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

appease all tendencies to too eager a desire after anything, to restrain lust, and to preserve a decent steadiness in everything. The vice in contrast to this is called prodigality (nequitia). Frugality, I imagine, is derived from the word fruge, the best thing which the earth produces; nequitia is derived (though this is perhaps rather more strained; still, let us try it; we shall only be thought to have been trifling if there is nothing in what we say) from the fact of everything being to no purpose (nequicquam) in such a man, from which circumstance he is called also Nihil, nothing. Whoever is frugal then, or if it is more agreeable to you, whoever is moderate and temperate, such a one must of course be consistent; whoever is consistent must be quiet; the quiet man must be free from all perturbation, therefore from grief likewise: and these are the properties of a wise man, therefore a wise man must be free from grief.

So that Dionysius of Heraclea is right when, upon this complaint of Achilles in Homer,

Well hast thou spoke, but at the tyrant’s name
My rage rekindles, and my soul’s in flame:
’Tis just resentment, and becomes the brave,
Disgraced, dishonor’d like the vilest slave,37

he reasons thus: Is the hand as it should be, when it is affected with a swelling? or is it possible for any other member of the body, when swollen or enlarged, to be in any other than a disordered state? Must not the mind, then, when it is puffed up or distended, be out of order? But the mind of a wise man is always free from every kind of disorder: it never swells, never is puffed up; but the mind when in anger is in a different state. A wise man, therefore, is never angry. For when he is angry, he lusts after something. For whoever is angry naturally has a longing desire to give all the pain he can to the person who he thinks has injured him, and whoever has this earnest desire must necessarily be much pleased with the accomplishment of his wishes. Hence he is delighted with his neighbor’s misery. And as a wise man is not capable of such feelings as these, he is therefore not capable of anger. But should a wise man be subject to grief, he may likewise be subject to anger; for as he is free from anger, he must likewise be free from grief. Again, could a wise man be subject to grief, he might also be liable to pity, or even might be open to a disposition towards envy (invidentia); I do not say to envy (invidia), for that can only exist by the very act of envying: but we may fairly form the word invidentia from invidendo, and so avoid the doubtful name invidia, for this word is probably derived from in and video, looking too closely into another’s fortune; as it is said in the Melanippus,

Who envies me the flower of my children?

where the Latin is invidit florem. It may appear not good Latin, but it is very well put by Accius; for as video governs an accusative case, so it is more correct to say invideo florem than flori. We are debarred from saying so by common usage. The poet stood in his own right, and expressed himself with more freedom.

Therefore compassion and envy are consistent in the same man; for whoever is uneasy at anyone’s adversity is also uneasy at another’s prosperity: as Theophrastus, while he laments the death of his companion Callisthenes, is at the same time disturbed at the success of Alexander; and therefore he says that Callisthenes met with man of the greatest power and good fortune, but one who did not know how to make use of his good fortune. And as pity is an uneasiness which arises from the misfortunes of another, so envy is an uneasiness that proceeds from the good success of another: therefore whoever is capable of pity is capable of envy. But a wise man is incapable of envy, and consequently incapable of pity. But were a wise man used to grieve, to pity also would be familiar to him; therefore to grieve is a feeling which cannot affect a wise man. Now, though these reasonings of the Stoics, and their conclusions, are rather strained and distorted, and ought to be expressed in a less stringent and narrow manner, yet great stress is to be laid on the opinions of those men who have a peculiarly bold and manly turn of thought and sentiment. For our friends the Peripatetics, notwithstanding all their erudition, gravity, and fluency of language, do not satisfy me about the moderation of these disorders and diseases of the soul which they insist upon. For every evil, though moderate, is in its nature great. But our object is to make out that the wise man is free from all evil, for as the body is unsound if it is ever so slightly affected, so the mind under any moderate disorder loses its soundness. Therefore the Romans have, with their usual accuracy of expression, called trouble, and anguish, and vexation, on account of the analogy between a troubled mind and a diseased body, disorders. The Greeks call all perturbation of mind by pretty nearly the same name, for they name every turbid motion of the soul πάθος, that is to say, a distemper. But we have given them a more proper name, for a disorder of the mind is very like a disease of the body. But lust does not resemble sickness; neither does immoderate joy, which is an elated and exulting pleasure of the mind. Fear, too, is not very like a distemper, though it is akin