view entirely at variance with the whole of the fourth book of the De Finibus, and when the discrepancy is pointed out, refuses to be bound by his former statements, on the score that he is an Academic and a freeman[83].  “Modo hoc, modo illud probabilius videtur[84].”  The Academic sips the best of every school[85].  He roams in the wide field of philosophy, while the Stoic dares not stir a foot’s breadth away from Chrysippus[86].  The Academic is only anxious that people should combat his opinions; for he makes it his sole aim, with Socrates, to rid himself and others of the mists of error[87].  This spirit is even found in Lucullus the Antiochean[88].  While professing, however, this philosophic bohemianism, Cicero indignantly repels the charge that the Academy, though claiming to seek for the truth, has no truth to follow[89].  The probable is for it the true.

Another consideration which attracted Cicero to these tenets was their evident adaptability to the purposes of oratory, and the fact that eloquence was, as he puts it, the child of the Academy[90].  Orators, politicians, and stylists had ever found their best nourishment in the teaching of the Academic and Peripatetic masters[91].  The Stoics and Epicureans cared nothing for power of expression.  Again, the Academic tenets were those with which the common sense of the world could have most sympathy[92].  The Academy also was the school which had the most respectable pedigree.  Compared with its system, all other philosophies were plebeian[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.