Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
of it depends not merely on time, but on the daily consideration of it.
For if the cause continues the same, and the man be the same, how can
there be any alteration in the grief, if there is no change in what
occasioned the grief, nor in him who grieves? Therefore it is from
daily reflecting that there is no real evil in the circumstance for
which you grieve, and not from the length of time, that you procure a
remedy for your grief.
XXXI. Here some people talk of moderate grief; but if such be natural,
what occasion is there for consolation? for nature herself will
determine, the measure of it: but if it depends on and is caused by
opinion, the whole opinion should be destroyed. I think that it has
been sufficiently said, that grief arises from an opinion of some
present evil, which includes this belief, that it is incumbent on us to
grieve. To this definition Zeno has added, very justly, that the
opinion of this present evil should be recent. Now this word recent
they explain thus: those are not the only recent things which happened
a little while ago; but as long as there shall be any force, or vigor,
or freshness in that imagined evil, so long it is entitled to the name
of recent. Take the case of Artemisia, the wife of Mausolus, King of
Caria, who made that noble sepulchre at Halicarnassus; while she lived,
she lived in grief, and died of it, being worn out by it, for that
opinion was always recent with her: but you cannot call that recent
which has already begun to decay through time. Now the duty of a
comforter is, to remove grief entirely, to quiet it, or draw it off as
much as you can, or else to keep it under, and prevent its spreading
any further, and to divert one's attention to other matters. There are
some who think, with Cleanthes, that the only duty of a comforter is to
prove that what one is lamenting is by no means an evil. Others, as the
Peripatetics, prefer urging that the evil is not great. Others, with
Epicurus, seek to divert your attention from the evil to good: some
think it sufficient to show that nothing has happened but what you had
reason to expect; and this is the practice of the Cyrenaics. But
Chrysippus thinks that the main thing in comforting is, to remove the
opinion from the person who is grieving, that to grieve is his bounden
duty. There are others who bring together all these various kinds of
consolations, for people are differently affected; as I have done
myself in my book on Consolation; for as my own mind was much
disordered, I have attempted in that book to discover every method of
cure. But the proper season is as much to be attended to in the cure of
the mind as of the body; as Prometheus in AEschylus, on its being said
to him,
I think, Prometheus, you this tenet hold,
That all men's reason should their rage control?
answers,
Yes, when one reason properly applies;
Ill-timed advice will make the storm but rise.[48]
XXXII. But the principal medicine to be applied in consolation is, to
maintain either that it is no evil at all, or a very inconsiderable
one: the next best to that is, to speak of the common condition of
life, having a view, if possible, to the state of the person whom you
comfort particularly. The third is, that it is folly to wear one's self
out with grief which can avail nothing. For the comfort of Cleanthes is
suitable only for a wise man, who is in no need of any comfort at all;
for could you persuade one in grief that nothing is an evil but what is
base, you would not only cure him of grief, but folly. But the time for
such precepts is not well chosen. Besides, Cleanthes does not seem to
me sufficiently aware that affliction may very often proceed from that
very thing which he himself allows to be the greatest misfortune. For
what shall we say? When Socrates had convinced Alcibiades, as we are
told, that he had no distinctive qualifications as a man different from
other people, and that, in fact, there was no difference between him,
though a man of the highest rank, and a porter; and when Alcibiades
became uneasy at this, and entreated Socrates, with tears in his eyes,
to make him a man of virtue, and to cure him of that mean position;
what shall we say to this, Cleanthes? Was there no evil in what
afflicted Alcibiades thus? What strange things does Lycon say? who,
making light of grief, says that it arises from trifles, from things
that affect our fortune or bodies, not from the evils of the mind.
What, then? did not the grief of Alcibiades proceed from the defects
and evils of the mind? I have already said enough of Epicurus's
consolation.
XXXIII. Nor is that consolation much to be relied on, though it is
frequently practised, and sometimes has some effect, namely, "That you
are not alone in this." It has its effect, as I said, but not always,
nor with every person, for some reject it; but much depends on the
application of it; for you ought rather to show, not how men in general
have been affected with such evils, but how men of sense have borne
them. As to Chrysippus's method, it is certainly founded in truth; but
it is difficult to apply it in time of distress. It is a work of no
small difficulty to persuade a person in affliction that he grieves
merely because he thinks it right so to do. Certainly, then, as in
pleadings we do not state all cases alike (if I may adopt the language
of lawyers for a moment), but adapt what we have to say to the time, to
the nature of the subject under debate, and to the person; so, too, in
alleviating grief, regard should be had to what kind of cure the party
to be comforted can admit of. But, somehow or other, we have rambled
from what you originally proposed. For your question was concerning a
wise man, with whom nothing can have the appearance of evil that is not
dishonorable; or at least, anything else would seem so small an evil
that by his wisdom he would so overmatch it as to make it wholly
disappear; and such a man makes no addition to his grief through
opinion, and never conceives it right to torment himself above measure,
nor to wear himself out with grief, which is the meanest thing
imaginable. Reason, however, it seems, has demonstrated (though it was
not directly our object at the moment to inquire whether anything can
be called an evil except what is base) that it is in our power to
discern that all the evil which there is in affliction has nothing
natural in it, but is contracted by our own voluntary judgment of it,
and the error of opinion.
