Cicero, de Finibis Bonorum

ToposText · Cicero · 447 sections

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§ 5.50 ”What an ardour for study, think you, possessed Archimedes, who was so absorbed in a diagram he was drawing in the dust that he was unaware even of the capture of his native city! What genius do we see expended by Aristoxenus on the theory of music! Imagine the zeal of a lifetime that Aristophanes devoted to literature! Why should I speak of Pythagoras, or of Plato, or Democritus? For they, we are told, in their passion for learning travelled through the remotest parts of the earth! Those who are blind to these facts have never been enamoured of some high and worthy study. And those who in this connexion allege that the studies I have mentioned are pursued for the sake of mental pleasure fail to see that they are proved to be desirable for their own sake by the very fact that the mind feels delight in them when no bait of advantage is held out, and finds enjoyment in the mere possession of knowledge even though it is likely to be a positive disadvantage to its possessor.
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§ 5.51 But what is the point of inquiring further into matters so obvious? Let us ask ourselves the question, how it is we are interested in the motions of the stars and in contemplating the heavenly bodies and studying all the obscure and secret realms of nature; why we derive pleasure from history, which we are so fond of following up, to the remotest detail, turning back to parts we have omitted, and pushing on to the end when we have once begun. Not that I am unaware that history is useful as well as entertaining. But what of our reading fiction, from which no utility can be extracted?
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§ 5.52 What of our eagerness to learn the names of people who have done something notable, their parentage, birthplace, and many quite unimportant details beside? What of the delight that is taken in history by men of the humblest station, who have no expectation of participating in public life, even mere artisans? Also we may notice that the persons most eager to hear and read of public affairs are those who are debarred by the infirmities of age from any prospect of taking part in them. Hence we are forced to infer that the objects of study and knowledge contain in themselves the allurements that entice us to study and to learning.
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§ 5.53 The old philosophers picture what the life of the Wise will be in the Islands of the Blest, and think that being released from all anxiety and needing none of the necessary equipment or accessories of life, they will do nothing but spend their whole time upon study and research in the science of nature. We on the other hand see in such studies not only the amusement of a life of happiness, but also the alleviation of misfortune; hence the numbers of men who when they had fallen into the power of enemies or tyrants, or when they were in prison or in exile, have solaced their sorrow with the pursuit of learning.
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§ 5.54 Demetrius of Phalerum, a ruler of this city, when unjustly banished from his country, repaired to the court of King Ptolemy at Alexandria. Being eminent in the very system of philosophy which we are recommending to you, and a pupil of Theophrastus, he employed the leisure afforded by his disaster in composing a number of excellent treatises, not for any practical use of his own, for he was debarred from affairs; but he found a sort of food for his higher nature in thus cultivating his mind. I myself frequently heard the blind ex-praetor and scholar Gnaeus Aufidius declare that he felt the actual loss of light more than the inconvenience of blindness. Take lastly the gift of sleep: did it not bring us repose for our bodies and an antidote for labour, we should think it a violation of nature, for it robs us of sensation and entirely suspends our activity; so that if our nature did not require repose or could obtain it in some other manner, we should be quite content, inasmuch as even as it is we frequently deny ourselves slumber, almost to the point of doing violence to nature, in the interests of business or of study.
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§ 5.55 “Even more striking, and in fact absolutely obvious and convincing natural indications are not wanting, more particularly no doubt in man, but also in every living creature, of the presence of a positive craving for constant activity. Perpetual repose is unendurable on any terms. This is a fact that may be readily detected in children of the tenderest age, if I may risk being thought to lay undue stress on a field of observation sanctioned by the older thinkers, all of whom, and my own school more than others, go to the nursery, because they believe that Nature reveals her plan to them most clearly in childhood. Even infants, we notice, are incapable of keeping still. Children of a somewhat more advanced age delight in games involving considerable exertion, from which not even fear of punishment can restrain them. And this passion for activity grows as they grow older. The prospect of the most delightful dreams would not reconcile us to feeling asleep for ever: Endymion's fate we should consider no better than death.
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§ 5.56 Observe the least energetic among men: even in a notorious idler both mind and body are constantly in motion; set him free from unavoidable occupations, and he calls for a dice-board, goes off to some sport, or looks for somebody to chat with, seeking at the club or at some trivial social gathering a substitute for higher and more intellectual amusements. Even the wild animals that we keep caged up for our amusement find their captivity irksome, although they are better fed than if they were at large; they miss their natural birthright of free and untrammelled movement.
