Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/125

 things which nature has made man consider as most desirable. But Zeno laid it down that that honourableness which arises from conformity to nature is the chief good. And Zeno was the founder and chief of the Stoic school.

XLIII. This now is plain enough, that all these chief goods which I have mentioned have a chief evil corresponding to them, which is their exact opposite. I now put it to you, whom shall I follow? only do not let any one make me so ignorant and absurd a reply as, Any one, provided only that you follow some one or other. Nothing more inconsiderate can be said: I wish to follow the Stoics. Will Antiochus, (I do not say Aristotle, a man almost, in my opinion, unrivalled as a philosopher, but will Antiochus) give me leave? And he was called an Academic; but he would have been, with very little alteration, something very like a Stoic. The matter shall now be brought to a decision. For we must either give the wise man to the Stoics or to the Old Academy. He cannot belong to both; for the contention between them is not one about boundaries, but about the whole territory. For the whole system of life depends on the definition of the chief good; and those who differ on that point, differ about the whole system of life. It is impossible, therefore, that those of both these schools should be wise, since they differ so much from one another: but one of them only can be so. If it be the disciple of Polemo, then the Stoic is wrong, who assents to an error: and you say that nothing is so incompatible with the character of a wise man as that. But if the principles of Zeno be true, then we must say the same of the Old Academics and of the Peripatetics; and as I do not know which is the more wise of the two, I give my assent to neither. What? when Antiochus in some points disagrees with the Stoics whom he is so fond of, does he not show that these principles cannot be approved of by a wise man?

The Stoics assert that all offences are equal: but Antiochus energetically resists this doctrine. At least, let me consider before I decide which opinion I will embrace. Cut the matter short, says he, do at last decide on something. What? The reasons which are given appear to me to be both shrewd and nearly equal: may I not then be on my guard against committing a crime? for you called it a crime, Lucullus, to violate a principle; I, therefore, restrain myself, lest I should