Cicero's ethics, then, stand quite apart from his dialectic. In the sphere of morals he felt the danger of the principle of doubt. Even in the _De Legibus_ when the dialogue turns on a moral question, he begs the New Academy, which has introduced confusion into these subjects, to be silent[97]. Again, Antiochus, who in the dialectical dialogue is rejected, is in the _De Legibus_ spoken of with considerable favour[98]. All ethical systems which seemed to afford stability to moral principles had an attraction for Cicero. He was fascinated by the Stoics almost beyond the power of resistance. In respect of their ethical and religious ideas he calls them "great and famous philosophers[99]," and he frequently speaks with something like shame of the treatment they had received at the hands of Arcesilas and Carneades. Once he gives expression to a fear lest they should be the only true philosophers after all[100]. There was a kind of magnificence about the Stoic utterances on morality, more suited to a superhuman than a human world, which allured Cicero more than the barrenness of the Stoic dialectic repelled him[101]. On moral questions, therefore, we often find him going farther in the direction of Stoicism than even his teacher Antiochus. One great question which divided the philosophers of the time was, whether happiness was capable of degrees. The Stoics maintained that it was not, and in a remarkable passage Cicero agrees with them, explicitly rejecting the position of Antiochus, that a life enriched by virtue, but unattended by other advantages, might be happy, but could not be the happiest possible[102]. He begs the Academic and Peripatetic schools to cease from giving an uncertain sound (balbutire) and to allow that the happiness of the wise man would remain unimpaired even if he were thrust into the bull of Phalaris[103]. In another place he admits the purely Stoic doctrine that virtue is one and indivisible[104]. These opinions, however, he will not allow to be distinctively Stoic, but appeals to Socrates as his authority for them[105]. Zeno, who is merely an ignoble craftsman of words, stole them from the Old Academy. This is Cicero's general feeling with regard to Zeno, and there can be no doubt that he caught it from Antiochus who, in stealing the doctrines of Zeno, ever stoutly maintained that Zeno had stolen them before. Cicero, however, regarded chiefly the ethics of Zeno with this feeling, while Antiochus so regarded chiefly the dialectic. It is just in this that the difference between Antiochus and Cicero lies. To the former Zeno's dialectic was true and Socratic, while the latter treated it as un-Socratic, looking upon Socrates as the apostle of doubt[106]. On the whole Cicero was more in accord with Stoic ethics than Antiochus. Not in all points, however: for while Antiochus accepted without reserve the Stoic paradoxes, Cicero hesitatingly followed them, although he conceded that they were Socratic[107]. Again, Antiochus subscribed to the Stoic theory that all emotion was sinful; Cicero, who was very human in his joys and sorrows, refused it with horror[108]. It must be admitted that on some points Cicero was inconsistent. In the _De Finibus_ he argued that the difference between the Peripatetic and Stoic ethics was merely one of terms; in the _Tusculan Disputations_ he held it to be real. The most Stoic in tone of all his works are the _Tusculan Disputations_ and the _De Officiis_.