modes of life, and yet to miss what makes a man happy . The question, therefore, regarding the supreme good and the supreme evil , and which distinguishes sects of philosophy , is one; and these questions concerning the social life, the doubt of the Academy , the dress and food of the Cynics , the three modes of life -- the active, the contemplative , and the mixed -- these are different questions, into none of which the question of the chief good enters. And therefore, as Marcus Varro multiplied the sects to the number of 288 (or whatever larger number he chose) by introducing these four differences derived from the social life, the New Academy , the Cynics , and the threefold form of life, so, by removing these differences as having no bearing on the supreme good , and as therefore not constituting what can properly be called sects , he returns to those twelve schools which concern themselves with inquiring what that good is which makes man happy , and he shows that one of these is true , the rest false . In other words, he dismisses the distinction founded on the threefold mode of life, and so decreases the whole number by two-thirds, reducing the sects to ninety-six. Then, putting aside the Cynic peculiarities, the number decreases by a half, to forty-eight . Taking away next the distinction occasioned by the hesitancy of the New Academy , the number is again halved, and reduced