Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
knowing how it is that, notwithstanding the different opinions of
philosophers with regard to the ends of goods, virtue has still
sufficient security for the effecting of a happy life--which security,
as we are informed, Carneades used indeed to dispute against; but he
disputed as against the Stoics, whose opinions he combated with great
zeal and vehemence. I, however, shall handle the question with more
temper; for if the Stoics have rightly settled the _ends_ of goods, the
affair is at an end; for a wise man must necessarily be always happy.
But let us examine, if we can, the particular opinions of the others,
that so this excellent decision, if I may so call it, in favor of a
happy life, may be agreeable to the opinions and discipline of all.
XXX. These, then, are the opinions, as I think, that are held and
defended--the first four are simple ones: "that nothing is good but
what is honest," according to the Stoics; "nothing good but pleasure,"
as Epicurus maintains; "nothing good but a freedom from pain," as
Hieronymus[62] asserts; "nothing good but an enjoyment of the
principal, or all, or the greatest goods of nature," as Carneades
maintained against the Stoics--these are simple, the others are mixed
propositions. Then there are three kinds of goods: the greatest being
those of the mind; the next best those of the body; the third are
external goods, as the Peripatetics call them, and the Old Academics
differ very little from them. Dinomachus[63] and Callipho[64] have
coupled pleasure with honesty; but Diodorus[65] the Peripatetic has
joined indolence to honesty. These are the opinions that have some
footing; for those of Aristo,[66] Pyrrho,[67] Herillus,[68] and of some
others, are quite out of date. Now let us see what weight these men
have in them, excepting the Stoics, whose opinion I think I have
sufficiently defended; and indeed I have explained what the
Peripatetics have to say; excepting that Theophrastus, and those who
followed him, dread and abhor pain in too weak a manner. The others may
go on to exaggerate the gravity and dignity of virtue, as usual; and
then, after they have extolled it to the skies, with the usual
extravagance of good orators, it is easy to reduce the other topics to
nothing by comparison, and to hold them up to contempt. They who think
that praise deserves to be sought after, even at the expense of pain,
are not at liberty to deny those men to be happy who have obtained it.
Though they may be under some evils, yet this name of happy has a very
wide application.
XXXI. For even as trading is said to be lucrative, and farming
advantageous, not because the one never meets with any loss, nor the
other with any damage from the inclemency of the weather, but because
they succeed in general; so life may be properly called happy, not from
its being entirely made up of good things, but because it abounds with
these to a great and considerable degree. By this way of reasoning,
then, a happy life may attend virtue even to the moment of execution;
nay, may descend with her into Phalaris's bull, according to Aristotle,
Xenocrates, Speusippus, Polemon; and will not be gained over by any
allurements to forsake her. Of the same opinion will Calliphon and
Diodorus be; for they are both of them such friends to virtue as to
think that all things should be discarded and far removed that are
incompatible with it. The rest seem to be more hampered with these
doctrines, but yet they get clear of them; such as Epicurus,
Hieronymus, and whoever else thinks it worth while to defend the
deserted Carneades: for there is not one of them who does not think the
mind to be judge of those goods, and able sufficiently to instruct him
how to despise what has the appearance only of good or evil. For what
seems to you to be the case with Epicurus is the case also with
Hieronymus and Carneades, and, indeed, with all the rest of them; for
who is there who is not sufficiently prepared against death and pain? I
will begin, with your leave, with him whom we call soft and voluptuous.
What! does he seem, to you to be afraid of death or pain when he calls
the day of his death happy; and who, when he is afflicted by the
greatest pains, silences them all by recollecting arguments of his own
discovering? And this is not done in such a manner as to give room for
imagining that he talks thus wildly from some sudden impulse; but his
opinion of death is, that on the dissolution of the animal all sense is
lost; and what is deprived of sense is, as he thinks, what we have no
concern at all with. And as to pain, too, he has certain rules to
follow then: if it be great, the comfort is that it must be short; if
it be of long continuance, then it must be supportable. What, then? Do
those grandiloquent gentlemen state anything better than Epicurus in
opposition to these two things which distress us the most? And as to
other things, do not Epicurus and the rest of the philosophers seem
sufficiently prepared? Who is there who does not dread poverty? And yet
no true philosopher ever can dread it.
