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

parricide or of a betrayer of his country). Vexation is a pressing grief. Mourning is a grief at the bitter death of one who was dear to you. Sadness is a grief attended with tears. Tribulation is a painful grief. Sorrow, an excruciating grief. Lamentation, a grief where we loudly bewail ourselves. Solicitude, a pensive grief. Trouble, a continued grief. Affliction, a grief that harasses the body. Despair, a grief that excludes all hope of better things to come. But those feelings which are included under fear, they define thus: There is sloth, which is a dread of some ensuing labor; shame and terror, which affect the body (hence blushing attends shame); a paleness, and tremor, and chattering of the teeth attend terror; cowardice, which is an apprehension of some approaching evil; dread, a fear that unhinges the mind, whence comes that line of Ennius,

Then dread discharged all wisdom from my mind;

fainting is the associate and constant attendant on dread; confusion, a fear that drives away all thought; alarm, a continued fear.

The different species into which they divide pleasure come under this description: so that malevolence is a pleasure in the misfortunes of another, without any advantage to yourself; delight, a pleasure that soothes the mind by agreeable impressions on the ear. What is said of the ear may be applied to the sight, to the touch, smell, and taste. All feelings of this kind are a sort of melting pleasure that dissolves the mind. Boastfulness is a pleasure that consists in making an appearance, and setting off yourself with insolence. The subordinate species of lust they define in this manner: Anger is a lust of punishing anyone who, as we imagine, has injured us without cause. Heat is anger just forming and beginning to exist, which the Greeks call θύμωσις. Hatred is a settled anger. Enmity is anger waiting for an opportunity of revenge. Discord is a sharper anger conceived deeply in the mind and heart. Want, an insatiable lust. Regret is when one eagerly wishes to see a person who is absent. Now here they have a distinction, so that with them regret is a lust conceived on hearing of certain things reported of someone, or of many, which the Greeks call κατηγορήματα, or predicaments, as that they are in possession of riches and honors; but want is a lust for those very honors and riches. But these definers make intemperance the fountain of all these perturbations, which is an absolute revolt from the mind and right reason⁠—a state so averse to all rules of reason that the appetites of the mind can by no means be governed and restrained. As, therefore, temperance appeases these desires, making them obey right reason, and maintains the well-weighed judgments of the mind, so intemperance, which is in opposition to this, inflames, confounds, and puts every state of the mind into a violent motion. Thus, grief and fear, and every other perturbation of the mind, have their rise from intemperance.

Just as distempers and sickness are bred in the body from the corruption of the blood, and the too great abundance of phlegm and bile, so the mind is deprived of its health, and disordered with sickness, from a confusion of depraved opinions that are in opposition to one another. From these perturbations arise, first, diseases, which they call νοσήματα, and also those feelings which are in opposition to these diseases, and which admit certain faulty distastes or loathings; then come sicknesses, which are called ἀῤῥωστήματα by the Stoics. And these two have their opposite aversions. Here the Stoics, especially Chrysippus, give themselves unnecessary trouble to show the analogy which the diseases of the mind have to those of the body. But, overlooking all that they say as of little consequence, I shall treat only of the thing itself. Let us, then, understand perturbation to imply a restlessness from the variety and confusion of contradictory opinions, and that when this heat and disturbance of the mind is of any standing, and has taken up its residence, as it were, in the veins and marrow, then commence diseases and sickness, and those aversions which are in opposition to these diseases and sicknesses.

What I say here may be distinguished in thought, though they are in fact the same, inasmuch as they both have their rise from lust and joy. For should money be the object of our desire, and should we not instantly apply to reason as if it were a kind of Socratic medicine to heal this desire, the evil glides into our veins, and cleaves to our bowels, and from thence proceeds a distemper or sickness which, when it is of any continuance, is incurable, and the name of this disease is covetousness. It is the same with other diseases: as the desire of glory, a passion for women, to which the Greeks give the name of φιλογυνεία. And thus all other diseases and sicknesses are generated. But those feelings which are the contrary of these are supposed to have fear for their foundation, as a hatred of women such as is displayed in the Woman-hater of Atilius, or the hatred of the whole human species as Timon is reported to have done, whom they call the Misanthrope. Of the same kind is inhospitality. And all these diseases proceed from a certain dread of such things as they hate and avoid. But they define sickness of mind to be an overweening opinion, and that fixed and deeply implanted in the heart, of something as very desirable which is by no means so. What proceeds from aversion, they define thus: a vehement idea of something to be avoided, deeply implanted and inherent in our minds, when there is no reason for avoiding it. And this kind of opinion is a deliberate belief that one understands things of which one is wholly ignorant. Now, sickness of the mind has all these subordinate divisions: