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WIDENER UBRARV
HX (32RE X
^ 3J. fj~
jh ■>" '
i'/ ■
C I C E R O'S
FIVE BOOKS
DE FINIBUS.
G
CICERO'S
FIVE BOOKS
DE FINIBUSj
CONCERNING THE LAST OBJECT
OF
DESIRE AND AVERSION.
BY S. PARKER.
REVISED AND COMPARED WITH THE ORIGINAL,
WITH A RECOMMENDATORY PREFACE,
BY JEREMY COLLIER, M. A.
A NEW EDITION. .
London:
PRINTED FOR LACKINGTON, ALLEN, & CO.
FINSBURY SQUAREy
BY NATHANIEL BLISS, OXFORD.
1812..
> e/L /Q/ U A O 3jC
TO
MR. CHERRY,
OF SHOTTESBROOK,
IS BERKS.
Sir,
The design of dedications has been so
long abused, that modesty obliges me not to
make you a tender of my respects in this,
way, much more than yourself not to admit
of it. And yet if I should spare you, I
could not excuse it to myself, when I consi-
der your title to the present argument, and
how good a judge you are both of tJiat and
the Translation.
I have concerned myself with the greatest
orator ', and one of the greatest philosophers
that ever appeared. And therefore decency
forbids my name at length in the title page.
But at the same time the world will be so
just, I hope, to the translator, as to compute .
upon the sense he has of your favours, in
proportion to the eminence of your authors
character.
Cicero, as appears by his dedicating sp
great a part of his works to Brutus, found
ir DEDICATION.
few of his fellow-citizens that deserved his
address. Had he lived in our days, \yhatever
some people imagine, he must have been
more at a loss for men of merit. And you
may be sensible that I flatter you as little as
I wrong the rest of my countrymen, when
I tell you there are not very many among
them, worthy of Cicero's philosophy, and
none worthier than yourself.
And that you may live long as admired
an example* as you have always lived, of
religion, piety, goodness* candour, and pru-
dence, happy in yourself and yours, happy
in the success of your designs and affairs,
happy in the exercise and use of your learn-
ing, happy in the neighbourhood and conver-
sation of Mr. Dodwell, (one of the greatest
felicities I can wish you in this world) happy
in the acquisition and enjoyment of what-
ever as a good Christian and a wise man you
have reason to think valuable here, until
you attain the completion of human happi-
ness in a better state, is the prayer of.
Honoured Sir,
Your most obliged,
And humble Servant,
S. P.
Mil. COLLIER'S PREFACE
TO THE
READER.
The following treatise, for the import-
ance of it, may well be called the grand
question. The inquiry is concerning the seat
ef the sovereign good, the complement of
human happiness, and the farthest object of
desire. And here all considerable parties
are. alio wed to put in their claim ; to argue
their pretences at length, and make the
most of their cause. In the first place
Torquatus stands up for, Epicurus, and
harrangues it strongly in behalf of pleasure:
and by concealing the defects, and height*
ening the advantages of this system, makes
the argument entertaining enough. But
then Tully appearing in person on the other
side, pulls ofFTorquatus's paint, exposes the
fallacy of his reasoning, and the scandal of
his hypothesis ; and in short, makes a perfect
conquest of Epicurus and all his clan : and
this is the subject of the two first books. In
the third the famous Cato Uticensis comes
on in defence of the stoics; calls virtue
and happiness the same thing, and courts
nothing but what is strictly honourable and
just : and thus by the lustre of his object,
by begging a principle or two, arguing con*
▼1 MR, COLLIERS PREFACE.
sistently, and flourishing handsomely upon
the character of his wise-man, he makes his
philosophy look plausible, solemn, and great.
In the fourth book* Tully enters the lists
again against Cato, takes his plea in pieces,
proves the stoical provision for happiness
too narrow, shews the vanity and canting of
that sect , and that though their terms were
different, their principles were much the
same with those of the peripatetics, whose
moral scheme in the fifth booh is explained
at large, and defended by Piso. This ar-
gument we see must have a great deal of
learning and curiosity in it ; insomuch that
the matter and notional part would be suffi-
cient to recommend it, though under an
ordinary management : how then must it
shine in the hands of so great a master as
Tully? So rich in his invention, so exact
in his method, so close in his reasoning, and
so pompous in his elocution ? As for the
translation, I have the satisfaction to com-
pare it with the original; and aim of opinion
the critics will find the authors sense well
represented, which in so nice and uncom-
mon a subject, is no easy performance :
besides, the phraseology is English, and the
turn lively and agreeable : and in some
places I shall venture to say, Tully is im-
proved by transplanting, and thrives better
in our soil, than in his own.
J. COLLIER.
THE
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
It is not the formality of the thing which
dravfrs a preamble from me, but 1 would
gladly give my reader some necessary hints,
find obviate a brace of prejudices, the onQ
against translations in general, the other
against translations of those authors which
are called inimitable.
To expostulate upon the former; What is
the meaning of ignorance and conceitedness,
unless it be, to understand nothing of other
people's knowledge, and prefer one's own
before it ? Our unhappy nation has more
reason than any other to distrust itself; and,
since it will never be the better for its own,
to try the cheaper experience of former ages
and foreign countries. Besides ; to make
good sense inclosure is a contempt of Provi-
dence which has designed it of more general
benefit than the -ran, and as communicable
through the distances of time as place. For
though it is inconsistent with the order of
nature, an universal equality of privileges
viii the translator's preface.
and conditions ; yet empty heads are to be
furnished from full ones, and not only au-
thorized but obliged to supply themselves
as they can. If some people have thought
more to the purpose than we ; why do not
we allow the advantage, and convert it to our
own, as readily as the juice of French grapes,
or the manufacture of Indian artificers ?
It, is objected that translations make us
idle, and forgetful of the originals. Rather
they should seem to put us in mind of them :
and this is the least good they can do. I
confess they may be trifled with, and so
may the originals, and a great many, valuable
things beside, and that is, by those who will
not give themselves the trouble of making
a right use of them ; for they are serviceable
to those that understand the originals, by
illustrating the sense, and to those that do
not, by imparting it ; while the latter have
the pleasure of novelty, and the former, of
variety into the bargain.
Another stratagem is, either to alarm our
modesty or dispute our prudence ; if the
original is good for something, it was arro-
gance to render it ; if good for nothing, we
made a foolish choice. Here is a dilemma !
in obedience to which, no doubt, we are to
Jet the illiterate part of the world lie unin-
formed and destitute of those instructions,
which were intended them by the learned !
What if we cannot reach the grandeur*
eloquence, neatness, and I know not what
ij«p^— — ■ m
THE TRANSLATORS PREFACE. IX
<
all, of an author's ' expression? Must we
Jose his morality ? Shall we stifle the seri-
ous principles and solitary precepts of a '
Greek or Latin philosopher, in a compli-
ment to the singular graces of his style, and
very often to the fancied ones ? Reason is
not given for the sake of language, but
language for the sake of reason ; atid it is
rightly observed by men of sense, that our
having a relish, as it is called, that is in plain
English, a greater regard to words than
things, may come in among the causes of
alt our public indiscretions and irregula-
rities.
1 am sensible Cicero in the title-page is
enough, with some people, to prevent the
good impressions of his own discourses. But
no matter, he will take effect, in his disha-
bille, upon the understandings of those that
deserve to be the better for him. For here
they will have his argument laid out in the
same equal distribution and method as
Brutus himself received it, though not in
the same propriety and easiness of language,
which the matter will admit of as little as
the author. If I have made those terms
intelligible in English, which it cost him so
much pains to find Latin for, let the reader
be content. Tully derived most of his
philosophical notions from the Greeks, whose
thoughts were so refined and uncommon
sometimes, -that as rich as was their language,
they were obliged to explain themselves in
X THE TRANSLATORS PREFACE
words provided on purpose. Now Tully
Endeavoured to carry up these notions, and
set them out with a greater variety of ex-
pression ; so that if our tongue can be made
to keep pace with him* it is not a little for
l£s credit
4s to the argument of the following trea*
tise ; it is, as the author takes occasion more
than once to observe, the main question and
piqst material point that immediately con-
cerns us in philosophy* the origin as well as
Consummation of it. For men are as" little
inclinable to act, unless for an end, as to
desist till they compass it ; and therefore
if they mistake the worse for tlye better, it
is a desperate case. Tully has handled the
inquiry at large : in the first and third book
he reports the resolutions of the epicureans
and stoics in their full force and validity,
out of the mouths of two very remarkable
and popular champions, each for his cause.
In the second he confutes, and, as became
him, lashes the pretensions of the first ; and
in the fourth discovers and rectifies the
errors of stoicism, but with all the deference
due to so generous over-sights. In the fifth,
Piso presents his chart of the peripatetical
principles, according to the best intention
and tenor of them. And from first to' last
my author's ingenuity is as observable for
the constructions he puts upon the sense of
his adversaries, as his reach of judgment in
the detection of their absurdities, Wis way
%M% TRANSLATORS PREFACE, XI
$f disproving is fair, genteel, .entertaining,
and politic ; he first makes one enemy con-
quer another for him, aqd then subdues
them both for himself. Nor has he pinched
the controversy, but wrought it up with
many incidental observations, reflexions, and
authorities. He besprinkles it with poetical
citations from the best wits* and surprising
instances of virtue and wisdom, domestic
and foreign. In a word, so comprehensive
has he formed his essay* that, beside the
several opinions of all the old philosophers^ a$
well those whose writings are perished aa
others, about moral ends* it affords a satisv
factory abridgment of all the ancient, natu*
ral 9 and moral philosophy and logic ± with
a faithful account of them, and a hand-
some judgment upon them too.
All this while it must be confessed* that
sometimes he strikes upon a prejudice or an
error. As when, for example, in the second
book aft of doubting comes upon him, and
he dares not aver this or that in relation to
the moral ends there mentioned. In the
same book he speaks fair of the violences of
Lucretia and L. Virginius ; so does Piso
un reproved in the fifth, though he discount
tenanced the practice of self murder a little
before. There is a passage in the fourth
book inclining to a supposition of the souFs
materiality ; but then in the fifth, where
Piso asserts the perpetuity of its operation,
our author, by not afterwards questioning
XU THE TRANSLATORS PREFACE.
or objecting against it, allows it, and declares
vigorously for the probability of it, in the
first book of his Tusculan Questions and Sci-
pio's dream. Elsewhere Piso ventures too
far, and Cicero takes no notice of it- No
majif says he, could mistake his chief good, nor
consequently his own measures, did he but un-
derstand theftdl significance of his nature
as soon as he was born. If these two great
men had lived long enough to be acquainted
with St Paul's doctrine, that we are not
sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of
ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, and
the reasons he gives for it, they had altered
their opinion. These are some of the most
% exceptionable positions : 1 should have men-
tioned one more which leads up the rear,
but that the reader will find considered at
length in the Appendix.
To muke some arfiends for these illusions,
his allowed sentences are all weighty, con-
sequential, clear, and apposite. He is a
stranger to the windings of Plato, the intri-
cacies of Aristotle, and the hastiness of Se-
neca. He has Epiqtetus's morals, not with-
out the rationale. And had he not been by
birth a republican, was qualified by nature
to have argued as majestically and compen-
diously as Antonine himself. However in
one respect no author has been more un-
happy than Cicero, that the excellence of
his performances has baujked the use of
them, and begot such a superstitious reve-
THE TRANSLATORS PREtfACfc. xitf
tente in those that might have been his in-
terpreters, as to hinder the distribution of
that influence which he designed universal.
I know some parts of his philosophy have
within these few years appeared in English.
An attempt, as it happens, an unkind one,
has been made upon his Tusculan Questions,
and his books of the Nature of the Deities.
The British Cicero alone has copied the Ro-
man to the life, in h\s admirable and envied
translation of the Offices. It is true, these
three 9 with that which follows, are the sub-
stance of his ethics ; but what other profit-
able precepts and suggestions are to be col-
lected from the remainder, I believe, might
do some service among us recommended in
our own tongue, especiallj 7 in in age when
people rave after experiments, and, like the
generality of madmen, will not be brought
to their wits but in their own way ; when the
obligations of Christianity are disowned as
well as violated ; and that which should
make them serious, is the subject of their
mirth. Nor can we wonder that they who
have lost religion, have lost themselves.
CICJBRO
Of
MORAL ENDS*
ssassszsssssassaai
BOOK L
' ii i i i i i ' jir
When I first attempted to naturalize the notions
and arguments, which the Grecian philosophers
have, with such a force of wit and judgment, and
such an exuberancy of curious learning, delivered
in their mother-tongue, I easily foresaw, my friend
Brutus, that in spite of fate, and my best endea-
vours, I should bring the critics about my ears in
a plentiful manner ; one sort of men (there are
scholars of the party too) cannot digest so much
as the bbsiness of philosophy in general; while
others are willing to dispense with you for a little
smattering ; but for a constant and entire applica-
tion to it, they can upon no terms approve of it
A third party are our heUeniied countrymen,
topful of Greek, and too learned for the pedantry
of Latin ; and these know not how to excuse k
to their own consciences, if they look into any but
3 '
2 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
Greek authors. Others, of a fourth kind, I expect
to meet with, directing me to the pursuit of more
significant studies: they grant philosophical exer-
cises are very polite and genteel, but then they
do not suit the dignity of my character and condi-
tion. To each of these I shall return a satisfactory
answer: and first, as for the professed enemies
of all philosophy, I refer them to a certain book
of mine, (they know which I mean,) where upon
occasion of Hortensius's invectives, I have drawn
up its defence, and vindicated its merit ; a work,
which yourself, and some other discerning persons,
have been pleased to favour with such encourag-
ing commendations, that I cannot forbear entering
upon new essays, and should be sorry, if after I
have once carried my point as to men's opinions,
the world should have cause to believe it is more
than I can do to keep it As for the second sort,
who condescend to gratify us with a small allow-
ance, it is an impracticable lesson they teach us,
when they talk of our abridging ourselves in the
use of that which when we once come to meddle
with, we loose the command of our own inclina-
tions ; and in earnest I had rather shake hands
with your thorough-paced abjurers of philosophy,
than your people that would cramp us in a study
which is almost infinite in its nature, and pretend
to warn us against excesses, where temperance
were a fault. For either a finished wisdom is at-
tainable ; and then it is pity but, wheu we have
BOOK THE FIRST. S
made prize of it, we should have time to enjoy the
fruits of our expedition ; or the difficulty is seem-
ingly as great as if it were not so; but then, first
of all, the search of truth ought to stop no where
till there is no more to find ; and secondly, it were
an eternal blemish upon us to flag in the chace
when the game is inestimable. Again; is there a real
satisfaction in writing upon philosophical argu-
ments ? Then certainly, nothing but envy and
peevishness will interrupt us. Or is it a very la-
borious toil ? It is hard, indeed, if a man may not
have the liberty of being as industrious as he
pleases. Old Chremes in the play, perhaps,
thought it was good nature, when it disturbed him
so much, that his new neighbour should dig and
plough, and gaul his shoulders — not that he would
balk his bustling, but only wished him to work
upon matter more suitable to his quality : and just
as obliging are those solicitous gentlemen, whose
bowels yearn over us for that intention of thought
which is properly a recreation to the thinkers. But
it is not so easy to give our whole-sale Greeks con*
tent ; as surprising an absurdity as, I conceive, it
is, that they will not reconcile themselves to serious
points discussed in the language of their own
country, and yet find themselves entertainment in
the verbal translations of the Greek mythologies.
For where is the man so inveterately bent against
the credit of his country, as to undervalue and
throw aside Ennius's Medea, or Pacuvius's An^
r
4 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
tiopa? To admire them as they stand in Euripides,
and nauseate them as made ours ? And yet the
cry runs, Menander in the original for my money ;
Caefcilius's Synephebi, and Terence's Andria are
trash to it. It may be so, but still, as good an
author as we have of Sophocles, I had rather read
Attilius's bald translation of Sophocles's Electra
than the original itself. And though Licinius in-
deed would make Attilius a rough and a crabbed
aullifiiy' perhaps not without reason, yet he may
qftd 1 fttjjtf to be read ; and not only Attilius, but
alrfci]g*^t of our poets, the negTect of them pro*
ceeding either from a lethargic laziness, or a fop-
pish delicacy. Besides, (or I am mistaken,) he
scarce deserves the name of a learned man that is
not competently versed in the productions of the
Latins. Now with tags of metre translated from
the Greek, such as utinam ne in nemore, <$c. we
dan dispense well enough ; where is the harm then,
should we render what Plato has discoursed upon
the subject of a good and happy life into Latin?
Or, waving the project of a translation, what if I
engage to make good what such authors of charac-
ter have asserted, and annex my own dpinion of
things in my own method and style? Will there
yet remain room for prejudice in favour #f the
Greeks, provided we write as handsomely as the
best of them, without being beholden to any of
them? It will not suffice to tell us, the Greeks
have been canvassing all these questions before-
BOOK THE MR8T, 5
hand. By the same argument the objectors are
debarred their poring upon half of the Greeks
themselves that are extant. What has Chrysippus
omitted that concerns the doctrine of the Stoics?
and yet nothing will serve but we must read Dio-
genes, Antipater, M nesarchus, Panaetius, my friend
Posidonius, (that should have been mentioned hi
the first place,) and an hundred besides. Do we
not conceive a mighty satisfaction when we peruse
Theophrastus upon the very same heads which
Aristotle had treated of before him ? And so for
the Epicureans; do they ever scruple to come
over again with the same suggestions that Epicurus
and their predecessors had set a foot formerly?
Well then, if the Greeks think it worth their while
to read one another, though many proceed upon
the same matter, because they handle it different
ways ; it is a very hard case, if bur people will not
do the same justice to the labours of their -country-
men. I confess, were I resolved upon as formal a
translation of Plato and Aristotle, as our poets
have made of the Grecian fables, I should be far
from deserving the thanks of my fellow-citizens
for the importation of those mighty genii; but I
have not yet made the attempt, though I know of
no impediment or prohibition to stop me ; and
when it comes in my way, I shall use my own dis-
cretion in citing passages, especially from the au-
thors aforesaid, as Ennius has quoted from Homer,
and Afranius from Menander. At the same time
6 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
I will not do as Lucilius did, challenge and cm-
pannel my readers. No, I will wish for a Persius,
and call out for a Scipio and a Rutilius, whose
depth of judgment was such a bug-bear, it seems,
to the poet, that upon the apprehension he presently
addresses himself to the Tarentines, Consentines,
and Sicilians. This was one of that bard's many
merry conceits, and in the days when critics had
as little of politeness and learning in them, as his
works, of solidity ; for, it is certain, they discover
more of humour and the gentleman than scholarship.
But as to my own concern, I need not stand in awe of
any readei; whatsoever, having presumed to dedi-
cate these notes to a person, who so fairly makes
his party good, upon the comparison, with the
best of the Grecian sages ; though it was yourself
that laid an obligation upon me to do so, by the
present you were pleased to make me of your book
about Virtue. That which has begot so strange an
abhorrency in some people to the compositions of
the Latins, is, I believe, the misfortune of meeting
with uncouth translations from wretched Greek
originals, deliciously improved in the brewing* Nor
will I blame those that have had no better luck*
for their antipathy, upon condition they will cashier
the Greeks too that harangue them to the same
effect in the same strain. But who would refuse
any valuable hints, whatsoever, or whencesoever,
dressed up in expressions elegant and proper? Cer-
tainly no body, unless it were the same person's
BOOK THE FIRST, 7
ambition to be thought a native of Greece, as Al-
bucius had his mock-title, the Athenian praetor,
given him by Scaevola. Our Lucilius's account of
it is very comical and satyrical in those lines which
he puts into Scaevola's mouth, Grcecum te, Aliuci,
Tis well, Albucius, yon shall be no more
A Roman, as we counted you before ;
No, nor the Sabine, who so loudly boasts
Of patrons, pensions, honourable posts.
When'er we meet, roy brave Atheuian lord
I kiss your hand, and x°"S l he the word.
Your troopers, lictors, all the tribe of state,
With #a7pE shall alarm the people's hate.
The reflections were just: nor is any thing more
unaccountable than this prevailing aversion to our
own manufacture. But that the disquisition is for
another place, I am sensible I could prove, and
have often insisted upon it, that the Latin tongue
is so far from the barrenness which it is generally
charged with, as to be more copious even than the
Greek. When or where have any of our first or
second-rate orators or poets betrayed any defici-
ency, either as to richness or elegance of expression,
when once provided with a pattern to follow?
The commonwealth of Rome has thought me wor-
thy to be made an instrument of serving her inter-
est; and, I hope, what with the fatigues of the
bar, and a thousand drudgeries and dangers, I
have in that respect acquitted myself as I ought ;
'9 CICEIO.OP MOftAl END*.
yet one duty more is, I think, incumbent opofl
me, and that is the propagation of learning among
my countrymen, whatever pains or perplexities it
may cost me. Furthermore, I promise all such as
are disposed rather to read the Greeks, they shall
never be discouraged by me, if they will really
study them, and put no tricks upoaus; and as for
those who trade in both languages, or are inclin-
able to prefer their own to any other so far as it
will serve their purpose, I will do them what ser-
vice I can. To proceed, they who would have
me lay out my talent another way, are somewhat
severe, seeing no body of Roman extraction has
wrote more than I have done already ; not that I
am yet without a reserve, if I live long enough to
make it public, though among all my productions
there are none preferable to the ensuing Philoso*
phical Treatise, as every one that well digests it
will allow. For how can we better exercise our
thoughts and our curiosity than upon philosophi-
cal Queres, and particularly the present; namely,
What is ultimately the scope and end to which all
our resolutions of living honestly and virtuously are
pointed : what nature bids us pursue as the choicest
of eligible things, and what to avoid as the greatest
of evils : a question about which there has ever
depended a mighty controversy among the men of
letters ; and therefore, I conceive, I shall not seem
to depart from the dignity of my character, by set-
ting myself to learn wherein consists the solidity
BOOK THE FIRST, %
and perfection of whatever occurs in the concerns
of life. Shall two such patriots as Publius Sceevola
and Marcus Manilius maintain a dispute whether
a master's title be good to the child of his slave ?
And shall Marcus Brutus dislike an argument of
such an admirable kind and so general a use as
mine? I have heretofore with pleasure gone
through that case beside many others of the same
stamp, and design to go over them again; but
must we therefore never look after those resolves
which settle the main and only business of life ?
The first, perhaps, may sell best ; but the last, I
am sure, will serve best ; as I need not inform those
who will but apply themselves to read them. Let
me add, that I have dissected and sifted the whole
question about the ends of good and evil, for I
have not only dwelt upon such notions as I myself
could approve, but stated the several hypotheses
which philosophers of all sorts have advanced:
To begin with the plainest, let Epicurus's model,
being the most generally known, lead the van ; and
you will see jny account of it h as accurate as you
can meet with any where among the Epicureans
themselves, it being not my design to make prose*
lytes, but to clear up truth. Once upon a time,
you must know, I heard Epicurus's cause pleaded
as to his opinion about pleasure, by that complete
scholar Lucius Torquatus. Caius Triarius, a well
instructed, serious young gentleman was present.
And I answered what we had from Torquatu*.
c
10 CICEHO OF MORAL ENDS.
They were pleased to make me a visit at my Beat
in the country ; and so after a short conference •
about learned matters, to which my two guests
were much addicted ; once in our lives, says Tor-
quatus, we have caught you at leisure ; now then I
must know your reason why you refuse your vote
for my friend Epicurus, for you are not so bad as
the rest, that not satisfied with dissenting from him,
bear him a mortal hatred. I take him to be the
only man of them all that had truth before his eyes,
and was able to rescue the mind from the grossest
errors, and find out a complete method to make
us good and happy. But I suppose yours and
Triarius's objection is one and the same, that he
wants all the elegancies of Plato, Aristotle, and
Theophrastus. For as to the truth and stanchness
of his assertions I cannot suppose you will pretend
to dispute it. Never, Torquatus, replied I, were
you wider of the mark. I am not at all displeased
with the style of your philosopher; it is expressive
and clear : and though I would not turn my back
upon a philosopher's eloquence if it came in my
way ; yet at the same time I would never fall out
with him for having none to shew. No, it is his
matter which I cannot relish, at least as to a great
many instances that might be produced. But so
many men so many minds, and none infallible.
To this Torquatus : and what, I beseech you, may
be your exceptions ? for I am well satisfied of
your candour, and therefore conclude you have
BOOK THE FIRST. 11
some way or other mistook the philosopher's mean-
ing. If I have, said I, my instructors Phaedrus
and Zeno must answer for it, who with all the
knowledge they communicated of the Epicurean
principles, could never reconcile me to any but the
proofs they gave of their own diligence. Atticus
and I were two of their most constant auditors ;
for Atticus had an esteem for them both, and was
a passionate admirer of Phaedrus ; nor did we let
a day pass without interchanging our notions upon
what had been dictated by our tutors. Then it
never used to be any part, of our debate whether I
understood, but only which way I held the question.
If you please, answered Torquatus, let us hear
what it is that you cannot digest. In the first
place said I, as much as he values himself upon
his natural philosophy, never any man's abounded
more with blunders and absurdities. He attempts
improving upon Democritus, but in my opi-
nion so very unfortunately, that whatever he
mends he makes ten times worse than it was be-
fore. Democritus had supposed an infinite space,
uncircumscribed by dimensions or extremities,
and therein a multitude of atoms or indivisible
bodies, and these to frisk about hither and thither
till they danced themselves into a consistency and
continuity, so as to make up the material world ;
and that these atoms derived not their agitation
from the impulse of any efficient cause, but that
they had been, in motion from all eternity. Now
i
,12 CICERO OF MORAL END*.
so long as Epicurus keeps touch with Democritus,
for the most part he makes a pretty good shift,
though both advance a great many suppositions to
which I can never subscribe, as particularly and
especially, when there are two fundamental prin-
ciples at least which every naturalist is obliged to
consider, the efficient and the material cause, they
have excluded the former, and wholly concerned
themselves with the latter. In this nonsense they
are equally interested ; but the next monster of
imaginatipn is Epicurus's own ; for when he has
given the word of command to his little indivisible
solids, that they should air descend by the force of
their own weight in a direct line, according to the
natural tendency, forsooth ! of all bodies, the subtle
virtuoso at last bethought himself that if every
atom fell from its place in a straight line, they
might fall long enough before any two of them en-
countered. Hereupon he casts about for an expe-
dient ; and what do you think it was ? Why truly
his atoms had unaccountably got a irick of reeling,
and so met and shook hands, and combined them-
selves into a world. Now this is a mere school-
boy's invention ; and yet it will not bring him off
at last : for this motion of inclination is all preca-
rious and arbitrary, and no more cause assigned
for it, than for his depriving his atoms of that direct
motion which is natural to gravitation. What a
strange creature is a natural philosopher, erecting
hypotheses without a physical cause? and that iia-
BOOK THE FIRST. IS
pertinently to his own design in doing so ? For if
all bis atoms must descend sideling, they will ne-
ver join one another ; or, if some are to fall aslant y
and some right down, just according as he lays his
commands upon them; this is teaching them to
lead up con/rants and minuets. And then this
tumultuary conflux of atoms to the disappointment
of Democritus as well as Epicurus, could never,
after all, have produced such a beautiful and regu-
lar universe. Indeed the very supposing of an
indivisible body proves him sufficiently defective
and ignorant in his own way, as himself might
have understood, if instead of unteaching his friend
Polyoenus geometry, he had submitted to learn a
little of it from him. s Democritus, who was a man
of learning and a complete geometrician, allows
the sun to be a very large body, while the other
is contented with two feet, or thereabouts, for its
diameter, making its real bigness the same, or
much the same, as its apparent. Thus whatever
he changes, he spoils; and whatever he takes
without altering belongs to Democritus; as his
atoms, his space, his representations or species,
which obtruding themselves upon us, are the cause
as well of thought as of sight; his apiria, or infi-
nity ; his innumerable worlds, and his daily origin
nations of some, and dissolutions of others. These
chimeras I know not what to make of; but yet,
methiqks, it is pity Democritus, after the applause
which others have bestowed. upon him, should lose
14 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
all his reputation through the default of one of his
most devoted and servile followers. Then as for
that other part of philosophy which contains the
mystery of disputation, and is termed logic, your
oracle is absolutely unfurnished and defenceless i
for he has nothing to say, not he, to definitions,
divisions, and partitions; neither will he put us in
a .way to form a conclusion, unravel a fallacy, or
distinguish equivocate : he appropriates all discri-
mination to the external senses; and affirms that
if ever they should entertain a falsehood for a truth,
we are destitute of any further means of discerning
one from the other. And as for his ethics, the third
part of liis philosophy, when he brings into the light
his moral end, it is a dishonorable and a sordid one.
The grand proof which he urges for his position is
fetched from this natural principle, that we should
pursue pleasure and avoid trouble ; and therefore
liis division of things is into delectables and detest-
ables. This is all Aristippicism revived, only the
Cyrenaics managed their cause more artfully and
ingeniously. Now human nature could not receive
a greater affront than this implies. Our being,
with its furniture and distinction, was certainly
designed to much nobler purposes: and I cannot
believe (though I know myself liable to error) that
the original Torquatus took the enemies. gold chain
from him, in order to the perception of any bodily
pleasure ; or that in the time of his third consul-
ship he engaged the 'Latins in the battle of Veseris,
BOOK THE FIRST* 15
for the sake of any sensual gratification. ' So when
he gave his child the fatal blow with his own hand,
preferring the rights and authority of the public
establishment to the natural tenderness and duty
of a parent, I suppose, the satisfaction of this dis-
cipline, if he had any, was severely embittered by
the relation. So again, when Lucius Torquatus, ,
that was fellow consul with Cneius Oct&vius, treated
his son, that had been adopted by Silanus, with
such severity, upon articles exhibited against him
by the Macedonian delegates, for acts of extortion,
while he was prator in that province, strictly
commanding him to come to his trial, then after
an hearing of both parties, declaring that his be*
haviour in his government had been unworthy of
the family from which he was descended, and
banishing him for ever from his presence: will
you say that the father when he did all this had
any raptures and transports in his eye? Not to
enumerate the dangers, the toils, the calamities,
which are welcome to every true patriot and pro-
tector of his dependents, in such a rational defi-
ance to all outward enjoyments as to embrace ex-
tremities rather than forego a duty ; not to reckon
\ip these, I say, let us descend to more familiar
instances, though not weaker evidences. I appeal
to yourselves, gentlemen, where is the nectar and
ambrosia you taste in the several authors you con
verse with, historians, philosophers, poets, and the
many verses you have imprinted upon your me;
1 5 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
mory? It will not serve the turn to tell me they are
entertaining and diverting. No doubt the Torqua-
tuses found a pleasure too in what they did. But
Epicurus is wiser than to put his cause upon that
issue ; and so are yourselves, and every body that
understands the merits of it. If here, as of course,
it is demanded, how the Epicureans then come to
be so numerous, among other causes, a principal
one is this, that Epicurus is vulgarly conceived to
maintain, that virtue and probity are essentially
and intrinsically delightful ; and whether any re-
gard be had to corporeal satisfactions or not, vir-
tue and wisdom would be desirable irrespective-,
ly, and for themselves, which he can by no means
away with. And therefore I can as little approve
of Epicurus's opinion. But it is as good as could
be expected from that illiterate man : for, I pre-
sume, even Torquatus himself must acknowledge
him to have been but a very superficial scholar.
However, he had no reason to seduce other peo-
' pie from following their studies : though, it seems,
he could not influence you in that respect. This
was what I offered, not so much to explain myself,
as to alarm Torquatus. In earnest, said Tria-
rius with a smile, you have effectually stripped
Epicurus of all his philosophy, and left him
no pretension to cheer up his spirits, but only
this ; that as extravagantly as he talks, you un-
derstand his drift. His natural philosophy is
borrowed ware, and all of it in your opinion bad ;
BOOK THE FIRST. 17
but none of it so bad as his own alterations and
amendments. He knew not one tittle of logic. His
placing the sovereign good in pleasure, is a con-
ceit that is none of his own ; and the very choice
discovers the shallowness of his judgment : for
Aristippus had defended it before, and with a much
better grace too. And when you have thus di-
vested the man of common sense, it is no wonder
you should make him a dunce into the bargain.
If I am to declare myself obliged. Sir, said I,
to dissent from any man, would you have me do
it without informing you what it is 1 dislike in him ?
If I could receive ail that Epicurus has taught,
what should keep me from going over to him ?
especially when I consider, that to learn his philo-
sophy is no more than to learn a game. It is
true, L think it beneath the dignity of a philo-
sopher to blemish a dispute with contumelious and
spiteful suggestions, passionate excursions, or a
positive, peremptory obstinacy. But why dispu-
tants may not fm&jlazvs as fast as they can, I do
not apprehend. Most freely, says Torquatus,
I agree with you there ; for it is impossible to dis-
pute at all without the liberty . of carping, as to
dispute without impartiality and temper to any
purpose. But for other matters, you shall have
my answer immediately, if you will give yourself
the trouble to hear it. What, said I, do you think
I have been promising myself all this while ? Then
the question was, whether he should take in all the
18 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
parts of the Epicurean institution, or confine himself
to the topic of pleasure, the point in controversy :
and when I had left him to his choice, why then,
said he, I will at present speak to the main ques-
tion only, deferring the vindication of his physics
for a more seasonable opportunity. And I do not
question but to satisfy your scruples, and remove
your prejudices about the deviatory motion of the
atoms, the bigness of the sun, and the reasonable-
ness of the improvements made by Epicurus upon
Democritus. For this time I shall only explain
myself upon the subject of pleasure, neither ad-
vancing new notions, nor any other that I think .
you will have reason to reject. For my part,
said I, an unconvincible humour is my aversion ;
and assure yourself, if you can fairly prove your
point, you make me your convert. Then I do
not despair, said he, provided you will be as good
as your word ; but to prevent the interruptions of
queres and replies, I crave leave to carry on my
discourse in a continued series. And when for
that I had left him to his own discretion, thus he
addressed the company : I will begin in that me-
thod which my master observed before me, and
define the subject of the question ; not that I sup-
pose you want any such instruction, but that we
may proceed more regularly. It is therefore de-
manded what is our chief and ultimate good, into
which, as it is agreed among all philosophers what-
soever, the rest are universally resolved, and itself
BOOK THE FIRST. 19
into none. Epicurus will have this to be pleasure ;
as, on the contrary, pain to be the greatest of evils ;
and he. thus proposes to prove it. Every animal,
gays he, is no sooner born, but it begins the chace
after pleasure, and indulges itself in that, as the
only expedient of its well-being ; while to the ut-
most of its power it avoids and rescues itself from
pain; and this in an unprejudiced and an unde-
praved state of nature. And therefore he denies
any necessity of expostulating for a reason why we
should affect pleasure and abhor pain. These he
accounts the immediate results of sensation, as we
perceive that jire makes us warm, that snow is
white, and honey sweet ; of all which particulars,
we need no other demonstration to convince us,
than that of impressions from without, the difference
being wide between syllogistical deductions, and
the simple perceptions of sense : the one unlocks
doubts and obscurities, and lets you into truth ;
the other is a thorough-fare, and lets in truth
upon you. Now in regard a man without any
senses is no better than a carcase; from hence it
follows, that nature is the best judge of her own
desires and aversions : and that pleasure is the im-
mediate object of the first, and pain of the other.
For is there any thing which a man is capable of
perceiving and distinguishing in order to pursue or
shun it, besides pleasure or pain ? Others there are
of Epicurus's-disciples that carry the thing further ;
| and not enduring that the distinctions of good and
£0 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
evil should be ingrossed by the senses, understand
it as a dictate of the judgment, and a rule of right
reason, that pleasure is in its own nature desirable,
and pain odious.. And say that the consequence,
which is, that we should pursue the first, and
avoid the last, is an innate principle. But another
party, to which I properly belong, observing how
strangely the dispute concerning excellency of plea-
sure and the evil of pain has been bandied about,
are of opinion, that we ought not to manage our
cause with pertness and bigotry, but lay our rea-
sonings carefully together, and confer at large upon
the nature of pleasure and pain. Wherefore for
the easier detection and disproof of their error that
declaim against pleasure, and speak favourably of
pain, I will set the whole matter in a true light,
and give you the sense of what I find suggested to
our purpose by our great alchymist of truth and pro-
jector of human felicity. Nobody conceives an
aversion to pleasure ; but because, if we take im-
prudent measures to attain it, we suffer for it in
the consequences. As on the other hand, nobody
can be a friend to pain, as pain ; but yet it may
meet with a favourable reception, because it fre-
quently happens, that pain and labour prove a ne-
cessary means towards the procurement of exqui-
site pleasures. To propose a trivial instance;
w hich of us three would fatigue himself with our
bodily exercises, if he did not find his account in
it ? At the same time shall I blame a man for pre-
BOOK THE FIRST. 81
ferring that pleasure which he can purchase with-
out any manner of trouble, or for excusing himself
from that pain which is not productive of pleasure?
Notwithstanding, when the blandishments of any
present delights prevail so far as to intoxicate and
incapacitate us for judging what difficulties and
inconveniences we had better embrace, we are
highly to be blamed, and deserve to have no fa-
vour shewed us ; as do also those people, whose
effeminacy, and lightness, and antipathy to pain
and labour betray them into dishonourable courses.
But here the right distinction is very obvious. As
thus ; when we are free from all conditional bars
and limitations, and warranted to make directly
after that whicli pleases us best, then we must re-
sign up ourselves entirely to the pleasure, and
admit no treaty with the pain. S But when, as it
falls out sometimes, either our duty or our circum-
stances • oblige us to give up our pleasures, and
wade into vexations, there is this choice yet re-
served for every wise man, either to secure' to him-
self greater pleasures at the price of lesser, or to
escape severer vexations by accepting lighter. This
is my notion of the business; and I would gladly
understand why the instances of our family will
not agree with it — seeing you were pleased, upon
recollection, out of respect and kindness to fasten
there. A notable stratagem (if it would take)
to stroke your adversary into a peaceable indif-
ference ! But, I beseech you, what account will
22 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
v
you give u& of their acting as they did? Cat*
you believe \ when the enemy was charged so
briskly, and their own flesh and blood handled so
roughly, that no ends or interests were to be served?
The very beasts of prey are wiser than to expose
and disorder themselves for nothing : and can you
fancy that persons of such a character would have
acted so singularly, if they knew not why ? Hereafter
we shall see what grounds they went upon. At
present it is enough to be assured, that if they did
what became them, they acted upon some other
motive than that of simple and abstracted virtue.
One of them carried off his enemy's chain ; and
when he had done so, made armour on it for his
own security. Well, but there was a dangerous
obstacle that faced him, called an army. And what
could be the temptation then? Why a prospect
of raising his reputation, and fortifying his interest
with applause and popularity. The same person
knocked his child on the head ; but had he been
so rash and inhuman as to do such a thing with-
out a reason, I should blush to own myself his
relation. Now, if it was his intent rather to de-
stroy his own quiet, than suffer the military disci-
pline tu be infringed, or his orders and authority
neglected among the soldiers, when the danger
was imminent ; he made a wise provision for the
safety of his countrymen, well-knowing that his
own was comprehended therein. The same ob-
servations are applicable to a vast variety of in*
BOOK THE tflRST. tS
stances. And as industriously as both of you,
especially my antagonist, who thrashes at the study
of antiquity, exercise your lungs upon the cha-
racters of gallant and extraordinary men, and
magnify their actions, as not resulting from any
mercenary considerations, but purely from a prin-
ciple of virtue and honour, you are tied to retract,
provided, as in the premisses, it be made a rule of
option, that lesser satisfactions are to be quitted
for the obtaining of greater, and lesser inconve-
niences borne with to divert worse. And thus
much may suffice in relation to your instances of
glorious and heroic actions, it being by this time
proper to come forward and observe how directly
all virtue tends to pleasure. And here I shall ex-
plain what it is I mean by pleasure, that so the
common misconstructions may be prevented, and
the seriousness and even austerity of that philoso-
phy, which passes for such a luscious, effeminate
system, may be set forth. For indeed that sortof
pleasure which strikes the senses, and affects the
economy of our bodies with an obliging influence,
we do not pursue exclusively of the other incom-
parable pleasure, which consists in indolency, or
an exemption from pain : for since pleasure is no-
thing else but the agreeableness, nor pain but the
disagreeableness of things to the percipient; and
sincethevery removal and intermission of pain is
a thing so very agreeable to us, no wonder if we
pronounce the absence of pain to be a pleasure.
