The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by CiceroCicero, Marcus Tullius
Philosophy
The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by Cicero
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
Ethics -- Early works to 1800; Happiness -- Early works to 1800
Here, however, is a much greater difference.—Zeno thinks that a happy life
depends on virtue alone. What says Antiochus? He admits that this is true
of a happy life, but not of the happiest possible life. The first is a
god, who thinks that nothing can be wanting to virtue; the latter is a
miserable man, who thinks that there are many things besides virtue, some
of which are dear to a man, and some even necessary. But I am afraid that
the former may be attributing to virtue more than nature can bear;
especially since Theophrastus has said many things with eloquence and
copiousness on this subject; and I fear that even he may not be quite
consistent with himself. For though he admits that there are some evils
both of body and fortune, he nevertheless thinks that a man may be happy
who is afflicted by them all, provided he is wise. I am perplexed here; at
one time the one opinion appears to me to be more probable, and at another
time the other does. And yet, unless one or the other be true, I think
virtue must be entirely trampled under foot.
XLIV. However, they differ as to this principle. What then? Can we
approve, as true, of those maxims on which they agree; namely, that the
mind of the wise man is never influenced by either desire or joy? Come,
suppose this opinion is a probable one, is this other one so too; namely,
that it never feels either alarm or grief? Cannot the wise fear? And if
his country be destroyed, cannot he grieve? That seems harsh, but Zeno
thinks it inevitable; for he considers nothing good except what is
honourable. But you do not think it true in the least, Antiochus. For you
admit that there are many good things besides honour, and many evils
besides baseness; and it is inevitable that the wise man must fear such
when coming, and grieve when they have come. But I ask when it was decided
by the Old Academy that they were to deny that the mind of the wise man
could be agitated or disturbed? They approved of intermediate states, and
asserted that there was a kind of natural mean in every agitation. We have
all read the treatise on Grief, by Crantor, a disciple of the Old Academy.
It is not large, but it is a golden book, and one, as Panætius tells
Tubero, worth learning by heart. And these men used to say that those
agitations were very profitably given to our minds by nature; fear, in
order that we may take care; pity and melancholy they called the whetstone
of our clemency; and anger itself that of our courage. Whether they were
right or wrong we may consider another time. How it was that those stern
doctrines of yours forced their way into the Old Academy I do not know,
but I cannot bear them; not because they have anything in them
particularly disagreeable to me; for many of the marvellous doctrines of
the Stoics, which men call παράδοξα, are derived from Socrates. But where
has Xenocrates or where has Aristotle touched these points? For you try to
make out the Stoics to be the same as these men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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