After the death of Arcesilaus, the academy was suc cessively under the care of Lacydes, Evander, and Egesinus. Its new tenets, however, meeting with great opposition, these philosophers found it difficult to sup port the credit of the school ; and Carneades, a Cyrenian by birth, and one of its disciples, found it reasonable to modify what was most obnoxious in the system of Ar cesilaus, and became the founder of the New Academy. It was his doctrine, that the senses, the understanding, and the imagination, frequently deceive us, and there fore cannot be infallible judges of truth ; but that from the impressions which we perceive to be produced on the mind by means of the senses, we justly infer ap pearances of truth or probabilities. These impressions Carneades called phantasies, or images; and maintained, that they do not always correspond to the real nature of things. The successors of Carneades in the New Aca demy, were Clitomachus, a native of Carthage, Philo of Larissa, and Antiochus of Ascalon, who resigned the chair in the 175th Olympiad, when the Academic School was transferred to Rome. The learning and eloquence of Philo are highly celebrated by Cicero, who knew him at Rome, whither he had fled for refuge during the Mithridatic war. He is reckoned by sonic the founder of a fourth academy 3 as he held the peculiar tenet, that truth in its nature is comprehensible, although not by the human faculties.
Thus it appears that scepticism was to a certain ex tent encouraged by all the teachers of the Academic school, but most of all by Arcesilaus, and his followers of the middle academy ; and in the lowest degree by Plato, and the more genuine Academics. If Plato
seemed to contract our sphere of knowledge, it was only with the intention of directing the strongest illumi nation on the objects which were most fraught with in struction, and subservient to the highest purposes. But Arcesilaus, by placing in the same obscurity every ob ject within the utmost extent of the sphere, encouraged a chilling and dangerous indifference about every princi ple, whether of speculation or action. Such, however, were not the genuine doctrines of the Academy, as is frequently assumed by Hume, and other modern free thinkers, who wish to arrogate to themselves the ho nourable title of Academics, instead of the more appro priate, though reproachful, appellation of sceptics. The scepticism of Plato, and his genuine followers, was not that which wishes to throw doubt and obscurity upon every object of human knowledge, hut that which hesi tates to assume what it has not investigated ; and is cau tious of believing, in order that it may believe nothing that is not absolutely conformable to truth. This rational, or Platonic scepticism, may be seen admirably exempli fied in some of the philosophical writings of Cicero, who, though he sometimes calls himself an eclectic philoso pher, and professes to select whatever he found most valuable in the various schools of Greece, shows a mani fest predilection for the doctrines of the academy as taught by Plato; and therefore may be considered as a genuine academic. See Plin. Hist. :lilt. I. 12. c. 1. Laert. 1. 4. Cic. de Fin. 1. 4. c. 31. Ac. Qu. 1. 4. and de Orat. 1. 3. c. 16. Sext. EmJi. Adv. Rhet. s. 20. Also Potter's Arch. Gra'C. Bruckeri Hist. Phil. and Enfield's Abridg °lent. (in)