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§ 5.57 Hence the abler and more accomplished a man is, the less he would care to be alive at all if debarred from taking part in affairs, although allowed to batten on the most exquisite pleasures. Men of ability either choose a life of private activity, or, if of loftier ambition, aspire to a public career of political or military office, or else they devote themselves entirely to study and learning; and the devotees of learning are so far from making pleasure their aim, that they actually endure care, anxiety and loss of sleep, in the exercise of the noblest part of man's nature, the divine element within us (for so we must consider the keen edge of the intellect and the reason), they ask for no pleasure and avoid no toil; they are ceaselessly occupied in marvelling at the discoveries of the ancients or in pursuing new researches of their own; insatiable in their appetite for study, they forget all else besides, and harbour not one base or mean thought. So potent is the spell of these pursuits, that even those who profess to follow other Ends of Goods, defined by utility or pleasure, may yet be seen to spend their whole lives in investigating and unfolding the processes of nature.
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§ 5.58 ”It is therefore at all events manifest that we are designed by nature for activity. Activities vary in kind, so much so that the more important actually eclipse the less; but the most important are, first (according to my own view and that of those with whose system we are now occupied) the contemplation and the study of the heavenly bodies and of those secrets and mysteries of nature which reason has the capacity to penetrate; secondly, the practice and the theory of politics; thirdly, the principles of Prudence, Temperance, Courage and Justice, with the remaining virtues and the activities consonant therewith, all of which we may sum up under the single term of Morality; towards the knowledge and practice of which, when we have grown to maturity, we are led onward by nature's own guidance. All things are small in their first beginnings, but they grow larger as they pass through their regular stages of progress. And there is a reason for this, namely that at the moment of birth we possess a certain weakness and softness which prevent our seeing and doing what is best. The radiance of virtue and of happiness, the two things most to be desired, dawns upon us later, and far later still comes a full understanding of their nature.'Happy the man,' Plato well says,'who even in old age has the good fortune to be able to achieve wisdom and true opinions.' Therefore since enough has been said about the primary goods of nature, let us now consider the more important things that follow later.
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§ 5.59 In generating and developing the human body, Nature's procedure was to make some parts perfect at birth, and to fashion other parts as it grew up, without making much use of external and artificial aids. The mind on the other hand she endowed with its remaining faculties in the same perfection as the body, equipping it with senses already adapted to their function of perception and requiring little or no assistance of any kind to complete their development; but the highest and noblest part of man's nature she neglected. It is true she bestowed an intellect capable of receiving every virtue, and implanted in it at birth and without instruction embryonic notions of the loftiest ideas, laying the foundation of its education, and introducing among its endowments the elementary constituents, so to speak, of virtue. But of virtue itself she merely gave the germ and no more.
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§ 5.60 Therefore it rests with us (and when I say with us, I mean with our science), in addition to the elementary principles bestowed upon us, to seek out their logical developments, until our full purpose is realized. For this is much more valuable and more intrinsically desirable than either the senses or the endowments of the body above alluded to; since those are surpassed in an almost inconceivable degree by the matchless perfection of the intellect. Therefore all honour, all admiration, all enthusiasm is directed toward virtue and towards the actions in harmony with virtue, and all such properties and processes of the mind are entitled by the single name of Moral Worth. “The connotation of all these conceptions and the signification of the terms that denote them, and their several values and natures we shall study later;
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§ 5.61 for the present let us merely explain that this Morality to which I allude is an object of our desire, not only because of our love of self, but also intrinsically and for its own sake. A hint of this is given by children, in whom nature is discerned as in a mirror. How hotly they pursue their rivalries! how fierce their contests and competitions! what exultation they feel when they win, and what shame when they are beaten! How they dislike blame! how they covet praise! what toils do they not undergo to stand first among their companions! how good their memory is for those who have shown them kindness, and how eager they are to repay it! And these traits are most apparent in the noblest characters, in which the moral excellences, as we understand them, are already roughly outlined by nature.
