Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/478

426 hesitation and without misgiving; their intentions and their motives are sufficiently obvious from their actions.

But the character of Cicero eludes any such precise definition. He had personal ambitions, though they were not unlimited like those of Cæsar. He was no less loyal to the Republic than was Cato, loyal with all the passionate attachment of an enthusiastic nature to the great ideals of liberty and patriotism. But he aspired to be a practical statesman, to adapt his principles to the necessities of the time, and to modify his action so as to secure the greatest possible amount of good under the given circumstances. There were times in Cicero's life, when the requirements of a sage and patriotic opportunism and those of fidelity to principle seemed irreconcilable. At such times the infinite perplexities of the political situation bewildered him; and who might not have shared his bewilderment? He had not the power of shutting his eyes to all considerations but one; on the contrary, his vivid imagination presented every possible aspect of a problem to his mind, and he was always trying to view a question from a dozen sides at once. This habit led sometimes to confusion or inconsistency of statement, sometimes, again, to hesitancy in action.

Cicero made many mistakes as a politician. His forecast is often wrong; he is often taken by surprise; sometimes by the over-refining of his own subtle intellect, sometimes by applying the casuistry of his Greek book-learning too readily to the