24 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
Thus for the purpose, the consequence of taking
off hunger, and extinguishing thirst is an actual
satisfaction : and so, as to all other particulars, a
cessation of disturbance is the very birth of plea-
sure. Hence it was that Epicurus denied a. me-
dium between pleasure and pain, because that
medium, as understood by those who talk of it,
implies freedom from pain ; which he will have to J
be not a pleasure barely, but the queen of all plea-
sures ; it being impossible but that every man who
feels at any time within himself after what manner
he is affected, should be sensible either of some
pleasure or some molestation : whereas it is Epi-
curus's maxim, that the sublimest pleasure termi->
nates in an entire discharge from pain ; and that
although it further admits of specifications and
variety, yet it is capable of no higher improvements.
Upon this occasion, I remember, my father has
told me, when he has been in the humour of ral-
lying stoicism, that at Athens, in one of the Ceramici,
there is a statue of Chrysippus sitting, and holding
out his hand, as if he would propose his favourite
quere, Do you find any cravings iri your hand in the
present crisis of its affairs? None, I dare say,
which yet it would not but have, if pleasure were
a real good ; and therefore it cannot be such. My
father was positive, the statue itself, if able to
speak, would talk more d propos. It is true, the
argument holds handsomely against the Cyrenaics ;
but Epicurus is by no means concerned in it. If
BOOK THE FIRST. 25
there were no pleasure but that which exhilarates
and captivates the senses, the mere absence of
pain, without the force of a little lively pleasure,
could never have given his hand content : but if
Epicurus's indolence be the highest of all plea-
sures, we may grant Chrysippus the first supposi-
tion, that his hand, while he held it out, felt no
want of any thing; but for the next, that \ipkaqur$
were a real good, his hand would be grasping at it,
we must beg bis pardon ; for it could not possibly
feel the want of any thing, because that which is
free from pain is in a state of pleasure. Further,
to make it plain that pleasure is our utmost good,
let us represent to ourselves the condition of a
man perpetually regaled with all the variety con-
4 ceivable of the most ravishing pleasures incident
either to the mind or body, without the least alloy
of pain, either present or approaching: can any
condition of life be more advantageous, or more
desirable than this ? especially since it must include
«uch a firmness of soul, as renders it proof against
the fears of death or pain ; death being a loss of
all sensation, and pain either long and moderate,
or acute and short ; so that which ever it proves,
there is room for comfort: though to finish the
felicity of it, it is necessary that the dread of a
Deity be forgotten, and the sweetness of past plea-
sures very frequently recollected. Again : let us
imagine a man afflicted with the saddest agonies
and tortures of mind and body, utterly despairing
M
26 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
of any relief or relaxation, and wholly lost as well
to the remembrance of past, and the expectation
of future, as the fruition of any present pleasure ;
what could we call him but the very accomplish-
ment and idea of misery itself? If therefore a
life of torment is the most detestable, undoubtedly
it is the greatest evil, and consequently a life of
pleasure must be the greatest good, on this side
whereof the mind of man finds nothing for it finally
to fix upon; as there is nothing besides pain, as that
comprehends all sorts of terrors and molestations r
which simply and from itself can either disturb or
shatter us. In short, pleasure and pain are the
first occasions and springs of all affection, aversi6ny
and action ; whence it is evident, that all the con-
cerns of wisdom and virtue are to be reckoned into
the account of a life of pleasure. And thus while
we convince ourselves, that when we have said all,
a life of jollity and pleasure is the summum bdntim,
the last and the completest good, into which all.
others must be resolved, and itself into none ; thfere
are some people abroad that widely mistaking the
intendment and scope of nature, affirm, that virtue
and glory claim that denomination ; an absurdity,
from which Epicurus, if they would lend him aft
ear, would easily free them: for what becomes of
the dignity and value of all your fine charming
virtues, in case they are no longer effective of plea-
sure ? But for the sake of health, we should look
upon the science of medicine aa an idle piece of
BQOK THE FIRST, 27
cariosity.; and a pilot is esteemed, not for his the-
ory of navigation, but the benefit of his conduct:
accordingly wisdom, or the science of living, were
it no more than a barren amusement, would be un-
deserving of our application, whereas it claims our
Attention, because we are by it put in a way to
come at pleasure. What pleasure I mean, I hope
you know so well by this time, that I need not fear
the odium of the word will stand in the way of my
argument. The thing which I drive at is this.
All the unhappiness of our lives is notoriously im-
putable to the false estimates we pass upon the
nature of things, and these misapprehensions fre-
quently forfeit us our choicest pleasures, and lay
us open to the most melancholy discomposures j
against which, wisdom is our antidote, as being
that which subdues our fears, and our desires, cor-
rects our vain opinions and prejudices, and cer-
tainly brings us to the possession of true pleasure*
It is this alone that quells our solicitude, and all
our panic fears, that slakes the vehemence of our
appetites, and teaches us the art of living happily,
our appetites being so insatiable as to bring de-
struction upon ourselves and our neighbours, upon
entire families, nay upon whole common-wealths.
These are the fountains of emulation, ruptures,
faction, and war. And yet as wildly and impetu-
ously as they are raised against other people, the
tempests and tumults they excite in our own breasts
are such, that the comforts of life are totally lost
€8 CICERO OF MORAL "ENDS.
in them; and till a man has the discretion to
prune away his levity, and his mistakes, and con*
tain himself within the restrictions of nature, it is
not in his power to live without disturbance and
terror. To this purpose is that most useful and
edifying division, which Epicurus has introduced
of our desires into those that are both natural and
necessary ; those that are natural but not neces-
sary ; and those that are neither natural nor nc-
tessary. The first may be satisfied easily and
cheaply : the second will also come to very rea-
sonable terms, requiring no more than a moderate
competency of what provisions offer themselves :
but the third will not be restrained or stinted at all.
Now then, as sure as ignorance and false reasonings
Over-cast the serenity of human life, and nothing
but wisdom rescues us from the tyranny of our
inclinations and terrors, and makes us a match for
the malice of fortune, and masters of our own ease
and quiet : so surely it is pleasure w-e propose to
ourselves, when we labour to be wise, and fear of
infelicity that keeps us from courses of indiscretion.
Thus ought we to be ambitious of having a com*
mand over ourselves, not for the sake of the virtue,
but the inward satisfaction, complacency, and har-
mony arising out of it. For this virtue is that
which governs us in all our pursuits and aversions,
inasmuch as it is not enough for us to distinguish
between what methods are fit or unfit to be taken,
but .our determinations must be followed with suit-
BOOK THE *IR3T. 99
able resolutions and practices ; whereas usually
when we come to know what we have to trust to,
some one phantom or other of pleasure enchants
us; we yield ourselves prisoners to our own desires,
and lose all apprehensions of the consequences ;
and so for the love perhaps of a poor insignificant
satisfaction, that might have been obtained some
other way, or if not, it had been never the worse
for us, we run ourselves into diseases, distresses,
and disgraces ; nay, frequently upon the very
weapons of public justice : while they who con-
trive and regulate their pleasures in such a man-
ner that no subsequent inconveniences attend them,
and deal so ingenuously by themselves as not to
do, for any solicitations of pleasure, what they are
satisfied ought not to be done, receive always dou-
ble interest for any pleasure they quit; and to
put by a greater evil they surrender themselves to
a less. Whence we infer, that as moderation and
temperance are not desirable qualities, as they
retrench our pleasures, but only as they commute
them to our advantage, so extravagances and in-
temperance are not purely upon their own account
detestable. The same is to be said of fortitude,:
It is not for the blessedness either of taking or en-
during pains that we give proofs of our patience,
our vigilance, nay our industry, and even our bra-
very itself : but these, we know, are the best phy*
sic toward a cure of the solicitudes and discou-
ragements of human life, and a philosophical garde
30: CICEftO OF : MORAL, £NJ>S.
du corps against our daily disasters. The fear of
death murders the repose of life; and, when af-
fliction once overpowers and unmans us, we must
be miserable : thus multitudes have become dis-
pirited and desperate, and done violence to their .
parents, their friends, their country, and them-
selves. But a man of a sturdy, brave spirit is
beyond the reach of care and disquietude: he is
unconcerned at the thoughts of death, as remand-
ing him into the same condition he was in before
be was begot, and fortified against pain by recol-
lecting, that, if violent, death stops it ; if gentle, it
has intermissions; if between both, we have it
under command ; and so as long as it is support-
able, may endure, and when we can no longer en-
dure it, may be as glad to leave life, as the diver-
sion of an opera when we are tired. All this effec-
tually proves that cowardice and laziness are not
essentially such ill qualities, nor fortitude and toler-
ance, such good ones, as they are made to be, but
only for that the effects of the first are so pernici-
ous, and those of the latter so pleasant and bene-
ficial Justice only remains of the four cardinal
virtues to be considered, and this will take the
same application as the former, it having been
shewn, that the union between pleasure, prudence,
temperance, and fortitude, is indissoluble ; and it
holds as well between pleasure and justice, which
is not only inoffensive, but fills the soul either with
satisfactions arising immediately from itself, or
BOOK THE FIBST. r 5l
from an assurance of all those felicities which ate
incompatible with a corrupted conscience, just as
precipitancy, impetuosity and itnpotency teaze ahd
torment the mind; for the consciousness of justice
is a charm against) all discomposure, whereas your
knave's lying close and undetected for some time,
can by no means make him secure that his practises
shall never be discovered. For foul play creates
suspicions, which ripen into rumours, and then
come the informers and the judges, unless the
very parties betray themselves, as they did under
your consulship; or if some people of wealth
and interest, fancy themselves sufficiently fenced
against prosecution and disturbance from men,
yet there is the dread of a Deity which they
cannot elude; and those dismal apprehensions
which haunt and macerate them night and day,
pass into a certain earnest, and a convincing proof
of the divine vengeance. How great, alas ! are
the odds between the advantages proposed in doing
an ill thing, and the mortifications we suffer for it
from our own consciences, from public justice, and
public odium. And yet some people's avarice,
pride, ambition, lust, luxury, and vices in general
are so insatiable, that the more they extend their
conquest, the more they are encouraged and ani-
mated, and will not be reclaimed, and therefore
must be restrained. Upon the whole, we see right
reason binds us to the duties of justice, equity, and
honesty* Man is but a poor helpless infant, and
^j
3t CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
fair-dealing is his interest, and the best means to
compass his ends. By right, our generosity should
be the steward of our fortunes, and abilities,
which, if impowered, will procure us the main in-
gredients of* a comfortable Ufa, that is, the , bene-
volence and favour of others ; and that without
crossing upon any plausible temptation, for the
wants of nature are easily supplied without our
betaking ourselves to injurious methods, and of
all other wants we are to take no notice, for the
matter of them is unworthy the least regard, and
the booty cannot prove so valuable as the injury
prejudicial. Wherefore we dare not affirm even
of justice that it is eligible andvaluable for itself, but
because of the satisfactions which attend it, for
there is a mighty consolation in being esteemed and
beloved, inasmuch as the interests of life are there-
by confirmed, and so the pleasures of it doubled.
And therefore villany and disingenuity ought to
scare us not so much by the calamities which they
bring upon ill men, as because they banish repose
and cheerfulness from the mind that entertains
them. Now then if all the glorious pretensions
of virtue itself which your other philosophers have
spent their harangues upon, dwindle into nothing,
unless consummated by pleasure ; and pleasure is
the only thing which by its own force invites and
attracts us to itself, it is apparent that pleasure must
be our main and ultimate good, and a happy life,
only another name for a life of pleasure. My
BOOK THE FIRST. 33
principal assertion being thus made out, I shall
now briefly dispatch some remaining observations.
Whether pleasure and pain are the true moral
ends, is not questioned by any of our sect : but
the error of some among us lies in their ignorance
of the true origins of pleasure and pain. It can-
not be denied that the pleasures and pains of the
mind spring from the pleasures and pains of the
body: and I must own, whatever Epicureans
think otherwise, as I know there are a great many
superficial ones that do, must not, as you observe,
hope to carry their point. The pleasures, it is true,
and disturbances of the mind affect us with joy
and sorrow ; but then both of them begin at the
body, and because of the intimate relation that is
between them, it comes to pass that the pleasure
and grief which the mind perceives, exceeds the
pleasures and pains of the body, for the body is
sensible of none but the objects present ; whereas
the mind moreover employs itself upon precedent
and future. And if when the body is in pain, the
mind is proportionably afflicted, any expectations
of eternal and infinite evils, must add very consi-
derably to the weight of our troubles, as on the
other hand, to be free from such apprehensions
must mightily increase our pleasures. In short,
it is past dispute that the richest satisfactions, and
the blackest anxieties of the mind conduce more
cither to the happiness or unhappiness of our lives,
than either of them, if their, duration be measured
w
34 cicEfeo of Moral «nd$.
Only by the continuance of the pleasures and paiad
of the body. Further, it is to be intimated that
dissatisfaction does not immediately succeed upon
intermission bf pleasure, unless a positive sorrow
supplies the place of a departed pleasure; although
intermission of pain is itself a very sensible refresh-
ment whether accompanied by any bodily plea-
sures or not. And this hint sufficiently illustrates
the choiceness of the pleasure of indolency* Again,
as the prospect of a future good is a wonderful sup-
port and encouragement, so is the remembrance
and recapitulation of satisfactions past and gone.
Men of sense will entertain and amuse themselves
with reviving the images and ideas of the sweets
they have formerly tasted, and none but a fool
troubles his head with recollecting the miseries he
has undergone. It is in our own power as well to
bury past perplexities in oblivion, as to retrieve
and dwell upon the very phantom of what has here-
tofore delighted us. And those recollections, if
enforced with earnestness and attention, will as
the matter of them appears either hurtful or benefi-
cial in its nature, accordingly disturb or compose.
Behold then how plain, direct and admirable a me-
thod I recommend to make you happy ! for since
we cannot wish ourselves a greater happiness than
to be absolutely free from pain and disquietude,
and to enjoy the completest pleasures imaginable
both of mind and body, what is there a way that
<:an further contribute toward our attaining that
BOOK THE FIRST. 34
chief and ultimate good which we seek for ? Out
upon that voluptuary Epicurus, is continually in
your mouths, and yet he proclaims it an impossi-
bility for him that would not keep up to the rules
of wisdom, justice and ingenuity, to live happily, and
as impossible for him that does, to live unhappily 2
for if there can be no peace as long as there is fac-
tion and rebellion in a body politic, nor in a fami-
ly where the leading members of it are divided j
for the same reason the mind that is at variance
with itself is not in a condition to relish any thing
that may be called a savory and a genuine plea-
sure. Where inconsistent purposes and resolutions
take place, ease and tranquillity have no concerns.
If any harsher bodily distempers create such la-
mentable perturbations, how much more must the
diseases of our minds impair our happiness ? By
the diseases of the mind, I mean all our excessive
and fantastical desires after riches, glory, dominion,
sensual pleasures. Add to these discontent, dis-
appointment, and vexation, which distract and
consume us while we will not understand that our
minds ought to take no impressions but of bodily pain
either present or in reversion. And because every
unwise man labours under one or other of these
diseases, therefore we meet with nobody that is
properly happy. Besides, deathlikea stone, suppose,
over Tantalus, is perpetually dangling above our
heads ; and then there is another thing called super*
ttition that certainly if indulged destroys our quietr
56 CICERO OF MORAL EKDS.
Nor is it in the pofrer of any unwise man to enjoy
any present comforts, or the remembrance of
any past, but barely the hopes of future; the un-
certainty of which fills him with fear and an*
guish, and when in the upshot he finds that the
gay promises he had made himself of wealth,
empire, greatness, and glory come to nothing, he
loses all patience ; foi^ indeed, let him act as vigor-
ously as he will, it is impossible for such a man
to find fuel enough for the flame of his own pas-
sions and appetites. There are also your puny,
abject, disconsolate, malicious, envious, peevish,
unconversable, exceptious, unaccountable sorU
of souls, not forgetting the amorous, impertinent,
impudent, lewd, intemperate, idle, insignificant,
inconstant : and these poor wretches never know
what means a moment's relaxation from misery.
So that happiness cannot be the portion of fools,
nor unh&ppiness of understanding men. And thii
we prove from principles which are far more just
and rational than those of the stoics, who will have
nothing to be properly good, but an empty chimera
of their own which they have dignified with tho
title of honest urn, affirming that virtue lodged in
this honestum or principle of honour and honesty y
alone and exclusively of all pleasure, suffices to
render us completely happy. Not but this is a
real truth too in one sense, (and instead of opposing
it so understood, we will stand by it) for it is con- %
gtantly Epicurus's character of a wise man, that he
BOOK THE FlfiST. VT
governs his appetites, that he despises death, that
he is pot afraid to make his own conclusions when
he is thinking of the gods, nor unwilling to leave
the world when it is convenient. So soon as he is
thus disposed be cannot help being happy ; at least
the pleasures of his life, though blended with a
few disturbances, will be predominant He freely
indulges himself in his meditations upon delights
that are fled, and makes the most of objects and
opportunities that lie before him, expecting, with-
out depending upon things to come, and ever se-
curing the present, • He steers aloof from all the
ill habits mentioned before, and upon comparing
the life of a fool with his own, is cheered and
fatisfied. If any uneasiness attacks him, it is
never of that force, but that still he is master
of a superior proportion of happiness. What
qan be nobler theorems than those of Epicu-
rus, that fortune has very little power over a
wise man, and that he governs the world by the
force and authority of his understanding, and that
a state of mortality fills up the measure of his hap-
piness as effectually as immortality itself could.
Your logic Epicurus neglected, as affording no
helps, either in the business of morality or argu-
mentation: and yet his natural philosophy abounds
with instances and exemplifications of the force
both of that art and rhetoric in their several
branches. But it is the knowledge of nature's
phenomena that dissipates those terrors which else
38 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
had imposed upon us, that cures our superstition,
and hardens us against the fear of death ; and
what is more, until we have thoroughly examined
what are the severals which the order and economy
of the universe require, we have not done all that
lies in our power toward finishing our behaviour
and manners. But then, provided we keep close
to our general criterion, or determining rule, as a
divine irradiation of truth from heaven, and once
come to form and fix rightly our notions of things,
it will dot be in the power of wit or words to drive
us from our hold. Neither yet so long as we are
ignorant of the natures and properties of beings,
can we prove the verity of sensible representations
and suggestions. Ail ideas of the mind are derived
from the senses ; if these therefore are all faithful,
as Epicurus tells us, we are capacitated in some
sort both to apprehend and comprehend. But if
these are to be cashiered, and there can be no such
, thing as a right perception, the reasons of either
position must be such as demonstrate both to be
precarious ; over and above the frustration of all
our intercourses and enterprises which such a
scepticism implies. Upon the whole, our natural
philosophy is our orvitan against the fears of death,
or the horrors of a religious melancholy. It dis^
covers the secret dependances of natural causes,
and makes us easy and secure. It shews us what
and how various our appetites are, and whence wo
ipay best form our measures to regulate theau
Jbook the first. 39
And lastly it serves for a rule of judgment and
science to state our distinctions by, between truths
and untruths. I must not make an end until I
have explained myself upon one head more, and
that is the subject of friendship, which you tell us
is never to be contracted, if pleasure be the great-
est good) though Epicurus declares it his opinion,
that wisdom among all the ingredients of happiness
has not a nobler, a richer, or a more delicious one
than friendship. And this he did not only assert
in his writings, but gave a practical proof of it in
his life and conversation. How singular a com-
mendation this is, appears from the rare instances
of friendship, which the mythology of the ancients,
as voluminous and as full of variety as it U, con-
tains, at most amounting but to three couples,
when we have traced them from Theseus to Ores-
tes. But O ! what a numerous, what an harmo-
nious company of friends did Epicurus crowd into
his own little habitation ! and the Epicureans have
«ver followed the example. But to return ; the dis-
putants of our sect have managed the question of
friendship upon three different bottoms. One party
of them that confess the communicative satisfac-
tions which pass from friend to friend, are not so
•desirable upon their own account as every indivi-
dual's proper pleasure, (a confession very prejudi-
cial, as some people conceive, to the interest of
friendship) yet vigorously maintain their point, and f
to do them justice, with very good success, it ap-
40 CtC£HO OP MORAL ENDS,
pearing to them an absurdity, that the virtues before
specified should be inseparable from pleasure, and
friendship not sol Even common sense prompts
us to friendly associations and alliances upon the
view of the many and mighty dangers and frights
that go along with unconversableness and solitude.
For these alliances make us bold and sprightly,
and are the certain fore-runners of an advancing
happiness. For if malice, envy, and disregard are
the bane of tranquillity, the consequence will be,
that friendliness, I will not say promotes, but Com-
pletes our satisfactions, as well common as per-
sonal : and as fast as it furnishes out the present, it
heightens them on with promises of future. Seeing
therefore the comforts of life must be very uncer-
tain and volatile, unless fixed by friendship; and
friendship is no way to be cultivated but by loving
our friends no less than ourselves : pleasure is as
necessarily the concomitant, as mutual affections
are the indentures of friendship ; and hence it is
that friends equally share one another's content or
discontent, and every wise man has as quick a
sense of the circumstances of his friend as of his
own, and will bustle as briskly to gratify his friend
as to gratify himself. » So that whatever has been
urged to prove that virtue and pleasure cannot be
alienated from each other, may as well be applied
to prove that neither can friendship and pleasure,
be divorced ; according to what Epicurus has ex-
cellently remarked, that the same philosophy which
BOOK THE 7IRST. i\
has baffled the damping supposition of an eternal
or permanent state of misery, has pronounced
friendship the best security of human life. A se-
cond sort of Epicureans, and a very shrewed one
too, apprehending more danger than those of the
first hypothesis form your ill-natured objections,
and doubting whether the cause of friendly offices
will not be lost, if we make pleasure the scope and
lend of them, answer yqu, that the first motive and
occasion of striking an acquaintance and confeder?
ating, is the pleasure of compassing an amicable
union, which being wrought up into familiarity, the ■
endearments prevail so far at last, that, all consi-
derations of profit thrown aside, one friend loves
another for the other's proper sake. Thus we com*
monly entertain a partiality for particular places,
as cloisters, towns, schools, fields, dogs, horses,
games, because they have been the stages or in*
struments of our exercises or diversions : how
much more natural is it then for conversation to
breed and heighten friendship ? A third sort air-
ledge articles of a tacit compact, wherein all wise
men are parties, and whereby they are obliged to
love their friends full as well as themselves. This
we all know is practicable, and the method holds
true in faqt. I need i)ot add how subservient it is
to our happiness, this mingling of interests. And
pow we hftve laid together an account of the wholp
jnatter ; by which it appears, that the doctrine of
pleasure'? t>?ii»g the surnmum bonum, is sp for firpj»
#
4t CICJMO OF MORAL ENDS.
weakening Ibe foundations of friendship, that with-
out it there can be no such thing. And if the rea-
sonableness of what has been insisted upon is,
as it is, as bright and radiant as the sun in the
meridian; if nature herself seals it aft with her
own testimony, if that testimony be further corro-
borated by the full and unbiassed evidence of our
own senses ; nay, if children, infants, and even the
dumb animals themselves, antecedently to any de-
generacies, and prepossessions, upon the bare
dictate and instinct of their natures, give us to un-
derstand, that nothing k grateful to our being but
pleasure, nothing disagreeable but pain: what
veneration and acknowledgments are due to the
man, that having first soberly and rightly digested
the lessons which nature taught him, has put us
all in a way, if we have but our wits about us, to
make our own lives easy, quiet, and pleasant ? If
be was nothing of a scholar, it was because he
would not seem upon any terms to extend the pro-
vince of learning beyond the study of human hap-
piness. You, I warrant, would have advised him to
do, as I and Triarius here have done by your ad-
vice, play the fool and waste his time in conning over
the poets ; or else to follow Plato's example, and
lay out himself upon music, geometry, arithmetic,
and astronomy. All of them amusements that
proceed upon principles notoriously false; and
which, though they were never so solid, signify not
a rush towards the improving of our lives, that is>
BOOK THE FIRST. 43
of our pleasures. What ? would you have hat} him
to have employed his hours upon the sciences afore-
said, and to have spared all his laborious, beneficial
enquiries about the conduct and regulation of life !
No, no ; the men that want better teaching, are
they who require of a philosopher, when he is be-
yond his climacteric, to make the dement* of his
education his business: they, and not Epicurus.
Then he concluded in these words; you have now,
air, what I had to propose, and I expect you will
vouchsafe me your sentiments upon it; and then
I shall have my ends of you; which, for want of a
fair opportunity, I could never have before.
C1C3EKO
OF
MORAL ENDS*
BOOK II.
iMtafebiATELY they both turned their eyes upott
me; and when I observed them expecting, I told
them in the first place I would hot be guilty
of that which I had condemned in the philoso-
phers; of reading a lecture upon a question.
Did ever Socrates, that great master in the faculty,
take such a course? It was an abuse brought in by
the sophists, as they were called. Leontinus Gor-
gias, one of that tribe, was the first man that pre-
sumed to frequent the public exercises and chal-
lenge a question; I mean, demand a subject to be
disputed upon off-hand. This was bold, or ra-
ther impudent; if our philosophers, that after-
wards trod in Gorgias's steps, can forgive the
term. Though, as we learn from Plato, Socrates
routed the sophists as he pleased, and particularly
the challenger aforesaid. His way was to put
questions . and receive answers, and to make the
person he conferred with explain his bun opinions;
find then he spoke again to those answers, as he
46 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS,
saw convenient This manner of disputing in pro-
cess of time grew quite out of use, till it was re-
vived by Arcesilas, who made his auditors open
their minds to him instead of inquiring what was
his, and afterwards he came in with his animad-
versions upon their propositions, which neverthe-
less they were permitted to defend as long as
they were able. The general and ordinary pro-
cedure was, and is still, among the academics,
to have the question proposed, and then the pro-
posers keep silence. As thus ; Pleasure, say you,
is according to mg sense of things, the summurn
bonum : whereupon immediately follows the dis-
proof at large, in a fair and full dissertation ; the
assigner of the question being not conceived to
hold it as he has been pleased to state it, but to
call for such reasons as any body else Can object
It happens our affair is in a great forwardness,
Torquatus having already not only informed us
how he holds the question, but why he holds it so*
And notwithstanding, sir, your discourse, as you
continued it in one thread, was extremely taking,
yet perhaps it had been more advisable, as parti-
culars came to be urged in order, and when what one
side or the other granted or denied was well under-
stood, then to have deduced your particular con-
clusions from the premisses agreed upon, until you
had gone through all parts of the dispute* For a
running oration is like a rapid stream : it carries
all before it, but with such violence and precipita-
tion, that there is no laying bold upon, or making
BOOK THE SECOND. ' 47
prize of any thing. In all methodical and rational
inquiries the law-form of ea res agatur, pray keep
to that y must be allowed for a leading direction j
for if we will dispute, we must be first agreed upon
the matter we dispute about : so says Plato in his
Phaedrus ; and Epicurus himself has approved of
it, and passed it into a standing Ipw ; not observ-
ing the notorious inconsistency of this rule with
another of his> prohibiting definitions, without the
help of which it is very often impossible for the
parties in suspense to agree upon the meaning of
the matter in debate ; as particularly in the case
before us. We are looking out for the ultimate
good. And after a thousand arguings about it, pro
and con, how much the wiser, think you, are we like
to be until we have settled and paired our notions,
as of good in general, so of an ultimate good in par-
ticular. And these illustrations and characterizing*
of the forms and essences of things are called deft-
nit ioivs. You yourself stumbled upon them some*
times — for want of due caution J else you had omit-
ted your excellent account of the last or final good,
that it is that good which is the scope and end of
all our commendable actions, and which is never
pursued for the sake of any thing else- I suppose,
had you thought it of consequence, you would not
have scrupled to give us also a definition of bonum,
good in general, as that it is the object of our na-
tural desires, or that it is every thing that is real-
ty beneficial, or advances our welfare, or creates
48 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS*
us a pleasure. It should seem then, you can re*
concile yourself as often as you see fit to the busi«
ncss of defining ; and if so, give me leave to put
you to the trouble of defining pleasure, the subject
of our present disquisition. Is it supposable, said
he, that any body can be ignorant of the nature
of pleasure, or demand a definition to give him
a light into it? But that for my own part I
know, said I, how true and adequate an idea of
pleasure I have, I could find in my heart to confess
myself an exception to your Is it supposable : but
let it suffice that a certain philosopher, who goes
by the name of Epicurus, as carefully as he incuk
cates the expediency of learning the significations of
words, not only hesitates and varies in the im port*
nnce of the word pleasure, but utterly mistakes it,
I profess, a glorious paradox ! replied he smiling,
that the man who asserts pleasure with all his force
to be our utmost good, the perfection and complex
ment of all our felicity, should not conceive what
pleasure is ? In earnest, either Epicurus did not
understand the nature of pleasure; or, if he did,
no mortal beside himself ever understood it.
I was asked how that appeared. I replied, that
every body meant by pleasure, no more than
the satisfactions and gratifications of sense. Well !
said Torquatus, and does Epicurus take no cogr
nizance at all of such a sort of pleasure ? Oft*
ener, said I, than makes for his credit ; as when
fee fr&nkty declares if there be any other good be*
BOOK THE SECOND, 49
sides good eating, good drinking, good music, and
something else not fit to be named, he neither
apprehends where, or what it is. I appeal to
yourself; have I misrepresented him ? And what
if he has affirmed thus much? said Torquatus,
where is the harm, if you will pufrbat favourable
construction upon the words which they will very
well bear, and I will undertake to vindicate. O,
no question ! said I, and pray be proud withal of
your being listed under the pink of penetration, the
only bashful poor creature that ever seized upon
the title of wise! for Metrodorus did not write
himself so, but Epicurus very graciously conferred
that honour upon him. As the seven sages had
the same epithet adjudged them by the general
consent and suffrage of the world: but no matter
for that; as long as it is plain Epicurus in the
passage before quoted means by pleasure the same
thing that other people do, a pertain delightful
tremor *m the senses, called \ti Greek q£oyj), in
Latin voluptas. It was demanded then, what I
took offence at. I will tell you, sir, said I, and
really not so much with a design to reprimand ei-
ther yourself or Epicurus, as for our better infor-
mation. As much of that, said he, as you please,
arid as little correction. Do you know, said I,
what Hieronymus Rhodius has allotted for the
sumnwm bornm? I know, said Torquatus, he
resolves it into nihil dolere, mere indolence. And
what is his opinion as to pleasure ? That it is not
H
50 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
k thing to be desired for its own sake. It seems
then, said I, he puts a distinction between pleasure
and indolence ! He does so, said he, and against
all reason, as is clear from what I formerly ob*
served to yon, that the removal of all uneasiness is
the consummation of all pleasure. As for the
effect of indolence I shall examine, said I, what it
is in the sequal. Meantime, I assure myself you
cannot be so perverse as to deny there is a differ*
ence in the result between actual pleasure and
bare indolence. I assure you, said he, I must be
so perverse, and am confident my cause is good.
Is it a pleasure to drink wheo we are thirsty? No
doubt on it* Is it the same pleasure that follows
when our thirst is quenched? Not the same species
of pleasure. The latter is a still or stable pleasures
the former an active or operative one. But if, said
I, they so little resemble one another, why do you
confound them ? Have I, said he, so lately told
you to so little purpose, that pleasure arising from
the absence of pain admits of variety, though not
of intension ? I have not forgot it, said I, and
you spoke good Latin when you told me so, but
not clear sense. Varietas is a Latin word properly
signifying a diversity of colours, though taking it in
a larger acceptation, we adapt it to a diversity or
multiplicity of peculiarities in any thing else. Thus
we say a poem full of variety, an oration full of
variety, and variety in a mans manners or fortune;
and variety of pleasure too, that is, as there hap-
*OOK THE SECONP, 51
* pent to be a 'variety of objects and motives that
occasion different pleasures. Had you spoke of
such a variety as this, 1 had understood you with
as little help as I understand my own meaning;
but when you are pleased to teach us, first, that a
state of indolency is the very uttermost perfection
of pleasure ; secondly, that the approximation of
things operating agreeably upon our senses is an
active or fermenting pleasure begetting a variety
of pleasures ; and yet that your pleasure of indolence
admits of no intension or improvement, I am as
much at a loss for a notion of what you mean by
your variety, as for a reason, why indolence must
have the name of pleasure* Can you imagine a
greater blessing, said he, than to be free from all
manner of pain or trouble? For the present, sup-
pose it, said I ; will it follow Xh^t pleasure and indo-
lence are one and the same thing? Certainly indo*
knee is not only a pleasure, said he, but an unpa^
ralelled one too. If you are resolved, said I, that
it shall be the summum bonum, your unparalelkd
pleasure, why will you not stick by it sincerely,
stoutly, and faithfully ? And why will nothing satisfy
you, unless pleasure be received into the college of
virtues, that is, a common prostitute into a familia-
rity with ladies df reputation and honour f The
reason is plain, because when she is by herself she
is loathsome and scandalous ; and all the apology
you can make for her is to cry, You do not appre-
hend Epicurqs's meaning when he mentions her!
52 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
I have myself been frequently admonished thus.
But I must own, such is the affront, that as little
apt as I am to grow warm in a dispute, I cannot
forbear sometimes expressing my resentments when
I am told so. Hard luck indeed ! the dunce is to
be taught what qSoft) signifies in Greek, and voluptas
in Latin ! Which of the tongues is it that I am
a perfect stranger to? Or why cannot I under-
stand what the word pleasure imports, as well as
every body that, forsooth ! will commence Epicu-
rean ? Especially in regard it is a celebrated maxim
of your professors, that philosophy requires not a
foundation of learning. Accordingly as the old
Romans took Cincinnatus from the plough and
made him dictator, just so you travel to Greece for
your worthies, and let them be but honest fel-
lows, you care not how little they are taught or
polished. Dull Cicero ! not to comprehend Epi-
curus's dictates half so well as they ; though I am
very sure and positive that the words ijSow} and
voluptas (pleasure) stand for the same idea. We
arc ever and anon at a loss for want of a Latin
word that will exactly answer in signification to a
Greek one; but for the present occasion there is
not a word in all our language more expressive. of
the propriety of its Greek than the word voluptas ;
nor a Roman that is tolerably acquainted with his
mother-tongue, but knows that voluptas implies
two things, a serenity or satisfaction in the mind,
and the activity of any gay sensations in the body*
BOOK THE SECOND. 53
Therefore Trabeas we see, makes use of the word
latitia where he is speaking of the same excess of
pleasure that Caecilianus represents by omnibus
latitiis latum esse, tumbling in an ocean of de&ghU
Note by the way, that the stoics take the word al-
ways in an ill sense, ascribing a viciousness even
to pleasure of the mind, and thus defining it, plea-
sure of mind is a fantastical elevation grounded
upon a dream of the presence of a substantial good.
When the word has a reference to the body, it is
not properly the same as Uetitia or gaudium(joy,)
but primarily , and in the strictness of the Latin
idiom it stands for the influence and impressions of
any delight upon our senses. Though it is true
the word jucunditas, a delicious perception, may be
made metaphorically and improperly to respect
the mind, jucundum being derived from juvare, a
term equally significative, whether accommodated
to the concerns of the mind or of the body.
Though not so improperly neither, sir, as that we
must explode a medium between all joy and all
grief; between
Tanta laetitia auctus sum, &c.
O ! 'tis a dangerous joy, my soul gires way !
And,
Nunc deraum mihi animus ardet,
A conflagration wars ab«ut my heart.
for what think you of (to the tune of neither the
first nor the last)
J4 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS*
Qttanqwn bee inter aos, &c.
It matters not how long or how lately we have been
acquainted, neighbour
There is a middle condition between an affluence of
pleasure and an extremity of pain, and that is,
when we are affected by neither. What say you now ?
Can you dispense yet with my returning to my
school-dame, and my school-master ? If not, do me
the justice to examine whether it is for want of a
competent knowledge of the Greek, that I do not
understand Epicurus, or for want of perspicuity in
Epicurus, that his meaning is absolutely unintelli*
gible. A fault which was never excused but in
two cases ; either when it was designed, as Hera*
clitus affected intricacies in bis natural philosophy,
and so got himself the surname of obscure ; or else
w hen our subject-matter is abstruse, though not our
manner of explication, as in the instance of Plato**
Timaeus. Now Epicurus, unless I much mistake
him, is neither unwilling to signify his meaning
clearly, nor argues about any physical riddle or ma-
thematical subtilty, but a familiar manageable
common-place. You yourselves do not suppose us
ignorant of the nature of pleasure ; no, but of E-
picurus's notion of it ; and that supposition wil}
justify the inference, that although we are thorough-
ly instructed in the signification of the word pleasure,
he would not usfe it in that sense, but affix to i( a
new and singular one of his own. If he is agreed
with Hieronymus, and places the summum bonum
BOOK: THE SfeCOKt). 66
iti an easy, unmolested state of life, why will he
not speak out as plain as the other, abrogate the
name of pleasure, and adhere to vacuitits doloris^
freedom from disturbance f Or if he will have
pleasure for his summum borium, I mean his plea-
sure of indolence or unactive pleasure^ let him not
leave the other in the lurch, his dear enchantress
which bears the name of operative pleasure, or
pleasure in motu. Why is he so concerned to per-
suade every mortal mart out of the consciousness
of his own nature, and to convince him in spite
of his senses that indolence and pleasure, are the
very same thing? It is hard, let me tell you, Tor-
quatus, that all our faculties must be stormed at
this rate, and our apprehensions rifled of the
plainest and the most universal meanings. Is it
not obvious and uncontrovertible that we are all
subject to a threefold variety of circumstances, ei-
ther actual pleasure, or actual pain, or mere c*m-
posedness, which is the company* condition ? One
man receives a refreshment upon eating, another a
violence of torment upon the rack, but nobody
much, I think, of one or the other in sitting still.
