The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by · Marcus Tullius Cicero
Introduction.
And, indeed, if the custom of man could speak, this would be its language. That its first beginnings were, as it were, beginnings of desire that it might preserve itself in that nature in which it had been born. For it had not yet been sufficiently explained what nature desired above all things. Let it therefore be explained. What else then will be understood but that no part of nature is to be neglected? And if there is nothing in it besides reason, then the chief good must be in virtue alone. But if there is also body, then will that explanation of nature have caused us to abandon the belief which we held before the explanation. Is it, then, being in a manner suitable to nature to abandon nature? As some philosophers do, when having begun with the senses they have seen something more important and divine, and then abandoned the senses; so, too, these men, when they had beheld the beauty of virtue developed in its desire for particular things, abandoned everything which they had seen for the sake of virtue herself, forgetting that the whole nature of desirable things was so extensive that it remained from beginning to end; and they do not understand that they are taking away the very foundations of these beautiful and admirable things.
XVI. Therefore, all those men appear to me to have made a blunder who have pronounced the chief good to be to live honourably. But some have erred more than others,—Pyrrho above all, who, having fixed on virtue as the chief good, refuses to allow that there is anything else in the world deserving of being desired; and, next to him, Aristo, who did not, indeed, venture to leave nothing else to be desired, but who introduced influence, by which a wise man might be excited, and desire whatever occurred to his mind, and whatever even appeared so to occur. He was more right than Pyrrho, inasmuch as he left man some kind of desire; but worse than the rest, inasmuch as he departed wholly from nature: but the Stoics, because they place the chief good in virtue alone, resemble these men: but inasmuch as they seek for a principle of duty, they are superior to Pyrrho; and as they do not admit the desire of those objects which offer themselves to the imagination, they are more correct than Aristo; but, inasmuch as they do not add the things which they admit to be adopted by nature, and to be worthy of being chosen for their own sakes, to the chief good, they here desert nature, and are in some degree not different from Aristo: for he invented some strange kinds of occurrences; but these men recognise, indeed, the principles of nature, but still they disconnect them from the perfect and chief good; and when they put them forward, so that there may be some selection of things, they appear to follow nature; but when they deny that they have any influence in making life happy, they again abandon nature.
And hitherto I have been showing how destitute Zeno was of any good reason for abandoning the authority of previous philosophers: now let us consider the rest of his arguments; unless, indeed, O Cato, you wish to make any reply to what I have been saying, or unless we are getting tedious. Neither, said he; for I wish this side of the question to be completely argued by you; nor does your discourse seem to me to be at all tedious. I am glad to hear it, I replied; for what can be more desirable for me than to discuss the subject of virtue with Cato, who is the most virtuous of men in every point? But, first of all, remark that that imposing sentiment of yours, which brings a whole family after it, namely, that what is honourable is the only good, and that to live honourably is the chief good, will be shared in common with you by all who define the chief good as consisting in virtue alone; and, as to what you say, that virtue cannot be formed if anything except what is honourable is included in the account, the same statement will be made by those whom I have just named. But it appeared to me to be fairer, advancing from one common beginning, to see where Zeno, while disputing with Polemo, from whom he had learnt what the principles of nature were, first took his stand, and what the original cause of the controversy was; and not to stand on their side, who did not even allow that their own chief good was derived from nature, and to employ the same arguments which they did, and to maintain the same sentiments.
XVII. But I am very far from approving this conduct of yours, that when you have proved, as you imagine, that that alone is good which is honourable, then say again that it is necessary that beginnings should be put forward which are suitable and adapted to nature; by a selection from which virtue might be called into existence. For virtue ought not to have been stated to consist in selection, so that that very thing which was itself the chief good, was to acquire something besides itself; for all things which are to be taken, or chosen, or desired, ought to exist in the chief good, so that he who has attained that may want nothing more. Do you not see how evident it is to those men whose chief good consists in pleasure, what they ought to do and what they ought not? so that no one of them doubts what all their duties ought to regard, what they ought to pursue, or avoid. Let this, then, be the chief good which is now defended by me; it will be evident in a moment what are the necessary duties and actions. But you, who set before yourselves another end except what is right and honourable, will not be able to find out where your principle of duty and action is to originate.
