ver-failing good sense. It must
be allowed that he is deficient in depth; that he skims over rather than
dives into the subjects of which he treats; that he had too great
command of the plausible to be a patient investigator or a sound
reasoner. Yet if he has less originality of thought than others, if he
does not grapple with his subject, if he is unequal to a regular and
lengthened disquisition, if he is frequently inconsistent in his
opinions, we must remember that mere soundness of view, without talent
for display, has few recommendations for those who have not yet imbibed
a taste even for the outward form of knowledge,[145] that system nearly
precludes freedom, and depth almost implies obscurity. It was this very
absence of scientific exactness which constituted in Roman eyes a
principal charm of Cicero's compositions.[146]

Nor must his profession as a pleader be forgotten in enumerating the
circumstances which concurred to give his writings their peculiar
character. For, however his design of interesting his countrymen in
Greek literature, however too his particular line of talent, may have
led him to explain rather than to invent; yet he expressly informs us it
was principally with a view to his own improvement in Oratory that he
devoted himself to philosophical studies.[147] This induced him to
undertake successively the cause of the Stoic, the Epicurean, or the
Platonist, as an exercise for his powers of argumentation; while the
wavering and unsettled state of mind, occasioned by such habits of
disputation, led him in his personal judgment to prefer the sceptical
tenets of the New Academy.

6.

Here then, before enumerating Cicero's philosophical writings, an
opportunity is presented to us of redeeming the pledge we have given
elsewhere in our Encyclopaedia,[148] to consider the system of doctrine
which the reformers (as they thought themselves) of the Academic school
introduced about 300 years before the Christian era.

We shall not trace here the history of the Old Academy, or speak of the
innovations on the system of Plato, silently introduced by the austere
Polemo. When Zeno, however, who was his pupil, advocated the same rigid
tenets in a more open and dogmatic form,[149] the Academy at length took
the alarm, and a reaction ensued. Arcesilas, who had succeeded Polemo
and Crates, determined on reverting to the principles of the elder
schools;[150] but mistaking the profession of ignorance, which Socr