Do you not, as we converse* take notice how many
thousands of living arguments of a state of indiffer-
ence move this way and that way about us ? But
for all that, said Torquatus, I must abide by it,
that it is not only a pleasure, but the very quint-
essence of pleasure not to be in pain. So that,
answered I, my skinker perceives himself as agree-
56 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
ably affected in filling me out a glass when he has
no inclination to drink, asl can do, for my life, when
I am taking it off to quench my drought. Let me
pray you, said he, no more of your interrogatories
and expostulations. I thought I had provided
against your Socratical snares in ^preliminary arti-
cle. Are you then, said I, rather for a rhetorical
than Buy logical methods of disputation ? For, both,
said he, unless you will affirm that the philoso-
phers have not so good a claim as the orators to
the process of discoursing at length. Aristotle,
said I, and after him Zeno the stoic, distributed
the energies of speech into two kinds, the rhetorical
and the logical The first are compared by Zeno
to the hand of a man, expanded, because an ora-
tors business is to amplify and expatiate ; the lat-
ter to the hand clenched, because a philosopher's
business is to say as much in as few words as he
can. But in compliance with your desire, I will
try to philosophise in the vein of a rhetorician,
that is of a philosophising for, as for our forensic
oratory, it will of necessity be flat and jejune, be-
cause it obliges us to suit our measures to vulgar un-
derstandings. Not that by thus complying I
would countenance Epicurus's contempt of logic,
a science that brings home the full benefit of all
our simple conceptions, and disposes aright as well
the discursive faculty as the judgment, and by
means whereof Epicurus might have kept himself
upon his legs, had he but condescended to the dull
BOOK THE SECOND 57
discipline of distinguishing ; at least in the parti-
cular before us. Pleasure, you assert, is the sum-
mum bonam ; the next thing to be looked into, is,
What is pleasure, and this is the ready way to set
clear the full sense of the question. Had Epicurus
troubled himself to explain what pleasure is, hi
had never been so bewildered. For either he must
4iave stuck to Aristippus's pleasure, sensual, soft,
and effeminate, that which our cattle, if they could
speak, would ca\\ pleasure ; or if he would have
opposed his own proprieties to the sense and lan-
guage of all Greece beside, the brave Achaan,
Argive, attic youths, omnes danai, &c. (as the
unapastic has it,) then he must have rejected
Aristippus, and appropriated the name of pleasure
to indolence. Or if he intended, as he did, to pa-
tronise both, he would have given us them together
in the terms of indolence joined with actual pleasure
for the two ultimate goods. And for this he might
have pleaded several renowned precedents among
the philosophers^ as Aristotle for one, who consti-
tutes his summum bonum of two parts, a virtuous
Hfe with an entire prosperity. For the same
purpose Callipho couples honesty and pleasure ;
Diodorus, honesty and indolence; and Epicurus
had no more to do than to yoke together that which
is the modern opinion of Hieronymus with the
ancient opinion of Aristippus, though their distinct
hypotheses naturally carried them to the choice of
distinct moral ends. I may venture to say they
i
58 fclCERO OF MORAL ENDS*
Understood Greek full as well as EpictiruS ; arid
yet Aristippus never, sprinkles his smnmom bonum
of pleasure with indolence. Neither does Hiero*
hymus at any time miscal his summum bonum of
indolaice by the name of pleasure, as even denying
that things of a desirable nature are effective of
pleasure: Do nbt mistake yourself; to be without
pain and to he under the seiise of pleasure, are not
bnly two distinct modes of expression, but two
distinct things; And yet, as if it were not enough
to make these two distinct modes convertible, which
is venial in comparison with the other, you must
be straining at impossibilities and identifying the
distant natures of the things themselves. If Epi-
curus thought good to pitch upon both pleasure
and indolence, he should, as he does, but still so
as to jumble them into one by confounding the
names, have retained both alike for a summum
bonum. There are many passages in him I could
cite where he extols pleasure, properly so called*
and very. modestly professes in a place where he is
handling the suhject of summum bonum, that he
cannot imagine what can pass for good, beside the
wistippic species of pleasure. In another book
(judge yourself, Torquatus* whether I translate his
fcords unfairly, for I am going to quote one of his
Weighty, demonstrative periods, his oracles of wis*
dom> as they are called, the tovgiat &>£ai> the con-
stant pole-stars^ which yourself and the rest of
yotaf fraternity consult and sail by in pursuit of
BOOK THE SECOND, J 9
happiness) the same author thus declares himself,
I should have nothing at all to object against lux-
ury, if the pleasm^es of it could disengage the mind
of man from all dread of the gods, of death, and
of pain, and implied the proper scope and end of
our appetites, for thus refined they would make
up the total of human happiness, and become a
charm against the evils of pain or sorrow. But
does Epicurus really talk at this rate? said Triarius
to Torquatus, for he coulcl no" longer contain lumr
self, and though he knew well enough how the case
really stood, be had a mind to bring Torqimtus to
confession. But Torquatus- tqok him up with a
ready, assurance, Qwne$ the cfharge, and told us
we did not relish the sense of Epteurus's word*
rightly. And it is impossible I. should, said I, so
long as he . say$. ode thing . and me^os . aether,.
However, here I fully comprehend the drift of
what he asserts, and the absurdity too. A luxu-
rious fettow does not deserve to be discommended,
provided he be but a wise man ! It is pity he:
did not tell u? that neither >vould a parricide der
serve a reproof, if it were not for his own avarice
and his dread of the gods, of, death, aiid of pain !
To what purpose does our 'greiat philosopher oomr
pound with' his gluttons, or oflfep at such a wild
supposition as the existence of a luxurious person
that is a stranger to those other mistakes and vices,
which if he had not entertained, he*. might have
frepn dispensed with' for his luxury ? Wotjld v\Qt
60 CIC£RO OF MORAL ENDS.
himself have rebuked a luxurious man for such a
blind pursuit of confused pleasures, if it were but
in behalf of the sovereign pleasure of mere indo-
knee? Besides too, there are sots in the world
that make no conscience of scrambling for the
sacrifices upon the altars, and brave death every
day with a
Mihi sex menses, &c.
Let me but lead a jolly life mean while.
And lay me seven months hence upon the fatal pile.
It may be against pain Epicurus has furnished
their snush^boxes with his nostrum, si gravis*
brevis; si longus, levis; if exquisite, short, and
moderate, if long. Be it so : yet am I puzzled
how to conceive such a thing as a mortal abandoned
to luxury, and yet abridging his appetites ! Why
then should Epicurus give himself the trouble of
informing us, that truly he has no exceptions
against a luxurious man, provided he lays a limi-
tation upon his appetites? which is as much as
to say in other words, I have no exceptions against
a sot, but that he is a sot ; nor, in general, against
a vicious man, if he were but virtuous. Observe
the sage's aqsterity ! He has no quarrel, not he,
against luxury considered in itself! And in good
truth, Torquatus, if pleasure be the summum bonum,
the man is in the right. Never hope to bring him
off with your imagery of a club of wretches vomit-
ing over the punch-bowl, and afterwards guried
BOOK THE SECOND. 6\
to bed by the drawers in order to be capacitated
for renewing the debauch upon a foundation of
truditks the next morning* Nobody supposed
the brutes of this predicament, who, perhaps never
got sober enough to know, as they say, when it is
day or night, until after a revolution of some years,
they have consumed the very means of subsistence;
nobody supposes these prodigies have much enjoy*
ment of their lives. Your men of delicacy, that
employ all the noted cooks, bakers, fishmongers,
and poulterers they can hear of, to furnish their
table with curiosities as agreeable as may be pro-
cured to stomach and palate ; 'whose wines, as
Lucilius has it,
Cascading from a mighty goblet flow,
Without or skinny tang, or dash of snow :
Their business assignations, balls, &c.
— not to forget the womanish valets that wait upo*
them, and, conformable to all the rest, their clothes,
their plate, and the stateliness of their halls and
parlours. Defile these off the account, cries
Epicurus, and a fig for any other good whatsoever;
and yet, say I, the sensualist with all these appur-
tenances, though according to one meaning he
lives well, yet in no sense can Jive happily. Nor
think that pleasure, because it is not the summum
bonum, is not pleasure. It was pot an insensibility,
but a contempt of the sweetness of pleasure that
got .Lteliys, pupil in his youth to Diogenes th$
$$ cicxxo or mqral ends.
ttoic, afterwards to FaniEti.ua, the character of 3
wise nwn. He had ihe seme of tasting as well a$
other people ; but then* he had the seme of a phu
hsopher too. Remember O lapatke, utjactere, 4'c,
Be proud, ye dock-leaves, be for. ever proud ;
When Ljcliqs had you. on his plate, aloud.
Laelius the great, the wise, impartial rage
pischarg'd upon the gluttons o' the age,
Gallonius, Publius, poor nnhappy men,
That ev'ry day devour as much as ten,
And mortgage farms to treat a fool with fish,
Yet ne'er could get a dinner worth a wish !
The declaimer, who made no account of pleasure^
has not the confidence to deny Gallonius wa9
pleased with his meab ; but yet he is positive, you
see, that Gallonjus, or any otfyer slave to pleasure,
neverdined well. Here we have the separate interest*
of pleasure and bonum very gravely and judiciously
insisted on, and may learn from the distinction,
that although whosoever dines well, dines to his own
satisfaction, yet it will not hold convertibly, that
he that dines to his men satisfaction, dines well. As
for example ; Laslius used to dine well, that is, as
Lucilius explains it, cocto, condito, upon ordinary
fare. His principal dish was sermo bpnus, profit*
able discourse. And thus he made up a dinner,
si queri libenter } myzh to his own satisfaction.
He knew no other end in eating, but soberly tq
satisfy the cravings of nature. He had good rea«?
son therefore to affirm, as he did, that notwithr
standing Gallonius might like his victuals well
BOOK Tilt SECONH; Gs
fetiough, yet the poor man, with all the ptiius and
expenses he was at, had never the good foriurte
once in his life to eat well; that is, to be plain, ttiat
he never eat frugally, temperately, and as he
ought to have eaten, but brutishly, indulgingly^
and in all respects as he ought not to have eaten*
It was the lusciousness of the satisfaction thut Las-
lius loathed: upon any other consideration he had
kcaroe admired his dock- leaves above a Gal Ionian
jish-dirmer. For why ? It is not to be suffered, thought
he, that pleasure shall usurp the title of summum
bonnm. And indeed to give it that title is no bet-
ter than high-treason as well iii word as in fact a-
gainst virtue and common honesty. ( To be stjort*
if it is not our summum bonum at dinner, it is
strange how it comes to be ihe summum bonumof our
iives. In the next place, how untowardly has your
philosopher distributed our inclinations and desires
into three sorts, such as are both natural and neces-
sary ; such as are natural, but not necessary, and
such as are neither natural nor necessary ? What
can be less artificial than this division ? Which,
whereas it should have no more than two, is
branched into three members. This is drawing
and quartering of comprehensive terms instead af
dividing them. It is a lamentable oversight in
settling a division to clap inferior and supe7*ior
hinds together. Had he first divided our desired
into natural and unreasonable ; and the natural
again into necessary and unnecessary, he had gone
<>4 CICERO OF HOltAt £Nl>*.
the right way to work. However, if he will but
reason as he should do, we will not fall out with
him for the confusedness of his method, because
he professes and vindicates inaccuracy and negli-
gence. Accordingly, for once I will do violence!
to my judgment^ and give a philosopher leave to
read mankind a lecture about limiting their desires*
What? Restrain our desires? (I mean our irre*
gular ones according to the proper signification of
the word cupiditates) No: totally suppress and
exterminate them, unless you will shew me a man
of a covetous temper, just as covetous as he ought
to be, or a sort of adulterers and gluttons that
keep within bounds. As if it were pity to treat
our depravities in so cruel a manner, but we must
descend forsooth ! to terms of accommodation viith
our vices! incomparable philosophy this! Not
but that I am as well pleased with the substance
and import of the division, as I am offended at the
form and dress he has given it. It were advisable
to couch the desideria naturte, the common solicita-
tions of our constitution under a more reputable
word than cupiditas, which should have been re-
served for his titles of avarice, intemperance,, and
the like enormous habits, and among them received
its condemnation. But alas ! these are liberties
which he makes a common practice of taking.
Neither will I censure him upon that score, be-
cause he had been modest in obtruding his doc-
trines upon us, his philosophic majesty must have
BOO* THE SECOND, 65
lessened his own prerogative, which rather than he
will do, after he has onte taken voluptas (sensual
pleasure) into his especial favour and protection,
in the sense which all mankind has imposed upon
that word : whatever difficulties hamper him, he
will not desert her ; nay, although he must utterly
overthrow the regalia of conscience, and the throne
being declared vacant, place in it voluptas to play
her own arbitrary game. But because he found
his rational, and would ever and anon be sallying
out in blushes upon his animal part, he had al-
ways that other proposition to retire to in his con-
fusion, that no additions can be made to the plea-
sure of indolence. But what if indolence be not a
term equivalent to voluptas? Why the philoso-
pher is not concerned about the precise sig-
nification of the terms. But what if the things
differ widely from one another? And suppose
(for although the Epicureans are very nice and
untractable, yet there are millions of men that
may be won with ease to yield almost an assent to
any thing) suppose I should frame an argument to
this effect, If indolence be the greatest of pleasures,
then t is the absence of pleasure the greatest of
pains ? Will it not hold ? No, because we may
not oppose the absence of pleasure but a privation
of pain to pain. However this is not obvious, and
the darkness of the distinction exposes the absur*
dity of his retaining that other pleasure, which if
denied him, he declares he knows not what deserve*
K
66 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
to be deemed our good. And it is this pleasure,
for which we are beholden to our palates and our
ears (not to mention in regard to good manners
and modesty some other organs of it) that is the
ruling favourite, the singular and sole good, which
our demure and rigorous philosopher bad ever any
notion of, and yet while he vacates that pleasure
under the raptures of indolence, he has most unad-
visedly contradicted himself, and made that sole
good of his to be not so much as a thing valuable
or desirable. And in all these repugnancies has
he tangled himself, purely because he thought it
beneath him to meddle with definitions, divisions,
logic, grammar, or language. By this time ypu
may be sensible how wise he was in his contri-
vances. He assumes the supposition of two plea-
sures, one his vokiptas in motu, his excited pleasure,
the other anew pleasure which nobody ever heard
uf before, and he melts down both at last into 009
and the same. The first of these, his delicious
double-refined pleasure you shall have him some-
times decrying at the rate of Manius Cur ius him-
self; and celebrating it at other times as his indi-
vidual bonum or good, a position to which rather
the public censors than any private philosopher's
animadversions are due, as being not half so bad
a solecism in point of grammar, as in point of
morality. Only excesses and solicitudes must not
go along wiih luxury; or else he has no manner
of complaint against it. I confess this is one way
fcOOK THfc SECOKIK 67
to strengthen his- party, when whoever wHi be a
tboroagh-paced voluptuary is to commence first a
philosopher of the Epicurean stamp. Notwith-
standing all this we have received our directions
to look for the^ origin of summum bonum in the
nests and nurseries of animals, for that the notices
they suggest about good and evil before their na-
tural powers have taken a wrong bias, may best
determine us ; and these are no sopner bora, but
they pursue and espouse pleasure as a. good, and
on the other hand eschew pain as an evil. This is
one of your positions, and this the exact sense of
it as you have worded it. But though the position
is one, the faults of it are many. For I beseech
you, sir, whether is it of the two pleasures, the stiU
and stable, or the active and operative (ia the style
made sacred by Epicurus) by which an infant
amidst his moans is to distinguish for us between
good and evil? If by the still and stable, we are
as ready to grant as you can wish, that nature con-
sults for and enforces her own preservation. If
by the active and operative, as you conceive, this
principle will recommend to mankind the rankest
and the most dishonest pleasures. Besides that
your new-born animal does not enter upon life
with so much as your transcendent pleasure of
indolence. Neither does Epicurus himself appeal
to his brats and his brutes, as much as he take*
them for the mirrors and dictionaries of nature, to
prove that according to nature we are incited to
68 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
pursue the pleasure of indolence, the influence
whereof has not force enough to rouse and irritate
the appetite. And the same objection will equally
affect Hieronyraus. For it is the pleasure which
sooths and solaces the sense, that actuates and
excites. And this is the reason why Epicurus
advances the instance aforesaid to shew that we
are prompted by nature to pursue, not the dormant
pleasure of indolence, but that cogent and active
one that give& life to all the motions of little chil-
dren and irrational animals. And what now can
savour of absurdity more than that, after he has
admonished us of nature's early impulses to one
sort of pleasure, he should constitute another for
the summum bonum? Then as for the suffrage
of brutes, I lay no stress upon it, for although their
authority be not incompetent upon the score of
depravities, yet it is certainly so upon the score
of imperfections* They are not capable of enter-
taining any wrong persuasions, and therefore in-
capable of intimating any right. It is one thing
to bend a stick till you make it stand awry ; and
another thing when it grows crooked. Again;
your infant is not instigated by the force of any
innate principle to a pursuit of pleasure, but to a
love of its own being, and a care of its own preser-
vation ; it being natural for every living creature
to wish well to itself, and every part of itself. It is
primarily fond of the body and soul, which make
up the whole of it, and proportionably of the powers
BOOK THE SECOND, 69
"and parts of each. For there are certain privileges
and advantages of prime account which appertain
both to the body and the mind. And when we
have passed a judgment upon these, we come to
observe that it i% consonant to the measures of
nature to further those interests which herself has
principally regarded, and to protest against the
contrary. Whether pleasure be one of those pri-
ma naturalia or not, is much disputed. But that
it is the only one, scarce any body, I should think,
could have the hardiness to maintain, that had not
lost the use of his Kmbs, five senses, and under-
standing, and never knew what it is to have a
sound body and a hale constitution. Take notice
withal, that the present article is the grand hinge
upon which the whole rationale of the disquisition
about the nature of good and evil turns. The old
academics and peripatetics have pronounced it the
summum bonum, secundam naturam vivere 9 a life
unsullied with any thing that is disagreeable to our .
nature ; or in other words, a life of virtue, not
destitute of the prima naturalia. Callipho required
no. additions to virtue but pleasure; Diodorus none
but indolence. After these, came Aristippus's
simplex voluptas, pleasure by itself; an d the stoics
consentire naturae, entire submission and conformity
to the establishments of nature, which they resolve
into living virtuously, or as a man of honour and
' honesty is bound to live, and which they explain
by a life, the perfection whereof is to be thoroughly
70 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
acquainted with the condition and circumstances of
those things which occur in nature, to make choice
of the measures which she prescribes; and not to
venture upon the contrary for the world. So then,
as there are three hypotheses of moral ends, ex-
cluding honest as, honesty and virtue, that of Ari-
stippus and Epicurus, that of Hieronymus, and thai;
of Carneades; so there are three hypotheses which
link honestas and something accessional together,
as those of Poiemo, Callipho, and Diodorus; be-
sides which there is that of Zeno in favour of pure;
and abstracted honesty, or moral decorum ; not to
mention the obsolete, abandoned schemes of Pyrrho^
Aristo, and Heriilus. Among these Aristippus,
Hieronymus, Carneades, &c. had the discretion to
contrive, every man for himself, that his own sys-
tem should be all of a piece, whether it were Ari-
stippus's pleasure, Hieronymus's indolence, Carnea-
des's frui principiis naturalibus, that we should
make the most we can of all principles in nature
whatsoever ; or whether it were any one of them
beside. But unfortunate Epicurus, when he had
engaged himself at first in befialf of pleasure, must
be understood either to mean Aristippus's pleasure,
and then he ought to have been true to Aristippus's
fummum bonum; or else Hieronymus's ; but how
can that be? when it is plain his first essay was in
recommendation of the Aristippean pleasure. As
unadvisedly has he empowered his senses to deter-
mine him about the goodness of pleasure^ and the
*00K THE SECOND. 7l
evil of pain. This is giving them a larger commission
than the law vouchsafes, to any man in the company.
We are allowed to judge or arbitrate in a private ca-
pacity ; but may not assume to ourselves the de-
termination of any matters which lie beyond our pro-
per cognizance. As it would be trifling and ridi-
culous for a judge upon the bench, when he has pro-
nounced the sentence, to conclude with a si quid
meijudicii est, if my judgment avails any thing.
And in case Epicurus's senses were not, and could
not be sufficiently authorized, such a. proviso stands
them in as little stead ; for it will not render the
decision, I hope, ever the more valid, if his senses
have sometime or other been pleased to adjudge
that which was sweet to be bitter, that which was
Smooth to be rough, -that which was nigh to be
qfar-off, that which stood still to be in motion, and
that which was four-square to be round. Let
right reason therefore interpose her authority in
the decision, and how will she proceed ? With a
nice regard, no doubt, to the counsels of wisdom,
as that is truely defined a knowledge extending to
things as well divine as human ; and with as pre-
cise a deference to virtues of all denominations,
which notwithstanding you treat as no better than
so many pimps and prentices to your pleasures,
right reason proclaims them so many empresses and
heroines ; and, as their herald, has notified aloud in
defiance to pleasure, that instead of its having any
title to the character of the summum bonum, after
3'
72 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
which we are enquiring, it is altogether unworthy
to be the colleague of honesty and virtue. Neither
is poor indolence iu a better taking ; nor yet the
hypothesis of Carneades, nor those which take in
pleasure or indolence into the substance of summum
bonum, or shut honesty or virtue out of it. So
that there are now no more than two behind, and
these to be discussed and weighed with all imagin-
able diligence and advertency ; for it must either be
concluded that bonum and malum, good and evil,.
are neither more nor less than honestum and turpe,
what is honest, and xvhat is not ; and as for any
collateral or supernumerary advantages, that they
are not at all to be minded ; or however as things
barely eligible or unacceptable ; not as things truly
and simply desirable or detestable : or else right
reason will assign the pre-eminence to that account
of summum bonum which comprehends all the ex-
cellencies and ornaments of honesty and virtue,
and all the perfections of a life regulated and re-
fined according to the model and scheme of na-
ture. And toward this determination right reason
will , make the happier advances, if she satisfies
herself in the first place whether the controversy
relating to these conclusions be real or only verbal.
Pursuant therefore to the admonishments of so
good a directress, I design to take that course, re-
solving to contract the dispute into as narrow a
compass as 1 can, and to deny a place in the pro-
vince of philosophy to all those uncomplex ideas of
wmm
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INK
BOOK THE SECOND.
73
summum bonum, which do not include virtue. And
first, it was a gross and foggy dulness of apprehen-
sion in Aristippus and the Cyrenaics, when they
had the impudence to carve themselves a summum
bonum, not out of so despicable a nullity as indo-
lence, but out of those busy pleasures which dally
with our senses; to miss of what Aristotle has re-
marked, that man is a kind of mortal deity, and
that the ends whereunto he is born, are observation
and action , as a horse to racing, an ox to ploughing ',
a finder to beating ; nay, contrariwise to maintain
so wild and unaccountable a doctrine, as that man
with all his natural dignities and eminences re*
ceived his existence for the same ignoble ends as
baboons and swines received theirs, to indulge
themselves in the fulsome satisfactions of eating,
drinking, and venery. This bill I am obliged to
file against Aristippus, though, to do him justice,
he has dealt more ingenuously by us than you, and
owns he means the same that the rest of mankind
mean by the voluptas or pleasure which he has en-
titled sovereign and sole. Not that this palliates
the offensiveness of his error, the very structure of
our bodies, as well as the excellence and majesty
of our rational faculties demonstrating that the en-
joyment of pleasures cannot possibly be the ge-
nuine end of our existence. Hieroliymus's sum- .
mum bonum of indolence, and yours too upon occa-
sion, or rather without occasion, deserves as little
to be regarded. For it is no consequence, that
74 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
because pain is an evil, therefore we canpot but be
sufficiently happy when the evil of pain is away.
That apophthegm of Ennius we will allow in him
qs a poet, nimium boni est cui, nihil est mali ;
'Tis an excess
Of pleasure not to feel uneasiness.
But we, as philosophers, must measure our felicity,
not by the absence of evil, but by the acquisition of
real good, and may expect to compass it, not upon
the footing of Aristippus's oscitancy and voluptu-
ousness, nor of Hieronymus's negative of indolence,
but by a studious vigilance, and an industrious
application. The summum bonum of Cameades
falls under the stroak of the same censure and dis-
proof. Indeed it was not from the opinion which
he had of it himself that he was moved to propose
it, but merely that he might mortify the stoics,
against whom he was implacable. This however
must be said for it, that in consort and conjunction
with virtue, it might appear plausibly enough to
take in the entire latitude of human happiness, and
reach up to the tenor of the present question. Nor
may we shew half the same tenderness and favour
toward any of the other complex summum- bonums
as virtue coupled with pleasure, her greatest nui-
sance, or with indolence, which has in it so little;
of summum bonum, that it is only the bare negation.
of an evil. I cannot imagine what some philoso-
phers intend by thus lessening and derogating
■w
n^i
*m&
puJUHPi m
BOOK THE SECONB.
75
from the character of virtue. They will not stop
at the demand of something to boot with her, , but
the allotments required must he the most. unbe-
seeming too, and those only of a few scanty parti-
culars, instead of the whole set of the prima natu-
ralia ; as Aristo and Pyrrho, for theit* part, set so
little by the prima naturalia, that they would by
all means make us believe, there is not an ace to
choose between a state of perfect healthy and a
most uncomfortable habit of body. And therefore
nobody has, for a long time, thought it worth while
to wrangle with them. Rather than virtue should
not be the most complete and comprehensive good,
they took away the liberty of comparison and option,
and consequently the seminal principle out of
which it should emerge, and the aliment by which
it should sustain itself. Herillus was for shutting
up every other gbod in the good of science. But
as this, it is evident, is not our greatest good, so
neither does it infer a regularity in our practices
and manners. Upon this account Herillus has
long since shared the same fate with the two former ;
for nobody has took him to task after Chrysippus.
The academics, you know, will aver nothing cate*
gorically y but as in despair of ever grasping any
absolute certainty, take up with whatever looks the
most probable; and therefore we can form no
judgment in relation to them. Epicurus makes
his entrance in the rear, and creates us the more
trouble, first, because he has brought a bed of more
76 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
than one kind of pleasure ; and, secondly, because
both himself and his philosophy had the good for-
tune to make themselves at first a great many
friends, and to live in as numerous a succession of
vindicators; nay, however it comes about, the
general applause of the multitude, which is a
very suspicious sign of the contrary being deserved,
some of these people, whom it is our duty to con-
fute, as we tender the interests of virtue, honour,
and merit, pretend to convert irito a demonstrative
argument. Thus I have drove the pretences of
all the other philosophers out of the field, and the
two combatants that remain, are, it should seem,
not I and Torquatus, but virtue and pleasure.
Chrysippus, a man of a mighty reach, and an assi-
duity proportionable, has led the way, and cast the
whole dispute about the nature of summum bonum,
upon the comparison that lies between those two.
And I am so far of his mind, that I conceive I have
cut the throat of Epicurus's cause so soon as I can
make out any one honestum, or principle of virtue,
to be a thing desirable for its own sake, and by
virtue of its own influence. Having therefore first
defined and stated the true notion and the proper
grounds of this honestum, with a seasonable brevity > I
shall proceed, sir, to unravel all thatyou have offered,
and hope, as you see cause, you will make good
the omissions of a defective memory. Honestum^
or every honourable, ingenuous, commendable
principle, is that which challenges our esteem and
BOOK THE SECOND. 77
test affections upon the merit of its own intrinsic
worth and excellence, exclusively of any prospect of
profit or compensation. Here, I conceive, we have
the rough-draft and outAines of honestum ; but he
that is disposed to contemplate the natural symme-
try and features of it, must look into conscience,
and survey the original presenting itself in the
intentions, purposes, and practices of such worthy
persons, as overlooking all the invitations of adi
vantage and interest are devoted to the flQeonv
plishing of great and glorious enterprises, purely'
upon the evidence of their suitableness to rational
faculties and a generous disposition. For among
many ether properties wherein a man differs from
a brute, the most conspicuous one is this, that he
is endowed with rational abilities, has a large
capacity of soul, a quick and lively apprehension,
and such a force of sagacity and thought as to
collect and observe diversity of ideas at one act, and
in one view, by the force of which powers he finds
out causes and consequences r and the relative dis-
agreements and correspondences of things with
things. We anticipate futurities and connect them
with the present juncture, and predetermine our-
selves about the general circumstances and events
of life. The further effect of all this is a kind of
inclination in one man to another, and a mutual
communication of desires, notions, and interests,
and according to the order of nature, these alliances
first obtain among the several relations of the same
78 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
family; next among the members of the same
civil community; and lastly among the several
parties of the universal society of mankind.
Hence Plato in one of his Epistles takes occasion
to admonish Architas, that the end of his coming
into the world zvas to be serviceable to his country,
and his friends, for that he was intitled to a very
small p or t ion of himself and his own actions. And
in regard we are born with a very vehement pro-
pensity to acquire the knowledge of truth, as is
evident from that eagerness of attention, with which
BOinetimes when we have nothing else to do, we
look up to the heavenly bodies, and gaze at the
places and the motions of them ; thi3 principle by
degrees kindles in the mind a veneration and fond-
ness for all truths in general, especially all funda-
mental, stanch, and solid truths, and as great an
aversion to illusions, falsities, and fallacies, as par-
ticularly to frauds, perjuries, malice and injustice.
But th4re is yet a higher proficiency of human rea-
son, and that is. an august and awful resoluteness,
that fixes us in an absolute command of ourselves,
and as if it were not enough to render disappoint-
ments and misfortunes tolerable, makes them
scarce perceivable ; that erects and exalts the soul,
ensures it against all the power of fear, or any
other impressions whatsoever. By this time we
have a three-fold division of honestum : the fourth
and last to be superinduced upon the three former
specieSy and no less amiable and engaging, respects
^JPWWWPBWPW^^IF
BOOK THE SECOND* 79
•rder and a regulation of our behaviour ; for the
very shape and lineaments of our bodies are as mo-
nitors to mind us of the dignity of our nature, and
caution us against licentious indecencies in word
or action. And these intimations, at least those
motives concurring which arise out of the three
precedent kinds of honestum, restrain us from doing
any thing rash and extravagant, and make us be-
ware of uttering or attempting whatever may give
offence, occasion mischief, or argue a littleness and
poverty of spirit. Behold the full dimensions and
proportions of our honestas (our principle of ho-
nour, honesty and virtue !) and how they comprise
the four virtues which yourself, sir, so mainly in-
sisted on. Be it so : yet Epicurus protests he can-
not conceive what some people would have him
understand by their confining the summum bonum
to this honestas. It is gibberish and jargon, he
tells us, to talk of resigning up all to this honestas,
unless you will suppose it high-seasoned with plea-
sure ; neither could it ever enter into his head af-
ter all the mighty bustle about the word honestas,
what is the proper sense of it. In the vulgar ac-
ceptation the word honestum, as he understands,
goes for every thing that is cried up and applauded
in the world. And although, continues he, that
which is thus celebrated may by chance now and
then surpass the sweetness of some sorts of pleasure,
yet it is the pleasure it affords which invests it with
its value and significancy. Take notice now how
80 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
widely the opinion of your matchless philosopher
that has extended his conquests over Greece, Italy,
and all the barbarous nations, differs from mine.
The term honestum he will maintain is unintelligi-
ble, unless either you make it stand for voluptas,
(pleasure) or intend it shall denote any thing that
has the acclamations of the multitude to magnify
it : whereas I am fully satisfied they as often be-
stow their encomiums upon things, which carry in
them a moral turpitude, and though sometimes it
happens otherwise, and they place their commenda-
tions right, yet nothing can owe its goodnes to their
commendations. Whatever upon the score of its own
excellency and rectitude becomes the subject of
praise, lays no claim to the word honestum by vir-
tue of any certificate from a multitude, but be-
cause, although no mortal had known any thing of
it, or spoke any thing concerning it, in its own na-
ture it would be lovely and laudable. According-
ly, finding himself unable to hold out against his
own convictions, Epicurus elsewhere changes his
note, and says as you do, that there is no living a
life of pleasure but for him that lives up to the rules
of ingenuity and virtue. And what is living up to
the rules of ingenuity and virtue ? Why the same
thing as living a life of pleasure. Very good !
That is as much as to say living up to the rules of
ingenuity and virtue is all one with living up to
the rules of ingenuity and virtue ; as the rules of
ingenuity and virtue are all one with Me voice of a
BOOK THE SECOND. SI
multitude. Why ? No life of pleasure without
their good liking? For shame! Shall a wise man
spread the sails of life to the breath of ideots ?
Well then ! What are we to understand in this
passage by honestum ? That, and only that, for
certain, which is truly and in its own nature valu-
able. For if it were valuable because ©f the con-
sequent pleasure, so is every good joint of meat
that hangs in the shambles. One would therefore
imagine Epicurus not to be the man, that having
set so high a price upon honestas as to declare it
impossible for us to live a life of pleasure without it,
makes the people's applause the very essence of this
honestas j and a most necessary condition of pleasure
too : as who would not wonder that he should suppose
any such thing as honestum, that is not rationally and
in a moral construction such, and that does not re-
commend itself by the lustre of its own excellency?
Wherefore, Torquatus, I could not forbear observing
with what ostentation and emphasis you brought
out that express assertion of Epicurus, that there
is no coming at the pleasures of life, but upon the
terms of honour, honesty, regularity, and prudence.
The dignity and eminence of the qualities answer-
ing to those words had you under such an influence
that you sprung upward in the pronouncing, kept
your body raised, and fixed your eyes upon us the
better to rivet your apology for Epicurus, that
there are passages to be found in him, where he
*t tributes their due praises to honour and justice.
H
82 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
And undoubtedly you did well and wisely to make
your use and advantage of those words, which are
of that peculiar importance, that did they not stand
adopted into philosophic terms, we could not so
much as know what occasion we have for philoso-
phy ! Those very sounds, prudence, fortitude,
justice, temperance, a language almost unknown to
Epicurus, are, and have ever been, so many phil-
tres upon the souls of the greatest men to engage
them in philosophical studies. The most acute
sense is the sense of sight, says Plato, yet not so
acute as to compass a view of all those charms and
graces of wisdom, which might we but once behold,
O ! how entirely would they captivate our affec-
tions and faculties! For no reason in the world,
to be sure, but because wisdom has a ready hand
at catering and preparing our pleasures ! It is
this that justice is only good for ! And that anti-
quated proverb has nothing in it, quicum in tenebris^
which is as much as to say, that we are to take no
advantages against any man upon an improbability
of being discovered ! This adage may serve for a
general instruction, not to consider so much who
sees our actions as what our actions are. So that
when you suggested how miserably the minds of
profligate people are tortured, as well by their own
acts of reflection upon themselves, as by the ter-
rors and gastliness of punishments either present
or expected, pardon me if I think you trifled : for
it is not necessary only to make an instance of your
BOOK THE SECOND. 88
fearful, faultering sinners, with so much grace left
about them as to execute the rigour of the law
upon themselves, and so little courage as to start
at their own shadow. No, no : we are ready to
produce you your politic, ingenious rascals that
make a science of villany as well as a trade, and
are safe enough if they can but practice out of all
danger of an information. At present we have
nothing to say to Lucius Tabulus the prater, that
was so notoriously corrupted in a cause of homicide*
as upon a motion made the year after to the people
by their tribune Publius Scaevola, whether he
should be called to account for it, and upon a
resolution of the people that he should stand his
trial, to be arraigned before Cneius Ctepio the
consul, appointed judge by an order of senate :
and when the sentence of banishment was after a
short hearing passed upon him, the fact had been
so clearly proved that he did not so much as, open
his mouth in his own defence. Our business is
with your close intriguing bffenders, (such was
Quintus Pompeius when he denied the Numantian
league,) and with your men of boldness and brass,
that have bound conscience, perhaps without much
difficulty, to its good behaviour, and are become
such artists at keeping their own counsel, such
finished proficients in dissimulation and grimace.
as to bemoan the iniquity of the age when they
hear of other people's crimes. These are your
seasoned wags. For example Publius Sextilus
Hufus, I remember, made oath how that Quintal*
S4 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
Fadius G alius had left him his heir, and in thfc
body of the testator's will it was found that he had
directed Sextilius to write his daughter Fadia sole
inheritress. But Sextilius averred he knew nothing
of it. And so he might securely, for there was
none of us who as friends of the deceased were
concerned in the arbitration that could disprove
him, though it was abundantly more reasonable to
believe that Sextilius had forsworn himself to come
by the estate than that Fadius could have so little
natural affection as not really to have given those
directions which were mentioned in his will. Sex-
tilius urged moreover that lie had been sworn to
the observance of the Voconian law, and might not
act against the tenor of it, unless we, the friends of
the deceased, would bear him harmless. To be
short, it was the opinion not only of us young men,
but of all the judicious and eminent sages upon
the spot, that the daughter could inherit no more
than what she might claim by the Voconian law.
So Sextilius run away with a large estate, which
had never fallen into his clutches, had he been
such a fool of a philosopher as to prefer honesty
and fair-dealing to his own lucre and advantage.
O ! but I warrant you he never enjoyed himself
afterwards ! Yes, and his estate too, and the more
for getting it so dextrously. The morsel was the
richer and the sweeter, because even the letter of
the law conspired to bring it him ; though rather
than wantonness and pleasure should go without
%o plentiful a fund, he ought, at least if he was a
BOOK THE SECOND. 85
true Epicurean, to have run hazards for it : seeing
if every man who affirms that honour and probity
are things for themselves desirable is obliged to
encounter any danger in their service, then on the
other hand ought every body that consecrates all
things else to his idol of pleasure, when his way
towards his pleasures lies through dangers, to ven-
ture on. Either Epicurus must not think it worth
his while to press the pursuit of his own summum
bonum, or if he does, whenever he has it in his
power to make prize of a tempting inheritance,
which will be a means of improving and multiplying
his pleasures, he must enterprise as daringly as if
a Scipio in thirst of glory were to drive a Hannibal
back into his own country. Scipio, let me tell you,
run an ugly risk, and that consulting not his
pleasure but his honour. And therefore your
philosopher cannot for shame, but when an interest
may be served, face all opposition rather than not
gain his point ; as provided none of his enormities
takes air, he furnishes himself with diversion out
of them, or if he come to be discovered he is wiser
than to let the formidable face of punishment affect
him, having been trained up to a contempt of death,
of banishment, or pain ! which, by the way, though
tolerable to a wise man, because forsooth ! his share
of good must surpass his share of evil of course,
yet, as you manage the matter, is to a wicked
man an insupportable grievance. Further, let
us suppose a knave that with his good parts
86 CICERO OP MORAL XVD8.
has power and authority, a man of as wide
a command was Marcus Crassus : not thai Craa-
sus abused those advantages : or such as Pom-
pey at this time of day, who fairly deserves
the thanks of his country-men for dealing so
handsomely by them, when if he pleased, he might
do them a thousand ill turns, and not smart for
it. The base tricks are innumerable that a man
might play, without so much as forfeiting his repu-
tation of incurring any censure. Should your
friend upon his death-bed leave his instructions
with you by word of mouth for his daughter to
succeed as sole inheritress to the estate, without
any body by to attest it, and not commit them to
writing as Fadius did, I make no question but
you would punctually fulfil those instructions, and
so perhaps Epicurus too would have done. Thus
Sextus Peducaeus, son to Sextus, that miracle of
worth and integrity, a gentleman of letters too, and
blessed, as we see, with a son as upright and inge-
nuous in all his dealings as his father, when
Caius Plotius ofNursia, a noble Roman knight
had notified his will to him only by word of mouth,
and before no witnesses, went directly to his relict,
who was altogether ignorant of the matter, ac-
quainted the lady how her husband had disposed
of the estate, and saw her settled in the full and
free possession of it I am confident Torquatus
would have acquitted himself as honestly. ' But
then at the same time he must have advanced a
^ BOOK THE SECOND. 87
manifest proof against his own doctrine ; for that
how much soever he pretends to subject all things
besides to pleasure and self-ends, yet in his prac-
tice and conduct he would give pleasure the go-by,
and stick to his duty ; which makes it a clear case
that a right disposition and temper of mind has
and must have the ascendant over all the sinister
cajoling persuasions of a perverted judgment.
Suppose (as the casuistry of Carneades supposes)
a person whose death would turn to your advan-
tage were preparing without any suspicion to seat
himself over the nest of an adder, and you knew
of an adder's being there ; though the law takes no
hold of you, and nobody can make appear that
you knew it, you are nevertheless a murderer un-
less you gave him a timely caution. But 1 have
dwelt already too long upon this head, especially
^considering I have handled it at large under the
person of Loelius in my discourses concerning a
common-wealth, and that it, is indeed a proposi-
tion which carries its own evidence in its bowels,
that there can be no such thing as a good man, un-
lets it be taken for granted that nature herself ties
upon us all the duties of justice and fair-dealing,
and that these duties are not to be resolved into
pretences of utility. Let this be further applied
to those two virtues which consist in bringing the
brutal part of us under obedience to the sceptre of
reason,' the virtues of modesty and temperance.