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§ 5.62 But this belongs to childhood; the picture is filled in at the age when the character is fully formed. Who is so unlike a human being as to feel no repulsion at baseness and no approval for goodness? Who is there that does not hate a youth spent in debauchery and wantonness? Who on the contrary would not esteem modesty and orderliness in the young, even though he has no personal concern in them? Who does not hate the traitor Pullus Numitorius of Fregellae, although he did a service to our country? Who does not praise and extol Codrus, the preserver of this city, or honour the daughters of Erechtheus? or loathe the very name of Tubulus? or love the memory of Aristides? Do we forget the strong emotion that we feel when we hear or read of some deed of piety, of friendship or of magnanimity?
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§ 5.63 But I need not speak of ourselves, whose birth, breeding and education point us towards glory and towards honour; think of the uneducated multitude, — what a tempest of applause rings through the theatre at the words: I am Orestes, and at the rejoinder: No, no,'tis I, I say, I am Orestes. And then when each offers a solution to the king in his confusion and perplexity: Then prithee slay us both; we'll die together: as often as this scene is acted, does it ever fail to arouse the greatest enthusiasm? This proves that all men without exception approve and applaud the disposition that not only seeks no advantage for itself, but is loyal and true even to its own disadvantage.
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§ 5.64 These high examples crowd the pages not only of romance but also of history, and especially the history of our own country. It was we who chose our most virtuous citizen to receive the sacred emblems from Ida; we who sent guardians to royal princes; our generals sacrificed their lives to save their country; our consuls warned the king who was their bitterest enemy, when close to the walls of Rome, to be on his guard against poison; in our commonwealth was found the lady who expiated her outraged honour by a self-sought death, and the father who killed his daughter to save her from shame. Who is there who cannot see that all these deeds and countless others besides were done by men who were inspired by the splendour of moral greatness to forget all thought of interest, and are praised by us from no other consideration but that of Moral Worth? ”The considerations thus briefly set out (for I have not aimed at such a full account as I might have given, since the matter admitted of no uncertainty), these considerations then lead to the undoubted conclusion that all the virtues, and the Moral Worth which springs from them and inheres in them, are intrinsically desirable.
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§ 5.65 But in the whole moral sphere of which we are speaking there is nothing more glorious nor of wider range than the solidarity of mankind, that species of alliance and partnership of interests and that actual affection which exists between man and man, which, coming into existence immediately upon our birth, owing to the fact that children are loved by their parents and the family as a whole is bound together by the ties of marriage and parenthood, gradually spreads its influence beyond the home, first by blood relationships, then by connections through marriage, later by friendships, afterwards by the bonds of neighbourhood, then to fellow-citizens and political allies and friends, and lastly by embracing the whole of the human race. This sentiment, assigning each his own and maintaining with generosity and equity that human solidarity and alliance of which I speak, is termed Justice; connected with it are dutiful affection, kindness, liberality, good-will, courtesy and the other Graces of the same kind. And while these belong peculiarly to Justice, they are also factors shared by the remaining virtues.
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§ 5.66 For human nature is so constituted at birth as to possess an innate element of civic and national feeling, termed in Greek politikon; consequently all the actions of every virtue will be in harmony with the human affection and solidarity I have described, and Justice in turn will diffuse its agency through the other virtues, and so will aim at the promotion of these. For only a brave and a wise man can preserve Justice. Therefore the qualities of this general union and combination of the virtues of which I am speaking belong also to the Moral Worth aforesaid; inasmuch as Moral Worth is either virtue itself or virtuous action; and life in harmony with these and in accordance with the virtues can be deemed right, moral, consistent, and in agreement with nature.
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§ 5.67 “At the same time this complex of interfused virtues can yet be theoretically resolved into its separate parts by philosophers. For although the virtues are so closely united that each participates in every other and none can be separated from any other, yet on the other hand each has its own special function. Thus Courage is displayed in toils and dangers, Temperance in forgoing pleasures, Prudence in the choice of goods and evils, Justice in giving each his due. As then each virtue contains an element not merely self-regarding, which embraces other men and makes them its end, there results a state of feeling in which friends, brothers, kinsmen, connections, fellow-citizens, and finally all human beings (since our belief is that all mankind are united in one society) are things desirable for their own sakes. Yet none of these relations is such as to form part of the end and Ultimate Good.
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§ 5.68 Hence it results that we find two classes of things desirable for their own sakes; one class consists of those things which constitute the Ultimate Good aforesaid, namely goods of mind or body; the latter set, which are external goods, that is, goods that belong neither to the mind nor to the body, such as friends, parents, children, relatives and one's country itself, while intrinsically precious to us, yet are not included in the same class as the former. Indeed, no one could ever attain the Chief Good, if all those goods, which though desirable are external to us, formed part of the Chief Good.
