CARNEADES.

Carneades, one of the most famous of the Greek philosophers, was a native of Cyrene. He founded the Third Academy, which, properly speaking, differed in nothing from the Second; for with the exception of a few qualifications, which served merely to disguise the doctrine, he was as earnest an advocate for uncertainty as Arcesilas; and even in respect to the dogma ofincomprehensibility, carried matters to as great an extreme. He admitted only of probabilities for the conduct of life, and beyond probability admitted neither of certainty or evidence.

He discovered uncertainty in respect to the most intuitive convictions, and even disputed the axiom on which the syllogism is founded, “ Quæ sunt idem uni tertio, sunt idem inter se.” Things that are the same with a third, they are the same to each other. We learn from Galenus, that Carneades objected to this generally received notion, and attacked it with

various sophisms. In fact, he laboured might and main to break the custom of assenting to what is not evident;—and what was there done more than this in the Middle Academy? For the rest, they had reason to say, that he undertook as great a task as Hercules himself; and they might have added, that the hero could with more ease overcome two thousand monsters, each as terrible as the Lernæn hydra, or the Nemæan lion, than Arcesilas or Carneades bring men to assent to nothing that had not been made evident by discussion.

In one sense therefore it must be admitted that our academician pushed his opinions as far as Arcesilas. His innovation simply amounted to this, that he did not, like the latter, deny the existence of truths, but maintained that we could not certainly discern them. He allowed, contrary to Arcesilas, that there were probabilities sufficient to determine us to act, provided we pronounced not absolutely upon any thing. He went yet farther, for he allowed a wise man on some occasions to conclude. This indulgence, it has been observed, makes a breach in his system, and has given occasion to say, that Arcesilas maintained his hypothesis better than Carneades. It is certain, however, that in the opinion of Cicero he always returned to the spirit of the direct opinion, as appears by the exposition of his sentiments at the end of that great orator’s questions. It is very probable therefore, that he retained at the bottom Arcesilas’s doctrine; but, out of policy, and that he might deprive his adversaries of the most specious pretences of disclaiming against and ridiculing him, he granted some degrees of probability, capable of determining a wise man to choose a side in his civil capacity. He saw very well, that without this he should never be able to answer their most odious objections, or prove that his principle was not the readiest way to reduce a man to inaction, and to the most scandalous quietism.

If it be well considered, it is the same thing to say, “ There are no truths,” and that, “ there are truths, but we have no rule to distinguish them from falsehoods.” If Arcesilas had maintained the first of these propositions, he might have been compared to a fiery courser that follows his impetuosity to the very bottom of a precipice. But I can scarcely be brought to believe, that he absolutely denied the existence of truths. He thought it enough, in my opinion, to maintain, that they were impenetrable to human understanding. The heat of the dispute perhaps hindered him from expressing himself so cautiously. “ Carneades was the first who laid aside the shameless way of calumniating, which he knew Arcesilas to have been very guilty of, that he might not be thought fond of disputing against every thing, for the sake of ostentation.” These words of St Augustin are more favourable to Carneades than Arcesilas; but Numenius had another opinion of these two academics; he was more angry with Carneades than with Arcesilas. He pretended that Arcesilas was in earnest, and deceived himself whilst he was deceiving others: but that Carneades believed nothing of what he said, and entertained his confidents with discourses quite different from his lectures, being pleased in nothing more than puzzling his scholars, and diverted himself with arguing pro and con. He built and demolished; having no sooner established a probability, but he was the first himself that took care to destroy it. In confessing there were truths and falsehoods in nature, but so concealed, that they were not really to be distinguished one from the other, he was even more dangerous than Arcesilas. “ Fur ergo præstigiatorque fuit solertior.”

His arguments against the oracles of Apollo were of weight. He maintained that Apollo could not foretell things to come, unless they had a dependence upon a necessary cause. He denied him the

knowledge of all contingent events, the parricide of Oedipus, for example; for there being no cause necessitating him to kill his father, it was not to be foreseen that he would kill him: a future action is not to be foreseen, but from a knowledge of the efficient causes of it. Nay, he held that the gods presiding over oracles could not so much as know what was past, where no footsteps were remaining to carry them up to the time of the event. He pretended, without doubt, that no other footstep was sufficient for this, but a chain of natural causes, acting without any use of free-will, and that the acts of the free-will of man, breaking this chain, hindered the gods from casting their eyes backward upon past ages, where no visible mark of the events remained. Chrysippus had eluded the instance drawn, “ that a man predestinated to die, shall die, let him make use of physic or not,”—by supposing a complication of predestined events, as that such a man shall make use of a physician, and be cured: for then the remedy is annexed to the fatality of the cure. This answer did not satisfy Carneades: but in order to confute it well, lie shewed the great inconvenience attending it, I mean the loss of free-will. “ If,” said he “ you join thus, in the decrees of fate, the causes with their effects, all things must be done by necessity, and nothing will be left in our power; every thing will depend upon an antecedent cause, and a chain of causes arise, linked together by a natural invincible tie.”

The disputes of the Augustinians and Calvinists with the Jesuits and the Arminians, about the consequences of predestination, it will be perceived, had a being among the ancient philosophers. Carneades has taught the Predestinarians to puzzle their adversaries with this objection,—that God can foresee nothing that depends upon an indifferent cause. None but the Socinians have been so ingenuous as to acknowledge the evident force of this objection; but

it has cost them the prescience of God; and what a monstrous absurdity is it to suppose a God ignorant of what men will do, until their actions are in progress !

