Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
self-control, and a hidden love of evil: for it is dangerous for
one who seeks after evil instead of good to attain his object. As
we hunt wild beasts with toil and peril, and even when they are
caught find them an anxious possession, for they often tear their
keepers to pieces, even so are great pleasures: they turn out to
be great evils and take their owners prisoner. The more numerous
and the greater they are, the more inferior and the slave of more
masters does that man become whom the vulgar call a happy man. I
may even press this analogy further: as the man who tracks wild
animals to their lairs, and who sets great store on—
“Seeking with snares the wandering brutes to noose,”
and
“Making their hounds the spacious glade surround,”
that he may follow their tracks, neglects far more desirable things,
and leaves many duties unfulfilled, so he who pursues pleasure
postpones everything to it, disregards that first essential, liberty,
and sacrifices it to his belly; nor does he buy pleasure for himself,
but sells himself to pleasure.
{221}
XV. “But what,” asks our adversary, “is there to hinder virtue and
pleasure being combined together, and a highest good being thus
formed, so that honour and pleasure may be the same thing?” Because
nothing except what is honourable can form a part of honour, and
the highest good would lose its purity if it were to see within
itself anything unlike its own better part. Even the joy which
arises from virtue, although it be a good thing, yet is not a part
of absolute good, any more than cheerfulness or peace of mind, which
are indeed good things, but which merely follow the highest good,
and do not contribute to its perfection, although they are generated
by the noblest causes. Whoever on the other hand forms an alliance,
and that, too, a one-sided one, between virtue and pleasure, clogs
whatever strength the one may possess by the weakness of the other,
and sends liberty under the yoke, for liberty can only remain
unconquered as long as she knows nothing more valuable than herself:
for he begins to need the help of Fortune, which is the most utter
slavery: his life becomes anxious, full of suspicion, timorous,
fearful of accidents, waiting in agony for critical moments of time.
You do not afford virtue a solid immoveable base if you bid it stand
on what is unsteady: and what can be so unsteady as dependence on
mere chance, and the vicissitudes of the body and of those things
which act on the body? How can such a man obey God and receive
everything which comes to pass in a cheerful spirit, never complaining
of fate, and putting a good construction upon everything that befalls
him, if he be agitated by the petty pin-pricks of pleasures and
pains? A man cannot be a good protector of his country, a good
avenger of her wrongs, or a good defender of his friends, if he be
inclined to pleasures. Let the highest good, then, rise to that
height from whence no force can dislodge it, whither neither pain
can ascend, nor hope, nor fear, nor anything else that can {222}
impair the authority of the “highest good.” Thither virtue alone
can make her way: by her aid that hill must be climbed: she will
bravely stand her ground and endure whatever may befal her not only
resignedly, but even willingly: she will know that all hard times
come in obedience to natural laws, and like a good soldier she will
bear wounds, count scars, and when transfixed and dying will yet
adore the general for whom she falls: she will bear in mind the old
maxim “Follow God.” On the other hand, he who grumbles and complains
and bemoans himself is nevertheless forcibly obliged to obey orders,
and is dragged away, however much against his will, to carry them
out: yet what madness is it to be dragged rather than to follow?
as great, by Hercules, as it is folly and ignorance of one’s true
position to grieve because one has not got something or because
something has caused us rough treatment, or to be surprised or
indignant at those ills which befall good men as well as bad ones,
I mean diseases, deaths, illnesses, and the other cross accidents
of human life. Let us bear with magnanimity whatever the system of
the universe makes it needful for us to bear: we are all bound by
this oath: “To bear the ills of mortal life, and to submit with a
good grace to what we cannot avoid.” We have been born into a
monarchy: our liberty is to obey God.
XVI. True happiness, therefore, consists in virtue: and what will
this virtue bid you do? Not to think anything bad or good which is
connected neither with virtue nor with wickedness: and in the next
place, both to endure unmoved the assaults of evil, and, as far as
is right, to form a god out of what is good. What reward does she
promise you for this campaign? an enormous one, and one that raises
you to the level of the gods: you shall be subject to no restraint
and to no want; you shall be free, safe, unhurt; you shall fail in
nothing that you attempt; you shall be debarred from nothing;
everything shall turn out according {223} to your wish; no misfortune
shall befal you; nothing shall happen to you except what you expect
and hope for. “What! does virtue alone suffice to make you happy?”
why, of course, consummate and god-like virtue such as this not
only suffices, but more than suffices: for when a man is placed
beyond the reach of any desire, what can he possibly lack? if all
that he needs is concentred in himself, how can he require anything
from without? He, however, who is only on the road to virtue,
although he may have made great progress along it, nevertheless
needs some favour from fortune while he is still struggling among
mere human interests, while he is untying that knot, and all the
bonds which bind him to mortality. What, then, is the difference
between them? it is that some are tied more or less tightly by these
bonds, and some have even tied themselves with them as well; whereas
he who has made progress towards the upper regions and raised himself
upwards drags a looser chain, and though not yet free, is yet as
good as free.