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§ 5.69 ”How then, you will object, can it be true that all things are means to the Chief Good, if friendships and relationships and the other external goods are not part of the Chief Good? The answer is that it is in this way: we maintain these external goods by those acts of duty which spring from the particular class of virtue connected with each. For example, dutiful conduct towards friends and parents benefits the doer from the very fact that such performance of duty is a right action, and right actions take their rise from virtues. And whereas the Wise, under nature's guidance, make right action their aim, on the other hand men not perfect and yet endowed with noble characters often respond to the stimulus of honour, which has some show and semblance of Moral Worth. But if they could fully discern Moral Worth itself in its absolute perfection and completeness, the one thing of all others most splendid and most glorious, how enraptured would they be, if they take such a delight in the mere shadow and reputation of it!
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§ 5.70 What devotee of pleasure, though consumed by most glowing passions, can be supposed to feel such transports of rapture in winning the objects of his keenest desires, as were felt by the elder Africanus upon the defeat of Hannibal, or by the younger at the overthrow of Carthage? Who ever experienced so much delight from the voyage down the Tiber on the day of the festival as Lucius Paulus felt when he sailed up the river leading King Perses captive in his train?
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§ 5.71 Come now, my dear Lucius, build in your imagination the lofty and towering structure of the virtues; then you will feel no doubt that those who achieve them, guiding themselves by magnanimity and uprightness, are always happy; realizing as they do that all the vicissitudes of fortune, the ebb and flow of time and of circumstance, will be trifling and feeble if brought into conflict with virtue. The things we reckon as bodily goods do, it is true, form a factor in supreme happiness, but yet happiness is possible without them. For those supplementary goods are so small and slight in the full radiance of the virtues they are as invisible as the stars in sunlight.
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§ 5.72 Yet true though it is that these bodily advantages are of but slight importance for happiness, to say that they are of no importance is too sweeping; those who maintain this appear to me to have forgotten those first principles of nature which they have themselves established. Some weight then must be given to bodily goods provided one understands what is the proper amount of weight. The genuine philosopher, who aims at truth and not ostentation, while refusing on the one hand to deny all value to the things which even those high-sounding teachers themselves admit to be in accordance with nature, will on the other hand realize that virtue is so potent, Moral Worth invested so to speak with such prestige, that all those other goods, though not worthless, are so small as to appear worthless. This is the language that a man will hold who while not despising all else but virtue yet extols virtue herself with her own proper praises; in short, this is the full, finished and complete account of the Chief Good. “From this system all the other schools have endeavoured to appropriate fragments, which each has hoped may pass for original.
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§ 5.73 Aristotle and Theophrastus often and admirably praised knowledge for its own sake; Herillus, captivated by this single tenet, maintained that knowledge was the Chief Good and that nothing else was desirable as an end in itself. The ancients enlarged on the duty of rising proudly superior to human fortunes; Aristo singled out this one point, and declared that nothing but vice or virtue was either to be avoided or desired. Our school included freedom from pain among the things in accordance with nature; Hieronymus made it out to be the Supreme Good. On the other hand Callipho and later Diodorus, the one having fallen in love with pleasure, and the other with freedom from pain, could neither of them dispense with Moral Worth, which by our school was extolled above all else.
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§ 5.74 Even the votaries of pleasure take refuge in evasions: the name of virtue is on their lips all the time, and they declare that pleasure is only at first the object of desire, and that later habit produces a sort of second nature, which supplies a motive for many actions not aiming at pleasure at all. There remain the Stoics. The Stoics have conveyed from us not some one or other item, but our entire system of philosophy. It is a regular practice of thieves to alter the marks upon stolen goods; and the Stoics, in order to pass off our opinions as their own, have changed the names, which are the marks of things. Our system therefore is left as the sole philosophy worthy of the student of the liberal arts, of the learned and the eminent, of statesmen and princes.”
