It is evident that in such discussions the same questions were examined which had formerly been more thoroughly sifted by Plato and Aristotle, in analyzing the nature of science and treating of the different kinds of truth, according as they were objects of pure intellectual apprehension, or only of probable and uncertain knowledge. The result was an attempt to revive the dialectic art which the Academics had ignored, so the existing accounts of Antiochus' moral teaching seem to show. Without yielding to the paradoxes of the Stoics, or the skepticism of the Academics, he held in the main doctrines nearly coinciding with those of Aristotle: that happiness consists essentially in a virtuous life, yet is not independent of external things. So he denied the Stoic doctrine that all crimes were equal, but agreed with them in holding that all the emotions ought to be suppressed. On the whole, therefore, though Cicero inclines to rank him among the Stoics, it appears that he considered himself an eclectic philosopher, and attempted to unite the doctrines of the Stoics and Peripatetics, so as to revive the old Academy.