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
And as there are two arts by which reason and
oratory are brought to complete perfection, one that of discovering, the
other that of arguing,—both the Stoics and Peripatetics have handed us
down this latter, but the Peripatetics alone have given us rules for the
former, while the Stoics have altogether avoided it. For the men of your
school never even suspected the places from which arguments might be drawn
as out of magazines; but the Peripatetics taught a regular system and
method.
And the consequence is, that it is not necessary for one now to be always
repeating a sort of dictated lesson on the same subject, or to be afraid
to go beyond one’s note-books: for he who knows where everything is
placed, and how he can arrive at it, even if anything be completely
buried, will be able to dig it up, and will always have his wits about him
in every discussion. And although men who are endowed with great
abilities, attain to a certain copiousness of eloquence without any
definite principles of oratory, still art is a surer guide than nature.
For it is one thing to pour out words after the fashion of poets, and
another to distinguish on settled principles and rules all that you say.
V. Similar things may be said about the explanation of natural philosophy,
which both the Peripatetics and Stoics apply themselves to; and that not
on two accounts only, as Epicurus thinks, namely, to get rid of the fears
of death and of religion; but besides this, the knowledge of heavenly
things imparts some degree of modesty to those who see what great
moderation and what admirable order there is likewise among the gods: it
inspires them also with magnanimity when they contemplate the arts and
works of the gods; and justice, too, when they come to know how great is
the power and wisdom, and what the will is also, of the supreme ruler and
master of the world, whose reason, in accordance with nature, is called by
philosophers the true and supreme law. There is in the same study of
nature, an insatiable kind of pleasure derived from the knowledge of
things; the only pleasure in which, when all our necessary actions are
performed, and when we are free from business, we can live honourably, and
as becomes free men. Therefore, in the whole of this ratiocination on
subjects of the very highest importance, the Stoics have for the most part
followed the Peripatetics; so far at all events as to admit that there are
gods, and to assert that everything consists of one of four elements. But
when an exceedingly difficult question was proposed, namely, whether there
did not seem to be a sort of fifth nature from which reason and
intelligence sprang; (in which question another was involved respecting
the mind, as to what class that belonged to;) Zeno said that it was fire;
and then he said a few more things—very few, in a novel manner; but
concerning the most important point of all, he spoke in the same way,
asserting that the universal world, and all its most important parts, were
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