Tusculan Disputations by Cicero (reading books for 7 year olds .txt) 📕

think less worth any regard. M. I am not at all surprised at that, for it is the effect of philosophy, which is the medicine of our souls. It banishes all groundless apprehensions, frees us from desires, and drives away fears. But it has not the same influence over all men; it is of very great influence when it falls in with a disposition well adapted to it. For not only does Fortune, as the old proverb says, assist the bold, but reason does so in a still greater degree; for it, by certain precepts, as it were, strengthens even courage itself. You were born naturally great and soaring, and with a contempt for all things which pertain to man alone; therefore a discourse against death took easy possession of a brave soul. But do you imagine that these same arguments have any force with those very persons who have invented, and canvassed, and published them, excepting indeed some very few particular persons? For how few philosophers will you meet with whose life and manners are conformable to the dictates of reason! who look on their profession, not as a means of displaying their learning, but as a rule for their own practice! who follow their own precepts, and comply with their own decrees! You may see some of such levity and such vanity, that it would have been better for them to have been ignorant⁠—some covetous of money, some others eager for glory, many slaves to their lusts⁠—so that their discourses and their actions are most strangely at variance, than which nothing in my opinion can be more unbecoming. For just as if one who professed to teach grammar should speak with impropriety, or a master of music sing out of tune, such conduct has the worst appearance in these men, because they blunder in the very particular with which they profess that they are well acquainted. So a philosopher who errs in the conduct of his life is the more infamous because he is erring in the very thing which he pretends to teach, and, while he lays down rules to regulate life by, is irregular in his own life. A. Should this be the case, is it not to be feared that you are dressing up philosophy in false colors? For what stronger argument can there be that it is of little use than that some very profound philosophers live in a discreditable manner? M.

That, indeed, is no argument at all, for as all the fields which are cultivated are not fruitful (and this sentiment of Accius is false, and asserted without any foundation,

The ground you sow on is of small avail;
To yield a crop good seed can never fail)

it is not every mind which has been properly cultivated that produces fruit. And, to go on with the comparison, as a field, although it may be naturally fruitful, cannot produce a crop without dressing, so neither can the mind without education; such is the weakness of either without the other. Whereas philosophy is the culture of the mind: this it is which plucks up vices by the roots, prepares the mind for the receiving of seeds, commits them to it, or, as I may say, sows them, in the hope that, when come to maturity, they may produce a plentiful harvest. Let us proceed, then, as we began. Say, if you please, what shall be the subject of our disputation.

A. I look on pain to be the greatest of all evils. M. What, even greater than infamy? A. I dare not indeed assert that, and I blush to think I am so soon driven from my ground. M. You would have had greater reason for blushing had you persevered in it, for what is so unbecoming⁠—what can appear worse to you⁠—than disgrace, wickedness, immorality? To avoid which, what pain is there which we ought not (I will not say to avoid shirking, but even) of our own accord to encounter, and undergo, and even to court? A. I am entirely of that opinion. But notwithstanding that pain is not the greatest evil, yet surely it is an evil. M. Do you perceive, then, how much of the terror of pain you have given up on a small hint? A. I see that plainly. But I should be glad to give up more of it. M. I will endeavor to make you do so. But it is a great undertaking, and I must have a disposition on your part which is not inclined to offer any obstacles. A. You shall have such. For as I behaved yesterday, so now I will follow reason wherever she leads. M.

First, then, I will speak of the weakness of many philosophers, and those, too, of various sects; the head of whom, both in authority and antiquity, was Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates, who hesitated not to say that pain was the greatest of all evils. And after him Epicurus easily gave in to this effeminate and enervated doctrine. After him Hieronymus the Rhodian said that to be without pain was the chief good, so great an evil did pain appear to him to be. The rest, with the exceptions of Zeno, Aristo, Pyrrho, were pretty much of the same opinion that you were of just now⁠—that it was indeed an evil, but that there were many worse. When, then, nature herself, and a certain generous feeling of virtue, at once prevents you from persisting in the assertion that pain is the chief evil, and when you were driven from such an opinion when disgrace was contrasted with pain, shall philosophy, the preceptress of life, cling to this idea for so many ages? What duty of life, what praise, what reputation, would be of such consequence that a man should be desirous of gaining it at the expense of submitting to bodily pain, when he has persuaded himself that pain is the greatest evil? On the other side, what disgrace, what ignominy, would he not submit to that he might avoid