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

to pain. Nor has there ever been anyone who did not commend a man who bore it in this manner. That, then, which is expected from a brave man, and is commended when it is seen, it must surely be base in anyone to be afraid of at its approach, or not to bear when it comes. But I would have you consider whether, as all the right affections of the soul are classed under the name of virtues, the truth is that this is not properly the name of them all, but that they all have their name from that leading virtue which is superior to all the rest: for the name “virtue” comes from vir, a man, and courage is the peculiar distinction of a man, and this virtue has two principal duties: to despise death and pain. We must, then, exert these if we would be men of virtue, or rather if we would be men, because virtue (virtus) takes its very name from vir, man.

You may inquire, perhaps, how? And such an inquiry is not amiss, for philosophy is ready with her assistance. Epicurus offers himself to you, a man far from a bad⁠—or, I should rather say, a very good man: he advises no more than he knows. “Despise pain,” says he. Who is it said this? Is it the same man who calls pain the greatest of all evils? It is not, indeed, very consistent in him. Let us hear what he says: “If the pain is excessive, it must needs be short.” I must have that over again, for I do not apprehend what you mean exactly by “excessive” or “short.” That is excessive than which nothing can be greater; that is short than which nothing is shorter. I do not regard the greatness of any pain from which, by reason of the shortness of its continuance, I shall be delivered almost before it reaches me. But if the pain be as great as that of Philoctetes, it will appear great indeed to me, but yet not the greatest that I am capable of bearing, for the pain is confined to my foot. But my eye may pain me, I may have a pain in the head, or sides, or lungs, or in every part of me. It is far, then, from being excessive. Therefore, says he, pain of a long continuance has more pleasure in it than uneasiness. Now, I cannot bring myself to say so great a man talks nonsense, but I imagine he is laughing at us. My opinion is that the greatest pain (I say the greatest, though it may be ten atoms less than another) is not therefore short, because acute. I could name to you a great many good men who have been tormented many years with the acutest pains of the gout. But this cautious man does not determine the measure of that greatness or of duration, so as to enable us to know what he calls excessive with regard to pain, or short with respect to its continuance. Let us pass him by, then, as one who says just nothing at all; and let us force him to acknowledge, notwithstanding he might behave himself somewhat boldly under his colic and his strangury, that no remedy against pain can be had from him who looks on pain as the greatest of all evils. We must apply, then, for relief elsewhere, and nowhere better (if we seek for what is most consistent with itself) than to those who place the chief good in honesty, and the greatest evil in infamy. You dare not so much as groan, or discover the least uneasiness in their company, for virtue itself speaks to you through them.

Will you, when you may observe children at Lacedaemon, and young men at Olympia, and barbarians in the amphitheatre, receive the severest wounds, and bear them without once opening their mouths⁠—will you, I say, if any pain should by chance attack you, cry out like a woman? Will you not rather bear it with resolution and constancy? and not cry, “It is intolerable; nature cannot bear it!” I hear what you say: Boys bear this because they are led thereto by glory; some bear it through shame, many through fear, and yet are we afraid that nature cannot bear what is borne by many, and in such different circumstances? Nature not only bears it, but challenges it, for there is nothing with her preferable, nothing which she desires more than credit, and reputation, and praise, and honor, and glory. I choose here to describe this one thing under many names, and I have used many that you may have the clearer idea of it. For what I mean to say is that whatever is desirable of itself, proceeding from virtue, or placed in virtue, and commendable on its own account (which I would rather agree to call the only good than deny it to be the chief good) is what men should prefer above all things. And as we declare this to be the case with respect to honesty, so we speak in the contrary manner of infamy: nothing is so odious, so detestable, nothing so unworthy of a man. And if you are thoroughly convinced of this (for, at the beginning of this discourse, you allowed that there appeared to you more evil in infamy than in pain), it follows that you ought to have the command over yourself⁠—though I scarcely know how this expression may seem an accurate one, which appears to represent man as made up of two natures, so that one should be in command and the other be subject to it.

Yet this division does not proceed from ignorance, for the soul admits of a twofold division: one of which partakes of reason, the other is without it. When, therefore, we are ordered to give a law to ourselves, the meaning is that reason should