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§ 5.75 After these words he paused, and then added: “How now? Do you think I have made good use of my privilege of having you hear me say over my lesson?” “Why, Piso,” I replied, “you have shown such a knowledge of your theory, on this, as on many other occasions, that I do not think we should have to rely much upon the aid of the Greeks, if we had more frequent opportunities of hearing you. And I was all the more ready to be convinced by you because I remember that your great teacher, Staseas of Naples, a Peripatetic of unquestionable repute, used to give a somewhat different account of your system, agreeing with those who attached great importance to good and bad fortune, and to bodily goods and evils.” “That is true,” said he; “but our friend Antiochus is a far better and far more uncompromising exponent of the system than Staseas used to be. Though I don't want to know how far I succeeded in convincing you, but how far I convinced our friend Cicero here; I want to kidnap your pupil from you.”
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§ 5.76 To this Lucius replied: “Oh, I am quite convinced by what you have said, and I think my cousin is so too.” “How now?” said Piso to me, “Has the young man your consent? or would you rather he should study a system which, when he has mastered it, will lead to his knowing nothing?” “Oh, I leave him his liberty,” said I; “but don't you remember that it is quite open to me to approve the doctrines you have stated? Since who can refrain from approving statements that appear to him probable?” “But,” said he, “can anyone approve that of which he has not full perception, comprehension and knowledge?” “There is no great need to quarrel about that, Piso,” I rejoined. “The only thing that makes me deny the possibility of perception is the Stoics' definition of that faculty; they maintain that nothing can be perceived except a true presentation having such a character as no false presentation can possess. Here then I have a quarrel with the Stoics, but certainly none with the Peripatetics. However let us drop this question, for it involves a very long and somewhat contentious debate.
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§ 5.77 It is the doctrine that the Wise Man is always and invariably happy that I would challenge as too hurriedly touched upon by you. Your discourse somehow skimmed past this point. But unless this doctrine is proved, I am afraid that the truth will lie with Theophrastus, who held that misfortune, sorrow and bodily anguish were incompatible with happiness. For it is violently inconsistent to call a man happy and at the same time say that he is overwhelmed with evils. How happiness and misfortune can go together I entirely fail to understand.” “Which position then do you question?” he replied; “that virtue is so potent that she need not look outside herself for happiness? or, if you can accept this, do you deny that the virtuous can be happy even when afflicted by certain evils?” “Oh, I would rate the potency of virtue as high as possible; but let us defer the question of her exact degree of greatness; the only point is now, could she be so great as she is, if anything outside virtue be classed as a good?”
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§ 5.78 “Yet,” said he, “if you concede to the Stoics that the presence of virtue alone can produce happiness, you concede this also to the Peripatetics. What the Stoics have not the courage to call evils, but admit to be irksome, detrimental,'to be rejected,' and not in accordance with nature, we say are evils, though small and almost negligible evils. Hence if a man can be happy when surrounded by circumstances that are irksome and to be rejected, he can also be happy when surrounded by trifling evils.” “ Piso,” I rejoined, “you, if anyone, are a sharp enough lawyer to see at a glance the real point at issue in a dispute. Therefore I beg your close attention. For so far, though perhaps I am to blame, you do not grasp the point of my question.” “I am all attention,” he replied," and await your reply to my inquiry."
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§ 5.79 “My reply will be,” said I, “that I am not at the present asking what result virtue can produce, but what is a consistent and what a self-contradictory account of it.” “How do you mean?” said he. “Why,” I said, “first Zeno enunciates the lofty and oracular utterance,' Virtue need not look outside herself for happiness';'Why?' says some one.'Because,' he answers,'nothing else is good but what is morally good.' I am not now asking whether this is true; I merely say that Zeno's statements are admirably logical and consistent.
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§ 5.80 Suppose Epicurus to say the same thing, that the Wise Man is always happy, — for he is fond of ranting like this now and then, and indeed tells us that when the Wise Man is suffering torments of pain, he will say'How pleasant this is! how little I mind! — Well, I should not join issue with the man as to why he goes so far astray about the nature of the Good; but I should insist that he does not understand what is the necessary corollary of his own avowal that pain is the supreme evil. I take the same line now against you. As to what is good and what is evil, your account agrees entirely with that of those who have never set eyes on a philosopher even in a picture, as the saying is: you call health, strength, poise, beauty, soundness of every part from top to toe, goods, and ugliness, disease and weakness evils.
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§ 5.81 As for external goods, you were, it is true, cautious; but since these bodily excellences are goods, you will doubtless reckon as goods the things productive of them, namely friends, children, relations, riches, rank and power. Mark that against this I say nothing; what I say is, if misfortunes which a Wise Man may encounter are as you say evils, to be wise is not enough for happiness.” “Say rather,” said he, “not enough for supreme happiness, but it is enough for happiness.” “I noticed,” I replied, “you made that distinction a little time ago, and I am aware that our master Antiochus is fond of saying the same; but what can be more unsatisfactory than to say that a man is happy but not happy enough? Any addition to what is enough makes it too much; now no one has too much happiness; therefore no one can be happier than happy.”
