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
Greek word; for who ever calls pity, or even anger, a disease—_morbus_)?
but the Greeks do call such a feeling πάθος. Let us then translate it
perturbation, which is by its very name pointed out to be something
vicious. Nor are these perturbations, I say, excited by any natural force;
and they are altogether in kind four, but as to their divisions they are
more numerous. There is melancholy, fear, lust, and that feeling which the
Stoics call by the common name which they apply to both mind and body,
ἡδονὴ, and which I prefer translating joy (_lætitia_), rather than a
pleasurable elation of an exulting mind. But perturbations are not excited
by any force of nature; and all those feelings are judgments and opinions
proceeding from light-mindedness; and, therefore, the wise man will always
be free from them.
XI. But that everything which is honourable is to be sought for its own
sake, is an opinion common to us with many other schools of philosophers.
For, except the three sects which exclude virtue from the chief good, this
opinion must be maintained by all philosophers, and above all by us, who
do not rank anything whatever among goods except what is honourable. But
the defence of this opinion is very easy and simple indeed; for who is
there, or who ever was there, of such violent avarice, or of such
unbridled desires as not infinitely to prefer that anything which he
wishes to acquire, even at the expense of any conceivable wickedness,
should come into his power without crime, (even though he had a prospect
of perfect impunity,) than through crime? and what utility, or what
personal advantage do we hope for, when we are anxious to know whether
those bodies are moving whose movements are concealed from us, and owing
to what causes they revolve through the heavens? And who is there that
lives according to such clownish maxims, or who has so rigorously hardened
himself against the study of nature, as to be averse to things worthy of
being understood, and to be indifferent to and disregard such knowledge,
merely because there is no exact usefulness or pleasure likely to result
from it? or, who is there who—when he comes to know the exploits, and
sayings, and wise counsels of our forefathers, of the Africani, or of that
ancestor of mine whom you are always talking of, and of other brave men,
and citizens of pre-eminent virtue—does not feel his mind affected with
pleasure? and who that has been brought up in a respectable family, and
educated as becomes a freeman, is not offended with baseness as such,
though it may not be likely to injure him personally? Who can keep his
equanimity while looking on a man who, he thinks, lives in an impure and
wicked manner? Who does not hate sordid, fickle, unstable, worthless men?
But what shall we be able to say, (if we do not lay it down that baseness
is to be avoided for its own sake), is the reason why men do not seek
darkness and solitude, and then give the rein to every possible infamy,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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