Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
method of reasoning, with regard to good and evil, to maintain that no
fool can be affected with joy, as he never can have anything good. But,
at present, my discourse proceeds upon the common received notions.
Let, then, honors, riches, pleasures, and the rest be the very good
things which they are imagined to be; yet a too elevated and exulting
joy on the possession of them is unbecoming; just as, though it might
be allowable to laugh, to giggle would be indecent. Thus, a mind
enlarged by joy is as blamable as a contraction of it by grief; and
eager longing is a sign of as much levity in desiring as immoderate joy
is in possessing; and, as those who are too dejected are said to be
effeminate, so they who are too elated with joy are properly called
volatile; and as feeling envy is a part of grief, and the being pleased
with another's misfortune is a kind of joy, both these feelings are
usually corrected by showing the wildness and insensibility of them:
and as it becomes a man to be cautious, but it is unbecoming in him to
be fearful, so to be pleased is proper, but to be joyful improper. I
have, in order that I might be the better understood, distinguished
pleasure from joy. I have already said above, that a contraction of the
mind can never be right, but that an elation of it may; for the joy of
Hector in Naevius is one thing--
'Tis joy indeed to hear my praises sung
By you, who are the theme of honor's tongue--
but that of the character in Trabea another: "The kind procuress,
allured by my money, will observe my nod, will watch my desires, and
study my will. If I but move the door with my little finger, instantly
it flies open; and if Chrysis should unexpectedly discover me, she will
run with joy to meet me, and throw herself into my arms."
Now he will tell you how excellent he thinks this:
Not even fortune herself is so fortunate.
XXXII. Any one who attends the least to the subject will be convinced
how unbecoming this joy is. And as they are very shameful who are
immoderately delighted with the enjoyment of venereal pleasures, so are
they very scandalous who lust vehemently after them. And all that which
is commonly called love (and, believe me, I can find out no other name
to call it by) is of such a trivial nature that nothing, I think, is to
be compared to it: of which Caecilius says,
I hold the man of every sense bereaved
Who grants not Love to be of Gods the chief:
Whose mighty power whate'er is good effects,
Who gives to each his beauty and defects:
Hence, health and sickness; wit and folly, hence,
The God that love and hatred doth dispense!
An excellent corrector of life this same poetry, which thinks that
love, the promoter of debauchery and vanity, should have a place in the
council of the Gods! I am speaking of comedy, which could not subsist
at all without our approving of these debaucheries. But what said that
chief of the Argonauts in tragedy?
My life I owe to honor less than love.
What, then, are we to say of this love of Medea?--what a train of
miseries did it occasion! And yet the same woman has the assurance to
say to her father, in another poet, that she had a husband
Dearer by love than ever fathers were.
XXXIII. However, we may allow the poets to trifle, in whose fables we
see Jupiter himself engaged in these debaucheries: but let us apply to
the masters of virtue--the philosophers who deny love to be anything
carnal; and in this they differ from Epicurus, who, I think, is not
much mistaken. For what is that love of friendship? How comes it that
no one is in love with a deformed young man, or a handsome old one? I
am of opinion that this love of men had its rise from the Gymnastics of
the Greeks, where these kinds of loves are admissible and permitted;
therefore Ennius spoke well:
The censure of this crime to those is due
Who naked bodies first exposed to view.
Now, supposing them chaste, which I think is hardly possible, they are
uneasy and distressed, and the more so because they contain and refrain
themselves. But, to pass over the love of women, where nature has
allowed more liberty, who can misunderstand the poets in their rape of
Ganymede, or not apprehend what Laius says, and what he desires, in
Euripides? Lastly, what have the principal poets and the most learned
men published of themselves in their poems and songs? What doth Alcaeus,
who was distinguished in his own republic for his bravery, write on the
love of young men? And as for Anacreon's poetry, it is wholly on love.
But Ibycus of Rhegium appears, from his writings, to have had this love
stronger on him than all the rest.
XXXIV. Now we see that the loves of all these writers were entirely
libidinous. There have arisen also some among us philosophers (and
Plato is at the head of them, whom Dicaearchus blames not without
reason) who have countenanced love. The Stoics, in truth, say, not only
that their wise man may be a lover, but they even define love itself as
an endeavor to originate friendship out of the appearance of beauty.
Now, provided there is any one in the nature of things without desire,
without care, without a sigh, such a one may be a lover; for he is free
from all lust: but I have nothing to say to him, as it is lust of which
I am now speaking. But should there be any love--as there certainly
is--which is but little, or perhaps not at all, short of madness, such
as his is in the Leucadia--
Should there be any God whose care I am--
it is incumbent on all the Gods to see that he enjoys his amorous
pleasure.
Wretch that I am!
Nothing is more true, and he says very appropriately,
What, are you sane, who at this rate lament?
