Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
(that is a kind of torture in use among the Greeks) cannot attain to a
completely happy life. He nowhere, indeed, says so absolutely; but what
he says amounts to the same thing. Can I, then, find fault with him,
after having allowed that pains of the body are evils, that the ruin of
a man's fortunes is an evil, if he should say that every good man is
not happy, when all those things which he reckons as evils may befall a
good man? The same Theophrastus is found fault with by all the books
and schools of the philosophers for commending that sentence in his
Callisthenes,
Fortune, not wisdom, rules the life of man.
They say never did philosopher assert anything so languid. They are
right, indeed, in that; but I do not apprehend anything could be more
consistent, for if there are so many good things that depend on the
body, and so many foreign to it that depend on chance and fortune, is
it inconsistent to say that fortune, which governs everything, both
what is foreign and what belongs to the body, has greater power than
counsel. Or would we rather imitate Epicurus? who is often excellent in
many things which he speaks, but quite indifferent how consistent he
may be, or how much to the purpose he is speaking. He commends spare
diet, and in that he speaks as a philosopher; but it is for Socrates or
Antisthenes to say so, and not for one who confines all good to
pleasure. He denies that any one can live pleasantly unless he lives
honestly, wisely, and justly. Nothing is more dignified than this
assertion, nothing more becoming a philosopher, had he not measured
this very expression of living honestly, justly, and wisely by
pleasure. What could be better than to assert that fortune interferes
but little with a wise man? But does he talk thus, who, after he has
said that pain is the greatest evil, or the only evil, might himself be
afflicted with the sharpest pains all over his body, even at the time
he is vaunting himself the most against fortune? And this very thing,
too, Metrodorus has said, but in better language: "I have anticipated
you, Fortune; I have caught you, and cut off every access, so that you
cannot possibly reach me." This would be excellent in the mouth of
Aristo the Chian, or Zeno the Stoic, who held nothing to be an evil but
what was base; but for you, Metrodorus, to anticipate the approaches of
fortune, who confine all that is good to your bowels and marrow--for
you to say so, who define the chief good by a strong constitution of
body, and well-assured hope of its continuance--for you to cut off
every access of fortune! Why, you may instantly be deprived of that
good. Yet the simple are taken with these propositions, and a vast
crowd is led away by such sentences to become their followers.
X. But it is the duty of one who would argue accurately to consider not
what is said, but what is said consistently. As in that very opinion
which we have adopted in this discussion, namely, that every good man
is always happy, it is clear what I mean by good men: I call those both
wise and good men who are provided and adorned with every virtue. Let
us see, then, who are to be called happy. I imagine, indeed, that those
men are to be called so who are possessed of good without any alloy of
evil; nor is there any other notion connected with the word that
expresses happiness but an absolute enjoyment of good without any evil.
Virtue cannot attain this, if there is anything good besides itself.
For a crowd of evils would present themselves, if we were to allow
poverty, obscurity, humility, solitude, the loss of friends, acute
pains of the body, the loss of health, weakness, blindness, the ruin of
one's country, banishment, slavery, to be evils; for a wise man may be
afflicted by all these evils, numerous and important as they are, and
many others also may be added, for they are brought on by chance, which
may attack a wise man; but if these things are evils, who can maintain
that a wise man is always happy when all these evils may light on him
at the same time? I therefore do not easily agree with my friend
Brutus, nor with our common masters, nor those ancient ones, Aristotle,
Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemon, who reckon all that I have mentioned
above as evils, and yet they say that a wise man is always happy; nor
can I allow them, because they are charmed with this beautiful and
illustrious title, which would very well become Pythagoras, Socrates,
and Plato, to persuade my mind that strength, health, beauty, riches,
honors, power, with the beauty of which they are ravished, are
contemptible, and that all those things which are the opposites of
these are not to be regarded. Then might they declare openly, with a
loud voice, that neither the attacks of fortune, nor the opinion of the
multitude, nor pain, nor poverty, occasions them any apprehensions; and
that they have everything within themselves, and that there is nothing
whatever which they consider as good but what is within their own
power. Nor can I by any means allow the same person who falls into the
vulgar opinion of good and evil to make use of these expressions, which
can only become a great and exalted man. Struck with which glory, up
starts Epicurus, who, with submission to the Gods, thinks a wise man
always happy. He is much charmed with the dignity of this opinion, but
he never would have owned that, had he attended to himself; for what is
there more inconsistent than for one who could say that pain was the
greatest or the only evil to think also that a wise man can possibly
say in the midst of his torture, How sweet is this! We are not,
therefore, to form our judgment of philosophers from detached
sentences, but from their consistency with themselves, and their
ordinary manner of talking.
XI. _A._ You compel me to be of your opinion; but have a care that you
are not inconsistent yourself.
_M._ In what respect?
