Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
victuals for three or four days; but take away a wrestler's provisions
but for one day, and he will implore the aid of Jupiter Olympius, the
very God for whom he exercises himself: he will cry out that he cannot
endure it. Great is the force of custom! Sportsmen will continue whole
nights in the snow; they will bear being almost frozen upon the
mountains. From practice boxers will not so much as utter a groan,
however bruised by the cestus. But what do you think of those to whom a
victory in the Olympic games seemed almost on a par with the ancient
consulships of the Roman people? What wounds will the gladiators bear,
who are either barbarians, or the very dregs of mankind! How do they,
who are trained to it, prefer being wounded to basely avoiding it! How
often do they prove that they consider nothing but the giving
satisfaction to their masters or to the people! for when covered with
wounds, they send to their masters to learn their pleasure: if it is
their will, they are ready to lie down and die. What gladiator, of even
moderate reputation, ever gave a sigh? who ever turned pale? who ever
disgraced himself either in the actual combat, or even when about to
die? who that had been defeated ever drew in his neck to avoid the
stroke of death? So great is the force of practice, deliberation, and
custom! Shall this, then, be done by
A Samnite rascal, worthy of his trade;
and shall a man born to glory have so soft a part in his soul as not to
be able to fortify it by reason and reflection? The sight of the
gladiators' combats is by some looked on as cruel and inhuman, and I do
not know, as it is at present managed, but it may be so; but when the
guilty fought, we might receive by our ears perhaps (but certainly by
our eyes we could not) better training to harden us against pain and
death.
XVIII. I have now said enough about the effects of exercise, custom,
and careful meditation. Proceed we now to consider the force of reason,
unless you have something to reply to what has been said.
_A._ That I should interrupt you! By no means; for your discourse has
brought me over to your opinion. Let the Stoics, then, think it their
business to determine whether pain be an evil or not, while they
endeavor to show by some strained and trifling conclusions, which are
nothing to the purpose, that pain is no evil. My opinion is, that
whatever it is, it is not so great as it appears; and I say, that men
are influenced to a great extent by some false representations and
appearance of it, and that all which is really felt is capable of being
endured. Where shall I begin, then? Shall I superficially go over what
I said before, that my discourse may have a greater scope?
This, then, is agreed upon by all, and not only by learned men, but
also by the unlearned, that it becomes the brave and magnanimous--those
that have patience and a spirit above this world--not to give way to
pain. Nor has there ever been any one who did not commend a man who
bore it in this manner. That, then, which is expected from a brave man,
and is commended when it is seen, it must surely be base in any one to
be afraid of at its approach, or not to bear when it comes. But I would
have you consider whether, as all the right affections of the soul are
classed under the name of virtues, the truth is that this is not
properly the name of them all, but that they all have their name from
that leading virtue which is superior to all the rest: for the name
"virtue" comes from _vir_, a man, and courage is the peculiar
distinction of a man: and this virtue has two principal duties, to
despise death and pain. We must, then, exert these, if we would be men
of virtue, or, rather, if we would be men, because virtue (_virtus_)
takes its very name from _vir_, man.
XIX. You may inquire, perhaps, how? And such an inquiry is not amiss,
for philosophy is ready with her assistance. Epicurus offers himself to
you, a man far from a bad--or, I should rather say, a very good man: he
advises no more than he knows. "Despise pain," says he. Who is it saith
this? Is it the same man who calls pain the greatest of all evils? It
is not, indeed, very consistent in him. Let us hear what he says: "If
the pain is excessive, it must needs be short." I must have that over
again, for I do not apprehend what you mean exactly by "excessive" or
"short." That is excessive than which nothing can be greater; that is
short than which nothing is shorter. I do not regard the greatness of
any pain from which, by reason of the shortness of its continuance, I
shall be delivered almost before it reaches me. But if the pain be as
great as that of Philoctetes, it will appear great indeed to me, but
yet not the greatest that I am capable of bearing; for the pain is
confined to my foot. But my eye may pain me, I may have a pain in the
head, or sides, or lungs, or in every part of me. It is far, then, from
being excessive. Therefore, says he, pain of a long continuance has
more pleasure in it than uneasiness. Now, I cannot bring myself to say
so great a man talks nonsense; but I imagine he is laughing at us. My
opinion is that the greatest pain (I say the greatest, though it may be
ten atoms less than another) is not therefore short, because acute. I
could name to you a great many good men who have been tormented many
years with the acutest pains of the gout. But this cautious man doth
not determine the measure of that greatness or of duration, so as to
enable us to know what he calls excessive with regard to pain, or short
with respect to its continuance. Let us pass him by, then, as one who
says just nothing at all; and let us force him to acknowledge,
notwithstanding he might behave himself somewhat boldly under his colic
and his strangury, that no remedy against pain can be had from him who
looks on pain as the greatest of all evils. We must apply, then, for
relief elsewhere, and nowhere better (if we seek for what is most
consistent with itself) than to those who place the chief good in
honesty, and the greatest evil in infamy. You dare not so much as
groan, or discover the least uneasiness in their company, for virtue
itself speaks to you through them.
