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

impunity for all sorts of crimes, for with them reproach is a stronger check than conscience. From whence we have that scene in Afranius borrowed from common life, for when the abandoned son said, “Wretched that I am!” the severe father replies,

Let him but grieve, no matter what the cause.

And they say the other divisions of sorrow have their use: that pity incites us to hasten to the assistance of others, and to alleviate the calamities of men who have undeservedly fallen into them; that even envy and detraction are not without their use, as when a man sees that another person has attained what he cannot, or observes another to be equally successful with himself; that he who should take away fear would take away all industry in life, which those men exert in the greatest degree who are afraid of the laws and of the magistrates, who dread poverty, ignominy, death, and pain. But while they argue thus, they allow indeed of these feelings being retrenched, though they deny that they either can or should be plucked up by the roots, so that their opinion is that mediocrity is best in everything. When they reason in this manner, what think you⁠—is what they say worth attending to or not?

A. I think it is. I wait, therefore, to hear what you will say in reply to them. M.

Perhaps I may find something to say, but I will make this observation first: do you take notice with what modesty the Academics behave themselves? for they speak plainly to the purpose. The Peripatetics are answered by the Stoics; they have my leave to fight it out, who think myself no otherwise concerned than to inquire for what may seem to be most probable. Our present business is, then, to see if we can meet with anything in this question which is the probable, for beyond such approximation to truth as that human nature cannot proceed. The definition of a perturbation, as Zeno, I think, has rightly determined it, is thus: That a perturbation is a commotion of the mind against nature, in opposition to right reason; or, more briefly, thus: that a perturbation is a somewhat too vehement appetite (and when he says somewhat too vehement, he means such as is at a greater distance from the constant course of nature). What can I say to these definitions? The greater part of them we have from those who dispute with sagacity and acuteness: some of them expressions, indeed, such as the “ardors of the mind,” and “the whetstones of virtue,” savoring of the pomp of rhetoricians. As to the question if a brave man can maintain his courage without becoming angry, it may be questioned with regard to the gladiators, though we often observe much resolution even in them: they meet, converse, they make objections and demands, they agree about terms, so that they seem calm rather than angry. But let us admit a man of the name of Placideianus, who was one of that trade, to be in such a mind as Lucilius relates of him,

If for his blood you thirst, the task be mine;
His laurels at my feet he shall resign;
Not but I know, before I reach his heart,
First on myself a wound he will impart.
I hate the man; enraged I fight, and straight
In action we had been, but that I wait
Till each his sword had fitted to his hand.
My rage I scarce can keep within command.

But we see Ajax in Homer advancing to meet Hector in battle cheerfully, without any of this boisterous wrath. For he had no sooner taken up his arms than the first step which he made inspired his associates with joy, his enemies with fear, so that even Hector, as he is represented by Homer,49 trembling, condemned himself for having challenged him to fight. Yet these heroes conversed together, calmly and quietly, before they engaged. Nor did they show any anger or outrageous behavior during the combat. Nor do I imagine that Torquatus, the first who obtained this surname, was in a rage when he plundered the Gaul of his collar, or that Marcellus’s courage at Clastidium was only owing to his anger. I could almost swear that Africanus, with whom we are better acquainted from our recollection of him being more recent, was noways inflamed by anger when he covered Alienus Pelignus with his shield and drove his sword into the enemy’s breast. There may be some doubt of L. Brutus, whether he was not influenced by extraordinary hatred of the tyrant so as to attack Aruns with more than usual rashness, for I observe that they mutually killed each other in close fight. Why, then, do you call in the assistance of anger? Would courage, unless it began to get furious, lose its energy? What? do you imagine that Hercules, whom the very courage which you would try to represent as anger raised to heaven, was angry when he engaged the Erymanthian boar or the Nemaean lion? Or was Theseus in a passion when he seized on the horns of the Marathonian bull? Take care how you make courage to depend in the least on rage. For anger is altogether irrational, and that is not courage which is void of reason.

We ought to hold all things here in contempt: death is to be looked on with indifference; pains and labors must be considered as easily supportable. And when these sentiments are established on judgment and conviction, then will that stout and firm courage take place⁠—unless you attribute to anger whatever is done with vehemence, alacrity, and spirit. To me, indeed, that very Scipio50 who was chief priest, that favorer of the saying of the Stoics “that no private man could be a wise man,” does not seem to be angry with Tiberius Gracchus, even when he left the consul in a hesitating frame of mind, and, though a private man himself,