Does not chastity suffer if bestialiaties be conmit-
88 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
i
ted, though all passes in privacy and darkness?
Or suppose you no crime can he flagitious if it
escape the brand of public infamy ? Again, is it
the way of heroes to make an estimate and compu-
tation of the pleasures they are to carry off with
them, before they break in upon the enemy's ranks,
and sacrifice their lives to the interest of their coun-
try ? Or is it a noble vehemence and explosion of the
soul that drives them forward? Tell me freelv.
Torquatus, were that illustrious ancestor of yours
now present at the conferences we are holding,
whether of the constructions we have passed upon
his behaviour would he take to himself, yours or
mine ? Would he rather have it asseverated by me
that he had no other aims than to be an instrument
of good to his country, or by yourself, that he only
designed to make his awn pennyworths and advan-
tages ? At least if you had unfolded your mean-
ing in plain terms, and told him to his face he ne-
ver did a brave thing in his life, but still there was
an expectation of pleasure at the bottom, how had
he taken it at your hands, do you think ? No mat-
ter, because you will have it so, though I can newr
consent that such a gallant captain as Torquatus
shall be said to have served under the banner of
pleasure, yet for once let him take his place among
the mercenary rout. But then must his poor col-
league, fublius Decius, the first consul of the fa-
mily, have had the scab of pleasure upon him too,
when the knight-errant so solemnly vowed himself
90O& THE SECOND, 8ft
t victup for his country, and gallopped full-speed
into the main body of the Latin army ? It tickled
his fancy, undoubtedly, to think of being hacked to
pieces within a quarter of an hour ! Nothing less
than the charms of that assurance could have
spurred him on to destruction, and with a keener
appetite too than if he had been riding in as much
haste after Epicurus's pleasure as Epicurus himself
could have wished. What is more, I cannot per-?
suade myself his son, had the father acted upon
any other than a principle of bravery and honour,
would have copied after him as he did in the time,
of his fourth consulship ; nor that his grandson f
the third in a direct line that lost bis life for the
public (and he a consul too when he fell) would
have fought and died so desperately in the war
with Pyrrhus. After these I could produce you
instances of Greeks, but that, in comparison of our
own, they are neither eminent nor many, as those
of Leonidas, Epaminondas, and three or four be-,
sides ; whereas were I to reckon up all the bright
ornaments of this kind with which our own country
has blossomed ; your principle of pleasure must im-
mediately prostrate itself a captive before our prin-
ciple of virtue ; nor would the remainder of the
day be long enough for such an enumeration. Be-
side, I may fairly say as Aulus Varius, that old
testy, severe judge, used to say to the person that
sat next him in the court, when a good many wit-
nesses had given in their depositions, and new one*
N
90 CICZftO OP MORAL ENDS,
were called, O me! O me! if we hwoe not had
enough of evidences yet, we shall never have enough
of them, take my word for it. Nay, to come
nearer home and appeal to a gentleman of
such renowned ancestors as yourself; was pleasure
the inducement in your younger years when you
opened a charge before that magnanimous patriot,
as the common-wealth knew him to be at all times,
but especially during his consulship, and after-
wards, I mean your own father? Under whose con-
duct, and by whose suggestion I too was so happy
as to give some proofs how much more I thought
myself obliged to be concerned for the good of the
community than for any private interests of my
own. It made me smile when I heard you stating
the opposition between the circumstances of a.
mortal beset with the greatest variety imaginable
of the most exquisite pleasures, and not so much
as under the pain of a scratch, or obnoxious to any
future ; and the circumstances of a poor creature
torn with inexpressible torments in all parts of his
body, without so much as the least hopes of a re-
laxation ; and then putting the question, whether
any thing could exceed the happiness of the for-
mer, or the misery of the latter ; and so making
your conclusion, that pain must be the greatest of
evils, and pleasure the summum bonum. There
was one Lucius Thorius Baibus, of Lanuvium. x
(Probably you do not remember him) this man
was thoroughly devoted to pleasure, had so perfect
BOOK THE SECONB. 91
acknowledge of the whole mystery of it, and kept
himself so well furnished with all accommodations
for it, that he could have challenged any man to
name him a pleasure, though it were never so racy
and delicate, which his ware-house did not afford
in plenty and perfection; so little troubled with
superstitious grumblings, as to make a jest of all
the sacrifices and temples ; and sX> unapprehensive
of the terrors of death, that he died with his
sword in his hand for the service of his country.
He measured his appetites and desires by his ca-
pacity of fruition, and had nothing to say to Epi-
curus's division of them : only be had an eye to his
health, and used wholesome exercise, to quicken the
inclinations of his palate. His diet was rich and
picquant, but as easy of digestion as he could con-
trive it. His wines luscious, but then he drank
with caution. In a word, he left not out one of all
those ingredients, which, if we deduct, Epicurus
has told us he kno*s not for his part, what we
mean by any bonum or human good. He laboured
under no sort of pain, though if any had seized
him, he would have undergone it like a soldier,
and made more use, believe me, of the physicians
than of the philosophers. Nobody had a more
cheerful complexion, a better state of health, a
livelier air and appearance, or a larger portion of
all the delights and pleasures in which he could
possibly indulge himself. Here then we have
found such a casket of happiness as comes up to
9t CICERO OF MOftAL ENDS.
yqur own description. And yet shall I? No;
virtue herself takes the assertion out of my mouth,
and speaks her Markus Regulus to have been ten
thousand times a happier man, even at that junc-
ture, when of his own accord, and without any
compulsion but of conscience, in respect of his
faith which he had engaged to the enemy, he left
his own country, returned to Carthage, and lay
deprived of the means of sleep and sustenance ;
even then, if virtue may be heard and heeded, he
was a happier man than Thorius with his bottles
up on a bed of roses. He had been a renowned
commander in the wars, received the honour of a
triumph, and born the office of consul more than
dnce, but the glory of all former passages of his life
he thought by no means equal to that of the last
evidence he gave of his integrity and constancy.
We that hear the story may fancy his condition was
miserable ; but the party that is the subject of it,
embraced condition as very eligible. It is not wan-
tonness, merriment, laughter, jests, nor any other
symptoms of levity that imply happines, but reso-
lution and constancy of mind, whatever outward
aspect persons and things may carry. When the
kings son had committed a rape upon Lucretia,
after she had abjured in a solemn manner the
whole body of the citizens, without more ado she
stabbed herself to the heart; and by the loss of
her, at the instigation of ferutus who led on the
people, the community at first made seizure of
BOOK THE SKCOtfD. §$
their democratical liberties ; as in honour to her
memory her father and husband were created the
first consuls. Lucius Virginius, a poor plebeian,
about sixty years after put an end to the life of his
own daughter Virginia, rather than she should be
debauched by Appius Claudius, then sitting at
the helm. Now therefore, Torquatus, you have
no other choice but either to fail foul upon these
examples, or to drop your pleas for pleasure.
Very ponderous pleas, no doubt, and a hopeful
cause that has not so much as a testimonial or a
recommendation to countenance it from any one
illustrious instance whatsoever ! The way which
we usually take is to appeal to historical monu-
ments for the authority of such extraordinary per-
sons as have bestowed the whole course of their
lives in conquering difficulties, and would have
stopped their ears at the name of pleasure, which
none of you, whenever you dispute, dare pretend
to fetch out a record or a precedent. You shall
have all other pretenders to philosophy telling you
stories ever and anon of Lycurgus, Solon, Miltiades,
Themistocles, and Epaminondas ; but the Epicu-
rean schools dare not so much as whisper their
names. To give one hint more upon the matter
in hand ; we have reason to think ourselves abun-
dantly supplied with the choicest instances of
merit by my friend Atticus's collections. Let any
man single out ever a one of the lives he has written,
and then tell us impartially his opinion, whether it
94 CICZRO OF MORAL ENDS.
does not eclipse the splendor of all the voluminous
accounts about Themistocles. Not to disparage
the Greeks neither, because it must be confessed
we deriveH our philosophy and politeness from
them. But still they took those liberties which in
us it were a fault to take. The stoics and peripa-
tetics are by no means agreed. The former will
not vouchsafe the title of good to any thing but
virtue and moral worth ; while the latter assign a .
very peculiar priority and preeminence to virtue
and moral worth, but say withal, that the external
advantages of body and fortune are good in their
degree. This is a truly noble and sublime contro-
versy, virtue being the subject, and the superiority
of it presupposed on both sides. Now whenever
we come to engage with your men, we must have
our ears, of course, offended with clauses relating
to those sordid and obscene pleasures which Epi-
curus rarely dismisses for a period together. Do
but meditate some time, Torquatus, upon your own
counsels and resolutions, and I am confident you
will presently grow sick of your hypothesis, Cle-
anthes's emblem shames you out of it It was a
pertinent and a pretty design as he set it forth in
his discourses to the imaginations of his scholars.
He bid them conceive pleasure in effigy, a bete
very gaudily and royally attired, seated upon a
throne, and figures all about her symbolizing so many
virtues for her majesty s maids of honour, and sup-
posed to have no other employment or office but to
JfoOK: THfe $£CON». 95
wait upon her and serve her, except now and then to
advise her in her ear, (that is, as much as one party in
a picture can advise another) to behave herself like
a well-bred gentlewoman, and do nothing that might
shock the minds of men, or prove fatal in the con*
sequences ; Neither , may it please your highness^
are we ignorant that the end of our being, and the
whole of our business is to obey your commands.
O ! but still Epicurus lays it down as an impossi-
bility that any man should be happy, unless he
lives prudently and virtuously. This is the pro-
position which is to dazzle us. But what is it to
me whether Epicurus maintains the affirmative or
the negative ? I am only concerned to examine
what the man that makes pleasure the summum
bonum must maintain, if he will talk consistently
with himself. Urge any thing like a reason if you
can, why the pleasures of Thorius, Posthumius,
Chius, and Orata, the most accomplished volup-
tuary of them all, were not of the first rate ? I
have before observed how gently Epicurus deals
by his voluptuaries, only cautioning them against
the folly of indulging their passions either of desire
or fear> and prescribing such a remedy against
both, as will not bear hard upon the vices of luxury
and excess; for truly the philosopher has no objec-
tions that he knows of, to point against sensuality,
when it is no longer encumbered by these two pas-
sions. It remains, therefore, that while you go on
to make pleasure the standard of all human gpod,
05 CICERO OF MOEAL BtfDS.
you cannot pretend to patronise or lay claim to
virtue, in as much as even he that takes care how
he hurls his neighbour purely for fear of incom-
moding himself, is far from being or deserving to
be called a good or a just man Do not you know,
nemo pius est, $c. It is downright irreligion to
be religious out of fear? Lay that to heart, I
beseech you, as an indisputable truth. No man,
believe me, is the honester for lying under such an
awe ; and if that be all the restraint that is upon
him, whenever it goes off, be must be a rogue; as
his fears will certainly vanish upon the first oppor-
tunity of solitude or privacy that flatters him, or at
least, if he thrives and rises, upon the stock of his
power and prosperity. In a word, we may very
charitably presume he would much, rather be
thought a good man in order to his being a rogue,
than really be a good man though he was sure to
have his honesty misconstrued. Upon the whole,
you must acknowledge you have palmed a spurious
mimic justice upon us, instead of that which is
genuine and invariable, and favoured us with two
notable pieces of advice ; first to make slight of all
the eternal rules of conscience, and secondly to
court and move by the precarious estimations of
other people. And this that we alledge against
you in relation to the virtue of justice, affects you
equally as to* the other three virtues, all which you
suppose fixed upon a pedestal of pleasure, that is
to say, stone walls upon a surface of water. I
BOOK THE SECOND. $7
would gladly be informed concerning that same
Torquatus we were discoursing of just now, whe-
ther he had any thing in him of fortitude or not;
for as little hopes as you give me of ever seducing
yourself, I cannot, if I would, force the dear and
honoured examples of your family out of my head,
but must enjoy myself in the remembrance of them,
especially of that incomparable person Aulus Tor-
quatus, as having b£en my particular friend, and
zealous supporter in very dangerous times. Both
of you can witness it. And yet as much as I pre-
sume to value myself, and wish to be valued upon
a sincere principle and N love of gratitude, I could
not have any relish of those obligations, if I sus-
pected that he was pleased to befriend me, not out
of tenderness, but for his own ends and emolument.
It will not save your cause to reply upon me, that
every good action is itself an advantage and a gain
for the agent. Keep to that, and we have you to
ourselves. For all that we affirm and contend for,
is this, that virtue is its aivn rexvard. EpiGurus
will not hear of it ; on the other hand, he makes
pleasure the wages and reward of all our actions
and purposes. But not to forget your relation ;
I tell you plainly, if when he accepted of the chal-
lenge of the Gall, fought him at the battle of Anien,
despoiled him of his chain, and acquired along
with it an honourable appellation, and all this, as I
conceive, upon the score of the congruity of such
an action to the dignity of human nature; if he
$ft CICERO OT MORAL ENDS.
would not have thus exerted himself, but upon the
motive of pleasure, I cannot have any opinion of
his fortitude. Again ; let only the fear of punish-
ment or infamy be security for all our modesty, our
chastity, and our temperance, instead of the real
sacredness of those ties which ought to guard them:
arcd what lewdness and brutality is there so vile
and abominable which a man will demur upon,
when he can trust to secrecy, impunity, or the
loftiness of his condition and character? How foul
and untoward an imputation were it, sir, to lie at
your own door, should we put the case that, bright
a**d admired as is your sense, your virtue, and the
magnificence of your character : yet so dishonour-
able are your intentions, pursuits, and endeavours,
and so detestable is that very end into which yoa
resolve the whole conduct of your life, that you
could not make a discovery of them to the world
but you must colour and tremble ? Ere long you
are to put on the magistrate, and on that occasion
must make your harangue to the people, and let
them understand what measures you design to follow
in the administration of justice. I suppose you
will think it proper also to go on in the old road,
and to give your auditory an account both of your
ancestors and yourself- Now will it not be very
engaging and popular, to declare tjiat as you never
did any one action in your life but pleasure was
your aim in it, so you will regard none but induce-
ments of pleasure throughout the course of your
BOOK THE SECOND. 99
eonsulat? O but, say you, I hope I have a little
more wit than so to bespeak a mob of ignorant
mechanics ! What think you then of one of the
courts of justice to discover your mind in, or if that
be too public yet, of the senate-home itself? Nor
there neither will you try the experiment, I dare
answer for you. But why, if it were not scanda-
lous to utter such a period ? And if so, methinks
I and Triarius, before whom you can talk at this
rate, have not had fair quarter from you. It may
be so, but the fault is our own. We impose an
odious and an undeserved signification upon a
word of mighty merit, or rather we are no judges
of the meaning of voluptas or pleasure. This
is everlastingly your evasion. You can dissect
the dark orthography when you please, and we too
are allowed to comprehend your projects when you
read us lessons about the impossibilities you are
big with of atoms and spaces between world and
world, but are fatally incapable of any notion of
pleasure, which every sparrow understands ; though,
whenever 1 think fit, I can force you to confess
that I comprehend not only what is pleasure^ a
pleasing tremor upon the senses, but also what i$
the pleasure whose quarrel is espoused by yourself;
and sometimes <we have it in the shape of that
tremulous, active pleasure which I have now defined,
and then it is capable of variations ; and sometimes
we have it in the phantom of that incomparable
pleasure of indolence, and then it is a still, fixwd
100 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
pleasure, and admits of no variations. And even
let it go for a pleasure, upon condition I may ask
you the question, whether you will set so stupid a
pleasure before you as the scope of all your actions P
If you are ashamed to answer me in the affirmative,
however take heart, be plain with the people, and
make known your resolution, never to act, while
you are in ^office, and when you are not, upon any
other bottom than that of self-interest, never to
play any other game but what you are to be a
winner by ; and guess how the assembly will rend
their throats to return the compliment, and what a
golden age they will promise themselves upon your
advancement to the consular power, which they are
impatient at this time to put into your hands ; and
yet if propositions of this nature be so scandalous,
that you have neither confidence nor courage
enough to make them part of a public declamation;
what prevails with you to riot in them to yourself,
and to your friends ? With you, that are habitu-
ated to the language of the peripatetics and the
stoics, and talk loud, especially in all places of
public judicature, about duty, justice, honour,
honesty, performance of promises, what comports
with the dignity of the government and grandeur
of the Roman republic, and what dangers, what
deaths are to be rushed upon for the sake of it.
Now we poor easy cits, little imagining how you
laugh at us all the while in your sleeve, glow again
with admiration and extasy. None but high flights
BOOK THE SECOND. 101
and Catonian strains of philosophy escape your
lips upon such occasions; not a single word of
pleasure, neither of your active pleasure or voluptas,
(as that word is understood in town arid country by
all who are acquainted with our language) nor yet
of that still, composed pleasure, which nobody gives
the name of pleasure to but yourselves. Recollect
a little and shew us how you got a dispensation to
make use of our words, and affix your own mean-
ings to them. ' Should a humour take you of affect*
ing in your aspect or gate more than ordinary pre-
tences to gravity, you would not be the same per-
son you were before ; how then can you put upon
us nothing but out-side and ostentation ? How can
you adulterate words, say one thing, and mean
another, and do by your notions as you do by your
garb, put them on or off as occasion calls you
from your house to . the chair of public authority,
or thence to your house ? Can you reckon this lati-
tude allowable? Commend me much rather to
such frapk and sound, such candid, handsome,
and brave assertions, as a man without any base
and pitiful reservations would be glad to have
either the senate, the people, or any council or con-
course in the world hear him delivering. As to
the matter of friendship, I cannot see where you
have left any room for such a thing, or how, one
man should be another's friend, unless it be for
the sake of his friend that he loves him. For
what does the word aware, (to love) from which
108 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
amicitia, (friendship) import, but to wish all tilt
good we can to another, though we shall reap
bo advantage by it ourselves? Doubtless, you
will tell me, I shall find my account in it, if I
will take up with such a principle as this. It is
odds I might if I dissembled it very artfully.
But, I hope, you have no thoughts of being a friend
according to true etymology, till you are such in*
deed ; and that you can never be, till your breast is
lined with a sincerity and ardour of affection, an af-
fection of spontaneous growth, and not propagated
out of any precarious pursuits of private advantage.
But what if I would make my own fortune ? then just
so long as you find you are a gainer, you will be
& friend, and when there is no more to be got, the
fewel fails and the friendship goes out. For friend-
ship and interest are not always inseparable, and
bow will you contrive when they once come to in-
terfere ? Will you renounce the former ? If so, it
must have been of an unaccountable kind. Will
you be true to it ? Then you are no longer true to
your own principles, if I rightly represent them* as
proposing personal utility for ihejinal cause of all
friendship. It is possible, you will desire not to
be reproached with it, though some time or other
you should abandon your friend. But why re-
proached with it, if it were not a matter well wor-
thy of reproach ? Now here lies the point ; thought
perhaps you will not utterly desert a friend to a-
void an inconvenience, jet you will be wishing him
200K THE SECCVD. 103
Out of the world when you cannot better your cir-
cumstances in it by your intimacy with him. At
least, if instead of proving serviceable, it so falls out
that he must cost you trouble and fatigue, estate,
or perhaps life itself ; then it will be high time to
look about you, and bethink yourself of yourself,
and of those pleasures which are the end of your
existence. Or will you rather, as the famous Py-
thagorean did, present your own body in the room
of your friend's to the fury of a Sicilian tyrant?
Will you, rather than not redeem his life with your
own, counterfeit him, and' swear yourself Orestes
when you are Pylades ; or being Orestes confute
Pylades, and demonstrate yourself Orestes ? Or if
you could not demonstrate it, beg both of you might
not die, but that your friend might be spared?
Yes, I know full well, Torquatus, you are not so
ridden with apprehensions of pain or death as to
hesitate at all this, or at any honourable manage-
ment whatever. But our inquiry is not, which
way your own disposition, but which way the
principles of your philosophy lead you. And
notwithstanding Epicurus' rodomontades in his
commendations of friendship, yet his institu-
tions and precepts which you have imbibed, and
now vindicate, utterly overthrow all duties of it.
How can that be when Epicurus himself had so
many bosom-friends ? Did ever I question Epicu-
rus's probity, candour, or good nature ? It is not
his conduct and course of life which I bring to the
shrift, but the judgment he has passed upon things.
104 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
To vilify an adversary, that is for the vanity of the
Greeks. I own he never failed to discharge the
part of a friend ; but for all that, if what I have
urged, is true, (and an academic, you know, must
not be over-positive) it was a practice of supere-
rogation in him. I shall be told that the generality
of the world have entertained different notions of
him, and thought they had very good reason for it
They have so ; but I am little influenced at any
time by the noice of that generality. The choicest
excellencies of every art, profession, or science,
nay, and of virtue itself, are the least common and
published. Were it not that their virtue had over-
powered the principle of pleasure, neither Epicurus
himself, nor so many of his followers could have
proved such sincere, good friends, or men of such
an exemplary stability and sobriety, so unconcerned
about pleasure, and to duty so resigned. Their
lives and conversations confute them. And where-
as it is a reproach upon the majority of mank nd
that they say greater things than they do, it is ac-
knowledged in favour of these gentlemen, that they
do better things than they speak. Yet all this does
not come quite home to the point, as we shall see
by looking over the particulars you suggested re-
lating to friendship, among which one had so many
of Epicurus's features, that I could almost have
sworn I h$ ard it from himself. It was this, that
it is our business to set a-foot amicable corre-
spondences, in regard, there is no living securely,
nor enjoying ourselves, unless pleasure be well
BOOK THE SECOND* 105
guarded with friendship. However, this has bad
my answer already. Of the opinion which was
next mentioned, and bears a fresher date as well
as a better construction, Epicurus, as I remember,
has never taken the least notice ; that when we
first lay out for friends we are wrought upon by
self-interest, but that when our friendships reach
a maturity, the ouier-coat of pleasure peels away,
and we love our friends for their own sakes. This
account of friendship has its flaws too, but how-
ever, I will not throw it back upon their hands.
Only be it observed, that though I let it serve my
turn, it will serve theirs very little that advance it,
as being a plain confession out of their own mouths
that sometimes a good man acts upon a better
bottom than a prospect and pursuit of pleasure.
The third notion you gave us was a supposal of a
tacit compact obliging the wise to bear the same
favour and good affection to their friends as to
themselves, by which means they enhance their
own happiness ; and you tell us further, that these
measures are not only practicable, but have been
actually experimented. When this league was
in agitation, they might as well, metbinks, have
tacked another to it, and agreed upon it among
themselves to admire and embrace justice, modes-
ty, and every other virtue for their own absolute
intrinsic merit And yet at last if our friend-
ships have no other nerves than those of advan-
tage and lucre, if we do not think them worth the
106 CICERO OF MORAL MTDS.
seeking, for their own sakes, upon abstracted en*
couragements, and purely as they are a commerce
of affections; what hinders but thai we should
rid our hands of them, when they come in compe-
tition with a rich farm, or a pleasant seat ? Here
I expect you will be putting in with Epicurus'*
courtly savings in commendation of friendship.
And for me he may say what he will ; my pro-
vince is only to examine whether what he says is
agreeable to right reason and his own hypothesis.
It seems, it is for the profits arising out of it that
we covet any man's friendship. Say you so?
Then whether of the two, think you, may it be
most worth your while to have a property in, our
friend Triarius here, or the granaries of Puteoli ?
Run over your common-places, and urge first of
all, that friends are a munition and defence. But
if you want these, you need only have recourse
to your own person, to the laws, or to any com-
mon' acquaintance. Secondly, that by contract-
ing friendships we keep clear of the hatred and
displeasure of the world. I thought Epicurus had
furnished you with his preservative precepts against
any of those blasts, or however as long*as you can
afford good and lord-like pay, a rush for our
Pyladean heartiness ; you need never be without
your life-guards and your garrisons. Well, but
what must you do for a companion to exchange
notions, crack a jest with, and impart a secret to.
Even make a companion of yourself, or when you
BOOK THE SECOND. 107
-ire tired with soliloquies, it is but calling in an
occasional acquaintance. Besides too, though you
should be disappointed as to these, the inconve-
nience is a trifle, and weighs nothing against the
profits of a golden mountain ! Now therefore to be
serious, you must be convinced, that as a friendship
founded upon sincerity of affection is all over ex-
cellent and noble ; so the closest intimacy, if self-
interest lies at the heart, is presently forgotten
when any body else outbids. And therefore if you
would have us friends indeed, I beseech you, let
me be the object of your love, and not my posses*
sions. But 1 have already expatiated too far in so
clear a case, and might at first have stopped short
at the proposition itself, that if every thing must
give way to pleasure, virtue and friendship can
have no footing in the world. And now, to leave
standing none of your arguments, I shall proceed x
to pass a few reflections on that part of your dis*
course, which as yet I have not spoke to. Aftd
first, in regard it is our own happiness to which we
direct and refer all our philosophy, and in quest
whereof we give ourselves up to speculations and
theories, while these opiniators resolve the felicity
of life into this thing, and those into that, as
particularly you of the Epicurean school fasten
it all upon pleasure, on the other hand making
infelicity and pain synonymous terms; let us
look into the nature of this human happiness
as understood by you Epicureans. That eve-
108 CICJSftO Of MORAL ENDS.
ry wise man may be master of his own happi-
ness, wherever it lies, I suppose you will give me
leave to lay it down as zpostulat. For if he may
be deprived of the happiness of his life, then is he
not properly happy, since there is no depending
upon the steadiness and duration of that which
we know to be fickle and variable ; and yet it is
impossible but that, as long as Providence has not
given us a lease of its favours, the fear of those dis-
tresses which the loss of them may, some time or
other, bring upon us, will be perpetually affecting
us, and as impossible for us to be happy while pos-
sessed with apprehensions of such severe calamities.
So that happiness at this rate is never to be com-
passed, because it is not any lesser parcels, but the
full and uninterrupted current of our time, which
makes up the measure of a life of happiness : and
no man s life can be denominated happy, unless it
continue so throughout. The possibility of being
happy at one time is destroyed by the possibility
of being miserable at another, because he that finds
himself obnoxious to misfortunes, is in that very
respect unhappy. For a true blessedness of life,
when it once commences, is as lasting and as un-
discontinued as wisdom, the mother of it, and
falls not under that condition of perfection, where-
of, as we learn from Herodotus, Solon admonished
Croesus when he wished him to defer hisjudg*
ment upon the happiness of any man's life until
he had seen the close of it. Epicurus notwith-
. BOOK THE SECOND. 109
ttandmg, as explained by yourself, is positive that
the length of its continuance adds nothing at all
to the happiness of life, and that an eternal circle
of delights would be no more than just adequate to
those of a momentary opportunity. And here a-
gain, the man falls foul upon himself. He has
made pleasure the summum bomm, and yet will
stand to it, that a determinate and stinted space of
time can gather under it as large a compass of
happiness as immortality itself. Those philoso-
phers, I confess, who refer all our good to virtue,
have sufficient reason to deny that our summum
Jxmum gains hulk by the prolongation of our lives,
because they maintain that in a plenitude of vir-
tue lies the complement of our happiness. But
for a philosopher to pin the perfection of human
happiness upon pleasure, and afterwards assert
that how short lived soever pleasure be, we should
have no more of it, though it were ever so perma-
nent, this, or I am mistaken, is to contradict him-
self witfa a vengeance ! Besides if pleasure cannot
receive any increase from permanency , neither can
pain. But the continuance of pain swells the evil
-of it ; and shall not the length of its duration am-
plify the good of pleasure ? Or if it shall not, what
then will become of that blessed condition and its
•eternity, wherein Epicurus has with so much de-
votion seated the Deity? For if eternity be such
an empty circumstance, his deity has not the least
advantage of the philosopher) and the mortal
1 ID CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
might vie pleasures and summum bonum with the
eternal being. But the mortal you will say, was
subject to pain. Not at all. He has declared
he could sing, O delicious! in the belly of Phala-
ris's bull. And therefore if eternity makes no
odds, as it includes no more than an infinite per-
petuity of pleasure not more perfect and plenary
than Epicurus himself was capable of, Epicurus,
it is plain, stands upon the level with the Deity it-
self. Now if the man and his maxims fall out*
all his declamatory flourishes and rants will stand
him in very little stead. The sum total of a
happy life is the pleasure of the body, (and pro-
vided you will make no more of it than what you
used to do, a pleasure not distinct from that of
the body,) the pleasure too, if it shall please you
of the mind. But yet alas ! Which way shall a
wise man procure a patent to hold this pleasure
for life ? The materials of it being neither at his
command, nor in his disposal, because they are
not the forces of his own wisdom, but such provi-
sions and furniture, as it ought to be the province
of his wisdom to lay in for his pleasures. And
these consist altogether of externals, and all extcr*
naLs are liable to casualties. The consequence
therefore is obvious, that notwithstanding Epicu-
rus's exiguam interoenire sapienti ; there are lit*
tie or no negotiations common to a wise man with
fortune, all the happiness of human life is in the
hands of Fortune* O but perhaps 1 I quote him
BOOK THE SECOND* 111
by piece-meal. Sapientem locupletat ipsa natura
should have come in, every wise man has a fair
pension from nature, and those perquisites Epi-
curus tells us are easily fetched home. There he
is in the right, and about the matter I will never
quarrel with him, but leave him to quarrel with
himself. The pleasure, he says, which a plain
and cheap diet ministers, comes not a whit behind
the relishes and flavours of the most palatable
dainties. And I readily agree with him herein,
that the choice of our diet is a thing of an indiffe-
rent relation to the happiness of our lives. This
is a real truth, and he shall have my good word
for it. Socrates himself, who shewed pleasure
not the least countenance or mercy, allows as
much, where he makes a good stomach the best
sauce to our meat, and a dry throat the best im-
prover of our liquors. But then when I catch a
man making over his all to pleasure, squaring his
life by Gallonius's rules, and yet preaching against
luxury like a Piso, I can neither give that man
the hearing, nor believe he speaks from his heart
That which facilitates the procurement of nature's
riches is, as he teaches us, the sufficiency of a lit-
tle for the supply of her occasions: but, under
favour, not for the supply of Epicurus's pleasure.
And though he is express in it, that the most or*
dinary accommodation yield as grateful [a pleasure
as the most chargeable, yet hereby he proves nq
more than that his mouth was out of taste as well
lit CICWtO Or MORAL ENDS.
his wits out of his head. Had be been a professed
foe to pleasure, and told us he had rather make
his dinner of a red-herring than upon a jole of
sturgeon, it had been something: but seeing he
has pitched upon pleasure for his summum bonum,
it is no longer his reason, but his senses that must
determine him, and the excellence of every thing
that is valuable arises in proportion to the sweet-
ness of the gusto. With all my heart however
let him if he can, possess himself of his pleasures at
a small rate, or even gratis, and let the satisfaction
the Persians found in eating their nasturtium salads
(which Xenophon speaks of) come up to the
agreeableness of those profuse entertainments
whieh so highly incensed Plato against the citi-
zens of Syracuse* In a word, let it be as easy a
concern as you please to feed your pleasures;
how shall we so order it that notwithstanding pain
k our worst evil, yet no torment shall be able to
make a breach in the happiness of life. Metrodo
rus, alias Epicurus the elder, where he is giving
a description of a happy man, supposes it neces-
sary that he should have a sound, healthy consti-
tution of body, and a full assurance that he shall
never lose it. Now which way are we to obtain
a full assurance of what shall be our state of health
either a year or an hour hence ? So that although
we should escape the greatest of evils, pain, yet
because it is possible it may seize us the next
minute, we must live continually in fear of it ;
BOOK THE SECOND. US
and how can his life be a happy one who looks for
the worst of evils to fall upon his head every mo-
ment? However Epicurus has put us in a way to
give pain a diversion. A very rational undertaking !
I confess, to set about instructing us how we may
make slight of the worst of evils ! Now the whole
art of it lies in recollecting that the sharpest pains
are the shortest. But what is it you mean by the
shortest and sharpest ? Think you the most acute
diseases have never held a man several days, nay
months together? Yet, who knows? when you
talk of sharpest pains y you may mean, perhaps,
none but such as are immediately mortal. Those,
it is granted, have not so much terror in them ;
but the pains I challenge you to assuage are
such as I beheld my very good friend grappling
with, that worthy and obliging person, Cneius
Octavius, son to Marcus, and that neither once nor
twice, nor by twinges, but by very frequent and
tedious returns. It makes me shrug when I call
to mind the agonies which he suffered. Such an
inflammation had overspread his whole body, that
you would have thought the flame was just ready
to blaze out. All this while he felt not the worst
of evils ; and although I could perceive him sensible
of the anguish, yet was he by no means a man in
misery, as he must have been, if his life had been
all along taken up with pleasure and wantonness.
In good earnest, you surprise me when you remark
that the most pungent pains are the soonest over,
114* cicem or moeax. bv ds.
and the most lasting the lightest ; because experi-
ence has taught me that sometimes the fiercest pains
may be very lasting ; and if they could never be so,
that until you are won to virtue by her own essen-
tial, charms, you cannot be duly qualified to sup-
port yourself under those pains; for fortitude has
her directions, I should say, her laws, to embolden
and confirm us, against all insults of pain, which
would otherwise unman us. And upon this ac-
count it is, that we contract a moral torpitude, not
by being sensible of pain, for that we cannot always
avoid, but by our impatience under it, when, like
Philoctetes,
„ To the wild waste our shrieks and plaints we Tent,
And teach the rocks in echoes to relent*
Let Epicurus be transformed for a little while into
Philoctetes, and try how he can behave himself in
the skin of that Greek, Cut viperino morsu y $c.
In whose distemper'd ?eins the framings flow
- Of viper's rage, and circulate his woe.
What though the pain be most afflicting, it cannot
hold long ! So it seems, for Philoctetes, it is sup-
posed, had not lain already above ten years under
ground. Yet still, si longus lev is > if it be chroni-
cal, it cannot be violent, but has its times of inter-
mission and relaxation. That is not always true
neither, and when it comes, what are you the better
for your relaxation, the image of your last anguish
*OOX TWX SXCOW*. 116
sitting lively upon your memory, and that of the
return of it upon your apprehension ? But even
then death is a certain remedy. And undoubtedly a
very savory one! But what becomes then of
your phm semper votuptatis that every man may at
alt times command a predominancy of pleasure f
For if he may, it is heinous advice when you point
him out that remedy : and it were a great deal the
better way to convince him what an unpardonable
dejection of soul it argues to sink it into impotence,
and lose ourselves under the discipline of pain.
All your si gravis, bre&is ; si longus, levis; short,
if not light; if lasting, slight; is but a chiming
rhyming cordial at the best But if you would
effectually relieve and dispel a patient's pain, it
must be done by the lenitives of true fortitude,
magnanimity and patience. Let me repeats what
Epicurus himself (for I am still sticking as close to
his skirts as I can) freely declared when he lay
upon his death-bed ; and then judge whether his
deportment and his rules were of a piece.
Epicurus to Hermachtts, wishing all health. I
date these few lines to you upon, that day of my
life, which, though the last, I find not at all un-
comfortable. The miseries I fed in my bladder
and bowels are as excessive as possibly they can be.
No question, excessive enough, upon supposition
that pain is the greatest evil; not else. He goes
en— And yet I make all things easy to me by re-
voking in my mind y of what a< new account, and of
116 excjcm* of moral ehds.
what singular solutions of things, I have had the
happiness to be the author. It remains, that, as
all along from your tender years you have valued
either Epicurus, or philosophy, you take Metro-
dor us s children into your care and protection.
Now cannot I, for my life, imagine that either
Epaminondas or Leonidas made a better exit
than this man ! though the former at the battle of
Man tine a, where he had given the Lacedaemonians
a defeat, having received a mortal wound, and
finding himself draw near his end, first asked his
soldiers whether he had lost his shield, and when,
with tears running down their cheeks, they told him
he had not ; then he inquired, does the enemy fly ?
And so soon as that question was answered to his
good liking, he gave order to draw the pike out of
his body, and so, victorious and triumphant,
spouted forth his life in a stream of blood : the
latter, Leonidas, king of the Lacedaemonians,
when at T hermopyte he had left his soldiers no
other choice than that of an ignominious retreat,
or a glorious excision, desperately charged the
enemy with his three hundred Spartans, himself at
the head of them. Something there is very noble
and great in the fall of a brave general. But a
philosopher grunts out his last between the blan*
kets : as for instance ; that same Epicurus who
thought he should purchase at least immortal ho-
nours by leaving his friend the legacy of compenr
sabatur cum summis doloribus latitia, I make all
BOOK THE SXCOH9. 11/
things easy to me when I revoke in my mind y <§*&
This it is confessed, sounds philosophically, but
still Epicurus breaks his shins over his own philo-
sophy ; for either those writings and new discover
ries of his, the review whereof afforded him such
matter of comfort, have no truth in them ; or if
they have, they could afford him no comfort, as
carrying in them no immediate relation to the bo-
dy ; it being an avowed and constant problem with
Epicurus, that nothing affords matter of joy or vex*
ation further than as it effects the body. He says,
that he delighted himself with ruminating upon
what was transacted formerly. Was the body
the principal in those transactions ? No, then it
had been the remembrance of sensual satisfaction ;
and not a review of his own systems that gave him
ease. Was the mind then immediately concerned?
Neither is that possible, because, according to
himself, the mind knows no other joy than that
which directly affects the body. And then too,
for what reason, Epicurus, could you think it
worth your while to recommend Metrodorus's
children to the care of Hermachus ? This was a
peculiar and a noble act of friendship, or I know
not what is so. But, I beseech you, was your
body interested in it ? So that whatever we meet
with throughout this highly- celebrated epistle of
Epicurus, tilts and justles against his own prin-
ciples. Thus he perpetually confutes himself, and
leaves nothing besides his own probity and good
118 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
behaviour to make his writings bear a price, it
being a clear indication of sucb an inbred and
unmercenary goodness of temper as is wrought
upon by the allurements neither of pleasure nor
profit, when a man bestows his concluding moments
in expressions and offices of respect and friend-
chip, and particularly in making one friend guar-
dian to another's children. When we see your
own philosopher so very scrupulous at the point of
death about fulfilling his duty, can we desire a
more sufficient proof of what I assert, that virtue
and probity are to be valued and courted for their
own sakes ? However, bating the incompatibleness
of it all with its author's own tenets, this epistle of
Epicurus's, rendered by me word for word from
the original, is a piece which merits a much bet-
ter place in my esteem than his last will and testa-
ment, where he does not only play booty against
himself, as before, but trespasses too upon the gra-
vity that became his beard. You must needs re-
member how pertinent and how large a share of
that book of his, which I mentioned before, is be-
stowed to make out, mortem nihil ad nos perti-
nere, that death touches not our copy-hold, be-
cause absolute insensibility is the consequence
of dissolution ; and an absolute insensibility has
no manner of effect upon us. Here, by the
way, he should have delivered himself wkh a
little more art and perspicuity. He tells us,
thai absolute insensibility is the consequence of
MOK THE SECOND, HJ
dissoluti$n y but forgets to let us know what be
means by dissolution. Let it suffice again that
I can guess at his meaning : I will only ask, why,
if dissolution or death puts an end to sense, and
po nothing succeeds that can affect us, he was
pleased to provide so quaintly and precisely, that
his heirs Amynomachus and Timocrates defray
such expenses as Hermachus in his discretion
should appoint for the annual celebration ofEpi*
cur us s birth-day in the month Gamelion: Item,
that monthly, upon the twentieth day of the moons
age, in honour of himself and Metrodorus 9 they
should find the expenses if a genteel entertainment
for all such persons as had been his companions^
and concurred with him in his philosophy. Such
a codicil, if the testator had been a country gen-
tleman of gaiety and good humour, might have
passed well enough : but a sage adept, and one
too that peculiarly prides himself in his natural
philosophy, might have understood better things
than to encourage the vulgar error of the return
of birth-days. As if it were conceivable how the
same numerical day, upon which a man is born,
should come over again: or indeed, one exactly
so circumstantiated, till at least, after the revo-
lution of many thousands of years, all the heavenly
bodies recover the very same points and positions
which they had attained upon that day. It is
nonsense, the conceit of the world about birth-
days* Well, but the world thinks otherwise ;
IfO CICZRO OF MORAL ENDS.
as if I did not know that ! But whether it does,
qt does not, wherefore, in the name of won-
der, should Epicurus desire to be thus aggran-
dized after his decease? Why should he settle
a revenue for that purpose in his will, when he
had stamped it upon your minds for an oracular
truth, that nothing after death can have any effect
upon us ? I am afraid the man improved himself
very little by his travels through his innumerable
worlds and unmeasurable regions ! His own tutor,
Democritus, that set him up, not to refer you to
others, would never have made so false a step
as this. But if he must have a day set apart and
observed, the day whereon he came into the world
was hardly so proper as the day whereon he first
became a philosopher : saving, you will say, that
unless he had been born, he could never have
become such. No, nor unless his great grand"
mother too had been born before him ! Believe
me, Torquatus, it is for the illiterate and obscure
part of mankind to leave a salary for the com-
memoration of their nativities. I will forbear
making any reflections for quietness sake, upon
the method you Epicureans have laid down to
yourselves of passing the festival, and how you
expose yourselves to the raillery of the wits upon
that score. But this I will maintain, that it was
much more incumbent upon his followers to have
Epicurus's birth-day kept among themselves, than
it was decent in him formally to order the solemn*-
!