XX. Will you, when you may observe children at Lacedaemon, and young men
at Olympia, and barbarians in the amphitheatre, receive the severest
wounds, and bear them without once opening their mouths--will you, I
say, if any pain should by chance attack you, cry out like a woman?
Will you not rather bear it with resolution and constancy? and not cry,
It is intolerable; nature cannot bear it! I hear what you say: Boys
bear this because they are led thereto by glory; some bear it through
shame, many through fear, and yet are we afraid that nature cannot bear
what is borne by many, and in such different circumstances? Nature not
only bears it, but challenges it, for there is nothing with her
preferable, nothing which she desires more than credit, and reputation,
and praise, and honor, and glory. I choose here to describe this one
thing under many names, and I have used many that you may have the
clearer idea of it; for what I mean to say is, that whatever is
desirable of itself, proceeding from virtue, or placed in virtue, and
commendable on its own account (which I would rather agree to call the
only good than deny it to be the chief good) is what men should prefer
above all things. And as we declare this to be the case with respect to
honesty, so we speak in the contrary manner of infamy; nothing is so
odious, so detestable, nothing so unworthy of a man. And if you are
thoroughly convinced of this (for, at the beginning of this discourse,
you allowed that there appeared to you more evil in infamy than in
pain), it follows that you ought to have the command over yourself,
though I scarcely know how this expression may seem an accurate one,
which appears to represent man as made up of two natures, so that one
should be in command and the other be subject to it.
XXI. Yet this division does not proceed from ignorance; for the soul
admits of a twofold division, one of which partakes of reason, the
other is without it. When, therefore, we are ordered to give a law to
ourselves, the meaning is, that reason should restrain our rashness.
There is in the soul of every man something naturally soft, low,
enervated in a manner, and languid. Were there nothing besides this,
men would be the greatest of monsters; but there is present to every
man reason, which presides over and gives laws to all; which, by
improving itself, and making continual advances, becomes perfect
virtue. It behooves a man, then, to take care that reason shall have
the command over that part which is bound to practise obedience. In
what manner? you will say. Why, as a master has over his slave, a
general over his army, a father over his son. If that part of the soul
which I have called soft behaves disgracefully, if it gives itself up
to lamentations and womanish tears, then let it be restrained, and
committed to the care of friends and relations, for we often see those
persons brought to order by shame whom no reasons can influence.
Therefore, we should confine those feelings, like our servants, in safe
custody, and almost with chains. But those who have more resolution,
and yet are not utterly immovable, we should encourage with our
exhortations, as we would good soldiers, to recollect themselves, and
maintain their honor. That wisest man of all Greece, in the Niptrae,
does not lament too much over his wounds, or, rather, he is moderate in
his grief:
Move slow, my friends; your hasty speed refrain,
Lest by your motion you increase my pain.
Pacuvius is better in this than Sophocles, for in the one Ulysses
bemoans his wounds too vehemently; for the very people who carried him
after he was wounded, though his grief was moderate, yet, considering
the dignity of the man, did not scruple to say,
And thou, Ulysses, long to war inured,
Thy wounds, though great, too feebly hast endured.
The wise poet understood that custom was no contemptible instructor how
to bear pain. But the same hero complains with more decency, though in
great pain:
Assist, support me, never leave me so;
Unbind my wounds, oh! execrable woe!
He begins to give way, but instantly checks himself:
Away! begone! but cover first the sore;
For your rude hands but make my pains the more.
Do you observe how he constrains himself? not that his bodily pains
were less, but because he checks the anguish of his mind. Therefore, in
the conclusion of the Niptrae, he blames others, even when he himself is
dying:
Complaints of fortune may become the man,
None but a woman will thus weeping stand.
And so that soft place in his soul obeys his reason, just as an abashed
soldier does his stern commander.
XXII. The man, then, in whom absolute wisdom exists (such a man,
indeed, we have never as yet seen, but the philosophers have described
in their writings what sort of man he will be, if he should exist);
such a man, or at least that perfect and absolute reason which exists
in him, will have the same authority over the inferior part as a good
parent has over his dutiful children: he will bring it to obey his nod
without any trouble or difficulty. He will rouse himself, prepare and
arm himself, to oppose pain as he would an enemy. If you inquire what
arms he will provide himself with, they will be contention,
encouragement, discourse with himself. He will say thus to himself:
Take care that you are guilty of nothing base, languid, or unmanly. He
will turn over in his mind all the different kinds of honor. Zeno of
Elea will occur to him, who suffered everything rather than betray his
confederates in the design of putting an end to the tyranny. He will