Therefore you are all of you seeking for this, and so are those who say that they pursue whatever comes into their mind and occurs to them; and you return to nature. But nature will fairly reply to you, that it is not true that the chief happiness of life is to be sought in another quarter, but the principles of action in herself: for that there is one system only, in which both the principles of action and the chief good too is contained; and that, as the opinion of Aristo is exploded, when he says that one thing does not differ from another, and that there is nothing except virtue and vice in which there was any difference whatever; so, too, Zeno was in the wrong, who affirmed that there was no influence in anything, except virtue or vice, of the very least power to assist in the attainment of the chief good: and as that had no influence on making life happy, but only in creating a desire for things, he said that there was some power of attraction in them: just as if this desire had no reference to the acquisition of the chief good. But what can be less consistent than what they say, namely, that when they have obtained the knowledge of the chief good they then return to nature, in order to seek in it the principle of action, that is to say, of duty? For it is not the principle of action or duty which impels them to desire those things which are according to nature; but desire and action are both set in motion by those things.
XVIII. Now I come to those brief statements of yours which you call conclusions; and first of all to that—than which, certainly, nothing can be more brief—that "everything good is praiseworthy; but everything praiseworthy is honourable; therefore everything good is honourable." Oh, what a leaden dagger!—for who will grant you your first premises? And if it should be granted to you, then you have no need of the second: for if everything good is praiseworthy, so is everything honourable; who, then, will grant you this, except Pyrrho, Aristo, and men like them?—whom you do not approve of. Aristotle, Xenocrates, and all that school, will not grant it; inasmuch as they call health, strength, riches, glory, and many other things good, but not praiseworthy; and they therefore do not think that the chief good is contained in virtue alone, though still they do prefer virtue to everything else. What do you think that those men will do who have utterly separated virtue from the chief good, Epicurus, Hieronymus, and those too, if indeed there are any such, who wish to defend the definition of the chief good given by Carneades?
And how will Callipho and Diodorus be able to grant you what you ask, men who join to honourableness something else which is not of the same genus?—Do you, then, think it proper, Cato, after you have assumed premises which no one will grant to you, to derive whatever conclusion you please from them? Take this sorites, than which you think nothing can be more faulty: “That which is good is desirable; that which is desirable ought to be sought for; that which ought to be sought for is praiseworthy,” and so on through all the steps. But I will stop here, for in the same manner no one will grant to you that whatever ought to be sought is therefore praiseworthy; and that other argument of theirs is far from a legitimate conclusion, but a most stupid assertion, “that a happy life is one worthy of being boasted of.” For it can never happen that a person may reasonably boast, without something honourable in the circumstances. Polemo will grant this to Zeno; and so will his master, and the whole of that school, and all the rest who, preferring virtue by far to everything else, still add something besides to it in their definition of the chief good. For, if virtue be a thing worthy of being boasted of, as it is, and if it is so far superior to all other things that it can scarcely be expressed how much better it is; then a man may, possibly, be happy if endowed with virtue alone, and destitute of everything else; and yet he will never grant to you that nothing whatever is to be classed among goods, except virtue.
But those men whose chief good has no virtue in it, will perhaps not grant to you that a happy life has anything in it of which a man can rightly boast, although they also, at times, represent virtues as subjects for boasting. You see, therefore, that you are either assuming propositions which are not admitted, or else such as, even if they are granted, will do you no good. XIX. In truth, in all these conclusions, I should think this worthy both of philosophy and of ourselves,—and that, too, most especially so when we were inquiring into the chief good,—that our lives, and designs, and wishes should be corrected, and not our expressions. For who, when he has heard those brief and acute arguments of yours which, as you say, give you so much pleasure, can ever have his opinion changed by them? For when men fix their attention on them, and wish to hear why pain is not an evil, they tell him that to be in pain is a bitter, annoying, odious, unnatural condition, and one difficult to be borne; but, because there is in pain no fraud, or dishonesty, or malice, or fault, or baseness, therefore it is not an evil. Now, the man who hears this said, even if he does not care to laugh, will still depart without being a bit more courageous as to bearing pain than he was when he came. But you affirm that no one can be courageous who thinks pain an evil. Why should he be more courageous if he thinks it—what you yourself admit it to be—bitter and scarcely endurable? For timidity is generated by things, and not by words. And you say, that if one letter is moved, the whole system of the school will be undermined. Do I seem, then, to you to be moving a letter, or rather whole pages? For although the order of things, which is what you so especially extol, may be preserved among them, and although everything may be well joined and connected together, (for that is what you said,) still we ought not to follow them too far, if arguments, having set out from false principles, are consistent with themselves, and do not wander from the end they propose to themselves.