BOOK THE SECOND. Ifl I
!
nation in his will. To return to the subject of
pain, which was that we digressed from when we ,
began upon dissecting the epistle : I will cast all
that part of the controversy upon this short con-
clusion, that man that is actually involved in the
greatest of evils cannot be happy, at least so long
as he is involved. But a wise man is always
happy, and yet sometimes in pain. Therefore pain
is not (he greatest of evils. Do not hope to turn
the edge of this argument with your wonted sug-
gestion, that it is the part of a wise man to dwell
upon past felicities, and abdicate the remembrance
of past afflictions. Teach me first how I shall re*
tain or forget things, just as I have a mind to it.
When Simonides, or whoever it was, profered
Themistocles to render him a master in the art of
memory : the art of forgetfulness, Themistocles
told him, he would thank him for ; that is, how he
might forget all that he xvished to forget, because
he remembered already more than he desired to re»
member. This was a very pithy and sharp reply.
To enjoin us forgetfulness at large is very despotic
cal philosophy. If you please to consider, not
Manlius himself could have set us a harder task
than a down-right impossibility. And what if after
all it is really a pleasure to recount those difficulties
through which we have bustled ? What if the pro-
verb which says, Jucundi acti labores, the sweetest
calms are after storms ; or the tragedian, Euri-
pides, if I can do him reason in Latin, for the
m
123 CICEKO Of MO*AL ENDS.
Epicureans have worn the Greek thread-bare,
Suavis laborum est prateritorum memoria.
How lively are the joys we taste
In recollecting troubles past I
Wtuit if those have more of truth and solidity in
them than all your ponderous instructions? On
the other hand, as for your bona prtetcrita, your
past felicities, were they but of the right kind,
such as, for example, Caius Marius's victories,
(jthe reaction of which scenes in his imagination
might very ,yvell support him, though an exile, a
beggar, and laid up in a morass,) then would we
attend to you, and shake hands with you ; being
sensible, that were a wise man to forego the remem-
brance of his own great resolves and enterprises,
the happiness of his life would in some, measure
}>.e defective and unfinished. But it is a recapitu-
lation of pleasures formerly enjoyed, and thoie
proper to the body, which refines the happiness
x of life in your account, unless you will admit
other pleasures, and then you must forego your
assertion, that ail the pleasures of the mind are
included in its communications with the body.
If the revival of a. past pleasure of the body upon
the memory affects us with such delight, AristotU
was a blockhead for making such sport with that
epitaph of Sardanapalus upon himself: Here lies
the Assyrian monarch, that, when he left the
worlds carried off all his lusts and his pleasures with
BO OX THE ffECOWB. 123
him ; as if, quoth Aristotle, he had the art of em*
balming them in the grave for his own use, though
in his life-time he could never prolong the sense
of them beyond those few moments the fruitioA
continued : for all pleasure of the body is very
swift, and, as he observes, momentary from its
earliest commencement; besides that the tokens
it generally leaves us to remember it by are smart
and pennance. How much more sincere the hap*
piness of Africanus, while he addresses his coun-
try in those incomparable lines, Desine, Roma,
tuos hostes Sfc. No more, imperial Rome, thy
rivals dread—
Namqtte tibi monumenta met pepefere labores.
With trophies hate my toils thy towr'g adorned.
He hugs himself upon the recollection of past
drudgery, npt of any departed pleasures, as you
advise. He will not exercise his memory with
any matters of meditation that respected the
delight of the carcass; in which the Epicurean
is so totally and irrecoverably immersed. Further ;
how will you convince us of that which you affirm
so roundly, that all the pleasures and pains of the
mind have an immediate dependance upon the
pleasures and pains of the body ? I am now in
conference with Torquatus, and to him I appeal
for an answer to the question, whether he never
134 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS*
met with any thing that purely by its own impres-
sions gave him a present delight? I will not instance
in worth and honesty, nor the idea of any virtue,
but in matters which I have mentioned above of
a much inferior significancy ; every oration or
poem yoa either compose or peruse ; every piece
of history or geography you consult ; nay, or any
good statue or piece of painting ; the recreations
of the theatres and fields, or a pleasant rural re-
treat, as, suppose LuculWs : (perhaps if I had
named your own, you would have took shelter
there, and I might have fallen under correction
for placing it in my catalogue of things remote
from the substance of the body) but is ever a one
of these proper to the essence of the body ? Or
does it affect you with pleasure immediately from
itself? If you will stand to the former, much
good may it do you with your obstinacy ; but if
you will allow the latter, then you must throw all
Epicurus's pleasure over-board. To come for-
ward ; the pleasures and pains of the mind, you
are confident, must be greater than those of the
body, which is only sensible of what is actually
present, whereasr the mind moreover collects into
itself things past and future. But how will you
make it out, I pray, that another who rejoices
upon my account is fuller of joy than myself?
The pleasure of the body conveys an occasion of
pleasure to the mind, and yet you will have it, that
BOOK THE 42CONB. l£5
the pleasure of the mind exceeds the pleasure of the
body, that is, he that congratulates his friend is ia
happier circumstances than he that is congratulated.
Then again, without discerning the consequence,
you crown the happiness of your man of wisdom
with the perception of the nlost exquisite intellec-
tual pleasures infinitely surpassing those of the
body. Which, if true, he will be subject withal to the
perception of intellectual pains infinitely surpassing
those of the body. So that sometime or other,
your man of uninterrupted happiness becomes
of necessity an object of commiseration. And
this cannot* be prevented, if pleasure and pain
are to go for the two last and Jinal causes.
And therefore, Torquatus, if we would get intelli-
gence of a summum bonum adequate to the dignity
of human nature, we must be looking out further,
and leave pleasure for a property to the vouchers
you call about you fojr the verity of your summum
bonum> the brutes; though even these under the
governance of instinct, very often set themselves
of their own good purpose to toilsome tasks and
enterprises, and make it evident that in the care
they take to propagate their kind, and nurture their
young, they serve other ends than those of pleasure.
Many of them are addicted to the labour of coursing
and wandering up and down ; and others rather
choose to embody themselves into their sort cf civil
society. The winged world make frequent disco-
veries of their apprehensiveness and memory; nay,
Uff CICXJIO OF MORAL INDS.
of a certain kind of discipline and piety among
them. And if these animals practise such imita-
tions of the virtues of the rational as are foreign to
pleasure; is it not hard that man, of a nature so
much superior to that of the beasts, shall be sup-
posed to want all his distinguishing eminences ; and
to respect virtue only as the tool of pleasure?
Besides, if pleasure be the all of human good,
the brutes have infinitely the advantage of us, who,
without giving themselves the least trouble, crop a
luxuriant variety of the fruits of the earth, as they
are put into their mouths by the bounty of nature ;
while we very often, with all the pains we can take,
find it a difficult matter to glean a competency. If
it were conceivable that men and brtites have the
same summum bonum in common, how needless
and superfluous must we reckon all those rules and
instruments of art which we lay up and collect, all
the ingenuous and liberal studies upon which we
employ ourselves, and all those virtues which stand
within the compass of our capacities ? Are they
good for nothing but to stuff out pleasure ? Had
the question been put to Xerxes, for what end and
purpose he rigged out and manned so many sail of
•hips, kept in pay so many troops of horse, and
companies of foot, dammed up the Hellespont, cut
his passage through mount Athos, marched his-
forces over champion tracts of the sea, and rendered
the continent navigable : lastly, why he made a
descent with all these forces, and this incredible
BOOK TltS SECOND. H7
violence, into Greece ; and bis answer bad been,
that his errand was only to rifle Hymettus of its
honey-combs ; without all question we should look
upon the inducement to have been as weak as the
attempts were astonishing. And so in the case of a
wise man, well accomplished with all the particu-
lars of a generous education and virtue, to say,
that as the other led his granadiers a foot over-
sea, and steered his fleets oyer mountains, he f
for his part, makes within himself the tour of
the universe — in order to suck a honey-comb
— No, no, Torquatus, our beings were bestowed
for designs and purposes far more excellent and
sublime, as appears upon contemplating the se-
veral perfections of the mind which in its fa-
culty of remembrance, keeps a copious journal
of ideas and events ; which by its divining power
penetrates into the course and train of things
to come ; which by a natural sense of shame bids
us lay a restraint upon our appetites ; which
ascertains the immutable laws of justice, and
the rights of human society ; and which arms and
establishes itself by a contempt of pain and death
against all the most formidable oppositions of per-
plexity and danger. Thus far extended lies the
field of the mind's abilities and properties. Con*
suit at leisure the senses and the fabric of your
body ; you will see that these too not only concur
with, but are subservient and instrumental to the
interests of virtue. For peculiar to the body how
188 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
many things are there preferable to pleasure;
vigour, health, activity, symmetry of features and
proportions ? And how many more peculiar to the
mind r Which by the most learned of the ancients
was esteemed a celestial ray of the divinity itself.
In good truth were you to have your will, and
pleasure to be our summum bomim, there is nothing
which we should have reason to covet with greater
earnestness than to have all our senses, night and
day, incessantly solicited by the sprightliest emo-
tions and extacies of it. Now the animal that
could be satisfied to lie thus dissolved from sun-
rising to sun-setting, with what face does he assume
to himself the definition of a man ? And yet the
cyrenaicks are such animals prof est ; and so
(which your modesty, poor men ! will not allow you
to be) are consistent with themselves. Further ;
let me refer you, not to the more important exer-
cises neither, which among our forefathers were
made necessary to preserve a man from the impu-
tation of idleness and insignificancy, but to the
lesser and purely ornamental improvements of ge-
nius; was it, suppose you, for ends of pleasure,
that Phidias, Polycletus, Zeuxis followed their oc-
cupations ; not to say that Homter, Archilocus,
and Pindar plied the muse? Shall a mechanic
propose worthier ends to himself when he is hand-
ling his chisel or his pencil, than a man of charac-
ter and authority when he is forming honourable
and great designs? Now then, to what origin
BOOK THE 9EC0N9. - 129
•hall we ascribe this error of yours, which has met
with so general a reception? That is as easily known
19 this proposition, Whoever makes pleasure th*
summum bonurn consults the meanest of his powers
which are his appetites, instead of attending to
the rational and discursive. And therefore it
may Jbe seasonably demanded, how the gods (for
that there are such beings yourselves confess) haying
not the seat of pleasure, flesh and blood, can be
capable of happiness ? Or if they may be happy,
though destitute of corporal pleasure, why will you
not grant also that a wise man may spin his own
happiness out of his own mind ? Examine the
characters recorded, not by Homer, of his heroes,
nor by others of Cyrus, Agesilaus, Aristides, The-
mistodes, Philip, Alexander, but of our domestic
worthies, and in particular those of your own fa-
wily. There was no man went beyond him in the
art of screwing up his pleasures you will find ne-
ver makes a part of the encomium. As little to
the sasoe effect run the inscriptions of monuments ;
witness that over the gate there— Uno ore cm plu-
rinuz consentiunt gentes populi primarium fuisse
virum — to whose memory not a few whole nations
dedicate this testimony, that he was inferior no
way to the best of his fellow-citizens. And is it
supposeable, than when so many nations clubbed
this testimony to Calatinus, they meant only, that
nobody had a happier hand and skill at contriving
and compounding his pleasures ? Or what if we
130 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
should stroke our young people on the head, and
tell them we conceive a good hope and opinion of
them, when they betray an inclination and resolu-
tion to prostitute themselves and all their actions
to their own private interests ? Can any thing be
more apparent than what disorder and confusion
such encouragements must bring into the world ?
Seeing they would effectually put a stop to all en-
tercourses of benefits and obligations, and so untie
the bands of public unity and agreement; it being
so far from a benefit, that it is down right usury
and stock-jobbing, when one man takes interest
for what he accommodates another with, and conse-
quently he that supplies me upon those terms,
brings me under no manner of friendly obligation.
If pleasure is to rule the roast, farewell, a long
farewell to the very brightest of virtues. Conver-
tibly ; when the principle of honour and honesty
is shut out of doors, I cannot understand what
should hinder ev£n a man of wisdom from letting
into the room of it a thousand villanies and vices.
To draw to a conclusion ; (for it were tedious and
endless to prosecute the dispute as far as it will
run) that is the only true and meritorious virtue^
it is certain, which blocks up the very avenues of
pleasure : whereof your own sense of things will
satisfy you much better than I can. Turn your
thoughts into yourself, and be determined by your-
self, whether you should rather choose to pass all
the stages of life in a stream of perpetual pleasures
BOOK THE SECOND. 131
and that tranquillity of indolence which we hear of
so often, not forgetting the other branch which
(were it not impossible) you would incorporate into
your happiness, an absolute unapprehensiveness
of future pain ; or, like yourself, the business of
whose life it has been to relieve and protect the
helpless, and to do mankind all the good that lay
in your power, to go in quest of Herculean labours
and hardships (cerumrue) the tragical word, which
(no affront to the god that underwent them) our
progenitors made use of to signify those labours, .
which at the same time they thought challenged
every man's imitation. And therefore I should
next ensnare you with a very vexatious question,
but 1 am afraid lest, when provoked you should
affirm, that by all the operose and mighty services
which Hercules himself did the world, his only in-
tent was to force his way to pleasure — Here I gave
over speaking, and Torquatus told me, if he
pleased he could repay me in my kind, but first
he would take some opportunity to discourse an
old acquaintance or two that were greater pro*
ficients and masters of the argument than himself.
You iriean, said I, the deserving and learned pair,
Syro and Philodemus. You have hit upon therft,
said he. But for the present, said I, Triarius is to
stand forth and be our umpire. That were a
good one indeed ! replied Torquatus, and laughed.
As for yourself, you treat us with civility ; but he is
the veriest vixin of a stoic — And hereafter, said
1S£ CXCEfiO OF MORAL ENDS.
Triarius, you will find me much altered for th*
worse. I have hoarded up all that was urged
against you, and so soon as ever your complice*
have made you tight again, look to it, I shall try
my strength upon you. And so we broke up t*
rest ourselve*.
CICERO
OF
MORAL ENDS.
BOOK III.
The business of the foregoing book, my Brutus,
has been to take down the pretensions of pleasure,
and make her truckle to dignity and greatness of
mind; and that I have done this effectually even
pleasure must acknowledge, if left to herself, and
not allowed any, or at least, not a very perverse
and incorrigible, council. For shame she can per-
sist no longer in her defiances to virtue, no longer
magnify that which is only grateful to the senses
above that which is honest and honourable, or those
enjoyments which glitter upon our corporeal organs
above a sober and a steady, firm disposition of
soul^NstPtheh it is time to take leave of the
syren, bequeathing her this caution, that she never
more let us catch her sporting out of her own roy-
alty, and that so serious and solemn an argument
as the present one, be no more set upon and
detained by the wanton importunacy of her blan-
dishments. J Seeing therefore pleasure is so far from
being the summum bonum, and indolence at as great
154 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
a distance, the same objections in a manner lying
against both, we must launch out again in search
of our summum bonum, taking this along with us,
that there can be no such thing, unless virtue, the
great exceTteUCJTSf all, makes up a good part of it.
So^lKatthe controversy in which I am now going
to engage the stoics, must be managed with greater
intention And a closer address than that which hap-
pened with Torquatus ; not as though I proceeded
carelessly then, but the common-places and sug-
gestions of your advocates for pleasure are, at best,
but very shallow and unartificial ; as themselves
are by no means quaint and subtle disputants, nor
qualified to create an adversary much trouble.
^^J^Epicurus, for one, has pronounced it unnecessary
to come to any ratiocioations in reference to pleasure,
because the senses are the proper judges of it, and
we need go no further for instructions concerning
it than to their insinuations. On which account it
was, that as Torquatus went through his part of the
dispute with an easy plainness, avoiding all intri-
cacies and sophistical fetches, so I have endea-
voured to answer him with an equal clearness and
facility : whereas, I need not tell you, the stoics
affect such methods of disputing as may best hamper
and impose upon us, of which method we stand
more in danger than the Greeks, because we have
a new set of words to coin for the explication of
a new set of notions. Nor will any man that is
tolerably tinctured with learning make a wonder of
• BOOK THE THIRD. 135
this, well-knowing that the professors of every dis-
tinguishing and uncommon art assign their terms
of art according as the instruments and exigences
proper to each art require the use of those terms.
Thus the logicians and natural philosophers have a
language to themselves made up of words which
are not in familiar use among the Greeks. The
geometricians, musicians, and grammarians observe
their several idioms and dialects. Nay, the rhe-
toricians themselves, though the substance of their
art lies wholly in judicial and declamatory plead-
ings, word their own rules in their ownfagnSj and
in the livery of their own appellativesfli&T step
over these polite and liberal arts, the machanics
could never make any thing of their manufacture,
did they not invent such names of things for them-
selves as no body else understands. Even in an em-
ploy so unelegant and rustic as that of agriculture,
whatever has any relation to it, or province in it,
has received its proper name* And therefore it
were strange, if philosophers might not make the
same bargain for themselves, seeing philosophy is
no less than the art of living, and ordinary modes
of expression will not serve a man's purpose when
he treats upon that subject. Yet have none of them
so much abounded in terms, as the stoics. Zeno,
the founder of the sect, brought nothing new into
play except words. And if Greece has so far in-
dulged her most eminent scholars as that when
they had sprung a new notion they should dress it
j
I3ff CICERO OF MORAL ENDS,
in new words, notwithstanding the supposed ferti-
lity of their language ; certainly a Roman, and the
first that has made such an attempt in his mother-
tongue, may very plausibly claim the same privi-
lege : and yet, having first represented it as a
grievance either that the. Greeks or those of our own
people who have revolted to them, should scan-
dalize the Latin tongue as if it were scanty and
barren, and not indeed more copious than theirs ;
I must confess it will cost my brain some pangs
before I can make as authentic Latin of the terms
adapted to their arts and hypotheses, (not to men-
tion any of our own,) as good Latin, I say, as the
general titles delivered down to us from our fore-
fathers, of philosophy , rt&toric, logic, grammar,
geometry, music. Not but names might have
been found for all these in the Latin tongue ; how-
ever since use has made them so, we will accept
of these names for our own. Thus much may
suffice with relation to words and names. For as
to the ideas themselves whereof they are the signs,
whether, my Brutus, I should venture to send
my thoughts to such an exquisite philosopher, (and
in so excellent a road of philosophy, as yourself^
I have been a long time unresolved, though well
assured I were not to be forgiven if I presumed
thus far, as pretending to make yoq wiser and
more knowing. That never entered into my
thoughts, my intention in the present address
being not to inform you in those parts of knowledge
BOOK THIS THIRD. ISf
in which no body is more conversant than Brutus,
but to repose and shroud myself under your name
and authority, and because I am sure to find you
a fair arbiter, as well as a great proficient in these
philosophical disputes. Having promised thus
much I shall now bespeak your wonted attention,
and your impartial judgment upon the merits of
an argumentive contest which was managed against
me by your uncle, that incomparable, that more
than sublunary man. Being, you must know,
at my country-seat and having occasion to make
use of some books that were in the library of Lu-
cullus, then a child, I went to his villa myself to
fetch them, as I ordinarily did; where whom
should I cast my eye upon but Marcus Cato seated
in the library with volumes of stoical authors piled
up round him. And this was no more than suit-
able to his love of reading, so very vehement and
constant, that never concerning himself for the
idle reflexions the populace made upon him, he
would sit conning-over his lesson in the sertate-
house, till such time as the senators were all come
together, but never so as to neglect the public
business and proceedings. By which you may
guess what a gormandizer of folio's he was (for-
give the indecency of the word) when he had got
the opportunity of such a vacation, and the con*
veniency of such a noble collection. No sooner
had we spied one another but he quitted his seat,
and according to customary preliminaries upon a
T
158 CICERO OP MORAL ENDS.
sudden encounter, What, says he, brings you hither ?
I suppose from your country-home, where I had
certainly been with you before now if I had known
of your arrival. Why yesterday, said I, the city
was all taken up and in distraction with the thea-
trical entertainments that were exhibited; so I
took that opportunity of leaving it in the evening,
and am now come hither upon my own errand,
which is to carry back with me a parcel of books
for my present use. By the way, methinks it is
pity, Cato, that our little Lucullus is not better ac-
quainted yet with all this vast treasure he is master
of. I would have him persuaded tolobk ypon this
as the best-furnished apartment in his house For
I have a hearty love and tenderness for him, and
therefore hope you will remember how much it is
your duty to breed him up to the pattern of his
father, of our old friend Csepio, and of yourself his
near relation. You will perceive I have reason
for my solicitude, as you cannot but be sensible
how much I once honoured the person, and still
reverence the memory of Caepio, verily believing
that were he now alive we shoyld have him among
the first-rate supporters of the common-wealth ;
and by what an entire friendship and concurrence
of sentiments I was wedded to that mirror of excel-
lence Lucullus, who stands at this time in idea
before me. You are highly to be commended,
said Cato, for the regard you shew to the memory
of those two persons, and the affection you bear
to the young successor of the family that remains,
BOOK THE THIRD. 139
especially considering they both by will appointed
you a share in the guardianship of their children.
Nor shall I be wanting to that duty whereof you
admonish me, neither must you in assisting me to
discharge it. And let me tell you, the youth gives
us already very pregnant intimations of a sweet and
modest disposition and a large capacity of soul.
But then you may remember how little a while
since he came* into the world. I do so, said I,
and yet account this a proper season for him to be
trying at those introductory studies and improve-
ments, which the more haste he makes to perfect
himself in, the better and the sooner will he be
qualified to step into greater affairs. Of this matter,
said Cato, we shall be obliged frequently and on
set-purpose to confer and deliberate. At present,
if you please, let us choose each his seat, which
we did, ^.nd so far satisfy my curiosity as to tell
me what books they can be which you, that have
so good a study of your own, are come hither for ?
Some Aristotelian treatises : I am sure to meet
■ with them here, and design to take them home with
me to bestow that leisure upon, which you and I,
you know, can command but seldom. And are
there, said he, no hopes of your conversion to
stoicism? No, not of Cicero's, who had always all
the reason he possibly could have to admit nothing
gmd besides virtue? Not more reason neither,
said I, than there is for your net affixing new names
to things when we are both agreed upon the things'
140 CICZRO Or MOEAL E5DI.
themselves. For the difference between us is not
in the principle, but wholly in the expression. Par-
don me there : said he, as often as you make any
thing desirable and a real good beside that which
is precisely honestum (honest honourable and vir-
tuous) you totally eclipse and for ever supplant
what is such. Loftily and majestically asserted !
But then carry it along with you, Cato, said I, that
even Pyrrho and A r is to, though they stand up for
an exact parity in the goodness of things, talk with
as much ostentation as you can do for your life.
May a body enquire what is your opinion of them?
What is my opinion ! said he; it is this, that all the
good, great, just, and virtuous members of our
eommon-wealth, whether known to us by fame or
in person, who exclusively of the advantages of
learning, and purely upon the sincerity of their
intentions have acquitted themselves like gallant
and glorious men, were much more happily in-
structed by the dictates of natural reason than any
philosophy in the world, which had taught them to
reckon upon any thing as good or ill, beside moral
honesty or turpitude, could have instructed them.
All the other schemes of philosophical institution
are some less, others more valuable : but in shorty
I am so far from allowing that any discipline
whatsoever extending the denomination of good or
evil to any thing remote from the region of moral
virtue, can conduce to the rectifying and advancing
ef human nature! that I am sure it must debauch
BOO* THB YttlftB. 141
it; there being left us no means of proving happi-
ness of life to be the effect of virtue, when once
we have surrendered this proposition, virtue is the
only good. And if happiness of life be not the
effect of virtue 7 where is the need to busy ourselves
about any such thing as philosophy ? If unkappi-
ness is incident to a wise man, as great as is the
glory and re utation of virtue, I do not see what
it has for which we should value it. All this, Cato, T^-*
said I, you might have urged had you been pupil
to Pyrrho Or Aristo, and as much to the purpose,
for these two, you know well enough, determine
virtue to be not only the sovereign good, but the
sole, and that is what yourself would have. And »
if it hold, the other consequence you are zealous
for is as necessary, that every wise man's happiness
is constant and continual. So that it lies upon
you to receive as your favourites those philosophers
and their opinion. Soft and fair ! said he : to the
province of virtue it belongs, the singling out and
defining of what is most conformable to the mea-
sures of nature. And therefore, as the parties
aforesaid have reduced all things to a level of in-
difference, and so made them equally eligible, they
have struck at the very vitals of virtue. Excel-
lently observed, said I, but while nothing passes
with you for good but mere virtue and honesty,
suppose you a stoic has a better pretence to abro-
gate the discriminating properties of other things ?
I know not, said he, what you mean by abrogating.
14t CICSJtO Of HOEAL »NDS.
I tbink I leave them as I fouijd then). Be virtue,
said I, or honesty, or moral rectitude, goodness, or
decorum, (ihe greater variety of names we give ifr
the better we shall set forth its nature) be it our
sole and single good, and no other will remain
worthy of our regard ; as again, let moral evil,
turpitude, dishonesty, dishonourableness, pravityi,
Jlagitiousness, pollution, to explain this idea like-
wise to the best advantage, let this be an evil by
itself, and the only one we are in danger of, and
then it is the only one from which we should
be careful to preserve ourselves. You take me
up, said he, before I am down, foreseeing what
more I was designing to add ; and therefore not to
try my teeth upon your scraps of argument, I will
rather with your approbation spend a portion of
those hours we have now to spare, in giving a com-
plete account of Zeno's and the stoical philosophy.
It will do mighty well, said I, and go a great way
toward expediting a due conclusion of our debate.
Now then to make an experiment, said he, for the
stoical hypothesis is full of perplexing difficulties
and obscurities ! The new terms which they sig-
nify their new notions by, though in process of
time they are become familiar and trite, appeared
novel and strange to the Greeks themselves ; and
therefore well may they look aukward and uncooth
in Latin. Trouble not yourself, said I, about
that. Zeno took the liberty of expressing those
new thoughts which presented themselves by words
BOOK THE THIRD. 14S
as unknown; and shall Cato be denied the same
privilege ? Not that it will be requisite to do like
a pedantic translator, when a word either more or
less in use might be had exactly opposite to the
sense, to squeeze the words in the translation, one
by one, out of the words of the original. When-
ever I am brought to such a pinch, my way is to
render by a circumlocution what the Greeks have
thrown into a single word. Or if a man can-
not pick out a proper Latin word, I will by no
means debar hrm from taking the Greek, It
were hard if we might call a horses* harness
cpkippia, and the drunkards jolly full bowls
acrtitophora ; and yet must not instead of pr&po*
sita and ? % ejec(a, words that signify things compa-
ratively eligible, or not atalletigiblc, substitute from
the Greek proegmena, and apoproegmena, mVtwith-
standing that praposita and rejecta will serve as
well. I thank you, said he, for the succours you
have lent, and shall adopt the two Latin words you
recommend, requesting you to set me forward when
you find me at a stand far want of any other, 1
The bold y said I, ire fortune's darlings : however
I will second you with all my strength. Only make,
haste and begin, for it is a divine one and the very
best we could have chosen, *that exercise for which
we are preparing. Then he set out : That every
living creature is from its nativity (whence begins
the philosophical epoch) instigated and compelled
by the constitution of its being, to love if, and en-
144 €IC£ttO OF MORAL ENDS.
deavour its own safety and preservation ; to take
a pleasure in every thing that may contribute there-
unto ; to keep as far off as it can from its own dissolu-
tion, and whatever may further it ; is a position esta-
blished among the men of my party, and that upon
the evidences which infants give in, before they
have yet scarce tasted of pleasure or pain % by reach-
ing after what they think will be beneficial to them,
and turning away from what they fear will incom-
mode them* And this they would never do, were
they not well pleased with their own natural cdn*
dition, and afraid of a change. Neither can it be ac-
counted for, how they should be desirous of any
thing at all, if they were not conscious of their own
existence and perceptions, and endeared to them-
selves, and their own interest by that consciousness.
And thus the origin of desire rises out of the prin-
ciple of self-lvoe : among the natural springs and
sources whereof there are very few stoics who rec-
kon pleasure. The reason is, because [{pleasure
be listed in the number of those things which na-
ture has made primarily desirable, we should be
thereby powerfully induced to pursue very lewd
and unjustifyable courses ; and to me this is a most
satisfactory reason. Then for a sufficient one,
why, in course, we are so kindly ffffectioned toward
those things which nature has inscribed of prime
account^ we have it here, that as for the parts of
the body, there is no one but if left to his choice,
would rather his own should be entire, perfect, and
BOOK THE THIED. 145
Well-limbed, than defective, unserviceable, distor-
ted. And as for ideas mid right conceptions of things,
(perhaps you had rather have me say xar aXi$s'£,
and may understand that better) these, as being
so many vehicles and subjects of truth,' we sup-
pose to be very acceptable to our minds upon their
own account. And of this we receive a convinc-
ing proof from the behaviour of young children,
who, as Httle as they gain by it, rejoice and exult,
if at any time without the help of others they
have compassed a new invention or discovery.
Furthermore, arts and sciences are in our esteem
worthy for their own sakes to be propagated
amongst us, not only because considered at largfc
they have something in them that deserves cultiva-
tion, but also, because as well the deductions as
the principles upon which they proceed are ra-
tional and methodical : and with us it goes for an
undoubted truth, that there is nothing so contrary
and detestable to human nature as to yield our as-
sent to an apparent falsity. The limbs or parts
of the body are of two sorts ; either such as nature
has adapted to proper uses and functions, as the
hands, the legs, the feet, and the internal organs ^
and about the various offices and operations of
these the physicians themselves Gannot agree among
themselves ; or such as have no manifest use, but
tferve only to beautify, as the peacock's tjiil, the
Variegating plumes upon the neck of a dove, and
the tuts and beard of a man, I am sorry that my
¥
0146 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS,
present matter will not admit of more diffusive and
lively periods. We are got among the first general
branches of division in nature,, and to them all
exuberancy and fluency of expression is foreign,
not that otherwise I should be very studious of it
Though it is impossible but that when we are dis-
coursing upon subjects of main importance, expres-
sion will force its way, and bring along with it both
weight and lustre* I deny not, said I, but you
are so far in the right ; and yet if what is attempted
upon a material subject, runs easy and clear, the
manager, in my opinion, has performed his part
to admiration. It is for every school-boy to spread
his treasure of rhetorical foliages upon a thesis of
this kind. A man of learning and sense will study
and endeavour all he can to discourse of it with
plainness and perspicuity. Haying then, continued
he, premised as much as is sufficient concerning the
aforesaid jDrifzcep/es, we shall now advance to cer-
tain, consequences which unavoidably result fnom
them. The division that comes next in my way
is of things into (zsthnabilia and inestimabilia^
those that are truly valuable and, those that are
not. That which is truly valuable is the same, as
I conceive, with that which is consonant to nature,
or by means of which such valuable properties
accrue to something else as render it very well.wor- ;
thy of our choice. This valuableness Zeno calls
a|/a. And that which is not truly valuable is just
the contrary to that which is valuable. Now this
JIOOK THE TfHIRD. 147
foundation being laid, that those things which are
exactly agreeable and calculated to the rules of
nature, are to be closed with and accepted for
themselves, and the contrary to be rejected ; the
first office or duty (for so I interpret the word
xaSHjxov) is to look to, and secure ourselves in the
condition and constitution that is proper to our
species ; the second, that we fasten upon those
things which hold an exact conformity with the
methods and order of nature, and that we guard
against the contrary- And after we have passed this
choice and refusal, then follows thirdly, Cum officio
selectio, choice in conjunction and union with duty,
and this choice a standing and perpetual one, ever
fixed and constant, and perfectly accommodated to
the nature of things. And here we have the first
emergency and notice of something really good,
and our first obligation to engage ourselves to those
things which are consonant, to the measures of na-
ture. But when we have run a longer thread of know-
ledge, (svma in the original) and beheld the rela-
tion of duties to one another, and the harmony of
all in consort, we rate them far abovg those things
which we had reckoned upon before, and thus are
we brought by knowledge and reason to conclude
that the great summum bonum of man, which de-
serves to be the chief subject of our praises, and
the chief object of our desires, stands upon the
ground-work of that o/xoAoyia, as the stoics call
it, or if you please, in bur language, cowveni-
148 CICERO OF MOlUt Ktfftf .
entia (coincidence and harmony) since in this
lies that bonum or good, to which all virtuous
and worthy actions must be referred, and the
good of virtue itself, which, though a subsequent
good, is nevertheless recommended purely upon its
own authority and excellency ; whereas the prima
natura, the t kings which offer themselves first in
order of nature, are none of them irrespectively
and for themselves to be prized. And because
\jpon the initia natural, the first general provision*
in nature, the duties we were mentioning subsist,
they are to be looked upon as subordinate to them
and dependent of them ; so that in the upshot, the
centre to which all duties tend, is that of the prin-
$ipia natura f the first general principles in nature.
Not that these constitute the last good of all, the
first analogies and coherences in nature, not includ-
ing virtuous actions or practices, which, according to
what I observed before, are the fruits and conse-
quences of them. Still these actions are among
those things which hold an exact conformity with
the measures pf nature, and engage us to bid higher
for them than' for any of the rest. Now here to
foresial a mistake which some people may be apt
to run upon, as if we introduced a couple of ultima
bona, utmost goods, let it be remembered that when
a man is to dart a spear, or ^hoot an arrow at a
white, which in the parallel answers to our ulti-
tnum in bonis, (last and furthest good) he must
neglect no motion or condition which may bring
*O0* THE THIRD, 149
his weapon to the mark, and thus the same person
does whatever is necessary to be done, to the end
that he may hit within the white, and likewise to
the end that no means may be omitted to render
him successful, with this difference still between
the two ends, that the former is, as the summum
honum in life, the last and outermost, but the latter,
namely, that no means ma$ be omitted to make the
flight prosperous, does not import a good to be
prized and desired for itself, but only to be chosen
and used as a conducive one. And in regard all
offices and duties whatsoever, arise out of the flrst j
general principles in nature, it must needs be that
human wisdom results also from those principles.
Neither is it more wonderful that these general
principles should conduct us to wisdom, and that
we should set more by wisdom afterwards, than
before by these general principles that brought her
and us together, than what is known every day,
that he who is handed by another into the acquaint-
ance of a third person, comes to esteem the third
person above him to whom he owes the knowledge
of him. The members and organs of our body are
evidently framed and disposed for a stated and
uniform discharge of the offices and operations
proper to the animal life. In like manner the in*
clinations and propensities of the mind (signified
in Greek by o^tal) and so reason too, be it never
so perfect and improved in us, are allotted us not
for every use we can make of them, but only for
15* CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
certain uses respecting the due government of our
lives. For life ought to be as little left to itself,
and as much tied to rules as a stage-player in his
action, or a dancing-master in his steps. And a
life shaped by these rules we call a well-ordered or
a rational course of life. The art of governing, or
the science of medicine has not, I conceive, so
near an affinity to wisdom as what I compared it
to before, the gestures of a player ■, or the motions
of a dancing-master, because it immediately con-
sists in the exercise of itself, and is not to be re-
duced into act before it is consummate. Although
the comparison will not hold throughout between
wisdom and these two attainments, because let the
performances of a player or a dancing-master b«
never so just and excellent, yet they do not singly
take in the whole oeconomy and complement of
the respective aits. Whereas the entire substance-
of virtue comes under our particular xaTog9-a>jxaTa,
recte facta, good and rational acts. For it is pe-
culiar to wisdom in contradistinction to all other
arts and accomplishments whatsoever, that it is to
itself all in all/and all in every part. It were also
a mere madness to pitch a parallel between the end
of the art of governing or of the science of medicine,
and the end of wisdom; inasmuch as it is the busi-
ness of wisdom to fortify and rectify the mind, and
raise it above the impressions and reach of external
accidents, to effect which exceeds the province of
all other arts and sciences : as nobody can be thus
y BOOK THE THIRD. 151
•happily disposed, till he has passed it into an infal-
lible dictate, that whatever touches not upon the
confines of virtue or Dice is in its own nature
uncomparatively indifferent. And now let me
entertain you with a taste, of those choice infer-
ences which, flow from the premisses. That it is
the last and final good of man to take such mea-
sures of life as quadrate with the order and the con-
stitutions of nature, is proved; and that the life of
every wise man must be fortunate and happy,
independent* never entangled, and always free and
furnished, unavoidably follows from that position.
By. the way you may have taken notice, 1 presume,
that when I speak of the last or finals or prin&pal
.good, (or end instead of the two former, last, or
jinal good) I mean the same by it as the Greeks
by. the word rfoog. Then as to that grand
article that we should esteem virtue, and no-
thing else to. be our good, (a direction that
reaches as far into the condition of our lives, and
into life itself, as into that kind of philosophy which
we are now considering) I might fetch a large com-
pass of rhetoric, and set out the praises of it at
length in the choicest turns of speech, and the
tnost commanding periods, ,but that I postpone
tjhem all to the quick and girding conclusions of the
stoics; as thus, whatever is good is praise- worthy ; ^
whatever is praise-worthy is matter of virtue and
honour; therefore whatever is good, is matter of
virtue and: honour. Can any thing be more close-
15J CICEKO OF MORAL ENDS.
ly and fairly inferred? There is nothing to b*
found in the sequel but what is the genuine pro-
duct of the premisses. The major ox first proposi-
tion, I know, is usually denied ; as if it were not
true, that whatever is good is praise-worthy (for
nobody questions but that whatever is matter of vir-
tue and honour is so.) But then how extravagant
is it to suppose that any thing which is good is not
desirable, or that that which is desirable is not
pleasing, or that that which is pleasing is not wor-
thy of our love, or that that which is worthy of our
love is not worthy of our esteem and praises, and
consequently matter of virtue and honour ? Again,
it is not a life of misery or without felicity, but a
life of real happiness that a man may boast of, and
in such a life he is allowed to glory, which yet were
not to be suffered if his life of happiness were not
a life of virtue, and therefore both are the same.
Neither is any one worthy of esteem and commen-
dation, but upon the score of some significant claim
which gives him possession of credit, honour, or
happiness ; and what holds as to the man, holds
as to the life of the man. Consequently, if virtue
and honesty are the characteristics of a happy life,
nothing but what is matter of virtue or honesty
may pass for good. To make sure work; let it
once be granted, that pain is an evil; and then find
me out a away, if you can, to settle, invigorate, and
confirm the mind. As it is not in the power of
any man, that accounts of death as an erU, not to
BOOK THE THIRD, 15$
he afraid of it, nor, in general, to slight or be un-
concerned at any mischief or evil, be it what it
will. And when this is once admitted, which was
never in this world contested, the next is a very
natural superinduction, that a man of true greatness
and bravery will afford contingencies and accidents
of life no other consideration than that of scorn
and contempt. Upon the whole therefore nothing,
we see, can be an evil but what has in it an alloy
of moral turpitude. Accordingly, it is the part of
that great sample?* of magnanimity, fortitude and
contempt of the world (which if we cannot actually
produce, we should at least be glad if we could) to
rely upon himself: to be undismayed about any
part of. his life, and to have a good opinion of his
own strength and condition, holding to this, with
assurance, that a wise man can come to no harm.
Which consideration alone makes it appear plainly,
that nothing beside virtue and honour is good y and
that a happy and a virtuous life are one and the
same. I know very well what a variety and differ-
ence of opinions there was among those philoso-
phers that seated the summum bonum, or the last
great good, in the mind, and how many abettors '
of their mistakes they have had. But, for my part,
I that follow the masters who settle it all upon the
virtues of the mind, in comparison of that opinion,
as little attend to the doctrines of any of those
three sects which representing virtue as unentire
and abortive, pretend to patch it up either with
154 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
pleasure or indolence, or the prima natures, (the first
general constituents of human nature) as to theirs
that saluting either pleasure for a summum bonum,
or indolence, or the prima natura, make a separa-
tion between virtue and summum bonum. Beyond
them all for paradoxes of absurdity, is that clan
of your academics, who, notwithstanding they have
determined the last empyreal good to consist in a
life of speculation and science, that there is no
real difference between one thing and another, and
that a wise man cannot but be happy, because he
strings all his circumstances upon the same thread ;
yet bind it upon their wise-man as the presiding
and most fundamental of his duties to bilk his own
m eyesight, and forswear all manner of assent. The
replies which are made to this account of the mat-
ter are, for the most part, much more prolix than
so plaid a case requires. For is it not clear, that
unless we understand how to skim and drain off
whatever is repugnant to the measures of nature
from whatever agrees to them, it is a jest to look
longer after any such thing as prudence, or so much
as to talk of it respectfully ? So that having dis-'
patched the aforesaid hypotheses, and in them all
others of the same complexion, we have now no
other summum bonum left behind, unless it rests
here, that we live under a judicious regard to the
motions and emergences in nature, that we stand
to her propositions, and abjure what crosses upon
her ; in short, thai we live up and according to he?
BOOK THE THIRB. 155
directions. The «riy«tyjxa)ixo*: (as it is called by
the men of skill) or advance and progress that is
made in any specimen of any other art is subse-
quent and expected. But wisdom is always born
full-groivn y and every effect of it so complete and
adequate in itself, as not to be capable of improve-
ment, amounting to no less than that which we
take to be truly valuable and desirable ; it being
no less a misdemeanor to*be sensible of any fear,
or sorrow, or fleshly inclinations, though they are
not complied with in practice, as to ^ell our coun-
try, injure our parents^ or disfurnish the temples,
which are crimes of commission. And as these do
not gather and grow into sins by little and little,
but so soon as they are, are as great as they will be :
so the exercise of any virtue implies an actual
perfection of practice, not an ascending one. And
now to explain what I mean by bonum or good, a
word which makes such a figure in our present de-
bate; somewhat variously the philosophers have
expressed themselves about it, though all their
definitions run at last into an equivalency. I am
for that of Diogenes, with whom bonum or good is>
that whose essence is consummate^ and the a><pgtoj|*d
or advantage derived by it, he has defined to be
either those influences, or circumstances, which
that perfection of essence conveys. And forasmuch
as the mind is the fountain and residence of all our
notions* whether collected from experience, relative
connexions, Similitude, or by comparing reason
156 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
with reason ; the last of these operations produces
the knowledge of our good, the mind after having
distinguished those things which are according to
the measures of nature, mounting in a road of
rational collections, until it arrives at the compre-
hension of its own good, which is of that nature
that it neither admits of accession, nor intension,
nor comparison, but is absolute and singular, and
makes us know that it is such. As honey, the
principal of all sweets, does not relish by virtue of
any comparative, but of its own proper and speci-
fic sweetness. In like manner the excellencies which
make our bonum or good so valuable, are to be
estimated not by quantity but by kind. Nor does
our valuation (a§/a) though it should run ever so
high, take it out of its proper kind, because it car-
ries in it nothing of good or evil. Whence it fully
appears that the estimate we pass upon virtue
must not follow rules of proportion, but the de-
finition of its essence. Next for the perturba-
tions or passions of the mind, to the unwise the
burthen and bane of their being, called in the
Greek va&y\, which is as much as to say, distem-
pers and indispositions, and so, perhaps, I might
have translated it, were it not unusual to call com-
passion or anger a disease, or had I not thought the
sense of the word perturbation sufficiently disad-
vantageous. These perturbations which are di-
gested under four general heads, trouble of mind x
fear, lust, and igSom^ according to the signification
BOOK THE THIRB, 157'
\
the stoics have imposed upon it, equally applicable
to the body and mind. Lcctitia we may render it,
a lively and emphatical sense of pleasure within.
These are so many unnatural fermentations to be
accounted for from false opinion, and the levity of
human n&ture, and lie out of a wise man's way. fit
is advanced by a great many other philosophers
beside the stoics, that whatever comes under the
notion of virtue is valuable and desirable upon
its own account This all philosophers are bound
to assert, however they stand affected, except the
three factions that leave virtue out of the summum
bonum ; but the stoics especially, that leave all
things out of the character of good beside virtue.
And the reason why they do so, is obvious and
evident, if it were no more than this, that though
as to inconveniences and punishments he were
sure to be excused, there neither is, nor ever was
any man yet, suppose his avarice and other desire*
and inclinations have governed him as uncontrol-
lably as you please, but who would much rather
have brought about his designs without than by the
perpetration of a crime. So when we take pains
to inform ourselves rightly of the concealed distri-
butions, motions, and efficiencies in the natural
world, as for instance in the heavenly bodies ; what
advantage or lucre do we propose to make of our
curiosity ? Or what ivildman of the mountains or the
forests could ever yet so damp the force of nature's
impulses within tym, as not to reckon it worth his
158 €IC£RO OF MORAL XNBI. .
while to converse with significant matters of sci-
ence, but on the contrary to nauseate them, unless
they yielded either his purse a stipend, or his senses
a gratification f Who that so soon as he hears of
the actions, the sayings, and the resolutions of
those astonishing examples of true fortitude and
every other virtue, our predecessors, whether the
Africani, or (the man that takes up so much room
in your thoughts and words) my great grandfather,
or any of the rest, perceives not almighty satisfac-
tion diffused over his faculties ? Who that ever
had an ingenuous education, and among people of
worth and honour, but would abominate whatever
is foul and unwarrantable as such, thougii the con-
Sequences of it were not disagreeable ? conceive
a secret resentment at the sight of a libertine ? and
be always out of conceit with little souls, tempo-
rizers, fops, and triflers? If the dishonesty of an
action is not in itself execrable and frightful ; what
is there to tie us up from committing the most
heinous facts, when countenanced by darkness and
solitude? All this amounts not to the thousandth
part of what I might offer upon this point, if there
were occasion. I know of nothing more indis-
putable, than that as virtue or moral excellency is
for itself to be valued and desired, so vice or moral
turpitude is to be hated and avoided, *" Further ;
if I have now evinced it sufficiently that there is no
other human good beside virtue and moral excel-
Uncy } it necessarily follows that this moral excel*
BOOK THE THIRD. f5£
kncy is to be preferred before the means which
are made use of to acquire it And therefore as
often as we affirm against folly, temerity, injustice,
intemperance, that we ought to beware of them
because of the ill effects they bring; this must not
be taken as contradictory to that other position of
ours, that there is no other evil beside moral,
turpitude, the malignity of those effects not lying
in the detriment which the body sustains from
them, but in the immorality and viciousness of
the action ; for so the word xanla is better turned
thap by the word malitia, properly signifying/Ktf/ice.
You are very happy, Cato, said I, in the elegance
and expressiveness of your terms. Philosophy has
been long accounted at Rome an exotic, and such
is the subtilty and delicacy both of its matter and
language, that we have hitherto despaired of weav-
ing it into our mother-tongue ; and yet you find na
trouble to latinize it, and make it a complete Ro-
man. It is true, we have those that will discourse
in Latin upon philosophical subjects, but then they
never proceed in the way of divisions and dejini-
tions, and only insist upon such particulars as stand
explicitly ratified by nature. The questions upon
which they try their skill are not at all involved ;
and so wrought off with ease. Permit me there-
fore to observe narrowly what you say, and to fix
in my mind such new terms as you supply us with
to help out our present controversy, because they
will be serviceable to me in my turn. You sug--
ISO CICEUO Or MORAL ENDS.
jested rightly, and like a master of Latin etymology
in the opposition you were stating between virtue
and vice, the latter, as I apprehend, taking its name
from vituperabile, because reproach and accusation
stick to its very essence, unless vituperabile may
rather come from vitium (vice ;>) and if you had
made malitia (malice) of xaxia, it would have
denoted according to our acceptation but one
particular sort of vice ; whereas virtue and vice,
as you have indefinitely opposed them, compre-
hend the several species of either. We are
now, continued he, upon the verge of a disqui-
sition that has been prosecuted with mighty
heats. The peripatetics, who being destitute of
logic seldom argue closely, have thought it their
best way to manage it with moderation and tender-
ness. But your beloved Carneades, a singular good
logician and orator, had well-nigh put us to our j
shifts. He was ever confident that the stoics and
peripatetics, upon the question de bonis et main,
(of good and evil) disagreed not in their principles,
but only in their terms. Now for my part I think
it notorious that there is more than a verbal differ-
ence between the two hypotheses. The stoics,
I say, and the peripatetics vary not half so much
in terms as in principles. Thus the peripatetics
make every thing which they call good an ingre-
dient in their composition of human happiness:
whereas we maintain that a happy life is constitu-
ted only of that which properly and by virtue of
BOOK THE THIR©. l6l
ptself challenges our esteem. Again; if pain is an
evil, what can be clearer than that a wise man,
when he lies in torture upon the wheel, is no lon-
ger happy? Now we, that have no notion of
the evil of pain, have found a surer way to hold
a wise man's happiness together in spite of the rack
itself. And it is plain that, were it not for opi-
nion and the vapours, in the nature of the 'thing we
should never find this pain greater and that lighter.
Else what makes that pain a scratch, when we come
by it in the defence of our country, which is an
anguish when the occasion is less honourable and
. important ? Another article wherein the peripate-
tics dissent from us, is this. The peripatetics
allow three kinds of things really good, and the
richer allotment of advantages either of body or
fortune falls to a man's share, the wider, they say,
is his felicity, the, accession of ail such extertml pri-
vileges making out the, whole extent of human hap-
piness with them ; so that if. we were to come up
to their terms, we must admit that the » larger the
inventory of his externals, the happier the man ;
which we cannot by any means digest. For certain-
ly if we deny altogether, that any supposed affluence
or abundance even of the bona naturct, (those things
which nature signifies to be good,) add any thing to
the blessednesSfjOr >;alue of life ; we can never per-
suade ourselvesjithat our happiness receives any
thing from externals, be their plenty and per-
fection as gr^at as you please. If wisdom and
y
l6f CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
health be, both of them, things desirable, then
must both in conjunction be more desirable than
wisdom alone ; and yet, notwithstanding both de-
serve to be valued, in conjunction they are no more
than equivalent to the first alone. For though we
grant that, healt h is a thing to be made much of,
but not to be made free of the classis of bona, or
things absolutely good; yet in competition and
comparison with virtue we value it no more than
a shadow. The peripatetics teach us another les-
son, and affirm that a virtuous action which will not
expose us to a present pain or loss, takes place of
one that will. This now sounds very harsh in our
ears, and why it does, you shall understand in the
sequel. Mean while what think you of the pa-
rallel between r the peripatetics and the stoics ! In re-
spect of thejinal good we stand up for, all those
foreign accommodations that relate to the body are
like the glimmering of a lamp before the sun in the
meridian, immediately vanished and absorbed ; a
drop of brine lost in the jEgean sea ; a stiver laid
op among Croesus's golden magazines; or the
length of a jleds leap deducted out of the number
of leagues that lie between this place and the In-
dies. The splendor of virtue extinguishes them,
and the bulk, exuberancy, and extent of it over-
bears and annihilates them. An Opportunity (tu-
xcugi'a) is not more itself though*the allowance of
time be never so liberal, because it cannot trans-
gress its own duration. And so a right practice
BOOK THE THIftD. 163
(xarop&aM-i?, as for xarog&oifta I would put rectum
factum, a regular action) and the concurrence of
moral principles, and the good of conformity to the
-measures of nature are incapable of being augmen-
ted. The case of these, and that former of an op-
portunity are perfectly alike. And hence it is that
the stoics have drawn off this doctrine, that a hap*
py life of the length of half a span is as good, and
ought to be as satisfactory* as one of a longer clue.
The prime excellency of a slipper is to sit easy and
handsome upon the foot, (I give you the old si-
mile) which if it does, it is nothing to the purpose
what size it is of, nor how many pair of the same
size there are in the world. And thus if symmetry .
and opportunity make out the nature of any good,
it is not to be multiplied into a plurality, nor ad-
vanced by being stretched. And yet some peo-
ple are so weak a* to infer, that because a good
state of health, when it stays.with us long, is better
than if it lasted but a little while ; therefore a long
allowance of time for the cultivation and exercise
of wisdom is rather to be wished for than a short
one. Now they are to understand that our esti-
mate upon health is determined from the cir-
cumstance of continuation, but our estimate
upon virtue from the circumstance of opportunity.
. And they might as gravely inculcate that it is better
to die or be born, in a long-instant of time than in
a short one. Some things though very transient
are as much worth as others though very perma-
154 CICERO OF MORAL ENDi.
nent ; but it is not every body that knows the dis*
tinction. To come forward ; they who attribute •
unto the last and final good a possibility of increas-
ing, if they will be consistent with themselves,
must also maintain degrees in wisdom^ apd an ine-
quality in the goodness or badness of any of our
actions. We that conceive the final good to be
incapable of additions, deny this. He, that is over
head and ears in a pool, though he should not be
further than three inches below the surface, is as
little in a condition to fetch his breath as if he were
at the bottom. A young puppy that is to have
the use of his eyes within a day or two is as blind
as another that was whelped an hour ago. In like
manner, he that makes but a partial and an imper-
fect progress in virtue is as wretched and forlorn
as he that has made none. You may call these
propositions mysteries, ©r paradoxes ; or what you
please, but, sure I am, if my first principle* are
true and compact, and what I have now superin-
duced altogether comports, with them, there is no
pretence for questioning the truth of them. When
I say that any degrees of greater or less are foreign
to the nature of virtife land vice, do not mistake
me, as if I denied that either the one or the other
might be, as I may say, expanded and rarefied.
Riches, our Diogenes conceives, may help us to
pleasure and a good constitution, and be the vehi-
cle of both ; but for the art of living well, or any
other art, riches convey nothing of it to us, though
BOOK THE THIRD. l6S
they may convey us to it : that therefore wealth is
as much a good as pleasure or a favourable consti-
tution ; that it is yet far from a consequence,
because wisdom is a real good, therefore current
coin must be so too : that whatever is not itself a
real good cannot include that which is ; that our
conceptions of things, which are the ground-work
and materials of all art, naturally operate, upon oar
inclinations ; and that for as much as riches are"
no real good, they cannot consequently include
whatever may be called an art. And though this is
rightly observed as to arts in general, yet there is this
one thing peculiar to virtue, that it must be perpe-
tually refreshed and exercised; which is not abso-
lutely required in arts and sciences; as also that
under virtue is comprehended an uniform constancy
and steadiness in the tenor of a man's whole life ;
but this is not of the substance of any liberal art
or science. To go on with our distinctions, because
were we to do, as Aristo has done, not distinguish
between the nature, of this and that, we could never
methodize the conduct of life, nor understand the
proper functions and administrations of wisdom;
in regard the severals, which respect or come into
the management of life, would lie undistributed,
and appear all equally eligible : passing therefore,
from the distinction between that which is abso-
lutely good, or matter of virtue, and that which is abso-
lutely evil or matter of vice, the stoics havje settled
another division of things, which, though they nei-
ther make for nor against the happiness of life, yet are
166 eiCE*o or moral sxds.
dissimilar and subordinate ; and these are either such
as are of some account 9 of ill account, or intermediate.
Those which are of some account have something
in them recommending and preferable, as health,
senses perfect, indolence, a great character, money,
and the like ; or else they are not properly prefer-
able, and so stand intermediate; and those which
are of ill account, having something in them dis-
commending and unacceptable, as pain, sickness,
the want of any of our senses, indigence, ignominy,
and the like; or else they are not properly unaccept-
able, and so make the other braneh of the inter-
mediate. Hereupon Zeno rather than he would
forego his distinction of xforjyptivov and axoT^oijy-
fiiyov, took the liberty to disgrace his own copious
language by bringing up those new terms, though
we must be prohibited to enrich our scanty one, if
you will give me leave to call it so. That I may
make the meaning of these terms a little better
understood, it will not be impertinent to tell you
what Zeno had in his eye when he made the word
Tpo7]7fjt^vov.mAs it were absurd, says he, to talk of
a sovereign prince being promoted to a dignity ;
and places at court are not for him, but for the
great men, his immediate inferiors: even so they
are not the supreme but the secondary prerogatives
of life, which I term frpwfffLha, producta (literally)
things that obtain favour and promotion, as aw
xgMjyfiiva, rejecta, things wherewith we are dis-
pleased, unless we render both as before, propositi
BOOK THE THIRD. lf)7
or pracipua, preferable*; and rtjecta, things
disagreeable. So we do but understand one ano-
ther, we ought not to be superstitious about words.
Now then, for as much as that which is really our
good is absolute and superlative, the nature of that
which is no more than a preferable can be neither
good nor bad, but is a8*a$>opov, what we may call
indifferent, or something as well on this side
insignificancy, as on this side the greatest signifi-
cance. That such midling species of things either
agreeable or disagreeable to nature should not be
left out of his distinctions was most necessary ; and
no less, that what could not be left out should be
reckoned upon as of some account ; and again, as
necessary, if we affirm such and such things to be
of some account, that our species of praposita or
preferables be allowed. So that this distinction is
a very just one, and the advancers of it, because
they would have it sufficiently intelligible, illustrate
it by a simile. Suppose a die to be thrown, upon
a wager that such a number shall rise, if such a
-number does indeed come up, that position of it,
considered abstractedly, approaches very near to
the end for which it was thrown, as another position
would utterly defeat that end ; andyet that particular
position does not partake of the nature of the end.
Thus the preferables I am speaking of have a re-
lation and affinity to the end itself, though neither
contained in it, nor influencing in conjunction with
it. Next comes on the division of good things
16S CICERO OF MORAL ENDSr
into rfXixA, those that arc of the very essence of
the final good (to make use, for once, of the bene-
fit of that concession, that we should have recourse
to a periphrasis, when the import of the word in
the original may be thereby better explained) and
cronjrixa, those that are instrumental towards our
attaining of it, and lastly, those that are mixed..
Virtuous actions are solely those that are purely
of the essence of it Friends are alone the purely
instrumental. And wisdom is both of the essence
and instrumental; of the essence, because nature
is concurred with in every act of it ; and instru-
mental, because it directs us to and puts us upon
the practice of virtue. The preferables are also
cither essential ones, instrumental, or mixed: es-
sential, as our features, our postures, our motions, -
which are some of them agreeable, some disagree-
able ; instrumental, as money; mixed, as sound
sensories, or a good state of health. The opinion
4>f Chrysippus and Diogenes as to the value of re-
putation (for the present occasion requires that
iuSo£/a be construed reputation and not glory) was,
that, when we have deducted its subserviency, it is
not worthy to cost us the trouble of extending an
arm ; and I am all in their interest. Although
others overpowered by Carneades have since con-
fessed, that reputation i* a thing to be valued and
sought for itself, and that although it could no way
turn to advantage, every man of an ingenuous dis-
position and improved intellectuals would be glad
BOOK TH* THI&jr, 169
. to $it fair in the thought*, of bis parents, his kir*
dred, and all good people ; that though it will
stand us in very little stead, we should endeavour
to leave behind us a lasting and aq honourable
mention of our name, in like manner as we make
provision for our children, though born after our
decease, barely for their convenience. Now dial
being proved to be our only good which is matter
if virtue, it follows that we ought to do whatever
is our duty, though the nature of duty falls not
within the account of those* things which are pro*
pei ly good or evil ; for between these lies the ba~
* lance of its reasonableness, and the measures we are
to take from the reasons which preponderate.
It is certain we are to be determined to the doing
ef our duty by such reasons as we can shew to be
the mare satisfactory. Whence it appears that
f duty is none of those things which are ekher good
or evil in themselves, but hovers in the middle ;
and since those things which are neither virtues
nor vices absolutely, are nevertheless of conse-
quence and advantage, *we are not to make the least
abatement of them. Now some of our action*
we are determined to by the reasons that result from
the posture and aspect of those things ; as whatever
is transacted upon reasons is that which we term
duty. And therefore duty has no part in the list;
of those things which are either good or evU
properly so called. And yet is it unquestionable
that tivm things are matter for a wise man to wort
170 CICEftO OF MORAL EXDf.
upon, tfho, when he puts a duty in 'practice, first
satisfies tnmself that it is a duty, and stands infal-
libly assured at the same time that that duty moves
in a middle sphere. For a further proof, observe
that whatever action bears the name of a complete
good one is a duty performed, as there is also duty
^unconsummate. So to deliver up honestly what was
deposited in my hands is a complete good action ;
to deliver up what is none of my own is a duty.
The word honestly imports a good act complete ;
and to give every man -his own, is a particular duty
defined. And because the middle order of things
comprehends the matter of our choice, whatever ■
we do or say with respect thereunto, will be a
point of duty. And so the unwise as well as the
wiseman, upon the score of that natural affection
which either bears to himself, will pursue those
measures which he thinks most agreeable to nature, \\
and avoid the contrary J Thus duty lies in common
between the wise and the unwise> and discovers
the middle order of things to be the region of its
residence. And as all duties* whatsoever arise
out of this element, so all our considerations and
counsels tend to it,, even those about going out of
or staying in the world; as to which, when the.
majority is on the side of those things which sym-
pathise with nature, it is a man's duty to live on ;
but when the majority either is, ot is likely to hang
on the other side, it is his duty to make his exit.
Whence it sometimes comes to pass' that a wise
BOOK THE THIRD, 171
man, though his condition be very happy, is obliged
to remove out of life ; and a fool, as bad as his
circumstances are, to keep to his old quarters. For
the Jirst and best generals in the distribution of r
nature, the secondary or middle, and the last or
worst are all offered and exposed to the judgment
and choipe' of a wise man, as his materials; and,
the real and chief good and evil, which we have
made such frequent mention of, reside beyond
these ; but these are to determine his resolutions,
one way or the other, as to the advisableness of
quitting or not quitting life. It is not my being virtu-
ous or not virtuous that should induce me to run
upon destruction. But it is a duty incumbent upon
a wise man, when the face of affairs requires it,
notwithstanding he is actually *in possession of the
moat exalted happiness, to dispatch himself, as
soon as he can ; as* he means to conform precisely
and scrupulously to the measures of nature, it
* being taken for granted by the stoics, that the cir-
cumstance of seasonableness or opportunity is the
distinguishing note and measure of a happy life.
Accordingly, wisdom lays her commands upon her
votary to abdicate herself too, when he cannot play
. a better game. On the other hand, seeing our
moral defects are in themselves no sufficient grounds
for us to become our own executioners, it follows
as certainly that a fool, though as such he is fated
to be miserable, is bound-over to live on till *hfc
loses a majority of thosa advantages which are
\7% CICKR0 CI MORAL BKDS.
according to nature* And another gdod reason
why the man, that it instated in such a mqjority,
should be tied to keep his bold of life, is because
•he is never the more unhappy if he keeps it thafi
if he leaves it, its continuance not at all aggravating
any disobliging conditions of it which may tempt
him to throw it up* Moreover, the stoics adver-
tise, that it nearly concerns us to observe how
effectually it is contrived and adjusted in the nature
of things, that those creatures which propagate
should love what they beget ; and from this natural
principle we fetch and account for the fundamen-
tals of society and "commerce among men. The
very figure and fabric of our bodies demonstrate
procreation to be among those encjs to which they
were formed ; and that procreation was intended
upon the formipg of our bodies, and not witbal a
love and tuition of what should spring from us,
were most unaccountable. The brutes have a
propensity to these offices implanted in them, and
by the care and trouble which they undergo, as-
well in the part of nursing as of bringing forth,
providence has expressly promulged and counte-
nanced the principle ; insomuch that we have not
a fuller assurance of our natural aversion to pain,
than of the importunity and impulses which we
feel within us, enforcing the parent's affection
toward the cbildr And this establishment in nature
lies at the bottom of civil and personal intercourses
and correspondences* and obliges every man to a
.>
BOOK THE THIRD. 173
CdaeefA and regard for his neighbour, because his
neighbour is a man as well as himself. It is true/
some of the parts of the body serve only for their
6*n purposes, as the eyes and ears; but then
others are ministerial to their fellow-members, as
the legs and hands. Thus again, there are beasts
of prey, the ends of whose being seem to terminate
•in themselves. Bat then there is the pinna or
nacrc-Jish (that in the open shell) and the pinnoteres,
as it id called, because though it makes a custom
Of swimming out, yet it never deserts its tenement,
but immediately closes it upon its return, as who
shduld say, caution is an excellent thing (beside
the pismires, the bees, and the storks) which pur-
Sue a public and common interest in the affairs
they carry on. And these combinations and part*
nerships are much more effectual and perfect in
the societies of mankind. You see then how na-
tural it is for us to form ourselves into communi-
ties and corporations. The stoics further teach
you, that the providence of the gods "governs the
tmiveree, and that a$ well the college of the hea-
venly powers as the whole multitude of mankind,
and every individual in it are of the substance of
that universe. And thence infer, that the more
public good is to supersede the more private. For
that whoever pretends to any probity, wisdom, a
dutiful and governable temper, or a tolerable no*
tiort of civil duties, will, in imitation of the laws,
more studiously solicit the interest of the public,
*>~
174 CICERO Ot MORAL ENDS.
than any private one whatsoever, though it were
his own ; and that he who is a traitor to his coun-
try, is neither better nor worse than, a mercenary,
corrupted renegado from • the common cause of
mankind : consequently that whosoever makes a
- present of his life to his country, merits very par-
ticular commendations, for corroborating in so signal
a manner this doctrine, that we ought to be more
zealous for our country's preservation than for our
own ; and this in reference to some barbarous and
hardy wretches, who declare they will readily give
their vote for a bonfire to be made of the 'whole
world the day after they are stepped out of it:
(there is a thread-bare Greek verse to this purpose
in which I might have .expressed myself.) Now with
respect to these, the stoics urge 4hat it is our duty
to take care for the well-being of our survivors and
posterity, properly and absolutely for their sakes.
And these cordial, affectionate intentions are pre-
supposed upon the dictating of a last rbill, or a
dying mah's recommending their respective charges
to his friends. Furthermore ; that it is natural
for us to unite in confederations and alliances, is
*a£ apparent as the irreconcilableness of any man's
genius to perpetual solitude, though he were pro-
mised it should be qualified with all imaginable
amusements of recreation and pleasure. Besides,
there is implanted in pur constitution a good-
natured eagerness to be as serviceable, and to as
many of our kind, as we can, particularly by recti-
1 . . : 7"
BOOK THE THIRD. 175
tying their judgments, and furnishing their facul-
ties. We are naturally as forv&irl to communicate
as to accept of notions,- aqd^he must be very sin-
gular indeed, that imparts to nobody' the least
portion of his own observations and acquisitions.
Again ; it is a rule of nature to those people who
enjoy singular privileges of fortune, and may com-
mand in the world, that, after the examples of
Hercules and Bacchus, they should exert themselves
as the champions and protectors of mankind. So v
instinct animates the bulls to encounter the lions ■
with collected force and fury in' defence of the
x heifers and the calves. When we consecrate to ,
Jove himself his epithets of greatest and best ;
when we appeal to him under his titles of beneficial^
and benign, the preserver of our families and
government, (stator) we signify how glorious a
province it is which we ascribe to him, namely,
that pf guarding us against violence, xtnd delivering
us out pf danger. And therefore, if below we are
unsolicitous for, and wanting to the advance of our
own mutual interests, it were unreasonable and
presumptuous to*make it our petition to the gods,
that they would be pleased to receive us into their
favour and patronage. In brief; we *slide as
directly into civil society and commerce, as we
come to) the use and exercise of our limbs, before
we can give a philosophical account of th6m.
And unless we did so, justice and generosity must
be very precarious and chimerical things. They
.X
176 CICERO OF MORAL 1NDI.
add, that although the laws and bonds of aocifjty
hold men and met) together, yet between men and
brutes no such nter courses take place; agreeable
to that excellent remark of Chrysippus, that man
is born to incorporation and society, and that every
thing else received its existencefor thtuse and ser-
vice of the gods and him; and consequently, that
man may dispose of the inferior animals as ht
pleases, to his awn advantage, without doing them
any injury ; that because the establishment of civil
rights is thus natural and necessary, the just man is
he that is careful to have them preserved ; the tm+
just he that invades and infringes them. And yet
that there is nothing in any common or civil rights,
.which interferes with the rights of individuals ; as
the seats in the play-house are all for common use,
and yet every man's pUtce is Ids own when he has
taken it : that since it appears to have been the in-
tent of the efficient cause that men should succour
and support one another, a wise zpan is not at all
forbidden by his character to take upon him and ad*
minister a public post, nor to marry and bav* chil-
dren ; for that wisdom and love, if it be chaste and
pure, are compatible with one another. As for
the measures and course of life peculiar to the cy-
nics, the stoics are divided, some admitting that
when, as it may happen, the exigencies of a man's
condition call for it, he should have recourse to
those measures ; but others will not hear of such
• dispensation. And the better to strengthen this
. • BOOK THE. THIRD. 177
. esconomy of commerce and natural affection, what
they call a>$sX^j&ard and 0Xotj&|xara > substantial
emoluments, and substantial detriments, they hold
to be of common concernment ; the former to the
advantage, the latter to the disadvantage of the
community.! And as they affirm them to be of
common concernment, so to lie in a parity, which
they will not allow us to what they call s5;£p*)pj-
ftara and Stwr^gij^/xara {conveniences and inconve-
niences) though they must make these two to be of
common . concernment : because that whieh brings
a real advantage tfiust be simply and properly good,,
and that which brings a real disadvantage must be
simply and properly evil, and to the instances, of
either of these kinds disparity is foreign. Now
conveniences and inconveniences are to be reduced to
the species before mentipned , of prefer ables apd
Jheir opposites ; and to those disparity is essential.
Any particular justifiable or unjustifiable actions,
in respect of the , agents, are ! not of common con-
x cernment, as the * substantial emoluments are de-
clared to be. Of this last advantageous kind is
friendship ; and hence <t he stoics recommend the
cultivation of it. There are some among them who
maintain, that it is the part of a wise man to love
his friend and himself alike, and others that say,
he ought to love himself best, reserving it still as a
caution in behalf of the obligations tojustice which
are fastened upon our nature, that there must be
qo snipping my own gains out of another maris
Sa
17S * CICERO OP MORAL END!.
cloth. But not one of them will endure any such
supposition as tbat considerations of profit should
ingratiate or enforce the duties of friendship or
equity, because the same considerations will serve
as effectually to undermine and supplant them, it
being unconceivable how -there should be any such
thing as justice or friendship in the world, unless
both subsist upon their own intrinsic merit and
dignity. They teach u* likewise, that the notioq
of right is truly and properly that, the definition
whereof we find legible in the nature of things;
that a wise man will abhor all thoughts not only
of injurious practices, but of practices any way
prejudicial to another ; as also of associating with
his friends, or his benefactors and patrons, in any
villanous devices or the execution of them. They
contend for it with all the nerves of truth and ar-
gument that equity and profit are inseparable;
that whatever is just and fair is truly honourable
and becoming ; and (convertibly) that whatever is
truly honourable and becoming must be just and
fair. In the next place, to the aforesaid variety of
moral virtues they annex their corollaries of logic
and natural philosophy, the former of which they
denominate a virtue, because by it we are enabled
to make our party good against ail the little skir-
mishes of falsehood and fallacy, and to confirm and
ascertain the doctrines which we lay down in rela-
tion to moral good and evil. For the stoics appre-
hend, that if a man is not something of a logician,
BOOK THE THIRD.- 179
he must needs be very liable to be misled and
imposed upon. So that unless inconsideration
and ignorance in general are no faults, when they
reckon upon that which remedies both as a virtue,
they have reason. And when they ascribe as-
much to natural philosophy, they justify themselves
as well; for, say they, when a man proposes to
come up as near to the model of nature as he can 9
if he goes to work regularly, he sets out with the
contemplation of the productions and methods of
providence. Not to mention at what uncertainties
we must be left about the nature of moral good and
evil, until such time as we have competently satis-
fied ourselves about the phenomena of the world,
how far the gods are concerned with it, in what
degrees of symmetry man, the little universe,
answers to the great one, and how much he is
indebted to the sages of old for those excellent
precepts of tlieirs ; that we should netoer bear
against the bias of an exigency ; that we should
resign ourselves to the conduct if the Deity; that
mtry man should know his ewn person, thoroughly ;
and no man exceed bounds. Now the just impor-
tance of all these, and it is very considerable, he
that is a stranger to natural philosophy cannot reach. .
Then too this science will carry us a great way in
stating the motives and encouragements, discerni-
ble in the face of nature, to a strict observation of
justice, and of all the duties of friendship and huma-
nity. Nay, until we have made a due progress in
180 CICEftO OF MORAL ENDS.
out physical inquiries,, we can hardly have a com*
plete rationale of our duties and obligations to the
divine powers themselves. But, I fear, by this
time, I have out-run my line, and expatiated
beyond the proper limits of the question proposed.
However the charming contexture of all the parts
of the stoical discipline, and the surprising depend-
ance of its institutions, one upon another, will
bear me out. O heavens ! are you not ravished
at the review of them ? What does nature herself,
as unimitably elegant and exquisite as are her per-
fections and beauties ; what does art and invention
afford so delicately proportioned, and so firmly
compacted ? How curious the agreement between
our antecedents and consequents ! Does not every
one of the latter grow out of the former ? And are
not all the parts of the hypothesis tied together
with such a continuity, that if you crop off a sylla-
ble, you ruin the whole ? and yet we challenge you
to wound the least jibre. O ! what an awful ! what
an heroical ! what a steady example is our man of
wisdom! He stands convinced and assured, that
virtue is alone the good of man, and so cannot but
be always happy, and in an actual possession of those
privileges and eminences, which, when attributed
to him, are a subject for the pedantic world to rally
and joke upon. For why is Tarquin so much a
monarch as he ; Tarquin, who knew not how to
govern either his subjects or himself? Why is not
he more truly the people's master, I mean ^.dictator,
BOOK THE THIRD. 181
than Scylla, whose province, when all is said, lay
only between his three accursed qualities, luxury,
avarice, and barbarity? Why not richer than
Crassus too, seeing Crassus, if it had not been for
his wants, would never have* passed they're/, arid
engaged in a groundless war ? Alas ! All things
we may fairly say, are in his possession, and in his
alone, who knows what use to make of every thing.
A wise man is the mOst charming of all beauties,
because regularity of features is much more capti-
vating in the soul tl\an in the body. A wise man
only is in a state of freedom, as never lying at any
one's mercy, or, submitting to the motions of his
own appetites, A wise man only is invulnerable
and unconquered, because his* miiid cannot be made
a prisoner, though his body should be covered with
chains. Lastly, a wise man cuts off all occasion
for suspending your judgment about the condition
bf his l^ppiness until you have seen the conclusion
of his life, and so proves that one of the seven
wise men gave Croesus very foolish advice. For
if Creesus had ever been a happy man, it was im-
possible that his happiness should' leave him even
at the funeral pile, which Cyrus had provided fim.
"Well then ! . If of necessity all good men must be»
happy, and only they: what can deserve to ba
more cultivated by us than philosophy, or to be
more sacred with us and dear to us than virtue ?
CICTERO
o*
MORAL ENDS.
BOOK IV.
Thus he concluded his discourse ; and when he
had done so, suffer me Cato, said I, to admire
your strength of memory, and clearness of expres-
sion after the proofs you have been giving of both :
and withal, either to despair of ever answering you,
or at least till I have had some time to recollect N
myself. The stoical hypothesis, though perhaps
not very solid, (for I will not be bold in my cen-
sures too soon) is so closely laid together, and so
artificially worked up, that it is no easy matter- to
look through the structure of it. Are you there-
abouts ? replied he : What ? have not I heard you
since the new statute was in force, pleading for
three hours together against a prosecutors allega-
tions upon the same day whereon they were exhi-
bited ? And do you think you shall have leave to
adjourn this cause ? No : though on your side it is
as indefensible as a great many others, which ne-
184 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
vertheless you have carried. The controversy is
no strange or new one either to yourself or others ;
it has been often already in your hands ; make up
to it once more, and you will find both matter and
words as ready to advance. I am never in haste,
said I, when I have the stoies to deal with, not so
much for auy opinion I have of their principles, as
because I cannot tightly understand them, and
when I am forced to tell them so, it put me out of
countenance. I grant, said Cato, we talk some-
times a little out of the way, but we know not how
to help it, 'because our subject-matter is dark and
perplexing. That is' remarkable indeed, said I,
and yet when the peripatetics hold forth upon the
same subject, and to the same effect, I understand
every word. Upon the same subject to the same
effect ? said he : then have I been proving ,all this
• while to. no purpose, that the stoics and peripatetics
come not near one another, not only as to terms,
but by the whole distance and length of either in-
stitution ?, Make that sufficiently clear, said 1^ and
I will capitulate immediately. I verily believed I
had done so, said he ; but if you think not, be
pleased to fall upon that particular before you have
engaged yourself in any other. With all my
heart, said I, and if I may reasonably oblige you
tQ it, speak up as well as ybu can for yourself in
your turn. Be it so, said he, though the fairest
and the best way would have been, to give every
man his due, whether stoic or peripatetic, without
BOOK THE FOURTH. 18S
making any comparisons. I airf well satisfied, Cato,
said I, that the principles which had been current
with Speusippus, Aristotle, and Xenocrates, all
disciples of Plato ; and with their two pupils after-
wards Polemo andTheophrastus ; are so extensive
in their compass, and so handsomely laid together,
that Zeno could have no pretence for separating
from Polemo who had been his instructor, and
from the other leaders of that institution; Here
I must desire you not to expect a reply from me to
every particular you have offered ; rather, if you
please, let the main body of our forces be drawn
outon either side. And be you careful to let me
know what it is which you think may be reformed
or improved. Now the philosophers aforesaid ob-
serving that men are born with a common aptitude
and tendency to the exercise of the; more noted
and conspicuous virtues, justice, temperance, and
the like, which in their nature are analogous to
other arts and sciences, though in the matter and
exercise of them superior; and that we make after
these virtues with all the ardour and ambition ima-
ginable : that our souls are, as it were, inlaid with a
love of knowledge ;, moreover that one great end of
our coming into the world is to fall into societies
and confederations, and that the greater a man's
genius is, he strives to make himself a more con-
siderable instance hereof : observing these things
to be so ; they distributed the whole of philosophy
into three parts, the division which Zeno has
2 b
186 CICERO OF MORAL EXDS.
adopted for his own. The first limb of Jthe divi-
sion is moral philosophy, and our question about
the end of moral good lying deep in the substance
of it, I shall forbear to consider it yet a while, and
at present only remark, that the old peripatetics
and academics, that held the same opinions under
different names, have handled at large, and very ju-
diciously, the subject of politics or civil govern-
ment. What a mighty number of treatises have we
extant of theirs relating to public establishment f
And then how many instances may we thank them
for of true oratory, in their exercises, as well as
rules of art, in their systems. Every nice, meta-
physical definition or distinction they have been
able to set out in very modish and agreeable lan-
guage ! So, I grant, have some of your brethren
sometimes ; but then it was, in the main, Cimme-
rian darkness, whereas every sentence of theirs is
clear and pellucid. Then as often as they are con-
cerned with those arguments which challenge at
once both elegance of style and weight of reasoning;
can any thing be more lofty and splendid than their
discourses ? As particularly when they write upon
the subjects of justice, fortitude, friendships con-
duct, philosophy, public administration, tempe-
rance, the bravery of some men •)•••**• They are
not for harrowing and scarifying like the stoics, but
■f What iUfcre lost, I will not pretend to retrieve, even with
the assistance of Lambin, whose guesses G rut er very justly
Tejects.
