Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
when he said, “What are you thinking of now, Kanus? or what are
your ideas?” “I have decided,” answered Kanus, “at that most
swiftly-passing moment of all to watch whether the spirit will be
conscious of the act of leaving the body.” He promised, too, that
if he made any discoveries, he would come round to his friends and
tell them what the condition of the souls of the departed might be.
Here was peace in the very midst of the storm: here was a soul
worthy of eternal life, which used its own fate as a proof of truth,
which when at the last step of life experimented upon his fleeting
breath, and did not merely continue to learn until he died, but
learned something even from death itself. No man has carried the
life of a philosopher further. I will not hastily leave the subject
of a great man, and one who deserves to be spoken of with respect:
I will hand thee down to all posterity, thou most noble heart, chief
among the many victims of Gaius.
XV. Yet we gain nothing by getting rid of all personal causes of
sadness, for sometimes we are possessed by hatred of the human race.
When you reflect how rare simplicity is, how unknown innocence, how
seldom faith is kept, unless it be to our advantage, when you
remember such numbers of successful crimes, so many equally hateful
losses and gains of lust, and ambition so impatient even of its own
natural limits that it is willing to purchase distinction by baseness,
the mind seems as it were cast into darkness, and shadows rise
before it as though the virtues were all overthrown and we were no
longer allowed to hope to possess them or benefited by their
possession. We ought therefore to bring ourselves into such a state
of mind that all the vices of the vulgar may not appear hateful to
us, but merely ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather
than Heraclitus. The latter of these, whenever be {282} appeared
in public, used to weep, the former to laugh: the one thought all
human doings to be follies, the other thought them to be miseries.
We must take a higher view of all things, and bear with them more
easily: it better becomes a man to scoff at life than to lament
over it. Add to this that he who laughs at the human race deserves
better of it than he who mourns for it, for the former leaves it
some good hopes of improvement, while the latter stupidly weeps
over what he has given up all hopes of mending. He who after surveying
the universe cannot control his laughter shows, too, a greater mind
than he who cannot restrain his tears, because his mind is only
affected in the slightest possible degree, and he does not think
that any part of all this apparatus is either important, or serious,
or unhappy. As for the several causes which render us happy or
sorrowful, let every one describe them for himself, and learn the
truth of Bion’s saying, “That all the doings of men were very like
what he began with, and that there is nothing in their lives which
is more holy or decent than their conception.” Yet it is better to
accept public morals and human vices calmly without bursting into
either laughter or tears; for to be hurt by the sufferings of others
is to be for ever miserable, while to enjoy the sufferings of others
is an inhuman pleasure, just as it is a useless piece of humanity
to weep and pull a long face because some one is burying his son.
In one’s own misfortunes, also, one ought so to conduct oneself as
to bestow upon them just as much sorrow as reason, not as much as
custom requires: for many shed tears in order to show them, and
whenever no one is looking at them their eyes are dry, but they
think it disgraceful not to weep when every one does so. So deeply
has this evil of being guided by the opinion of others taken root
in us, that even grief, the simplest of all emotions, begins to be
counterfeited.
{283}
XVI. There comes now a part of our subject which is wont with good
cause to make one sad and anxious: I mean when good men come to bad
ends; when Socrates is forced to die in prison, Rutilius to live
in exile, Pompeius and Cicero to offer their necks to the swords
of their own followers, when the great Cato, that living image of
virtue, falls upon his sword and rips up both himself and the
republic, one cannot help being grieved that Fortune should bestow
her gifts so unjustly: what, too, can a good man hope to obtain
when he sees the best of men meeting with the worst fates. Well,
but see how each of them endured his fate, and if they endured it
bravely, long in your heart for courage as great as theirs; if they
died in a womanish and cowardly manner, nothing was lost: either
they deserved that you should admire their courage, or else they
did not deserve that you should wish to imitate their cowardice:
for what can be more shameful than that the greatest men should die
so bravely as to make people cowards. Let us praise one who deserves
such constant praises, and say, “The braver you are the happier you
are! You have escaped from all accidents, jealousies, diseases: you
have escaped from prison: the gods have not thought you worthy of
ill-fortune, but have thought that fortune no longer deserved to
have any power over you”: but when any one shrinks back in the hour
of death and looks longingly at life, we must lay hands upon him.
I will never weep for a man who dies cheerfully, nor for one who
dies weeping: the former wipes away my tears, the latter by his
tears makes himself unworthy that any should be shed for him. Shall
I weep for Hercules because he was burned alive, or for Regulus
because he was pierced by so many nails, or for Cato because he
tore open his wounds a second time? All these men discovered how
at the cost of a small portion of time they might obtain immortality,
and by their deaths gained eternal life.