Accordingly, in his first establishment of his system, your master, Zeno, departed from nature; and as he had placed the chief good on that superiority of disposition which we call virtue, and had affirmed that there was nothing whatever good which was not honourable, and that virtue could have no real existence if in other things there were things of which one was better or worse than another; having laid down these premises, he naturally maintained the conclusions. You say truly; for I cannot deny it. But the conclusions which follow from his premises are so false that the premises from which they are deduced cannot be true. For the dialecticians, you know, teach us that if the conclusions which follow from any premises are false, the premises from which they follow cannot be true. And so that conclusion is not only true, but so evident that even the dialecticians do not think it necessary that any reasons should be given for it—“If that is the case, this is; but this is not; therefore that is not.” And so, by denying your consequence, your premise is contradicted. What follows, then?—“All who are not wise are equally miserable; all wise men are perfectly happy: all actions done rightly are equal to one another; all offences are equal.” But, though all these propositions at first appear to be admirably laid down, after a little consideration they are not so much approved of. For every man’s own senses, and the nature of things, and truth itself, cried out, after a fashion, that they could never be induced to believe that there was no difference between those things which Zeno asserted to be equal.
XX. Afterwards that little Phœnician of yours (for you know that the people of Citium, your clients, came from Phœnicia), a shrewd man, as he was not succeeding in his case, since nature herself contradicted him, began to withdraw his words; and first of all he granted in favour of those things which we consider good, that they might be considered fit, and useful, and adapted to nature; and he began to confess that it was more advantageous for a wise—that is to say for a perfectly happy—man, to have those things which he does not venture indeed to call goods, but yet allows to be well adapted to nature. And he denies that Plato, if he were not a wise man, would be in the same circumstances as the tyrant Dionysius; for that to die was better for the one, because he despaired of attaining wisdom, but to live was better for the other, because of his hope of doing so. And he asserts that of offences some are tolerable, and some by no means so, because many men passed by some offences, and there are others which very few people pass by, on account of the number of duties violated. Again, he said that some men are so foolish as to be utterly unable ever to arrive at wisdom; but that there are others who, if they had taken pains, might have attained to it. Now, in this he expressed himself differently from any one else, but he thought just the same as all the rest. Nor did he think those things deserving of being valued less which he himself denied to be goods, than they did who considered them as goods. What, then, did he wish to effect by having altered these names? At least he would have taken something from their weight, and would have valued them at rather less than the Peripatetics, in order to appear to think in some respects differently from them, and not merely to speak so.
What more need I say? What do you say about the happy life to which everything is referred? You affirm that it is not that life which is filled with everything which nature requires; and you place it entirely in virtue alone. And as every controversy is usually either about a fact or a name, both kinds of dispute arise if either the fact is not understood or if a mistake is made as to the name; and if neither of these is the case, we must take care to use the most ordinary language possible, and words as suitable as can be,—that is, such as make the subject plain. Is it, then, doubtful that if the former philosophers have not erred at all as to the fact itself, they certainly express themselves more conveniently? Let us, then, examine their opinions, and then return to the question of names.
