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

Now, the cure for one who is affected in this manner is to show how light, how contemptible, how very trifling he is in what he desires; how he may turn his affections to another object, or accomplish his desires by some other means; or else to persuade him that he may entirely disregard it: sometimes he is to be led away to objects of another kind, to study, business, or other different engagements and concerns; very often the cure is effected by change of place, as sick people that have not recovered their strength are benefited by change of air. Some people think an old love may be driven out by a new one, as one nail drives out another. But, above all things, the man thus afflicted should be advised what madness love is, for of all the perturbations of the mind, there is not one which is more vehement. For (without charging it with rapes, debaucheries, adultery, or even incest, the baseness of any of these being very blamable; not, I say, to mention these) the very perturbation of the mind in love is base of itself, for, to pass over all its acts of downright madness, what weakness do not those very things which are looked upon as indifferent argue?

Affronts and jealousies, jars, squabbles, wars,
Then peace again.⁠—The man who seeks to fix
These restless feelings, and to subjugate
Them to some regular law, is just as wise
As one who’d try to lay down rules by which
Men should go mad.53

Now, is not this inconstancy and mutability of mind enough to deter anyone by its own deformity? We are to demonstrate, as was said of every perturbation, that there are no such feelings which do not consist entirely of opinion and judgment, and are not owing to ourselves. For if love were natural, all would be in love, and always so, and all love the same object, nor would one be deterred by shame, another by reflection, another by satiety.

Anger, too, when it disturbs the mind any time, leaves no room to doubt its being madness, by the instigation of which we see such contention as this between brothers:

Where was there ever impudence like thine?
Who on thy malice ever could refine?54

You know what follows, for abuses are thrown out by these brothers with great bitterness in every other verse, so that you may easily know them for the sons of Atreus, of that Atreus who invented a new punishment for his brother:

I who his cruel heart to gall am bent,
Some new, unheard-of torment must invent.

Now, what were these inventions? Hear Thyestes:

My impious brother fain would have me eat
My children, and thus serves them up for meat.

To what length now will not anger go? even as far as madness. Therefore we say, properly enough, that angry men have given up their power, that is, they are out of the power of advice, reason, and understanding⁠—for these ought to have power over the whole mind. Now, you should put those out of the way, whom they endeavor to attack, till they have recollected themselves. But what does recollection here imply but getting together again the dispersed parts of their mind into their proper place? or else you must beg and entreat them, if they have the means of revenge, to defer it to another opportunity, till their anger cools. But the expression of cooling implies, certainly, that there was a heat raised in their minds in opposition to reason, from which consideration that saying of Archytas is commended, who being somewhat provoked at his steward, “How would I have treated you,” said he, “if I had not been in a passion?”

Where, then, are they who say that anger has its use? Can madness be of any use? But still it is natural. Can anything be natural that is against reason? or how is it, if anger is natural, that one person is more inclined to anger than another? or that the lust of revenge should cease before it has revenged itself? or that anyone should repent of what he had done in a passion? as we see that Alexander the king did, who could scarcely keep his hands from himself, when he had killed his favorite Clytus, so great was his compunction. Now who that is acquainted with these instances can doubt that this motion of the mind is altogether in opinion and voluntary? For who can doubt that disorders of the mind, such as covetousness and a desire of glory, arise from a great estimation of those things by which the mind is disordered? from whence we may understand that every perturbation of the mind is founded in opinion. And if boldness⁠—that is to say, a firm assurance of mind⁠—is a kind of knowledge and serious opinion not hastily taken up, then diffidence is a fear of an expected and impending evil; and if hope is an expectation of good, fear must, of course, be an expectation of evil. Thus fear and other perturbations are evils. Therefore, as constancy proceeds from knowledge, so does perturbation from error. Now, they who are said to be naturally inclined to anger, or to pity, or to envy, or to any feeling of this kind: their minds are constitutionally, as it were, in bad health, yet they are curable, as the disposition of Socrates is said to have been. For when Zopyrus, who professed to know the character of everyone from his person, had heaped a great many vices on him in a public assembly, he was laughed at by others, who could perceive no such vices in Socrates. But Socrates kept him in countenance by declaring that such vices were natural to him, but that he had got the better of them by his reason. Therefore, as anyone who has the appearance of the best constitution may yet appear to be naturally rather inclined to