BOOK THE FOURTH. 187
when the matter they are to work upon is of grand
importance,, they garnish it with a proportionable
grace of expression; and when it is more slight and
humble, they never let it lose any thing by the
comments they make upon it. How happy are
they in their consolatory and monitory essays, ad-
dressed to persons of the highest rank and repute?
They had two roatds or channels of disputation to
answer to the double face of circumstances in the
nature of the things Considered by them ; for ei-
ther the dispute must proceed in general terms
without being reduced to any certain persons or
spaces of time ; or if these are considered, then
upon some particulars either of fact, or right,
or parties, complications of terms* Accordingly,
they traced things both ways, and had they not
done so, could never have sallied out with such a
fluency upon every subject of either kind. Now.
Zeno and his partizans have troubled their heads
with nothing of this; whether because they would
not, or couW not look so far, f cannot tell,
Oeanthes, it is true, and Chrysippus have published
their methods of rhetoric ; and \yhat is the best we
can say of them? Why 4ruly that there are no
grammars like them in the world, to teach a man
silence. In short, I know no other use of them
but to trepan us into a new language, and wean us
from our old one. And is tjiis his way to warm tjhe
spirits of his audience and tp set them on fire ?
You see; what a mighty business he drives at ! It
V
188 CICERO 0* MORAL ENDS*
is to persuade an honest bourgher that tivita vee*
chia and the universe are the same corporation, and
that he that is free of the first has the same relation
and privilege in the other. Is such discourse as
this like to put the blood into a ferment of satisfac-
tion ? No, it would much sooner check the pas-
sions in their career, than set them a going! I
confess, it was quick and smart, your dwarfish
proof of your wise man's being a king, a dictator,
and a Crassus ; thanks to the rhetoricians that fur-
nished you ! It were all for the stoics if they could
speak a little more up to the merits of virtue : nay,
though they extend its jurisdiction to the full com.
plement of human happiness. For what are all
th^ir little interrogations but so many flea bites.
We may be glad to admit of them, but can never be
convinced by them, and they leave us the same as
they found us. They are undoubtedly off especial
concernment, and perhaps there is truth underneath
them too, but then, as I take it, they are treated
below their quality. Next come on logic and physics.
Remember, it was my bargain that the summufn
bonum should bring up the rear of the whole dis-
pute. Now Zeno coutd never find in his heart to
set about a reformation of one or the other of these,
having not the least fault to find with the model of
either. In relation to the first; is there any omis-
sion or oversight, I beseech yoq, with which the
ancients may be charged? Have they not be-
queathed us as many definitions, and as good tales
BOOK THB FOURTH. 189
of defining as Qan be desired? Have they not, as
the reason of the thing prescribed, settled their
divisions as well as their definitions, and likewise
the whole process of dividing? Not to speak of
their rules concerning contraries, upon which
their doctrines of kinds and species are erected.
For the ground of their argumentations they laid
down self-evident propositions, observing a due
method of connexion, and weighing the truth of
every proposition till they arrive at the conclusion.
Where do you meet with such a mart of ratioci-
nations as among them? Not like your littlp falla-
cious queries. Then too it must be remeriibered
how frequently they press us as well to confirm
the credit of our senses by our reason as of our
reason by our senses, and that so, as not to
confound the one with the other? Where not
these the men that first launched all the rules and
directions which the logicians keep such a chitter
with at this day? Chrysippus, I grant, was a con-
siderable pains-taker in that part, but Zeno made
-nothing of it, in comparison of the ancients. And
if as to some things he succeeded as well as they,
yet for others he never so much as took knowledge
of them. Toward the perfecting of an argument, t
whether in the mind or in words, there concur the
two arts of invention and reasoning. The latter of
•ihese has been improved both by stoics and peri-
patetics ; the former to advantage by the peripate-
tics, for the stoics never meddled with it at all.
190 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
No, they little imagined, where any mines of argu-
ment lay, which the peripatetics discovered metho-
dically and skilfully. And by this means they
have eased us of the incumberance of repetitions,
amplifications, and glosses; matters remote and
involved being easily managed and come at, when
once we know whereabouts they lie, and which is
the way that will bring us to them. You will tell
me, that there have been great wits, who by the
strength of pure natural parts have advanced thus
far : but all this while it is the safer way to steer
by art than nature alone. To sprinkle expressions
poetically is one thing; judiciously and logically
to distribute and distinguish them is another. And
thus the case runs too between the peripatetics and
the stoics, with regard to your natural philosophy,
the ends whereof, beside those two of Epicurus,
to rid us of the terrors of death, and the plague of
superstition, are made to be the teaching ourselves
temperance and modesty from those circumscrip-
tions and that decorum which the gods themselves
have observed ; magnanimity by contemplating
their operations and achievements; and justice
by a sufficient inquiry into the attributes, intentions,
and determinations of the great sovereign of the
universe. For it is a conformity of ideas and
purposes within us to ideas and purposes in him,
which philosophers mean when they talk of a
genuine and imperial law of nature. Moreover
these physical speculations are accompanied with
BOOK THE FOURTH. 191
an endless delight arising from our progress in
knowledge, the only pleasure upon which, after
we have dispatched our affairs of urgent conse-
quence, we may bestow our vacant hours with
credit. In a word, the stoics have copied from
the peripatetics as in all other principal parts of
philosophy, so particularly in their two assertions
of the existence of the gods, and the four elements
of the material world. Not but Zeno upon that
untoward question which had come abroad, whe-
ther there is any such thing as * fifth sort of sub-
stance, constituting the reasonable and intellectual
part of the universe, (and here came in the inquiry
they made about the nature of the soul,) affirmed,
that it consists of fire; in this, and in some few
instances beside, he will not agree with' them.
Notwithstanding as to the main point of all, that a
divine spirit or nature has the management of the
universe, and turns all the greater wheels of it, he
determines just as they have done. And then
instead of that narrow compass both of matter and
things, which the stoics suppose, the peripatetics
make the whole very ample and extensive ; not to
feay what mighty advances and collections they
have made, in stating the several kinds of animals,
and illustrating their originals, the structure of
their bodies, and the length of their lives. How
fully have they acquitted themselves in relation to
the vegetative world? How well have they ex-
plained and laid open the several causes of thing6,
192 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
both final and efficient ? And here we have the
% conduit which supplies us with an inexhaustible
plenty of sound argument to clear up our physical
account of things. Upon the whole then, I am to
seek for a reason why the name of the sect should
be changed. For it is no matter, whether Zeno
trod upon the heels of the peripatetics in every
circumstance and particular, or not, so long
as, it is certain, they led him the way. Just as
Epicurus in his natural philosophy is no more
than the second edition of Democrkus, though
he has made alterations, and perhaps not a few ;
but still the greater and the more material part
of the hypothesis is old : and as ungraciously
have you stoics dealt by the men that gave you
what you enjoy. So much for that head. Next
as to the matter of summum bonum, the very root
and trunk of all philosophy, let us a little examine,
whether Zeno's refinings will justify his separation
from those philosophical instructors of his, that
first brought that same summum bonum to light.
Upon this occasion, Cato, I shall make bold in
my turn, to set out the sense of the final good, as
it comprises all the business of philosophy ; and
what is by the stoics looked upon to be such : not
to disparage that idea of it which you have been at
the pains to give me, but only to discover as far a*
we are able, how much Zeno has added to it His
pi^edecessors the peripatetics, and in that number
Polemo most expressly, would have secundum na~
BOOK THE FOURTH. 193
turam vivere, a life after nature's model to be the
summum bonum ; and to this the stoics affix a three-
fold exposition, as first, that it is a life, the mea-
sures whereof result from a judgment rightly passed
upon the measures of nature : and this, they say,
was Zeno's sense of his final good, where he pro*
nounces it to be that which you were mentioning,
convenienter nature vivere, to conform to the mea-
sures of nature; secondly, through* the whole
course of our lives to discharge all, or however the
best part of the media officio, (middle duties.) But
then this exposition clashes with the former ; for
the rectum or xarog&wpot you were speaking of
(that which is altogether just and good) is appro-
priate to the man of wisdom, whereas the discharg-
ing of unfinished or imperfect duties is no more
than many an unwise man is capable of. Thirdly,
so to live as to make the best, if not of all, yet of
the largest portion of those circumstances which
are agreeable to nature. Now this is plainly tres-
passing beyond matters of practice ; the summum
bonum thus explained comprehending, beside a
virtuous life, all such things as are agreeable to
nature, and not at our command. And to this
third summum bonum, as also that character of life
which it requires as including virtue, it is" for none
but a wise man to make any pretensions. What
is this ut last, by the confession of the stoics them-
selves, but the very same summum bonum for
which Xenocrates and Aristotle had declared ?
Sc .
194 ' CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
Accordingly they have recognized that same first
principle of nature which you begun with, in words
to this effect : every being in nature affects its own
conservation, and endeavours to retain itself in the
properties of its kind. And hence it is, they tell
us, that we apply ourselves to learn arts and sciences,
because of their usefulness and subserviency to our
nature, and consequently the main one of them all
must be the art of living, that is, in such a man*
ner as to lose nothing of what nature has bestowed
upon us, and to fill up the defects remaining. Fur-
ther j they divided the whole compositum of man in-
to soul and body, determined both to be things va-
luable in themselves, and that therefore the virtues,
and excellencies of both are valuable too, making
the virtues of the mind as incomparably superior
to all advantages of the body, as the mind itself to
the body. Wisdom they recommended for the
-guardian and governant, the companion and help-
mate of human nature, and alleged that it was its
business to protect our composition, and hold body
and mind together in a commodious union* Then
after they have offered you the gross of their notion,
they come to manage more artfuHy. The estimate
and use .we are to make of the goods of the body
they conceived were obvious enough. But took
a nea£$r and a nicer view of the goods of the mind,
among the principal whereof just ice, and as it were,
in embryo, first presented itself. These, of all the
philosophers, were the first that urged the obliga-
BOOK THE FOURTH. 195
«
tiens of nature incumbent upon that which pro-
creates to love its own issue, and the natural validity
of conjugal ties and matrimonial union antecedent
thereunto ; and that the friendships and intimacies
of relations ail resulted from this origin. When
they had thus prepared the way, in the next place
they set themselves to contemplate the several spe-
cies of virtue^ their derivations and progressions ;
and ascended by these steps to that greatness of
mind which makes a man a match for fortune, let
her do her worst, upon this consideration, that a
man of true wisdom has the world in a string.
Indeed, whosoever followed the directions of the
old philosophy, disappointed the treachery and
malice of fortune, with all the ease imaginable.
Thus they set out with the first fixed principles in
nature, and then superinduced the amplitudines bo-+
norum, or consummative goods, whether they be such
as are consequent of a closer inspection into matters
more difficult and dark, pursuant to that desire of
knowlege and information which is radicated in the
mind, and spurs it on to exercises of ratiocination,
and the improvement of the apprehensive and dis-
cursive faculties ; or whether they be such as com-
port with human nature, in regard that man is the
only animal that is born with a principle of modes-
ty and sense of shame ; that courts alliances and
society with those of his own kind, and finds himself
tied up to a strict observation of honesty and de-
cency in all his actions and words. And thus the
seminary of natural principles above mentioned gives
196 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
birth to all the duties of temperance, modesty, jus-
£ tice, and every other virtue. 1 have now, Cato,
summed up the scheme of that philosophy for which
I am concerned, and having done so, would wil-
lingly understand upon what account Zeno and this
primitive set of notions, could not agree together.
Is there any of them which he has ever disap-
proved ? Does he dispute whether self-preserva-
tion be a natural principle ? Whether every living
creature is so much in favour with itself as to pro-
mote, as far as it can, the continuance of its exis-
tence in its proper kind ? Whether, seeing the end
of every art is resolved into that which nature prin-
cipally pursues by it, the art of living has the
same end as the rest? Whether the mind and
body we are compounded of, with their excellencies
and privileges, are worth our choice and good look-
ing-to for their own sakes ? Whether the excellen-
cies of .the mind deservedly take the upper hand ?
Whether the peripatetics are in the right as to
what they assert concerning prudence, love of
knowledge, human commerce and society, temper-
ance, modesty, magnanimity, and all other kinds
of virtue ? No, the stoics frankly acknowledge, that
the peripatetics have succeeded admirably well
upon all these heads, but that Zeno stands excused,
upon other grounds, for erecting a separate interest.
Undoubtedly ! Zeno was for setting all things in a
true light! and the errors of the ancients were
intolerable! O the hideous perverseness and
BOOK THE FOURTH. 197
Stupidity of the men, to call a flourishing constitu-
tion, an ignorance of pain, a clear, good eye-sight,
and all the other senses in perfection ; to call these
things good, as if any distinction were to be made
between them and their contraries ! One would
think they might have easily perceived that these
good things of theirs are no more than prccposita,
preferables I Again ; how wise were the old gen-
tlemen, I warrant you, when, instead of advan-
tages of the body to be such as we. should rather
choose to have than be without, they have repre-
sented them as desirable for themselves ! So for
life, there ought to be nothing in it but virtue!
What an escape ! to say, that a condition of life,
garnished with all other accommodations agreeable
to nature, is the more desirable rather than the
more eligible! Virtue^ it seems, is self-sufficient,
to render us as happy as it is possible fpr us to be ;
and when a wise ?nan is at the tip-top of all felicity,
can he wish thiugs were better with him? Yes
truly, he will endeavour to keep out of the way of
pains, diseases, and infirmity! Now was it not
shrewdly done of Zeno, to innovate upon such
pretences and provocations! Neither must we ^
overlook some other hints which you touched upon,
as became a man of art and discretion, that all
vicious habits and actions, whether of imprudence,
injustice, or any other, are of an equal obliquity ;
and that though a man climb to as high a pitch of
virtue, as the nerves of his natural faculties and
198 CICfcAO O* MOBAL ENDS.
learning will carry him, yet his case is as much to
, be pitied as that of the wickedest wretch upon
earth y un till" he arrives at a sinless perfection. For
example, Plato was an extraordinary man, but be-
cause he was not the stoics zvise one, he was as ill
a liver, and as unfortunate a poor soul, as if he had
been the most desperate villain in flesh. What
must the old philosophy do if it were not for these
corrections and amendments ! But still there is no
admission for them into cities, market-places, or
courts of justice ; for if any body should talk at this
rate in public, who could have the patience to hear
him set up for a professor in wisdom and morality?
To persuade us there is nobody can teach the
conduct of life like himself, and yet has the very
same conceptions with other people, the very same
principles, only he changes the significations of
words, (jashiers the old names of things, and fills
up their places with new ones of his own ! What
would you say if a prisoner's counsel, in the
conclusion of his plea, should flatly deny the
inconveniences of banishment or confiscation, for
that they are not fugienda, what we should be
glad to escape, but rejicienda, what we have no rea-
son tb make our choke, and signify to the judge,
that clemency will be thrown away upon his client?
Or if Hannibal were advanced to the city gates,
and had begun a breach, and * stoic should start
up, and prove with might and main, that there is
no harm at all in captivity, slavery, destruction! and
BOOK TH£ FOURTH. 199
devastation ? if the stoics man of wisdom be solely
entitled to virtue and happiness, how came it
to psss (hat our senate inserted the words, quod
EJUS VIRTUTfi, AUT FEJLICITATE, to whose Virtue
and success toe owe, it\ the order tt>ey passed foe
Africanus's triumph? In earnest, it is a very
unaccountable philosophy which expresses itself
abroad in the vulgar forms, but, when it comes
from the press, in its own! and all the while the
things to which new names are assigned, receive no
manner of alteration but what is purely modal and
abstracted. Whether we account of riches, power,
and health, as things properly good, or only pre-
ferable; as long as he that affirms them to be good,
reckons upon them no more than he that will have
them called preferable, what does it signify ? And
therefore it was no wonder that Panaetius, a man
of such remarkable sincerity and seriousness, and
a fit privy-counsellor for Scipio and Laelilius, being
to send Quintus Tubero some advice relating to
patience, has not a word to say against pain's
being an evil, which, if it had not been one, should
have been his grand argument : but shews the
nature and qualities of it, in what degree it is
foreign, and may be thrown off, and by what me-
thods we may support ourselves under it. Now
this man was a stoic, which makes it more proba-
ble that he designed by such a management to dis-
countenance that abuse of words, of which I have
complained. To return, and make a nearer ad-
/*
tOO CICERO OF MORAL ENDS*
vance to yourself, Cato ; give me leave to press
hard upon you, and attempt the comparison
between yours and other assertions, which I prefer
before yours. And as to all points, wherein you
and the ancients are both of a mind, let us allow
them without more ado, and so, if you think good,
fall directly upon those articles which are contro-
verted. The proposal, said he, looks well: come
as close to the business, and thrust as home as you
please. Hitherto your objections have been vulgar
and of course ; and therefore I promise myself you
have higher strain in reserve. Meaning me ? said
I, yet, so far as I am able, 1 will answer your ex-
pectations, and when I am at a stand for want of
something better, take up with coarser convenien-
ces. In the first place then be it established as
a postulate, that we are instigated by nature to
desire and consult for our own safety and well-
being. The subject of our next meditations ought
to be our own nature ; for how should we look to
the mainchance, till we know what it is ? Weare men,
or beings compounded of mind and body, whatever
principles they consist of. The mind and body
therefore challenge our good affections upon the
title of a natural impulse, and from them it is that
we must measure and make out the condition of
the ultimate good. And this, if the premisses may
be depended on, appears to be the acquisition of
the largest and the choicest portion of circum-
stances agreeable to nature. This was the mora
BOOK THE FOURTH. 201
end of the peripatetics ; only they defined it more
compendiously, secundum naturam vivere, to fol-
low nature's rule of life ; this was their summum
bonum. And let your brethren, or yourself, with
all your abilities, satisfy us, if it is possible, how
upon the footing of the precedent propositions, you
will fetch a summum bonum out of honesty or
virtue, or the congruity, in your sense, of our lives
to nature? Or whereabouts, or which way you
have dropped your bodies together with all those
other advantages which lie out of human jurisdic-
tion; not excepting duty itself? How nature
should recommend, and wisdom at the same time
reject all these, I am to learn. But what if instead
of man's chief, good, we were employed to look
out for that of some imaginary living-creature, (to
make use of a fiction for the lightning- up of truth)
with no more than mind or spirit in its substance?
Even such a living-creature would have nothing to
«ay to your moral end. No, it would ask, where
are the blessings of health and repose? .And as it
would be intent upon its own preservation, so it
could not but be hankering after these. What
other end therefore of its existence or action should
it regard, but that of living according to nature f
or in other words, as I have explained it above,
that it should be happy in, if not all, yet the most
and the best of • those circumstances which ar#
agreeable to nature? It is no matter what sort of
animal I instance in, for though it should be my
new fashioned one without flesh and bones, it is the
2 JD
xi
€02 CICEIO OF MORAL EKDS.
same thing : the mind is not without its tone and
affections analogous to those of the body. And
therefore it would finally apprehend its Jinal good
to be as I have described it. Chrysippus, where
he makes a division of animals, observes that
in some the body is the sovereign and excelling
part, in others the mind, and that others again
have this proportionable to that; and then he
comes to state the last and final good which is
proper to every species. Man he had disposed of
under that species in which the mind is principal :
and yet he allots him such a final good, as if instead
of being principally mind, he had thought him no-
thing else. RSo that before you have lighted on
some animal or other that is all over incorporeal,
and utterly unacquainted with any of those things
which are secundum naturam, agreeable to na-
ture, as health, or the like, there is no foundation
for a summum bonum of pure abstracted virtue. -
And how such an animal should exist without
contradicting its own nature, is unconceivable.
You tell us of advantages, which upon the compa-
rison are found so slight and slender, as to disappear
and be lost. And we grant you that such there
are, as Epicurus says of some sorts of pleasure,
so inconsiderable that in a manner they come to
nothing. But are all the advantages of the body,
at least when in due process of time arrived at
perfection, of no better a class than this ? As to
those advantages which are so mean that they are
presently eclipsed by others, it is very often indif-
boob; the fourth. S0»
ferent to us whether we have them or not, as (to
use your own similitudes) it were to no purpose to
light up a candle to the sun, or make over a
counter to the treasury of Croesus. x And those
which are not so easily obscured may sometimes
too be of little account As the accession of a
month to a ten-years life of pleasure has some-r
thing good in it, because it lengthens the pleasure
of it, and yet if we cannot obtain it, the ten-years
life of pleasure hath been a life of pleasure still.
The accession of a month is what I reckon parallel
to the goods of the body. Now it is worth otyp
while to dive after these accessionals : and there-
fore when the stoics give us to learn that a wise
man will rather choose that the virtuous life he
leads shall have, than want, the conveniences of a
Jug and a pitcher, and yet that these utensils con- .
duce nothing to his happiness, they make me smile.
Shall we dispute, or rather laugh such an illustra-
tion out of doors ? Could any thing in nature be
more comical and ridiculous than a man in concern
about the having or not having of a jug ? It is
one of the greatest services for which t can be in-
debted to another, the rescuing my body out of
indispositions and torments. And I am apt to
believe, if the wise man were, at the command of
a tyrant, to be broke upon the wheel, he would
put on another- guess countenance than if he had
let his jug drop ; and muster up all his fortitude
and patience, as well knowing how desperate an
expedition- he is sent upon, and what a dead-doing
S04 CICEKO OF MORAL EKD?.
enemy he has, of torment, to encounter, and that
therefore he must make the most of his virtue. To
return ; it is none of those diminutive advantages
which peribh in comparison, but the total of those
which goes to the completion of our summum
bonum, after which it concerns me to inquire. In
the life of a voluptuary any one pleasure is as none
among so many, and yet it makes a part of a vo-
luptuous life, as little as there is of it A groat
would have lain undistinguished among Croesus's
heaps, and yet he would have been the richer for
it. And thus, though our advantages according
to nature should not be very significant in the
composition of a happy life, nevertheless they come
into it; and since we are agreed in this, that a
natural inclination thrusts us upon the pursuit of
; . those things which are according to nature, it were
proper to have an inventory drawti of them, and
when that is done, we may pick and choose our
. opportunities of inspecting particulars, their extent ,
and diameter, the eminence of their properties, and
in what degree they promote the happiness of life ;
and the nature of ail those advantages which are
so small as to be in a manner undisceraable. In
short, what occasion is* there for making many
words about a matter decided? For nobody
questions but the summum bonum is analogous and
proportioned to the capacity and nature of the
thing to which it is a summum bonum ; and that,
because every being loves itself. Did ever any
6ne yet designedly abandon either all of itself, or
BOOK THE FOURTH. ' 10S
part of itself, or ^ much as the functions and fa-
culties of any part of itself, or stand off from any
of those circumstances which are according to
nature, or any influence or posture of them ? Or
did it ever grow utterly insensible of its original
constitution ? No, there is not a being in nature but
makes much of all advantages, little or great.
Upon what account therefore is man so singular
as to relinquish himself, to discount hia body,
and take up with a summum bonum uncommensti*
rate to the whole of *his person? It is determined
and confessed not only among the stoics, but all
parties whatever, that there must be an analogy
between the summum bonum and the nature of
man : but' bow so? if, consistently with that analo-
gy, the principal good of every thing must lie with-
in the more eminent and distinguishing part of it*
nature* : for in that sense the stoics understand our
summunt bonum. So that you have no more to do
but to make a change in the firstiprinciples of na-
ture ! and, quitting what you have " asserted, that
every animal is no sooner born than engaged to
the love, and taken up with the tuition and de-
fence of itself, to maintain henceforward, that tht
best affections of every living creature are only laid
out upon its distinguishing excellences and privi-
leges, and all its care and attendance epgrossed by
them ! and that every other being solicits the weU
fare of no more than the worthiest and noblest part
of itself ! Though which' way , that noblest part*
206 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
should be such, unlgss in respect of some other no-
ble and worthy part, is unintelligible enough ! And
if that part claims a share too hi our favourable in-
tentions, why should not the summum bonum or
the full measure of all that is desirable, be thought
equivalent to an aggregate of all, or at least, the
greater and choicest part of those things which we
are capacitated to desire? It is equally Phidias's bu-
siness to work a piece of carving, all himself; or to
undertake the finishing of what another band hat
left imperfect And in this case he is an emblem
of wisdom, which does not create men, but gives
the finishing strokes. Not but that she must
well weigh the steps which nature has made, if she
designs there shall be no defects in her work.
Very well ! In what condition do we come out of
the hands of nature? And what is the proper office
and province of wisdom ? What is there wanting
for her to make up ? Is there nothing else to be
consummated but the operations of the intellectual
faculties, which is but a periphrasis for our reason?
Why then indeed a virtuous life must necessarily
be the sole and utmost good of man, because vtr-
tue is the perfection and accomplishment of reason.
Or if the body alone is to be put into the best con-
dition, then let our summum bonum be patched up
out of health, ease, beauty, &c. But because we
*re seeking after the summum bonum of human na-
ture entire, what should hinder us from taking a
view of the result of the question so stated? That
. BOOK THE FOVRTH. 207
all the offices and efforts of wisdom are directed to
the improvement and elevation of human nature,
is universally confessed. And yet nothing will '*
serve some people's turn (to let you see that the stoics
are not the only men in the world from whom I
differ) but surhmum-bonums which are not subject
to our discretion and choice ; as if we were no more
.than animated mechanism : while others of the con-
trafy extreme, take not the least notice of any thing
but the mind, as if a man's body were no more
than a chimcera^ and as if the mind itself had not
its own corporeal seat and vehicle, but were a sort
of abstracted being disengaged from all matter,
(which is such a being fcs I know not what to make
of) and so were to be satiated with virtue alone,
and had no inclination to repose and freedom from
pain. Now every individual of these two factions
might with as good reason entertain a partiality
for the left side of his body, in opposition to the
right ; or shake hands with Herillus, stop at the ' / •
operations of the judgment, and set aside the prac-
tical concurrence of the will. For so far they aye
all alike, that every man's hypothesis is not a whole
one, while he takes in as much of human nature as
he pleases, and leaves us the rest. So that only
they can have effectually and fully notified the
summum bonum of man, who have depreciated no
tone part of his body, or power of his soul. But
because, Cato, no philosopher, will put you upon
proving that virtue is the main excellency and best
208 CICERO OF MORAL END*.
accomplishment of human nature, and because wise
and good men are looked upon as instances of an
adequate perfection, you are always flashing this
concession upon our understandings. Whereas
every animal has some good quality predominant in
him ; a^ for example, a horse or a dog : and yet
his health and ease are things which turn to account.
Accordingly virtue being the first and most tran-
scendent qualification of human nature, man takes
the denomination of perfect from that sovereign in-
gredient of his perfection. Seriously the different
methods and processes of nature ought to have
been better considered by you. When she has
ripened men into philosophers, it is not necessary
that she should do by their bodies as if they were
so many stalks of corn at full age, leave them be-
hind for stubble, or loose straws. No ; she accepts
of the due shadings and masterly touches without
expunging the out-lines herself had adjusted. Rea-
son is an addition and superstructure upon seme }
and when it comes to take its place, cannot be sup-
posed to exterminate the other. The cultivation
of a vine consists in taking such a just care of it, as
that all its parts may thrive : now suppose (as for
explication and instruction-sake you stoics never
make any scruple of putting imaginary cases) sup-
pose, I say, this faculty of cultivation lay within the
vine, no doubt it would set a higher value upoq
itself than upon all the substance of the vine,
and determine for itself that nothing in the vine be-
BOOK THi IOURTH. i0§
aide is comparable to it ; and yet it would not wil-
lingly be destitute of whatever else in> the vine con-
curs towards the support and improvement of it.
In like manner when reason comes into play, and
exercises the supreme authority ; the prima natu-
re, the antecedent provisions of nature f become
subjects and vassals to it : and yet the sensitive
part is as serviceable as ever, botlr to nature and
itself* In thfc mean time reason is to execute. that
regal pffice which she holds, in all the parts of it,
and regulate the whole series of life. Now these
things laid together, who can choose but be sur-
prised at the inconsistency of the stoics? They at-
tribute it to, the opjx^ or natural appetite, to duty
and to virtue itself, the custody of those things
which are according to nature; but whea they take
a flight to their surnmum bonum, these are all left
behind, and rather than they shall be shut up to-
gether into one and the same end, one and the
same energy of the will is subdivided, and these
things we are to make our choice, and those we are to
pursue. You assure us notwithstanding that if any
thing beside virtue has any relation to the hap-
piness of life, there can be no such thing as virtue,
Whereas, on the contrary it is impossible for vir-
tue to commence, Mjitess heir acceptances and refu~
sals be allowed to go along with the account of the
surnmum bonum. For if these are taken away, im-
mediately we slide into Arislo's absurdities^ for-
getting those very principles out of which jve ex-
2 £
f 10 CICERO OF MORAL EHPfi.
tracted virtue ; or if tbey are dispensed with, but %
not so as to retain their relation to the summum
honum, then we are in a direct road to the extrava-
gances of Herillus, make life to be twofold, and
institute a double rule of it answerable to his brace
of distinct summum bonums, which, if they had
been any, must have been united ; whereas now
a days they are set at distances wide enough. To
see the ungainliness of some people ! ' It is plain
you are got on the wrong side of the hedge, for
that unless the antecedent provisions of nature be
reckoned along with virtue into the total of the
summum bonum, we turn virtue into an impossibi-
lity. For genuine virtue, which we have now been
in quest of, never neglects any part of human na-
ture, but consults for the whole, whereas the virtue
which the stoics patronise, takes one part of human
nature into its protection, and leaves the rest
to shift for itself. The earliest essays of appetite
tend toward the securing of that condition of nature
wherein we are born, and could our constitution
speak,, it would second me. Well but, say you,
that is before it appears what it is to which nature
has a principal regard. And let that be assigned
as soon as you please ; will this proposition fare the
worse, no part of our nature is to be voerlooked?
Now if we are made up of nothing more than pure
reason, then can our ultimate good be made up of
nothing hut pure virtue. But if we have bodies too,
then is this the consequence of resting iu any 6uch
BOOK THE FOURTH. til
supposition, that so much of our nature as antece-
dently to that supposition we adhered to, in the re*
suit we are obliged to forgo; that is to say, if we
will live according to nature, the only, way is to
desert hen As we have known some philosophers
that when they have come within sight of objects of
a more eminent and glorious kind, have bid adieu
to the senses from which their first measures were
taken ; even so the speculators of your order, when
they had heen viewing the graces and charms of
virtue through the inclinations of human nature,
flung away the telescope, and remembering imper-
fectly that all desirable or valuable beings are such
throughout, and from one to the other, they have
sapped the very foundations, before they were
aware, of that which they so much esteem and ad-
mire* ^QFor which reason, I conceive, all the seve-
ral parties that have established honest e mvere, a
good and virtuous life, for their summum bonum,
have been overseen in that respect. Though some
have had better luck than others. Pyrrho came
by the worst of all, while he magnified virtue at
such a rate as to make every thing else absolutely
worthless and insipid. Aristo was not altogether
so unmerciful ; but as ail occasion and motive for
the inclinations of a wise man to work upon, has
afforded him any subject of thought or object of
imagination that at any time falls in his way. And
forasmuch as he was pleased to vouchsafe natural
inclination something to trust to, he got the start
K
SIS CICKRO OF MORAL ENDS.
of Pyrrbo ; but came behind others of the same
kidney upon this account, that he has quitted the
first provisions of nature. The stoics are - so far
cater-cousins to these philosophers, that they con-
fine the summum bonum to virtue, but then, as in
• reference to their fixing a principle of duty they
are better advised than Pyrrho, so they have suc-
ceeded much beyond Aristo by shunning his occa-
sional subjects and objects. But then again, in par*
ing away the advantages from the substance of the
summum bonum which they confess are natural, and
simply eligible, they play fast and loose with na-
ture, and border upon Aristo ; seeing as he con-
jured up his riddle of occasional subjects and object s f
so they taking up the first provisions of nature di-
vide them from the substance of human good, and
allow them np. place ml the consideration of moral
tnds* Now in representing them under the notion of
things eligible, they seem to assent to the suggestions
of nature, until they come to deny the subserviency
of those things to the happiness of life,, and then
they have done with her. Thus far I have prose-
cuted the proof of that allegation that Zeno had no
real inducement to found a faction contradistinct
to the order of the old philosophers. Let us now
bethink ourselves of proceeding to new matter-
But perhaps, Gato, you may have some animadver-
sions to interpose, or however I shall tire yon.
No remarks till you have made an end, said he,
and the longer you discourse, the better. It is a
felicity I am proud of, said, I, the liberty of con-
BOOK THE FOURTH, SIS
ferring notes about the nature of virtue with so
great a patron and example of it in every species,
as Cato. First then observe that the stoics are
but sharers with all other philosophers who. make
virtue the full and ultimate good of man, in their
characteristical position, their axiom of axioms,
that virtue is our only good, and an honest life the
perfection and consummation of our nature and our
happiness. And as for what you lirge, that if we
reckon upon any thing beside virtue, we destroy
the being of it, : the parties aforementioned can
object as much. Though I have been , rather
disposed to make a judgment of Zeno's exceptions
against Polemo, especially because they start fair
from the same first principles, the former having
borrowed them from the latter ; and to take notice
where Zeno makes his first halt, and how he picks a
quarrel, than of his character in respect of those who,
notwithstanding that they held the same opinions
with Zeno and Polemo, and supported them by the
same arguments, declared that their summum bonums
were no subsequent emergencies of nature. Another
thing which scandalizes me is this, that after you have
been broaching your doctrine of virtue's being our
only good, you require as a thing necessary, that
certain principles or materials congruous and well
adapted to nature come under our choice, in order
to the beirig of virtue. Is it a choice fit for virtue
to be built upon, when the chief and ultimate good
embraced is capable of, and imperfect without
214 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
additions f Certainly the summum bonum y or total
of human good, ought to enclose every thing that
is desirable or eligible, and he that has made prize
of it, has already all that he can have or wish to
have. Further; let us with the Epicurean single
out pleasure for the total of human good, and do
we not presently come to a plain rule and road of
practice ? Is it not apparent and notorious, the
end which the men of that denomination propose
to themselves in discharging offices or duties, and
how far they are concerned to act or not to act ;
and what they are to pursue and what to decline?
This is something like! here you have no sooner
a summum bonum but you understand, of your own
accord, what are the duties and practices which
match with it. But for your summum bonum of
virtue and honesty, it takes up so much room, as
you have extended it, that there is riot a corner left
for any such thing as a principle of duty and action.
And this is that for which yourselves no less than
the friends of occasional subjects and objects are so
much at a loss. You, for your parts, are driven
back again to nature, and the best answer she re-
turns you is a reproof, because you did not fetch
from her as well your ultimate good of life, as your
principles of practice, there being a near connection
and intercourse between all principles of action and
xhtfnal good. She will tell you that as Aristo has
been utterly discountenanced, and with very good
reason, for supposing a parity between and setting
BOOK THE FOURTH. 215
an -equal value upon all things which are not of
the nature of virtue and vice ; so Zeno is under a
great mistake, since with him nothing but what is
matter of virtue and vice is in the way to the sum-
mum bonum, and other things make nothing for the
happiness of life, though they have that in them
which is sufficient to sway the will; as if any thing .
out of the summum bqnum could command such a
choice or propensity. What can be more absurd
and preposterous than this method of yours, first
to find out the summum bonum,- and then to retire
back to the constitution of nature for your principle
of practice or duty ? Do not mistake yourselves.
We are not first called upon by principles of
practice or duty to pursue those things which are
according to nature, but these are the things which
set our inclinations on work, and invites us to
practiced Next we are to try what we can make
of your concise conclusions or consectaries, as you
call them. And first of all for the wonder of
laconism! Whatever is good, is praise-zoorthy ;
whatever is praise-worthy, is matter of virtue and
honour; therefore whatever is good is matter of
virtue and honour. This it is to be run through
with a bulrush' But who, do you think, will
connive at the major or first proposition ? Or in
case it should be received, where is the need of the
second? For if whatsoever is- go6d is praise-
worthy, whatsoever is good must be matter of
virtue and honour. Who, I say, will surrender
Sl6 CICERO OF HOAAL ENDS.
the premisses to you, Pyrrho, Aristo, and their
complices excepted ? Now with all these profes-
sors you are out of conceit As for Aristotle,
" Xenocrates, and the rest of that party, they will
not let you run away with it. Health, strength,
riches, fame, and so forth, are good, say they, though
they are not praise-worthy ; and what if virtue far
surpasses every other human good or excellency,
must therefore virtue alone comprehend the whole
substance of our good? Then again, what expect
you from Epicurus, Hieronymus, and as many .as
have espoused Carneades's summum bonum ? Will
these, can, you imagine, after they have deducted
virtue <fut of that total, comply with your demands ?
or from Callipho, or Diodorus, who have superin-
duced upon virtue that which is heterogeneous qnd
distinct from it?. Oris it Cato's custom to lay
down disputed premisses, and then make his own
conclusions ? There is your sorites also condemned
by us; whatever is good is worthy of our good
wishes ; whatever is worthy of our good wishes, is
desirable; whatever is desirable is praise-worthy :
and so on, for I shall trace it no further. It is
enough to deny you what we denied you before,
that whatever is desirable is praise- worthy. As
wretchedly shallow is that other consectary, that a
man may boast of the constituents of a happy life,
wherein he were not excusable if any thing beside
virtue were of the essence of it; For that matter
Polemo will never stand out with Zeno; no, nor
BOOK THE FOURTH. 217
Polemo's preceptor, nor any one of that or of the
other fraternities that compound their summum
bonum of virtue and other things, though virtue
they account the sovereign simple. And it is
granted'that virtue has incomparably the advantage,
that this, and this alone, affords matter of boasting,
and that whoever has this withfti him, may be hap-
py, under the want of all the * rest. But to say,
that nothing must be counted good but virtue!
Polemo will never be brought to it. Neither will
so much as this aphorism, that there is any thing
in a happy life which affords Matter of boasting
be yielded by those who receive not virtue into
their summum bonum; though by fits they will
maintain, that pleasure may be fairly a subject of
.ostentation. At last you must be convinced then, -
either that you have assumed what will never be
granted you; or, that if it should be granted you,
it will do you no manner of service. The truth on
it is, whenever we are meditating conclusions of this
nature, it ought to be the business and aim of philo-
sophy and philosophers, especially when they are in-
quiring after the summum bonum, to rectify and settle v
the counsels and cpnduct of life much rather than*',
the construction of words. Your short and poinant
demonstrations, with which you confess you are so
much taken, will they rescue a man from his pre-
judices? How pain comes to be an evil, is a point
debated, and we would be rightly informed about -
it. That' it is hateful, vexatious, disagreeable to
2 F
218 CICERO OF MORAL EN 51.
mans nature, and hard to be borne, tbe stoics
will tell you as well as other people; but then
having nothing in it of dishonesty, lewdness, immo-
rality, obliquity, or turpitude, it cannot be possibly
an evil. Now when you have laid this considera-
tion before a timorous man, though he may keep
his countenance, and not think it worth his while
to laugh, yet, I warrant him, he returns every jot
as substantial a coward as he came to his instruc-
tors. It is very strenuously asserted by you, that
so long as any man conceives pain to be an evil,
he cannot but want the true spirit of fortitude.