He seems even to his friends to be out of his senses: then how tragical
he becomes!
Thy aid, divine Apollo, I implore,
And thine, dread ruler of the wat'ry store!
Oh! all ye winds, assist me!
He thinks that the whole world ought to apply itself to help his love:
he excludes Venus alone, as unkind to him.
Thy aid, O Venus, why should I invoke?
He thinks Venus too much employed in her own lust to have regard to
anything else, as if he himself had not said and committed these
shameful things from lust.
XXXV. Now, the cure for one who is affected in this manner is to show
how light, how contemptible, how very trifling he is in what he
desires; how he may turn his affections to another object, or
accomplish his desires by some other means; or else to persuade him
that he may entirely disregard it: sometimes he is to be led away to
objects of another kind, to study, business, or other different
engagements and concerns: very often the cure is effected by change of
place, as sick people, that have not recovered their strength, are
benefited by change of air. Some people think an old love may be driven
out by a new one, as one nail drives out another: but, above all
things, the man thus afflicted should be advised what madness love is:
for of all the perturbations of the mind, there is not one which is
more vehement; for (without charging it with rapes, debaucheries,
adultery, or even incest, the baseness of any of these being very
blamable; not, I say, to mention these) the very perturbation of the
mind in love is base of itself, for, to pass over all its acts of
downright madness, what weakness do not those very things which are
looked upon as indifferent argue?
Affronts and jealousies, jars, squabbles, wars,
Then peace again. The man who seeks to fix
These restless feelings, and to subjugate
Them to some regular law, is just as wise
As one who'd try to lay down rules by which
Men should go mad.[53]
Now, is not this inconstancy and mutability of mind enough to deter any
one by its own deformity? We are to demonstrate, as was said of every
perturbation, that there are no such feelings which do not consist
entirely of opinion and judgment, and are not owing to ourselves. For
if love were natural, all would be in love, and always so, and all love
the same object; nor would one be deterred by shame, another by
reflection, another by satiety.
XXXVI. Anger, too, when it disturbs the mind any time, leaves no room
to doubt its being madness: by the instigation of which we see such
contention as this between brothers:
Where was there ever impudence like thine?
Who on thy malice ever could refine?[54]
You know what follows: for abuses are thrown out by these brothers with
great bitterness in every other verse; so that you may easily know them
for the sons of Atreus, of that Atreus who invented a new punishment
for his brother:
I who his cruel heart to gall am bent,
Some new, unheard-of torment must invent.
Now, what were these inventions? Hear Thyestes:
My impious brother fain would have me eat
My children, and thus serves them up for meat.
To what length now will not anger go? even as far as madness. Therefore
we say, properly enough, that angry men have given up their power, that
is, they are out of the power of advice, reason, and understanding; for
these ought to have power over the whole mind. Now, you should put
those out of the way whom they endeavor to attack till they have
recollected themselves; but what does recollection here imply but
getting together again the dispersed parts of their mind into their
proper place? or else you must beg and entreat them, if they have the
means of revenge, to defer it to another opportunity, till their anger
cools. But the expression of cooling implies, certainly, that there was
a heat raised in their minds in opposition to reason; from which
consideration that saying of Archytas is commended, who being somewhat
provoked at his steward, "How would I have treated you," said he, "if I
had not been in a passion?"
XXXVII. Where, then, are they who say that anger has its use? Can
madness be of any use? But still it is natural. Can anything be natural
that is against reason? or how is it, if anger is natural, that one
person is more inclined to anger than another? or that the lust of
revenge should cease before it has revenged itself? or that any one
should repent of what he had done in a passion? as we see that
Alexander the king did, who could scarcely keep his hands from himself,
when he had killed his favorite Clytus, so great was his compunction.
Now who that is acquainted with these instances can doubt that this
motion of the mind is altogether in opinion and voluntary? for who can
doubt that disorders of the mind, such as covetousness and a desire of
glory, arise from a great estimation of those things by which the mind
is disordered? from whence we may understand that every perturbation of
the mind is founded in opinion. And if boldness--that is to say, a firm
assurance of mind--is a kind of knowledge and serious opinion not
hastily taken up, then diffidence is a fear of an expected and
impending evil; and if hope is an expectation of good, fear must, of
course, be an expectation of evil. Thus fear and other perturbations
are evils. Therefore, as constancy proceeds from knowledge, so does
perturbation from error. Now, they who are said to be naturally
inclined to anger, or to pity, or to envy, or to any feeling of this
kind, their minds are constitutionally, as it were, in bad health; yet
they are curable, as the disposition of Socrates is said to have been;
for when Zopyrus, who professed to know the character of every one from
his person, had heaped a great many vices on him in a public assembly,
he was laughed at by others, who could perceive no such vices in
Socrates; but Socrates kept him in countenance by declaring that such
vices were natural to him, but that he had got the better of them by