XXI. They say that the desire of the mind is excited when anything appears to it to be according to nature; and that all things which are according to nature are worthy of some esteem; and that they deserve to be esteemed in proportion to the weight that there is in each of them: and that of those things which are according to nature, some have in themselves nothing of that appetite of which we have already frequently spoken, being neither called honourable nor praiseworthy; and some, again, are accompanied by pleasure in the case of every animal, and in the case of man also with reason. And those of them which are suitable are honourable, beautiful, and praiseworthy; but the others, mentioned before, are natural, and, when combined with those which are honourable, make up and complete a perfectly happy life. But they say, too, that of all these advantages—to which those people do not attribute more importance who say that they are goods, than Zeno does, who denies it—by far the most excellent is that which is honourable and praiseworthy; but that if two honourable things are both set before one, one accompanied with good health and the other with sickness, it is not doubtful to which of them nature herself will conduct us: but, nevertheless, that the power of honourableness is so great, and that it is so far better than, and superior to, everything else, that it can never be moved by any punishments or by any bribes from that which it has decided to be right; and that everything which appears hard, difficult, or unfortunate, can be dissipated by those virtues with which we have been adorned by nature; not because they are trivial or contemptible—or else where would be the merit of the virtues?—but that we might infer from such an event, that it was not in them that the main question of living happily or unhappily depended.
In short, the things which Zeno has called estimable, and worth choosing, and suitable to nature, they call goods; but they call that a happy life which consists of those things which I have mentioned, or, if not of all, at least of the greatest number of them, and of the most important. But Zeno calls that the only good which has some peculiar beauty of its own to make it desirable; and he calls that life alone happy which is passed with virtue. XXII. If we are to discuss the reality of the case, then there cannot possibly, Cato, be any disagreement between you and me: for there is nothing on which you and I have different opinions; let us only compare the real circumstances, after changing the names. Nor, indeed, did he fail to see this; but he was delighted with the magnificence and splendour of the language: and if he really felt what he said, and what his words intimate, then what would be the difference between him and Pyrrho or Aristo? But if he did not approve of them, then what was his object in differing in language with those men with whom he agreed in reality?
What would you do if these Platonic philosophers, and those, too, who were their pupils, were to come to life again, and address you thus:—“As, O Marcus Cato, we heard that you were a man exceedingly devoted to philosophy, a most just citizen, an excellent judge, and a most conscientious witness, we marvelled what the reason was why you preferred the Stoics to us; for they, on the subject of good and evil things, entertain those opinions which Zeno learnt from Polemo; and use those names which, when they are first heard, excite wonder, but when they are explained, move only ridicule. But if you approved those doctrines so much, why did you not maintain them in their own proper language? If authority had influence with you, how was it that you preferred some stranger to all of us and to Plato himself? especially while you were desirous to be a chief man in the republic, and might have been accomplished and equipped by us in a way to enable you to defend it to your own great increase of dignity. For the means to such an end have been investigated, described, marked down, and enjoined by us; and we have written detailed accounts of the government of all republics, and their descriptions, and constitutions, and changes,—and even of the laws, and customs, and manners of all states. Moreover, how much eloquence, which is the greatest ornament to leading men,—in which, indeed, we have heard that you are very eminent,—might you have learnt, in addition to that which is natural to you, from our records!” When they had said this, what answer could you have made to such men? I would have entreated you, said he, who had dictated their speech to them, to speak likewise for me, or else rather to give me a little room to answer them myself, only that now I prefer listening to you; and yet at another time I should be likely to reply to them at the same time that I answer you.
Surrounded by disease, and exile sad, And cruel want. Those ancients, then, must have been far from clever, to think that life more desirable, better, and happier. But the Stoics think it only to be preferred if one has a choice; not because this life is happier, but because it is better adapted to nature; and they think that all who are not wise are equally miserable. The Stoics, forsooth, thought this; but it had entirely escaped the perception of those philosophers who preceded them, for they thought that men stained with all sorts of parricide and wickedness were not at all more miserable than those who, though they lived purely and uprightly, had not yet attained complete wisdom. And while on this topic, you brought forth those similes which they are in the habit of employing, which are, in truth, no similes at all. For who is ignorant that, if many men should choose to emerge from the deep, those would be nearer breathing who came close to the surface, but still would not be actually able to breathe any more than those who are at the bottom? Therefore, on your principles, it is of no avail to make progress and advancement in virtue, in order to be less utterly miserable before you have actually arrived at it, since it is of no use in the case of men in the water. And since puppies who are on the point of opening their eyes, are just as blind as those that are but this moment born; it is plain also that Plato, as he had not yet seen wisdom, was as blind in his intellect as Phalaris.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.