The Athenians, having been fined five hundred talents for having pillaged the city of Oropus, sent their ambassadors to Rome, who prevailed so far as to have the fine reduced to one hundred talents. Carneades the Academic, Diogenes the Stoic, and Criolaus the Peripatetic, three famous philosophers, were charged with this embassy. Before they had their audience of the senate, each of them made an oration in the presence of a great assembly, and in each of them was admired a particular excellence; strength and rapidity of thought was that of Carneades. Cato the censor advised the senate to send the ambassadors back again immediately, because it was difficult to discover the truth in the intricacy of Carneades’ arguments. Plutarch tells us, the Roman youth were so charmed with them, that they renounced their pleasures and exercises, to indulge without interruption the passion he had inspired into them for philosophy, and with which they were seized as with an enthusiasm. This by no means pleased Cato; he was afraid lest for the future young people would chuse to follow their studies rather than the wars and taxed therefore, in the senate, the conduct shewn to these philosophical ambassadors. “ Let us give them their answer out of hand,” said he, “ and send them home; they are men able to make us believe whatever they please.” He spoke this not out of any particular prejudice to Carneades, as some have imagined, but because he disliked philosophy in general, and all the Greek learning. We ought not, however, to infer from these words of Plutarch, that Cato did not particularly fear the subtlety of wit and the strength of reason wherewith Carneades disputed.

While at Rome, he argued one day in favour of justice as a positive notion, and the next day against it. He was then in his element; he loved to ruin his own works, because at the bottom it served to support his grand principle, which was, that the mind of man was capable of nothing but probabilities; so that of two contrary things a man might indifferently adhere to the one or the other, in a negative or affirmative discourse. To make good our text, we shall quote Lactantius. “ Carneades, being sent ambassador by the Athenians to Rome, disputed copiously concerning justice in the presence of Galba and Cato the censor, both at that time great orators. The next day he overthrew his own disputation by a contrary one, and destroyed justice, which the day before he had extolled; not indeed with the gravity of a philosopher who ought to stick to his opinion, but as it were to exercise his rhetoric in disputingpro andcon. This he did that he might be able to oppose others, whatever they asserted.” Lactantius adds, that it was easy for this philosopher to refute whatever they could say in behalf of justice, for the Heathens could have no notion of it, being strangers to religion, the fountain and foundation of justice. After this Lactantius gives us the substance of the dispute, and tells us Carneades argued thus: “ If there be such a thing as justice,” said he, “ it must be founded either upon positive right or upon natural right. Now it is not founded upon positive right, for that varies with times and places, every people applying it to their own profit and interest; nor is it founded upon natural right, which is no other than a bias nature has imprinted in all animals, which leads them to search after what is useful to them; and it cannot be regulated according to this bias, without committing a thousand frauds and violences; from whence it follows, that it cannot be the foundation of justice;” wherefore, &c. he proved by a great many

examples the condition of men to be such, that if they have a mind to be just, they must act imprudently and foolishly; and if they have a mind to act prudently, they are unjust: whence he concluded that there is no such thing as justice, for a virtue inseparable from folly cannot be just. Lactantius owns the Heathens were incapable of answering this argument, and that Cicero dared not undertake it.

The subtleties with which Carneades opposed justice, appeared terrible to Cicero; one of the best pieces of this illustrious Roman is that De Legibus. There he lays down as a foundation, that there is a natural right; that is, some actions are just in their own nature, and which we are obliged to do, not because we live in a society where the positive laws punish those that pay no regard to them, but for the sake of that justice and equity which accompanies them, independent of human institution. This, he says, he must suppose, if he intends to build upon principles well chosen and rightly concerted, and yet he does not expect every body will approve of them: he promises himself only the approbation of the ancient Platonists, and of the Peripatetics and Stoics. Epicurus’s school he regards not; they professed a retreat from politics: he therefore suffered them to philosophize as they thought fit in their retirement; but he demands quarter from Arcesilas and Carneades. He is afraid, if they once came to attack him, they would make too great a breach in the structure he had been raising. He finds himself too weak to oppose them; he wishes he may not be exposed to their anger; he desires to appease and live in peace with them. These are his words: “ Perturbatricem autem harum omnium rerum academiam hanc ab Arcesila et Carneade recentem exoremus, ut sileat. Nam si invaserit in has, quæ satis scite nobis instructæ et compositæ videntur rationes, nimias edet ruinas, quam quidem ego placare cupio, submovere

non audeo.” According to this idea, Carneades might pass for a destroying angel. It will be seen that there is little new under the sun; for in addition to the subject of free-will discussed by Carneades, the scepticism of Hume, and his doctrine of causation, have produced very little more than a repetition of the ancient objection, in regard to morals and religion, to the doctrines of the first two academies. Cicero however, more moderate than the assailants of the modern sceptic, speaks strongly of the difficulties to be overcome; while every one knows that Hume has been overthrown a thousand times, by writers who have, or ought to have, a thousand times less pretension than the Roman orator.—Ed. ⁷⁹

Let us not however, forget a good observation made by Quintilius. He remarks, that Carneades always lived up to the rules of justice, although he argued against them, which was not unusual with the academics, and indeed with other people; few men act consistently with their principles.

Carneades lived until his eighty-fifth year: other accounts say his ninetieth; his death is said to have taken place in the fourth year of the 162d Olympiad. Plutarch has recorded a shrewd observation by Carneades:—“ The only thing in which young princes learn well is, how to ride the great horse: other masters flatter; but the horse, without making any distinction between the rich and the poor, the sovereign and the subject, throws to the ground all the unskilful riders who endeavour to mount him.”—Carneades.