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§ 5.82 “Then what is your view,” he said, “of Quintus Metellus, who saw three sons consuls, and one of these made censor and celebrating a triumph as well, and a fourth praetor, and who left his four sons alive and well and three daughters married, having himself been consul, censor and augur and having had a triumph? Supposing him to have been a Wise Man, was he not happier than Regulus, who died a captive in the hands of the enemy, from starvation and want of sleep, allowing him also to have been a Wise Man?”
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§ 5.83 “Why,” said I, “do you ask that question of me? Ask the Stoics.” “What answer then,” he said, “do you think they would give?” “That Metellus is no happier than Regulus.” “Well then,” said he, “let us start from that.” “Still,” said I, “we are wandering from our subject. For I am not inquiring what is true, but what each school ought consistently to say. I only wish that they did allow degrees of happiness! then you would see a collapse! For since the Good consists solely in virtue and in actual Moral Worth, and neither virtue nor Moral Worth, as they hold, admits of increase, and since that alone is good which necessarily makes its possessor happy, when that which alone constitutes happiness does not allow of increase, how can anyone possibly be happier than anyone else? Do you see how logical this is? And in fact (for I must confess what I really think) their system is a marvellously consistent whole. The conclusions agree with the first principles, the middle steps with both, in fact every part with every other. They understand what inference follows from and what contradicts a given premise. It is like geometry: grant the premises and you must grant everything. Admit that there is no good but Moral Worth, and you are bound to admit that happiness consists in virtue. Or again conversely: given the latter, you must grant the former.
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§ 5.84 Your school are not so logical.'Three classes of goods': your exposition runs smoothly on. But when it comes to its conclusion, it finds itself in trouble; for it wants to assert that the Wise Man can lack no requisite of happiness. That is the moral style, the style of Socrates and of Plato too.'I dare assert it,' cries the Academic. You cannot, unless you recast the earlier part of the argument. If poverty is an evil, no beggar can be happy, be he as wise as you like. But Zeno dared to say that a wise beggar was not only happy but also wealthy. Pain is an evil: then a man undergoing crucifixion cannot be happy. Children are a good: then childlessness is miserable; one's country is good: then exile is miserable; health is a good: then sickness is miserable; soundness of body is a good; then infirmity is miserable; good eyesight is a good: then blindness is miserable. Perhaps the philosopher's consolations can alleviate each of these misfortunes singly; but how will have enable us to endure them all together? Suppose a man to be at once blind, infirm, afflicted by dire disease, in exile, childless, destitute and tortured on the rack; what is your name, Zeno, for him?'A happy man,' says Zeno. A supremely happy man as well?'To be sure,' he will reply,'because I have proved that happiness no more admits of degrees than does virtue, in which happiness itself consists.'
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§ 5.85 You draw the line at this; you can't believe that he is supremely happy. Well, but can one believe what you say either? Call me before a jury of ordinary people, and you will never persuade them that the man so afflicted is happy; refer the case to the learned, and it is possible that on one of the two counts you will be doubtful about their verdict, whether virtue has such efficacy that the virtuous will be happy even in the bull of Phalaris: but on the other, they will find without hesitation that the Stoic doctrine is consistent and yours self-contradictory.
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§ 5.86'Ah,' says the Academic,'then you agree with Theophrastus in his great work On Happiness?' However, we are wandering from the subject; and to cut the matter short, Piso,” I said, “I do fully agree with Theophrastus, if misfortunes, as you say, are evils.” “Then don't you think they are evils?” he said. “To that question,” said I, “whichever reply I make, you are bound to be in difficulties.” “How so exactly?” he asked. “Because,” I replied, “if they are evils, the man who suffers from them will not be happy; and on the other hand if they are not evils, down topples the whole Peripatetic system.” “I see what you are at,” cried he smiling; “you are afraid of my robbing you of a pupil.” “Oh,” said I, “you are welcome to convert him if he wants to be converted; for if he is in your fold, he will be in mine.” “Listen then, Lucius,” said Piso, “for I must address myself to you. The whole importance of philosophy lies, as Theophrastus says, in the attainment of happiness; since an ardent desire for happiness possesses us all.