XXXII. But with how little is this man himself satisfied! No one has
said more on frugality. For when a man is far removed from those things
which occasion a desire of money, from love, ambition, or other daily
extravagance, why should he be fond of money, or concern himself at all
about it? Could the Scythian Anacharsis[69] disregard money, and shall
not our philosophers be able to do so? We are informed of an epistle of
his in these words: "Anacharsis to Hanno, greeting. My clothing is the
same as that with which the Scythians cover themselves; the hardness of
my feet supplies the want of shoes; the ground is my bed, hunger my
sauce, my food milk, cheese, and flesh. So you may come to me as to a
man in want of nothing. But as to those presents you take so much
pleasure in, you may dispose of them to your own citizens, or to the
immortal Gods." And almost all philosophers, of all schools, excepting
those who are warped from right reason by a vicious disposition, might
have been of this same opinion. Socrates, when on one occasion he saw a
great quantity of gold and silver carried in a procession, cried out,
"How many things are there which I do not want!" Xenocrates, when some
ambassadors from Alexander had brought him fifty talents, which was a
very large sum of money in those times, especially at Athens, carried
the ambassadors to sup in the Academy, and placed just a sufficiency
before them, without any apparatus. When they asked him, the next day,
to whom he wished the money which they had for him to be paid: "What!"
said he, "did you not perceive by our slight repast of yesterday that I
had no occasion for money?" But when he perceived that they were
somewhat dejected, he accepted of thirty minas, that he might not seem
to treat with disrespect the king's generosity. But Diogenes took a
greater liberty, like a Cynic, when Alexander asked him if he wanted
anything: "Just at present," said he, "I wish that you would stand a
little out of the line between me and the sun," for Alexander was
hindering him from sunning himself. And, indeed, this very man used to
maintain how much he surpassed the Persian king in his manner of life
and fortune; for that he himself was in want of nothing, while the
other never had enough; and that he had no inclination for those
pleasures of which the other could never get enough to satisfy himself;
and that the other could never obtain his.
XXXIII. You see, I imagine, how Epicurus has divided his kinds of
desires, not very acutely perhaps, but yet usefully: saying that they
are "partly natural and necessary; partly natural, but not necessary;
partly neither. That those which are necessary may be supplied almost
for nothing; for that the things which nature requires are easily
obtained." As to the second kind of desires, his opinion is that any
one may easily either enjoy or go without them. And with regard to the
third, since they are utterly frivolous, being neither allied to
necessity nor nature, he thinks that they should be entirely rooted
out. On this topic a great many arguments are adduced by the
Epicureans; and those pleasures which they do not despise in a body,
they disparage one by one, and seem rather for lessening the number of
them; for as to wanton pleasures, on which subject they say a great
deal, these, say they, are easy, common, and within any one's reach;
and they think that if nature requires them, they are not to be
estimated by birth, condition, or rank, but by shape, age, and person:
and that it is by no means difficult to refrain from them, should
health, duty, or reputation require it; but that pleasures of this kind
may be desirable, where they are attended with no inconvenience, but
can never be of any use. And the assertions which Epicurus makes with
respect to the whole of pleasure are such as show his opinion to be
that pleasure is always desirable, and to be pursued merely because it
is pleasure; and for the same reason pain is to be avoided, because it
is pain. So that a wise man will always adopt such a system of
counterbalancing as to do himself the justice to avoid pleasure, should
pain ensue from it in too great a proportion; and will submit to pain,
provided the effects of it are to produce a greater pleasure: so that
all pleasurable things, though the corporeal senses are the judges of
them, are still to be referred to the mind, on which account the body
rejoices while it perceives a present pleasure; but that the mind not
only perceives the present as well as the body, but foresees it while
it is coming, and even when it is past will not let it quite slip away.
So that a wise man enjoys a continual series of pleasures, uniting the
expectation of future pleasure to the recollection of what he has
already tasted. The like notions are applied by them to high living;
and the magnificence and expensiveness of entertainments are
deprecated, because nature is satisfied at a small expense.
XXXIV. For who does not see this, that an appetite is the best sauce?
When Darius, in his flight from the enemy, had drunk some water which
was muddy and tainted with dead bodies, he declared that he had never
drunk anything more pleasant; the fact was, that he had never drunk
before when he was thirsty. Nor had Ptolemy ever eaten when he was
hungry; for as he was travelling over Egypt, his company not keeping up
with him, he had some coarse bread presented him in a cottage, upon
which he said, "Nothing ever seemed to him pleasanter than that bread."
They relate, too, of Socrates, that, once when he was walking very fast
till the evening, on his being asked why he did so, his reply was that
he was purchasing an appetite by walking, that he might sup the better.
And do we not see what the Lacedaemonians provide in their Phiditia?
where the tyrant Dionysius supped, but told them he did not at all like
that black broth, which was their principal dish; on which he who
dressed it said, "It was no wonder, for it wanted seasoning." Dionysius
asked what that seasoning was; to which it was replied, "Fatigue in
hunting, sweating, a race on the banks of Eurotas, hunger and thirst,"
for these are the seasonings to the Lacedaemonian banquets. And this may
not only be conceived from the custom of men, but from the beasts, who
are satisfied with anything that is thrown before them, provided it is
not unnatural, and they seek no farther. Some entire cities, taught by
custom, delight in parsimony, as I said but just now of the
Lacedaemonians. Xenophon has given an account of the Persian diet, who
never, as he saith, use anything but cresses with their bread; not but
that, should nature require anything more agreeable, many things might