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

All these I saw⁠ ⁠… ;

but they had perhaps given over lamenting themselves, for by their countenances, and speech, and other gestures you might have taken them for Argives or Sicyonians. And I myself was more concerned at the ruined walls of Corinth than the Corinthians themselves were, whose minds by frequent reflection and time had become callous to such sights. I have read a book of Clitomachus, which he sent to his fellow-citizens who were prisoners to comfort them after the destruction of Carthage. There is in it a treatise written by Carneades, which, as Clitomachus says, he had inserted into his book; the subject was, “That it appeared probable that a wise man would grieve at the state of subjection of his country,” and all the arguments which Carneades used against this proposition are set down in the book. There the philosopher applies such a strong medicine to a fresh grief as would be quite unnecessary in one of any continuance. Nor, if this very book had been sent to the captives some years after, would it have found any wounds to cure, but only scars. For grief, by a gentle progress and slow degrees, wears away imperceptibly. Not that the circumstances which gave rise to it are altered, or can be, but that custom teaches what reason should: that those things which before seemed to be of some consequence are of no such great importance after all.

It may be said: What occasion is there to apply to reason, or to any sort of consolation such as we generally make use of, to mitigate the grief of the afflicted? For we have this argument always at hand, that nothing ought to appear unexpected. But how will anyone be enabled to bear his misfortunes the better by knowing that it is unavoidable that such things should happen to man? Saying this subtracts nothing from the sum of the grief: it only asserts that nothing has fallen out but what might have been anticipated. And yet this manner of speaking has some little consolation in it, though I apprehend not a great deal. Therefore those unlooked-for things have not so much force as to give rise to all our grief. The blow perhaps may fall the heavier, but whatever happens does not appear the greater on that account. No, it is the fact of its having happened lately, and not of its having befallen us unexpectedly, that makes it seem the greater. There are two ways, then, of discerning the truth, not only of things that seem evil, but of those that have the appearance of good. For we either inquire into the nature of the thing, of what description, and magnitude, and importance it is⁠—as sometimes with regard to poverty, the burden of which we may lighten when by our disputations we show how few things nature requires, and of what a trifling kind they are⁠—or, without any subtle arguing, we refer them to examples, as here we instance a Socrates, there a Diogenes, and then again that line in Caecilius,

Wisdom is oft conceal’d in mean attire.

For as poverty is of equal weight with all, what reason can be given why what was borne by Fabricius should be spoken of by anyone else as unsupportable when it falls upon themselves? Of a piece with this is that other way of comforting, which consists in pointing out that nothing has happened but what is common to human nature. For this argument does not only inform us what human nature is, but implies that all things are tolerable which others have borne and are bearing.

Is poverty the subject? They tell you of many who have submitted to it with patience. Is it the contempt of honors? They acquaint you with some who never enjoyed any, and were the happier for it; and of those who have preferred a private retired life to public employment, mentioning their names with respect; they tell you of the verse40 of that most powerful king who praises an old man, and pronounces him happy because he was unknown to fame and seemed likely to arrive at the hour of death in obscurity and without notice. Thus, too, they have examples for those who are deprived of their children: they who are under any great grief are comforted by instances of like affliction, and thus the endurance of every misfortune is rendered more easy by the fact of others having undergone the same, and the fate of others causes what has happened to appear less important than it has been previously thought, and reflection thus discovers to us how much opinion had imposed on us. And this is what the Telamon declares, “I, when my son was born,” etc.; and thus Theseus, “I on my future misery did dwell;” and Anaxagoras, “I knew my son was mortal.” All these men, by frequently reflecting on human affairs, had discovered that they were by no means to be estimated by the opinion of the multitude; and, indeed, it seems to me to be pretty much the same case with those who consider beforehand as with those who derive their remedies from time, excepting that a kind of reason cures the one, and the other remedy is provided by nature; by which we discover (and this contains the whole marrow of the matter) that what was imagined to be the greatest evil is by no means so great as to defeat the happiness of life. And the effect of this is that the blow is greater by reason of its not having been foreseen, and not, as they suppose, that when similar misfortunes befall two different people, that man only is affected with grief whom this calamity has befallen unexpectedly. So that some persons, under the oppression of grief, are said to have borne it actually worse for hearing of this common condition of man, that we are born under such conditions as render