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§ 5.87 On this your cousin and I are agreed. Hence what we have to consider is this, can the systems of the philosophers give us happiness? They certainly profess to do so. Whether it not so, why did Plato travel through Egypt to learn arithmetic and astronomy from barbarian priests? Why did he later visit Archytas at Tarentum, or the other Pythagoreans, Echecrates, Timaeus and Arion, at Locri, intending to append to his picture of Socrates an account of the Pythagorean system and to extend his studies into those branches which Socrates repudiated? Why did Pythagoras himself scour Egypt and visit the Persian magi? why did he travel on foot through those vast barbarian lands and sail across those many seas? Why did Democritus do the same? It is related of Democritus (whether truly or falsely we are not concerned to inquire) that he deprived himself of eyesight; and it is certain that in order that his mind should be distracted as little as possible from reflection, he neglected his paternal estate and left his land uncultivated, engrossed in the search for what else but happiness? Even if he supposed happiness to consist in knowledge, still he designed that his study of natural philosophy should bring him cheerfulness of mind; since that is his conception of the Chief Good, which he entitles euthumia, or often athambia, that is freedom from alarm.
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§ 5.88 But what he said on this subject, however excellent, nevertheless lacks the finishing touches; for indeed about virtue he said very little, and that not clearly expressed. For it was later that these inquiries began to be pursued at Athens by Socrates, first in the city, and afterwards the study was transferred to the place where we now are; and no one doubted that all hope alike of right conduct and of happiness lay in virtue. Zeno having learnt this doctrine from our school proceeded to deal with'the same matter in another manner,' as the common preamble to an indictment has it. You now approve of this procedure on his part. He, no doubt, can change the names of things and be acquitted of inconsistency, but we cannot! He denies that the life of Metellus was happier than that of Regulus, yet calls it'preferable'; not more desirable, but'more worthy of adoption'; and given the choice, that of Metellus is'to be selected' and that of Regulus'rejected.' Whereas the life he called'preferable' and'more worthy to be selected' I term happier, though I do not assign any the minutest fraction more value to that life than do the Stoics.
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§ 5.89 What is the difference, except that I call familiar things familiar names, whereas they invent new terms to express the same meaning? Thus just as in the senate there is always some one who demands an interpreter, so we must use an interpreter when we give audience to your school. I call whatever is in accordance with nature good and what is contrary to nature bad; nor am I alone in this: you, Chrysippus, do so too in business and in private life, but you leave off doing so in the lecture-room. What then? do you think philosophers should speak a different language from ordinary human beings? The learned and the unlearned may differ as to the values of things; but when the learned are agreed what each thing's value is, — if they were human beings, they would adopt the recognized form of expression; but so long as the substance remains the same, — let them coin new words at their pleasure.
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§ 5.90 ”But I come to the charge of inconsistency, or you will say I digress too often. You make inconsistency a matter of words, but I imagined it to be a question of fact. Only let it be clearly grasped, and in this we have the Stoics as our strongest supporters, that such is the power of virtue that all other things, if ranged in contrast with it, are absolutely eclipsed and extinguished; then, as for all the things which they admit to be advantageous and'to be adopted' and'selected' and'preferred' (terms which they define so as to mean possessed of considerable value), when I style these things, which receive so many names from the Stoics, some new and original, like your words'promoted' and'degraded,' some identical in meaning (for what difference is there between'desiring' a thing and'selecting' it? to my ear there is a more sumptuous sound about a thing that is selected, and to which choice is applied), — however, when I call all these things good, the only thing that matters is, how good do I mean, when I call them desirable, the only question is, how desirable? But if on the other hand I do not think them more'to be desired' than you'to be selected,' and if I who call them good do not deem them more valuable than you who call them'promoted,' all these external things will necessarily be overwhelmed and eclipsed by the side of virtue; its radiance will envelop them like the rays of the sun.
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§ 5.91 But you will say that a life which contains some evil cannot be happy. At that rate a crop of corn is not a heavy and abundant crop if you can spy a single stalk of wild oat among it; a business is not profitable if among enormous profits it incurs a trifling loss. Does one principle hold good in everything else, but another in conduct? And will you not judge the whole of life by its largest part? Is there any doubt that virtue plays so far the largest part in human affairs that it obliterates everything else? Well, then, I shall make bold to call the other things in accordance with nature'goods,' and not cheat them of their old name, rather than excogitate some new one; but I shall place the massive bulk of virtue in the opposite scale of the balance.