XVII. If, therefore, any one of those dogs who yelp at philosophy
were to say, as they are wont to do, “Why, then, do you talk so
much more bravely than you live? why do you check your words in the
presence of your superiors, and consider money to be a necessary
implement? why are you disturbed when you sustain losses, and weep
on hearing of the death of your wife or your friend? why do you pay
regard to common rumour, and feel annoyed by calumnious gossip? why
is your estate more elaborately kept than its natural use requires?
why do you not dine according to your own maxims? why is your
furniture smarter than it need be? why do you drink wine that is
older than yourself? why are your grounds laid out? why do you plant
trees which afford nothing except shade? why does your wife wear
in her ears the price of a rich man’s house? why are your children
at school dressed in costly {224} clothes? why is it a science to
wait upon you at table? why is your silver plate not set down anyhow
or at random, but skilfully disposed in regular order, with a
superintendent to preside over the carving of the viands?” Add to
this, if you like, the questions “Why do you own property beyond
the seas? why do you own more than you know of? it is a shame to
you not to know your slaves by sight: for you must be very neglectful
of them if you only own a few, or very extravagant if you have too
many for your memory to retain.” I will add some reproaches afterwards,
and will bring more accusations against myself than you think of:
for the present I will make you the following answer. “I am not a
wise man, and I will not be one in order to feed your spite: so do
not require me to be on a level with the best of men, but merely
to be better than the worst: I am satisfied, if every day I take
away something from my vices and correct my faults. I have not
arrived at perfect soundness of mind, indeed, I never shall arrive
at it: I compound palliatives rather than remedies for my gout, and
am satisfied if it comes at rarer intervals and does not shoot so
painfully. Compared with your feet, which are lame, I am a racer.”
I make this speech, not on my own behalf, for I am steeped in vices
of every kind, but on behalf of one who has made some progress in
virtue.
XVIII. “You talk one way,” objects our adversary, “and live another.”
You most spiteful of creatures, you who always show the bitterest
hatred to the best of men, this reproach was flung at Plato, at
Epicurus, at Zeno: for all these declared how they ought to live,
not how they did live. I speak of virtue, not of myself, and when
I blame vices, I blame my own first of all: when I have the power,
I shall live as I ought to do: spite, however deeply steeped in
venom, shall not keep me back from what is best: that poison itself
with which you bespatter others, with which you choke yourselves,
shall not hinder me from continuing {225} to praise that life which
I do not, indeed, lead, but which I know I ought to lead, from
loving virtue and from following after her, albeit a long way behind
her and with halting gait. Am I to expect that evil speaking will
respect anything, seeing that it respected neither Rutilius nor
Cato? Will any one care about being thought too rich by men for
whom Diogenes the Cynic was not poor enough? That most energetic
philosopher fought against all the desires of the body, and was
poorer even than the other Cynics, in that besides haying given up
possessing anything he had also given up asking for anything: yet
they reproached him for not being sufficiently in want: as though
forsooth it were poverty, not virtue, of which he professed knowledge.
XIX. They say that Diodorus, the Epicurean philosopher, who within
these last few days put an end to his life with his own hand, did
not act according to the precepts of Epicurus, in cutting his throat:
some choose to regard this act as the result of madness, others of
recklessness; he, meanwhile, happy and filled with the consciousness
of his own goodness, has borne testimony to himself by his manner
of departing from life, has commended the repose of a life spent
at anchor in a safe harbour, and has said what you do not like to
hear, because you too ought to do it:
“I’ve lived, I’ve run the race which Fortune set me.”
You argue about the life and death of another, and yelp at the name
of men whom some peculiarly noble quality has rendered great, just
as tiny curs do at the approach of strangers: for it is to your
interest that no one should appear to be good, as if virtue in
another were a reproach to all your crimes. You enviously compare
the glories of others with your own dirty actions, and do not
understand how greatly to your disadvantage it is to venture to do
so: for if they who follow after virtue be greedy, lustful, {226}
and fond of power, what must you be, who hate the very name of
virtue? You say that no one acts up to his professions, or lives
according to the standard which he sets up in his discourses: what
wonder, seeing that the words which they speak are brave, gigantic,
and able to weather all the storms which wreck mankind, whereas
they themselves are struggling to tear themselves away from crosses
into which each one of you is driving his own nail. Yet men who are
crucified hang from one single pole, but these who punish themselves
are divided between as many crosses as they have lusts, but yet are
given to evil speaking, and are so magnificent in their contempt
of the vices of others that I should suppose that they had none of
their own, were it not that some criminals when on the gibbet spit
upon the spectators.
XX. “Philosophers do not carry into effect all that they teach.”