{284}
XVII. It also proves a fertile source of troubles if you take pains
to conceal your feelings and never show yourself to any one
undisguised, but, as many men do, live an artificial life, in order
to impose upon others: for the constant watching of himself becomes
a torment to a man, and he dreads being caught doing something at
variance with his usual habits, and, indeed, we never can be at our
ease if we imagine that every one who looks at us is weighing our
real value: for many things occur which strip people of their
disguise, however reluctantly they may part with it, and even if
all this trouble about oneself is successful, still life is neither
happy nor safe when one always has to wear a mask. But what pleasure
there is in that honest straight-forwardness which is its own
ornament, and which conceals no part of its character? Yet even
this life, which hides nothing from any one runs some risk of being
despised; for there are people who disdain whatever they come close
to: but there is no danger of virtue’s becoming contemptible when
she is brought near our eyes, and it is better to be scorned for
one’s simplicity than to bear the burden of unceasing hypocrisy.
Still, we must observe moderation in this matter, for there is a
great difference between living simply and living slovenly. Moreover,
we ought to retire a great deal into ourselves: for association
with persons unlike ourselves upsets all that we had arranged,
rouses the passions which were at rest, and rubs into a sore any
weak or imperfectly healed place in our minds. Nevertheless we ought
to mix up these two things, and to pass our lives alternately in
solitude and among throngs of people; for the former will make us
long for the society of mankind, the latter for that of ourselves,
and the one will counteract the other: solitude will cure us when
we are sick of crowds, and crowds will cure us when we are sick of
solitude. Neither ought we always to keep the mind strained to the
{285} same pitch, but it ought sometimes to be relaxed by amusement.
Socrates did not blush to play with little boys, Cato used to refresh
his mind with wine after he had wearied it with application to
affairs of state, and Scipio would move his triumphal and soldierly
limbs to the sound of music, not with a feeble and halting gait,
as is the fashion now-a-days, when we sway in our very walk with
more than womanly weakness, but dancing as men were wont in the
days of old on sportive and festal occasions, with manly bounds,
thinking it no harm to be seen so doing even by their enemies. Men’s
minds ought to have relaxation: they rise up better and more vigorous
after rest. We must not force crops from rich fields, for an unbroken
course of heavy crops will soon exhaust their fertility, and so
also the liveliness of our minds will be destroyed by unceasing
labour, but they will recover their strength after a short period
of rest and relief: for continuous toil produces a sort of numbness
and sluggishness. Men would not be so eager for this, if play and
amusement did not possess natural attractions for them, although
constant indulgence in them takes away all gravity and all strength
from the mind: for sleep, also, is necessary for our refreshment,
yet if you prolong it for days and nights together it will become
death. There is a great difference between slackening your hold of
a thing and letting it go. The founders of our laws appointed
festivals, in order that men might be publicly encouraged to be
cheerful, and they thought it necessary to vary our labours with
amusements, and, as I said before, some great men have been wont
to give themselves a certain number of holidays in every month, and
some divided every day into play-time and work-time. Thus, I remember
that great orator Asinius Pollio would not attend to any business
after the tenth hour: he would not even read letters after that
time for fear some new {286} trouble should arise, but in those two
hours[10] used to get rid of the weariness which he had contracted
during the whole day. Some rest in the middle of the day, and reserve
some light occupation for the afternoon. Our ancestors, too, forbade
any new motion to be made in the Senate after the tenth hour.
Soldiers divide their watches, and those who have just returned
from active service are allowed to sleep the whole night undisturbed.
We must humour our minds and grant them rest from time to time,
which acts upon them like food, and restores their strength. It
does good also to take walks out of doors, that our spirits may be
raised and refreshed by the open air and fresh breeze: sometimes
we gain strength by driving in a carriage, by travel, by change of
air, or by social meals and a more generous allowance of wine: at
times we ought to drink even to intoxication, not so as to drown,
but merely to dip ourselves in wine: for wine washes away troubles
and dislodges them from the depths of the mind, and acts as a remedy
to sorrow as it does to some diseases. The inventor of wine is
called Liber, not from the licence which he gives to our tongues,
but because he liberates the mind from the bondage of cares, and
emancipates it, animates it, and renders it more daring in all that
it attempts. Yet moderation is wholesome both in freedom and in
wine. It is believed that Solon and Arcesilaus used to drink deep.
Cato is reproached with drunkenness: but whoever casts this in his
teeth will find it easier to turn his reproach into a commendation
than to prove that Cato did anything wrong: however, we ought not
to do it often, for fear the mind should contract evil habits,
though it ought sometimes to be forced into frolic and frankness,
and to cast off dull sobriety for a while. If we believe the Greek
poet, “it is sometimes pleasant to be mad”; again, Plato always
{287} knocked in vain at the door of poetry when he was sober; or,
if we trust Aristotle, no great genius has ever been without a touch