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§ 5.92 Believe me, that scale will weigh down earth and sea combined. It is a universal rule that any whole takes its name from its most predominant and preponderant part. We say that a man is a cheerful fellow; but if for once he falls into low spirits, has he therefore lost his title to cheerfulness for ever? Well, the rule was not applied to Marcus Crassus, who according to Lucilius laughed but once in his life; that did not prevent his having the name of agelastos, as Lucilius says he had. Polycrates of Samos was called'the fortunate.' Not a single untoward accident had ever befallen him, except that he had thrown his favourite ring overboard at sea. Did that single annoyance then make him unfortunate? and did he become fortunate again when the very same ring was found in a fish's belly? But Polycrates, if he was foolish (which he apparently was, since he was a tyrant), was never happy; if wise, he was not unhappy even when crucified by Oroetes, the satrap of Darius.'But,' you say,'many evils befell him!' Who denies it? but those evils were eclipsed by the magnitude of his virtue.
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§ 5.93 “Or do you even refuse to let the Peripatetics say that the life of all good, that is of all wise men, men whom every virtue decks, always comprises infinitely more good than evil? Who does say this? The Stoics, you suppose? Not at all; but the very people who measure all things by pleasure and pain, do not these cry aloud that the Wise Man always has more things that he likes than that he dislikes? When therefore so much importance is assigned to virtue by those who confess that they would not raise a hand for the sake of virtue if it did not produce pleasure, what are we to do, who say that the smallest amount you like to mention of mental excellence surpasses all the goods of the body, and renders them completely imperceptible? For who is there who would venture to say that it would become the Wise Man to discard virtue for ever (were this possible) for the sake of securing absolute freedom from pain? Who of our school (which is not ashamed to call evils what the Stoics term'hardships') was ever known to say that it is better to commit a pleasant sin than to do the painful right?
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§ 5.94 We think it was scandalous of Dionysius of Heraclea to secede from the Stoics because of a malady of the eyes. As though Zeno had ever taught him that to feel pain was not painful! What he had heard, though he had not learnt the lesson, was that pain was not an evil, because not morally bad, and that it was manly to endure it. Had Dionysius been a Peripatetic, I believe he should never have changed his opinions; the Peripatetics say that pain is an evil, but on the duty of bearing the annoyance it causes with fortitude their teaching is the same as that of the Stoics. And indeed your friend Arcesilas, though he was rather too dogmatic in debate, was still one of us, for he was a pupil of Polemo. When he was racked with the torments of gout he was visited by an intimate friend, the Epicurean Charmides. The latter was departing in distress.'Stay, I beg of you, friend Charmides,' cried Arcesilas;'no pain from there has got to here' (pointing to his feet and his breast). Yet he would have preferred to have no pain at all.
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§ 5.95 ”This then is our system which you think inconsistent. I on the other hand, seeing the celestial and divine existence of virtue, excellence so great that where virtue and the mighty and most glorious deeds that she inspires are found, there misery and sorrow cannot be, though pain and annoyance can, do not hesitate to declare that every Wise Man is always happy, but yet that it is possible for one to be happier than another." “Well, Piso,” said I, “that is a position which you will find needs a great deal of defending; and if you can hold to it, you are welcome to convert not only my cousin Cicero, but also myself.”
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§ 5.96 “For my part,” remarked Quintus, “I think the position has been satisfactorily defended, and I am delighted that the philosophy whose homely gear I already valued more highly than the estates of the other schools (I deemed her rich enough for me to find in her all that I coveted in our studies), I rejoice, I say, that this philosophy has been found to be also subtler than the rest, — a quality in which she was said by some to be deficient.” “Not subtler than ours at all events,” said Pomponius playfully; but I protest I was most delighted by your discourse. You have expounded ideas that I thought it impossible to express in Latin, and you have expressed them as lucidly as do the Greeks, and in apt language. But our time is up, if you please; let us make straight for my quarters." At these words, as it was felt there had been enough discussion, we all proceeded to the town to Pomponius's house.

Via ToposText (topostext.org), a project of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation created by Brady Kiesling. Translated by Harris Rackham (1868-1944). Composed ca. 45 BCE. Licence: public domain. Source.