_A._ Because I have lately read your fourth book on Good and Evil: and
in that you appeared to me, while disputing against Cato, to be
endeavoring to show, which in my opinion means to prove, that Zeno and
the Peripatetics differ only about some new words; but if we allow
that, what reason can there be, if it follows from the arguments of
Zeno that virtue contains all that is necessary to a happy life, that
the Peripatetics should not be at liberty to say the same? For, in my
opinion, regard should be had to the thing, not to words.
_M._ What! you would convict me from my own words, and bring against me
what I had said or written elsewhere. You may act in that manner with
those who dispute by established rules. We live from hand to mouth, and
say anything that strikes our mind with probability, so that we are the
only people who are really at liberty. But, since I just now spoke of
consistency, I do not think the inquiry in this place is, if the
opinion of Zeno and his pupil Aristo be true that nothing is good but
what is honorable; but, admitting that, then, whether the whole of a
happy life can be rested on virtue alone. Wherefore, if we certainly
grant Brutus this, that a wise man is always happy, how consistent he
is, is his own business; for who, indeed, is more worthy than himself
of the glory of that opinion? Still, we may maintain that such a man is
more happy than any one else.
XII. Though Zeno the Cittiaean, a stranger and an inconsiderable coiner
of words, appears to have insinuated himself into the old philosophy;
still, the prevalence of this opinion is due to the authority of Plato,
who often makes use of this expression, "That nothing but virtue can be
entitled to the name of good," agreeably to what Socrates says in
Plato's Gorgias; for it is there related that when some one asked him
if he did not think Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, who was then looked
upon as a most fortunate person, a very happy man, "I do not know,"
replied he, "for I never conversed with him." "What! is there no other
way you can know it by?" "None at all." "You cannot, then, pronounce of
the great king of the Persians whether he is happy or not?" "How can I,
when I do not know how learned or how good a man he is?" "What! do you
imagine that a happy life depends on that?" "My opinion entirely is,
that good men are happy, and the wicked miserable." "Is Archelaus,
then, miserable?" "Certainly, if unjust." Now, does it not appear to
you that he is here placing the whole of a happy life in virtue alone?
But what does the same man say in his funeral oration? "For," saith he,
"whoever has everything that relates to a happy life so entirely
dependent on himself as not to be connected with the good or bad
fortune of another, and not to be affected by, or made in any degree
uncertain by, what befalls another; and whoever is such a one has
acquired the best rule of living; he is that moderate, that brave, that
wise man, who submits to the gain and loss of everything, and
especially of his children, and obeys that old precept; for he will
never be too joyful or too sad, because he depends entirely upon
himself."
XIII. From Plato, therefore, all my discourse shall be deduced, as if
from some sacred and hallowed fountain. Whence can I, then, more
properly begin than from Nature, the parent of all? For whatsoever she
produces (I am not speaking only of animals, but even of those things
which have sprung from the earth in such a manner as to rest on their
own roots) she designed it to be perfect in its respective kind. So
that among trees and vines, and those lower plants and trees which
cannot advance themselves high above the earth, some are evergreen,
others are stripped of their leaves in winter, and, warmed by the
spring season, put them out afresh, and there are none of them but what
are so quickened by a certain interior motion, and their own seeds
enclosed in every one, so as to yield flowers, fruit, or berries, that
all may have every perfection that belongs to it; provided no violence
prevents it. But the force of Nature itself may be more easily
discovered in animals, as she has bestowed sense on them. For some
animals she has taught to swim, and designed to be inhabitants of the
water; others she has enabled to fly, and has willed that they should
enjoy the boundless air; some others she has made to creep, others to
walk. Again, of these very animals, some are solitary, some gregarious,
some wild, others tame, some hidden and buried beneath the earth, and
every one of these maintains the law of nature, confining itself to
what was bestowed on it, and unable to change its manner of life. And
as every animal has from nature something that distinguishes it, which
every one maintains and never quits; so man has something far more
excellent, though everything is said to be excellent by comparison. But
the human mind, being derived from the divine reason, can be compared
with nothing but with the Deity itself, if I may be allowed the
expression. This, then, if it is improved, and when its perception is
so preserved as not to be blinded by errors, becomes a perfect
understanding, that is to say, absolute reason, which is the very same
as virtue. And if everything is happy which wants nothing, and is
complete and perfect in its kind, and that is the peculiar lot of
virtue, certainly all who are possessed of virtue are happy. And in
this I agree with Brutus, and also with Aristotle, Xenocrates,
Speusippus, Polemon.
XIV. To me such are the only men who appear completely happy; for what
can he want to a complete happy life who relies on his own good
qualities, or how can he be happy who does not rely on them? But he who
makes a threefold division of goods must necessarily be diffident, for
how can he depend on having a sound body, or that his fortune shall
continue? But no one can be happy without an immovable, fixed, and