XXXIV. But the kind of affliction of which I have treated is that which
is the greatest; in order that when we have once got rid of that, it
may appear a business of less consequence to look after remedies for
the others. For there are certain things which are usually said about
poverty; and also certain statements ordinarily applied to retired and
undistinguished life. There are particular treatises on banishment, on
the ruin of one's country, on slavery, on weakness, on blindness, and
on every incident that can come under the name of an evil. The Greeks
divide these into different treatises and distinct books; but they do
it for the sake of employment: not but that all such discussions are
full of entertainment. And yet, as physicians, in curing the whole
body, attend to even the most insignificant part of the body which is
at all disordered, so does philosophy act, after it has removed grief
in general; still, if any other deficiency exists--should poverty bite,
should ignominy sting, should banishment bring a dark cloud over us, or
should any of those things which I have just mentioned appear, there is
for each its appropriate consolation, which you shall hear whenever you
please. But we must have recourse again to the same original principle,
that a wise man is free from all sorrow, because it is vain, because it
answers no purpose, because it is not founded in nature, but on opinion
and prejudice, and is engendered by a kind of invitation to grieve,
when once men have imagined that it is their duty to do so. When, then,
we have subtracted what is altogether voluntary, that mournful
uneasiness will be removed; yet some little anxiety, some slight
pricking, will still remain. They may indeed call this natural,
provided they give it not that horrid, solemn, melancholy name of
grief, which can by no means consist with wisdom. But how various and
how bitter are the roots of grief! Whatever they are, I propose, after
having felled the trunk, to destroy them all; even if it should be
necessary, by allotting a separate dissertation to each, for I have
leisure enough to do so, whatever time it may take up. But the
principle of every uneasiness is the same, though they may appear under
different names. For envy is an uneasiness; so are emulation,
detraction, anguish, sorrow, sadness, tribulation, lamentation,
vexation, grief, trouble, affliction, and despair. The Stoics define
all these different feelings; and all those words which I have
mentioned belong to different things, and do not, as they seem, express
the same ideas; but they are to a certain extent distinct, as I shall
make appear perhaps in another place. These are those fibres of the
roots which, as I said at first, must be traced back and cut off and
destroyed, so that not one shall remain. You say it is a great and
difficult undertaking: who denies it? But what is there of any
excellency which has not its difficulty? Yet philosophy undertakes to
effect it, provided we admit its superintendence. But enough of this.
The other books, whenever you please, shall be ready for you here or
anywhere else.
* * * * *
BOOK IV.
On other perturbations of the mind.
I. I have often wondered, Brutus, on many occasions, at the ingenuity
and virtues of our countrymen; but nothing has surprised me more than
their development in those studies, which, though they came somewhat
late to us, have been transported into this city from Greece. For the
system of auspices, and religious ceremonies, and courts of justice,
and appeals to the people, the senate, the establishment of an army of
cavalry and infantry, and the whole military discipline, were
instituted as early as the foundation of the city by royal authority,
partly too by laws, not without the assistance of the Gods. Then with
what a surprising and incredible progress did our ancestors advance
towards all kind of excellence, when once the republic was freed from
the regal power! Not that this is a proper occasion to treat of the
manners and customs of our ancestors, or of the discipline and
constitution of the city; for I have elsewhere, particularly in the six
books I wrote on the Republic, given a sufficiently accurate account of
them. But while I am on this subject, and considering the study of
philosophy, I meet with many reasons to imagine that those studies were
brought to us from abroad, and not merely imported, but preserved and
improved; for they had Pythagoras, a man of consummate wisdom and
nobleness of character, in a manner, before their eyes, who was in
Italy at the time that Lucius Brutus, the illustrious founder of your
nobility, delivered his country from tyranny. As the doctrine of
Pythagoras spread itself on all sides, it seems probable to me that it
reached this city; and this is not only probable of itself, but it does
really appear to have been the case from many remains of it. For who
can imagine that, when it flourished so much in that part of Italy
which was called Magna Graecia, and in some of the largest and most
powerful cities, in which, first the name of Pythagoras, and then that
of those men who were afterward his followers, was in so high esteem;
who can imagine, I say, that our people could shut their ears to what