And will he not therefore become strangely strength-
ened and animated when he apprehends it to be,
as yourselves describe it, a sore affliction, and
hardly to be endured! Verbal distinctions and
quibbles pre but a very poor antidote against a
real consternation. Will you stand by it still, that
if we can make the least fissure in your philosophy,
there is an end of the whole? What is your opi-
nion? Is it only a syllable, or so, that I have
battered down? Or x have I laid all open for a
considerable length together? Or what if the
method, coherence, and articulations of the stoical
hypothesis are so just .and exact as you say they
are ? Have we any reason to befrind consequences
grounded upon false principles, because they are
consistent with themselves, and answer the end
for which they were advanced ? Zeno lost his way,
and madeoff from nature as soon as he sallied
BOOK THE FOURTH. J 19
forth. And having resolved the summum bonum
into that-excellency of soul which we call virtue,
and denied that any thing can be^ truly good beside
virtue and honesty, and that if other things are
allowed the discriminations of better and worse,
virtue cannot stand upon its legs ; having begged
all this, he rightly pursued his inferences. It is
true; he did so, and I dare say nothing to the
contrary. But then those inferences are such
manifest falsities, that we can no longer doubt of
error in the principles from which they are de-
duced, according to the known logical rule, if the
conclusion be false, then the premisses from which
that conclusion fairly follmvs can never be true.
And that same syllogisticai process, , if that be so,
then this is so ; but this is not so, therefore that is
not so, is, in the opinion of the logicians, not only
certain,- but so clear and apparent as not to want
v a reason to back it. And therefore your inferences
failing, your principles come to nothing. And this is
the fate of your consequential doctrines too, that all
parties who fall short of your standard of wisdom
are equally unhappy ; that the wise are as happy as it
is possible for them to be ; that no one good action
is better than another; no one ill action worse;
which at first appearance makes a fine shew, but
will not bear the test of second thoughts. Indeed
there is so little bottom for the parities which Zeno
has supposed, that nature, truth, and common
sense cry out upon him for the wildness of the
f tO CICEBO Of MORAL EHD6.
supposition. And to mend the matter, the little
Carthaginian, (your Citisean friends, 1 need not
tell you, are a Phcenecian colony) when he could
not carry his cause, and the nature of things got
the better of him; what does he, like a cunning
gamester j but pervert the signification of- words?
And the things which before passed under the
character of good, are now to retain no better epi-
thets than those of convenient, commodious, and
suitable to nature! Nor was it Jong before he con*
fessed thus much, that a wise man, or a man com-
pletely happy, is yet happier in the possession of
those things, which we must not upon any term*
call good, than he can be without them. For he
grants that they have their significancy in the na-
ture of things, and that although JPlato be not a
giant in wisdom, yet he is not quite so bad as
Dionysius the tyrant ; there being no hopes that
the latter will ever become a wise man, though it
is not impossible but the former may. So it is
advisable for Plato to live on; but the sooner the
other hangs himself the better. And that foras-
much as some sins are wider deviations from duty
than others, some sins are venial, others not; and
that some men are born and bred up to that
degree of folly, as to be utterly incapacitated for
the attaining of wisdom ; but others might acquire
it, if they would mind their business. And thus
he expresses himself in a language different from
that of all other philosophers, though he holds
BOOK THE FOURTH. tf 1
their opinions ;, and notwithstanding all his fury
against any acknowledgment of the goodness of
those things which others dignified with the title
of goody he sets as high a price upon them as they.
What projects then and proclamations might he
have in his head when he reformed the terms!
Had it been but to set up a diversity as welLin
sentiments as in words from the doctrine of the
peripatetics, he ought to have reduced the weight
and worth of those inferior advantages somewhat
below their calculation. And then, with regard
to that which is of the last and largest importance,
a happy life, you are positive it is the sole effect
of virtue, and no -such thing as a congeries of
whatsoever substances or circumstances are suffi-
cient for the occasions of human nature. Either
things or words are the subject-matter of all dis-
putations ; and whether you do not understand
the thing, or misunderstand the name of it, you
are betrayed into a double contest about both.
But if we have nbt fallen beforehand under such
an ignorance or misconstru€tion, then are we to
take as much care as we can that the words we
make use of be well known and received, and ex-
pressive of what they are applied to. Will any
body, if once made sensible how right the ancients
were in their* judgment upon the state of things,
call in question the aptness and propriety of their
words ? But to digress a little from the vindication
of their terms, let us take a slight view . of their
22f CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
tenet*. They suggest, that so soon as the mind
of man apprehends this or that to be consonant
and suitable to nature, it is awakened into a good-
liking and desire of it : that whatever is according
to nature challenges a place in our esteem, and is
to be valued up to the proportion of its significance :
that of the things which are according to nature
there are two sorts, either those thatcarfy-no such
principle in their constitution as that of the desire
aforesaid ; and to these the denomination of me-
ritorious and laudable cannot belong : or else those
which take in such satisfactory and delightful sen-
sations as are proper to animals, together with
those operations and exercises of the rational fa-
culties which are peculiar to man : that the latter
of these, when they are reasonable and regular,
are styled honesty virtuous, becoming, and commend-
able ; the former natural advantages, which in
conjunction with what is honest and virtuous con-
stitute the full measure of a happy life : that
honesty and virtue are infinitely superior to all
those other advantages, which Zeno will not suffer
us to call good, though they who give them that
name, ascribe no more excellencv to them than
Zeno : that whenever we are left, suppose, to the
choice of virtue with health of body, or without
it, we are immediately determined by the voice of
nature, which to prefer : that still probity and
virtue are things of such an over-ruling obliga-
tion and consequence, and of so much higher
300K THE FOURTH. 123
account than whatever can come in competition
with them, and when once we are come to a
certainty as to the matter of truth or falsehood,
right or zvrong^ we must neither be influenced
by any dread of punishment or hopes of reward :.
that those powers and perfections which adorn
our nature are an over-match for the greatest
difficulties, hardships, and adversities; not that
we are to make a mere jesting matter of these, no
disparagement, say they, to the force of virtue >
but this we are to, conclude upon, that things of
this rank concur but subordinately and secondarily
toward the making of our lives happy or unhappy.
Inaword> Zenosets forth the inferior advantages
of life under the titles of valuable, eligible, and
suitable to nature ; and they think fit to give them
the appellation of good, and the largest and best
share of them, they throw into the definition of a
happy life. With Zeno that alone passes for good
which is desirable in its kind : and his happiness
is a good and virtuous one. So that, Cato, when
we come to argue about the thing itself, it is
plain we are cordially agreed, and to all intents
and purposes of the same side and sentiments,
provided our terms be once exchanged. Zeno,
I am "confident, could not but perceive as much,
though he was borne away by an enthusiasm
of big and bouncing words. For either he de-
signed that the words he used should be under-
6tood according to the genuine and common signi-
2^4 CICERO or MORAL ENDS.
fication of them ; and then Pyrrho, Aristo, and
himself are all of a piece : or if he will not come
in a partner with them ; for what reason does he
distinguish himself in expression from some others,
whose principles he cannot distinguish from his
own ? Let the old platonists and their scholars
come out of their graves, and thus undeceive you,
" We have heard a great deal, Cato, of your
" honesty and love of philosophy ; how sincere you
" are in the administration of Justice ; how con-
" scientious in attesting matter of fact ; and there-
" fore it is a mighty surprise to us, that the stoics
" have heaved us out of your better thoughts,
" though they comprehend neither more nor less
" about the nature of good and evil, than what
" our brother Polemo here had thrown in Zeno's
" way. It is true, the terms and forms of speech
•' wherein they deliver themselves, kindle at the
" first hearing a sudden veneration ;. but when the
" substance of the matter has been well examined,
" they will give a man a fit of laughing. If there-
" fore you resolve to stand by the opinions they
" advance, why will you not assert them in proper
" words? Or if you were prevailed upon by the
" argument of authority, how is it that an upstart
" has got the ascendant, to the exclusion of all us
" and of Plato himself? It is your ambition to be
" serviceable at the head of affairs; and who so
" fit as we to qualify and accomplish you for the
" service and support of the commonwealth, in
BOOK TIM FOURTH. 123
(i that high character which yt>u sustain ? Political
"precepts it has been one of our chief concerns to
" look after and lay down: and there is nothing
V that relates to civil government, whether as to
" its kinds and ' conditions, revolutions, laws, pro-
" visions, customs, or the tempers and behaviour.
*' of the people, but what our directions extend to,
" Further; eloquence, you know, is a statesman's
4< beauty, and your particular talent. O ! what
" prodigious advantages might you reap if you
" would look into those volumes which we have
" wrote relating' to it ? " Suppose the great sages
harangued you thus, what have you to say for your-
self? Why after you had taught them their lesson,
said he, the defendant would retain you to speak
for him too ! In the mean time I should crave the
liberty of replying in my place, but that at present
I shall be better pleased to hear you out, and
promise ere lohg a full answer to the platonists
and their lawyer together! Which, undoubtedly,
Cato, will have nothing but tnith in it, and there-
fore must run to this effect : " Gentlemen, I
" have always had a profound esteem for you ;
" you are persohs of no vulgar capacities, and your
" authority is very considerable, but excuse me if
" I think the stoics upon your shoulders have
" seen further than you could, and both concocted
" and cleared the argument with more spirit and
" force of reasoning. These were the men who '
"first found it out, that a good state of health is not
Sg
Sf 6 CICIEO OF MdEAt EK»S.
" a thing desirable, but purely eligible, as being iao-
" properly accounted good, though it is valuable
" too in some measure ; not that they ascribe a
" tittle more or less to it, than you that never
" scruple to give it the name of good. Besides,
" there is another thing which is highly provoking,
" that you ancients, as if you had been barbarous
" bom and bred, (as we Romans tell one another
" sometimes,) are persuaded that a good and vir-
" tuous man had much better live in health, repu-
11 tation, and plenty, than, as Ennius's Alcm&on,
" Circumventus morbo, S$c. With sickness curst,
" an exile, and a beggar. It is certain, you were
" strangely overtaken, in supposing that the former
" leads the happier, the better, and the more
" desirable life of the two._ The stoics are so
" wise as to assign such a life no more than the
" preference upon choice, because though it does
" not surpass the other in any degree oi felicity,
" yet it is better accommodated to nature ; but else
" all men whatsoever, that are not absolutely wise,
" are shut up in one and the same circle of un-
" happiness. This you were little aware oi, but
" the stoics have since discovered it, and resolved,
" that libertines and parricides are upon an equa-
" lity of happiness with the soberest and sincerest
" of us all, if he step short of a consummated wis*
" dom" And then you ihust bring in some of
your urtresembling similitudes ! As if any body
were ignorant that if a club of swimmers are. to
BOO* TKX FOUfcTH. tf7
rile op out of the water, they that are almost re-
turned to the top, are nearer advanced to the region
of respiration, than they that are left at the bottom,
and yet are as little able to breath ? But will it
follow that we must be as miserable as it is possi-
ble for us to be, if we do not come up to the very
utmost verge of virtue, let us make never so suc-
cessful pr6gres9es, never so near approaches to
it ? By all means ! For we must be either eagles,
or stark blind ! And therefore Plato's prospect
into sense and- wisdom, was no better than that of
Phalaris. And wherefore, I beseech you? the
reason is plain. A puppy-dog, that is within a few
hours of the age of seeing, is as blind as another
that is newly whelped. These allusions, Cato, are
far from being parallel to the state of the matter
in question, forasmuch as they imply, that though
you remove and depart as far as you can from
that which you avoid, yet is it all one as if you had
never avoided it, till you stand at the widest dis-
tance from it conceivable : For a swimmer* does
not fetch his breath till his head is above water,
and a whelp sees no more before he sees, than if
he' were never to see. If you are for comparisons,
what think you of a man with dim eyes, and an-
other with a distempered body? These under the
regimen of a skilful hand gradually recover, the
one his seeing, the other his health. Which is the
very case of those who are laying out for virtue,
they are cured of their ill habits, and their false,
* *
Jt8 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
opinions by degrees. Otherwise you must acknow-
ledge that Tiberius Gracchus the son was every
whit as happy a man as his father, though the
latter made it is business to support the common-
wealth, and the former to ruin it. For though the
father was not absolutely a wise man, as whence,
where, or when could you ever produce one ? yet
being sensible of what became him, and what would
recommend him, he made a good proficiency in the
practice of virtue. Or let us set your grandfather
Drusus, and Caius Gracchus his contemporary,
over against one another. As soon as the latter
had given the government a wound, still the former
closed it. Well but impiety and wickedness are
the origin of infelicity. I grant it ; unhappiness is
the portion of the unwise ; but for all that, he who
promotes the good of his countrymen, is not in the
same latitude of unhappiness with him who wishes
and endeavours the destruction of them. For as
fast as we correct the indispositions of the mind,
we refine it up nearer and nearer to the standard
of virtue. Now you do not quarrel with us. for
supposing degrees of improvement, but will by no
means bear of degrees of reformation. And it were
pity to let the argument pass unexamined, which
the stoics bring for the negative : those afts and
sciences which admit of a possibility of further ad-
vances and improvement , do not exclude the possi-
bility if gradual advances in that which is opposite
unto them; but virtue absolutely considered admits
BOOK JHE FOURTH. SS9
of no advances or improvements ; therefore vice,
which is contrary to it, admits of no gradatiofis.
Now the question is, whether uncertainties are to
be determined from certainties, or certainties be
over-ruled by uncertainties, That some vices are
greater than others is not to be denied. But whe-
ther your summum bonum will admit of additions
or not, is hardly so clear. Aqd yet you resolve,
that that which is uncertain shall hold good against
that which is certain, instead of proceeding from
that which is certain, to satisfy yourselves about
that which is uncertain. At this lock we must hold
you. Eor if one vice cannot be worse than an-
other, because nothing can be superadded to that
Which you have taken up with for your ultimate
good, and yet it is notorious that all vices are not
equal, it follows that you must turn away your old
ultimate good, and provide yourselves another.
For this is a never-failing rule, that when the con-
sequence is Jake, the premisses, upon which that
consequence depends, can never be true. And how
comes it about that you are so unhappily wedged ?
Because nothing contents you but a high-flown
summum bonum to make your brags of. Nay,
rather than virtue should not be the only good of
man, we are let loose from all obligations, either
to take care of our health, or to look after our es-
tates, to execute public offices, to prosecute any
concerns, or to discharge any duties of life, $ven
your great catholic good, your principle of honesty
J
ISO CJCJERO 0* MORAL tffbf.
and virtue is given up. And this is the very ob-
jection, which with so much earnestness Chrysip-
pus urges against Aristo. Now it was the foregoing
difficulty which gave birth to these malitia fattaci-
hquentice, in the words of Accius, these wicked
effects of sophistry. When you have set all the
duties of life afloat, wisdom has nothing -left to
support her; and when you confounded all things
together at such a rate as to leave no distinctions
between them, nor matter of option among them,
you vacated the duties of life ; and thus you be-
trayed yourself into inconveniences of a much more
heinous tendency than Aristo ; beside that he went
through-stitch with simplicity and plainness, where-
as your people are full of prevarication. Put the
question to Aristo, whether he accounts as good,
either freedom from pain, or riches, or health, and
he will answer you, no. Or whether he looks upon
their contraries as evil; no again. N Let the same
questions be proposed to Zeno, and he will return
you the very same answers. Hereupon we begin
to stare, and of both demand, how it is possible td
carry on the purposes of life, if it is ail alike to us,
whether we are sick or well, in pain or at ease,
starving with cold and hunger, or in good case and
clothing. Now Aristo will tell us roundly ; you
may live better than so many princes if you please,
and do just' as you please, and never know what it
is to suffer, to desire 9 or to fear. And what says
Zeno ? That this is all madness, and such doctrine
BOOK THE FOURTH. *31
M frustrates the very ends of living; that virtue
and turpitude are as distant from one another as
the poles; that as for other things, no difference lies
between them; that these intermediate things,
which are upon a perfect parity in respect of one
another (keep your countenance if you can, for
there is something very pleasant a coming) are
threefold, either such, as are eligible, such as are
tp he refuted, or suph as are indifferent. Say you
90? Hqw came they then to be perfectly alike
before ? They are so still, say you, in the relation
which they bear to virtue and vice. A great piece
of news indeed ! However let us hear you out.
Your instances, quoth Zeno, of health, riches,
freedom from pain, I cannot dignify with the title
of good, but if you please, I will call then) aywijy-
pita in the Greek, which has been translated pro-
ducta, praposita, prcecipua, (the two last words are
the best, the other sounds harsh,) preferable*. As
I dare not call want, diseases, and pain, evils, but
I make them rejectanea, what we have reason to
avoid. Accordingly, we must not say that we de-
sire or wish for, but that we choose and prefer the
former; nor that, on the Other hand, we avoid,
but that we set aside the latter. Now for Aristotie
and the rest of Plato's retinue; what say they?
Why that that which is according to. nature, is to
be called good; and that which is otherwise, evil.
What think you now of this master of yours ? Does
be not say the same thing with Aristo, while he
234 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
means otherwise ? and does he not mean the same
thing as Aristotle and his brethren, though he will
not *ay the same ? and since he means the same,
Why can he not express himself as other people
would ? At least let him convince me that my
supposing money to be something preferable, rather
than something good, and pain to be rather some-
thing that molests a man, tries his patience, and
is contrary to his nature, than something evil,
weans me ever the more from too great a love of
the first, or makes me ever the less resigning to the
impressions of the last. Our old friend and ac-
quaintance, Marcus Piso, used to make very good
sport with the maxims of the stoics, particularly
upon the * topic before us. Be it so, said he,
riches are not bonum, good, but prcepositum, eligi-
ble. And what are we the better now? Is our
avarice checked upon it ? Prcepositum, indeed, for
a word, has as many syllables again as bonum : and
what of that ? But it has more in it yet. How
the word bonum comes to be applicable to riches,
I cannot inform you; but I. conceive the name of
prcepositum is conferred upon them, because of
their having the preference in general. Upon
which account they cannot but be something extra-
ordinary ! And this was his way of proving that
Zeno seemed to signify, when he disposed of riches
among his praposita or preferables, that they are
of greater consideration and value than Aristotle
had supposed them when he allowed them to be
BOOK THJB FOURTH. 8>3&
something good, but yet no very desirable good
' neither, nor of such a significance as to weigh any
thing in opposition to virtue and honesty. And
so he went through all the terms with which Zeno
equivocated, and made it out, that he had appro-
priated higher titles to those things which he denied
to have any goodness in them, arid that he had
branded those things which he would not endure to
be called evil, with more ghastly appellations,, than
ever a one of us. After this manner the great
Piso, that entertained such a singular esteem for
you (and you know full well how great it was)
came over » the stoics. Two or three words more
to close with, and 1 have done : for it would take
up too much time to confute your assertions in
the detail. It is the same necromantic language
that has reared the scene of every wise man's uni-
versal monarchy, encircled him with mountains of
crowns and sceptres, and created him proprietor
of heaven and earth. It is by virtue of this
that he monopolises all the charms of beauty,
and all the privileges and character of a denizen :
but as for your fools, (that is, the rest of the
world) "they are no better than madmen, and in
circumstances quite contrary to those above men-
tioned. These are your megoSo^a, in our lan-
guage admirabilia, paradoxes. But let us come
forward, and look through them, and we shall find
little cause for wonder. It is but comparing your
words and the true meaning of them together, and
£34 cic&mo or weal ehds.
the dispute is at an end. You affirm that all sins
are equal. Now I do not design to attack this
principle in the same manner as I have formerly
done in defence of Lucius Murena against your
indictment. Then I had a great many unphiloso-
phical auditors, and condescended to the capacities
of the croud. But this time I shall handle the
matter a little more distinctly. I ask then how it
comes about that all sins are equal ? Because no
one virtue is such any more than another, nor any
one vice more a vice than another. This, let me
tell you, has been vigorously controverted ; but let
us proceed and discuss those direct arguments by
which you prove all sins to be equal. If among
the strings of a lute there is never a one in tune,
they are all alike out of tdne ; therefore the inhar-
moniousness of sins in general is the same, and
consequently they are equal. Thus you think to
impose upon us with ambiguities. What if one
string is out of tune as well as another? Does it
follow too that it is as much out of tune as another?
If not, you will get no ground by your similitude.
For what if one sort of avarice is as properly ava-
rice as another ? Shall we thence infer that one sort
is avarice in as great a degree as the other? And
even as pat and parallel is your simile of the pilot,
who, as it is hinted, is equally in fault if the ship
happens to be lost through his means, whether the
cargo be chaff or gold. And so it is all one, if I
do violence to another man, whether that other be
my father or my servant* This is as much as to
BOOK TILE FOURTH. S3&;
say, never any of you knew that the pilot, as such,
is not to concern himself about the lading of the
vessel* Be it fraited with gold or chaff \ his know-
ledge of steering is neither the greater nor the less :
whereas every body is or ought to be sensible,
how widely the relations of parent and servant dif-
fer from one another ; so that notwithstanding it
is of no moment in the business of steering a ship,
what the character is of that which comes to a
miscarriage, yet a great deal depends upon it in
the business of duty. Again; if the ship were la-
den with gold, and cast away through the careless-
ness of the pilot, he is more in fault than if it had
been filled with chaff; because there, is no art or
vocation in the world but what requires a founda-
tion of common prudence^ as it is called ; certainly no
man pretending to skill or science ought to be
. without it. Still then we are as much to seek for
this equality of sins as ever. It is all one for that ;
-the stoics will leave no stone unturned, and thus
they go on : dvery sin is an effect of weakness and
levity ; now for that all unwise people labour, one
y man as much as another, under these two imper-
fections, it inevitably follows that no one sin can be
greater than another. But who told them that all
unzcise men have these imperfections in an equal
degree ? Was Lucius Tubulus no more chargeable
with weakness and inconstancy than Publius Scae-
vola his prosecutor ? Or does there not a dispari-
ty arise out of the nature and circumstances of th«
2S6 CICEBO OF MORAL EKDS.
subject-matter of the fault ? So that in proportion
to the dignity, the bulk, and the number of these,
an abuse is either more or less aggravated or par-
donable? Here then, after all (to draw to a con-
clusion) lies the sole, but fatal mistake of the stoics.
They flatter themselves that they^can clasp-together
two contrary suppositions; As what can be more
irreconcileable than, for the same person, to affirm .
that nothing beside virtue has any goodness in it,
and yet that nature has recommended to our incli-
nations whatever she has accommodated to the
uses and purposes of life ? And sometimes they are
for keeping the track of the first hypothesis, and
then they run riot with Aristo ; sometimes they
will scamper away from it, and then, though they
are superstitiously tenacious of their own terms,
yet in the substance and sense of their philosophy
they are peripatetics true-blue ; over and above
that through their obstinate adherence to their sin-
gularity of expression they contract that moroseness,
austerity, and vehemence of temper, which they
discover both in their words and actions, and to
which Panaetius had so great an* aversion, that he
disclaimed as well the rigour of their maxims, as
their intricate methods of argumentation., He re-
mitted of the former, and was very shy of the lat-
ter. Nobody made more use, as you find in Jais
writings, of Plato, Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theo-
prastus, and Dficaearchus, authors upon whioh I
could heartily wish you too woutft betftbw due at-
.BOOK THE FOURTH. 2J7
tention and application. It grows late, arid it is
time for me to think of going homeward, and
therefore I shall shut up all with this proposal,
, that our conferences may go on. O, said Cato,
by all means ! We cannbt better employ our leisure,
and at our next meeting I expect you will be pa-
tient till I have disarmed you at all points. Let it
suffice, that whereas there is no notion of yours in
which I can acquiesce, there is frothing that dis-
pleases you in stoicism beside uncommon signifi-
cations of our terms : remember that. We will
consider of it, said I, but to spring a doubt at part-
ing is unfair. And so we withdrew.
CICERO
OF
MORAL ENDS.
BOOK V\
Having been a by-stander, my Brutus, at an en-
gagement which happened, and it was no new thiqjj,
between Antiochus and Marcus Piso, in the Ptole-
mfeium, the school so called ; and with me, my
brother Quintus, Titus Pomponius, and my brother
Lucius ; brother I mean, in respect of the love that is
betwixt us, though no more than my cousin-german
in reality ; we agreed, by common consent, that the
academy should be our walking-place for the after-
noon, where we knew we should meet, all that
part of the day, with no disturbance. -Accordingly,
at the hour appointed, we rendezvoused at Piso's .
house, chatted-over the short mile we had to walk
from Diphylus's quarters, and so made our entrance
into the academy, a recess very deservedly cele-
brated; and, according to our wishes, we had it
all to ourselves. Well ! said Piso, whether it be
the effect of apy innate principle, or no more than a
prejudice, I cannot say ; but sure I am, it makes a
240 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
stronger impression upon us, if we behold a place
where any sons of fame have resorted heretofore,
than either to be told the history of their lives, or
to be conversant with their writings. I know it by
myself at this time. These walls put me in mind
of Plato, who, says tradition, held bis disputations
within them, There lay his little garden, which
affects more than my memory, for, methinks, I see
him walking in it just before me. There sat Speu-
sippus, here Xenocrates, there his pupil Polemo ;
that very seat was his, which we are now looking
on. So when our host ilia at home salutes my eye-
sj§ht, (not the new hall of that name, which though
it be the larger in compass, is less than the other
to me,) presently my head is full of Scipio, Cato,
Laelius, but especially of my grandfather. And
for this reason so great use is made of the circum-
stance of place in the art of memory, because the
idea of place naturally excites us to recollection.
It is as you say, Piso, said Quintus, In my pas-
sage hither the Colonean tenement presented itself;
and I saw as plainly Sophocles in it, as I zealously
admire and love him. Giving my memory the
rein, at last I spied out CEdipus too, or the shape
of him at least, advancing this way, and heard him
ask in flowing numbers, Where am I? — .For my
part, says Pomponius, I am an Epicurean, though
you will never let me be one in quiet ; . and as we
came along l?y Epicurus's gardens, Pheedrus, my
particular favourite, you know, afforded me a great
BOOK THE FITTH. S41
deal of his conversation, till the, old proverb at last
came into my thoughts, and then I turned them
and myself from the dead to the living. ' Though
it would be impossible for me, were it x ever so
much my desire, to banish Epicurus out of my
imagination j for we that are of that family are not
contented with having the picture of him preserved
in an ordinary way, but his face must be graven too
upon the outside of our plate, and the seals of our
rings. Pomponius is mferry, said I : he has lost
np time at Athens, -it seems, and is resolved t«
make out his title to his name. But I am seriously
persuaded, Piso, of the truth of your observation,
that the places which they used, have a virtue in
them to excite, enliven, and feed our conceptions
about great and eminent men. When you and I
made a tour to Metagontus, you may remember,
instead of going, directly to my inn, nothing would
serve my turn but I must pay a visit to the place
where Pythagoras died, and to the seat that had
been under him. I must confess there is no part
of Athens which is not beset with these monuments
, and relics, but you cannot imagine hoW much that
portico there strikes my fancy. Not long since
Carneades had it, and there, to my thinking, he is at
this time. I have often scanned his features, and am
apt to believe the very seat yonder misses that burthen
of good sense which rested there, and the satisfac-
tion of that voice which came from it. Every man
In the company, said Piso, has had his own amuse-
S4t eiCBM Of MORAL £K*S.
ment, except your kinsman Lucius ; how does be
stand engaged ? For a wager, in the apartment of
Demosthenes and JEschines, listening, whit genius
and his course of study oblige him, to their oratori-
cal rencounters* You might have saved yourself
the trouble of asking, said Lucius and blushed, if
you had observed my descent to the Phalericum,
where, as the report goes, it was a custom with
Demosthenes to harangue the tide, with a prospect
of speaking louder one day than the sea could roar.
And just now I made a digression a little upon the
tight, and took Pericles's tomb in my way. But I
perceive there is no end on it. From one skirt of
the city to the other a stranger cannot set his foot
upon the ground but he treads upon a jewel of an-
tiquity. The use which a man of understanding
and learning ought to make of these remains, is to
spirit himself on, said Piso, in his imitation of illus-
trious examples. A man of curiosity indeed
regards them only as the pledges of earlier gene-
rations. CJive us leave therefore, forward as you
are of yourself, to quicken your emulation, and
encourage you to copy, as near to the life as you
can, after those originals, whom you so much desire
to be better acquainted with. I am to thank you,
Piso, said I, for your advice to my relation. At the
same time you may be assured by what you see of
him, that he practices up to your instructions.
Whereupon, said he, in a strain of his wonted
•friendliness, it is reasonable that we join forces,
BOOK TBS FIFTH* £43
and help, all hands, toward the young gentleman's
improvement; more especially that we initiate hiiri
in his philosophical studies, for two reasons, first, be-
cause he has the advantage of so good an example,
and one so dear as yourself to lead him the way ;
secondly, because they will be a noble adorning
and superstructure upon the study which he pur-
sues at present. Not that I believe there is great
occasion for suggesting this counsel, to one of him-
self predisposed to take this course; and who
minds his business to so good purpose under An-
tiochus's tuition. I do my best, replied Lucius
with a modest confusion ; by the way my uncle
was making mention of Carneades. That is the
man for my money ; but my infallible guide An-
tiochus forbids me his company. , It is easy to
foresee, said Piso, what opposition the attempt
will meet with in the presence of a certain friend of
ours, (looking at me,) but, for all that, I will ven-
ture to dissuade you from following the new aca-
demics, and bespeak you in behalf of the Old ones,
in which number, as Antiochus must needs have
informed you, beside the academics, properly so
called, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crantor,
and so forth, are the old peripatetics too, and
among them Aristotle, their foreman, perhaps, ex-
cepting Plato, not to be matched among all the
philosophers. Let me prevail with you to set
yourself to the reading of them ; you will find they
will furnish you with helps and directions for all
£44 CIClftO OV MORAL X1TBS.
sorts and parts of learning, humanity, history,
rhetoric^ and every other art and science ; in a
word, a man can never be fit for any matters ex-
traordinary, until these have made him so; as
they have been the making of many an orator, gene-
ral, and statesman ; besides multitudes of artisans
of an inferior character, as in mathematics, poetry,
music, and medicine, which this seminary of uni-
versal knowledge has bred. I am very sensible,
said I, of the truth of all this ; you know I am ;
and well pleased that you have fallen upon so sea-
sonable a subject of discourse, my cousin being
ambitious of a right notion of that hypothesis which
the old academics and peripatetics you speak of,
propagated about moral ends. And in regard Sta-
seas the Neapolitan was your companion for many
years together, and for several months last past
you have laid it out for your business, as we know
very well, by the help of Antiochus here at Athens,
to make yourself master of the whole hypothesis ;
who so fit to explain it as yourself? At which
smiling, Well, said he, I find then. I am to run the
first heat, and since it must be so, I will give the
young gentleman as good a light into the matter as
I can, the silence and commodiousness of this re-
tirement inviting me tp dq what never an oracle
in the world could have persuaded* me I ever
should, and that is, to exercise the function of a
philosophy-lecturer in the academy. This query
first however ;- in endeavouring to be serviceable
BOOK THE FIFTH. 945
to one of you, shall I not be troublesome to the
. rest ? Yes, to me, no doubt, said I, that have been
requesting the favour ! at the same time Pompo-
nius and my brother Quintus entreated, they might
be so happy as to hear him ; whereupon Piso be-
gan. Now, Brutus, you are a judge of his exposi-
tion of Antiochus's notions, whether it was right
or not, because you have : received ample instruc- .
tions from his brother Aristus. Besides, or I arm
under a mistake, you are an admirer of his princi-
- pies : let me pray you therefore to take good no-
tice of what Piso told us to the following effect.
I have already specified, said he, the peculiar ex-
cellences, and the advantageous oeconoray of the
peripatetical scheme. The whole of it, as of aH
the other hypotheses, lies distributed into three
parts: the first, physics; the second, logic; an*
the third, morality. So narrowly have these phi-
losophers inspected the fabric aqd constitution of
the universe that perhaps there is never a region
or extent, never a combination of particles in hea-
ven, earth, or ocean, to speak poetically, but their
disquisitions have reached it. In the first place
they took under consideration the origin and ele-
ments of the world, and came to resolutions con-
cerning them, not merely plausible and specious,
but mathematical and demonstrative. They laid
together all such assertions or effata as appeared
to have the greatest evidence, and upon the suffi-
ciency of that stock they still traded on to the
246 ■ cicero or moral ek&s.
more occult and remote dispositions and affections
of nature. Aristotle has described and accounted
for the generation, nutrition, and organical struc-
ture of all kinds of animals. Theophrastus has
done as much for plants and vegetables of every
species. -By the help of these collections the hid-
den forms and properties of things are discovered
more easily. The same instructors have left a
body of directions both for logic and rhetoric;
and Aristotle, their generalissimo, brought into
play the method of maintaining both sides of the
question, to the £nd that whatever can be said
pro or con upon every argument may have its full
force ; and not in order to contradict and over-
throw whatever shall be alleged, as Arcesilas pro-
posed. In managing the third part of philosophy
relating .to the conduct of life, they concerned
themselves with more than the condition of private
persons, and prescribed for the modelling and re-
gulation of a body politic. To Aristotle are we
debtors for the descriptions he has transmitted of
the manners, customs, and constitutions, as well
of the barbarous nations as of Greece; and to
Theophrastus for that knowledge which is come to
us, of their laws. Both have likewise offered their
sentiments and directions about the forms of pub-
lic government, and the qualifications of the go-
vernors, and have shewn at large wherein consists
the perfection of political establishment] Theo-
phrastus has favoured us over and above with his
BOOK THE FIFTH* 'S47
observations and maxims about public revolutions,
nice junctures, and the critical seasons for rigor
and indulgence. A retired, contemplative, and
studious life they apprehended to be the best, and
that it most becomes a man of wisdom, as being
of the same kind with the life of the deities. Up-
on all these they have treated gracefully and majes-
tically. With regard to the summum bonum they
have delivered themselves in two different styles
and methods, and one suited to vulgar capacities,
and this they call igcortpixlv ; (proper for the use
of those that are strangers to learning and philo-
sophy) the other, that which is to be found in their
commentaries or dissertations ; correct and elabo-
rate. Not that there is any thing material wherein
they vary or disagree, though seemingly they may
teach us inconsistent lessons. As for instance,
when they are enquiring into, and stating the con-
ditions of a happy life, the grand purpose, I confess,
and the dernier resort of all philosophy, they are
sometimes unresolved upon the question, whether
a wise man may command it if he pleases, or whe-
ther adverse accidents may ruffle and mar it ; some
are for this, and some for that, Theophrastus in
his treatise of a happy life makes large concessions,
and screws up the power of fortune too high : for
if he has truth on his side, ther\ is it really more
than wisdom can do to make us happy : and indeed
his account of things is so enervating and unmanly,
that it derogates net a little from the authority
848 CICERO OF MORAL ENDt.
and pretensions of virtue. Wherefore it will be
advisable for us to keep close to Aristotle and his
son Nichomachus, I mean the books of moral
philosophy which bear his name, though we are
told that Aristotle penned them ; as if it had been
impossible for the son to come up so aear to the
excellences of the father. And yet there will be
no harm in it, if we sometimes call Theophrastus
to our assistance, provided we do not underrate
the strength and forces of virtue as he has done.
To these professors let us confine ourselves, it
having been the misfortune of their successors, that
notwithstanding in their own way they have an-
swered their character much beyond the descen-
dants of the other schools, yet they slid into such
a degeneracy, that one would almost take them for
another sect, by themselves, and from themselves.
Strato, Theophrastus's pupil and immediate suc-
cessor addicted himself wholly to natural philoso-
phy, and succeeded in it very well ; but new and
singular were all the notions he started, and hardly
any of them had a relation to moral subjects.
Lysias was the scholar of Strato, a man of a large
compass of expression, but his matter mean and
steril. Aristo, his disciple, excelled 'in politeness
and elegance, but wanted the main perfection,
seriousnes and solidity of reasoning. He has wrote
many volumes very neatly and handsomely ; it were
to be wished his performances carried in them a
greater sway and cogency. Many others I might
• ~ BOOK THE JIFTH. . S49
mention, as particularly the learned and eloquent
Hieronymus, though in regard indolence is his
summum bonum, it is somewhat absurd to make a
peripatetic of him ; for a different summum bonum
ever implies a different philosophy. Gritolaus's
arguing is almost as ponderous and commanding as
that of the ancients whom he proposed to imitate ;
and this must be said for him, he no where departs
from the good old way ; but then he surfeits you
with a superfluity and luxuriancy of words. Dio-
dorus, a pupil of his, tacks virtue and indolence
together, and so is as singular in his summum bo^
num, and as distinct from the peripatetics as
Hieronymus. But as for the doctrine of the ancients,
my friend Antiochus has been at the pains to repre-
sent it fairly in all its parts, and proves that it was the
same with that which Aristotle and Polemo have since
asserted. Nor has Lucius unadvisedly picked out
the question of summum bonum at this time to be
read upon, seeing, when we have once determined
that, we have as good as passed a judgment upon
all the rest. .Matters less considerable may per-
chance be overlooked, or not thoroughly under-
stood, bnd then the ill consequences of our care-
lessness or ignorance can but bear proportion at
roost to the value or importance of the advantage
neglected : whereas, until we are duly informed
of the nature of the summum bonum, we must live
in the dark, and manage at all ventures ; float upon
the wide ocean without fear or wit, without appre-
JSO CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
hending where we are, or what port we are to
steer for. But when the ultimate ends of good!
and evil are made out, we know what course to
take, and what duties we have to discharge ; for
there must be some end or other which our inten-
tions or actions are aimed at, and this ought to be
the land-mark in our pursuit after the measures and
means of making ourselves happy ; but what this is
at last has been the subject of many a notable dis-
pute. I conceive it our best way to take that method
which proceeds upon the division of Carneades,
and is current with Antiochus. Now Carneades,
besides the several conclusions which the philoso-
phers had come to before him about summum
bonum, considered and comprehended how many
notions it is possible to frame of Jt. No science^
or art, said he, has properly the occasion and de-
sign of itself within itself; these are things distinct
and peculiar. It w.ere needless and tiresome to
run out into instances. Nothing can be clearer
than that art consisting of no more than its own
rules and methods is one thing ; the end and pur-
pose of art another. Medicine is the art of pre-
serving health and restoring it : the directing the
motions of a ship is the art of navigation; and
wisdom or prudence is the art of living : why then
should not this art have a final cause dependent
upon something out of itself as well as any of
the other ? That prudence affects only and alto-
gether what she finds consonant and analogous to
BOOK THE FIFTH. 251
the measures of nature, and essentially sufficient
to excite and engage the ogfug* as the Greeks terra
it, or appetite of the soul, is most generally presup-
posed. The only question is, what thus excites
and engages by virtue of itself, and emerges the
first object of our inclinations ? And this is the
great bone of dissension among the philosophers,
in their searches after the summurn bonum ; for
the dispute about moral ends and the nature of
the final and ultimate good hangs and turns upon
the prima invit amenta natures, whatever in nature
first challenges our inclinations ; for when we have
made a discovery of this, it will be a key to us, and
the whole length of the disquisition about summurn
bonum and its contrary lies open and plain. With
some people it is a clear case, that pleasure is the
thing we catch at from the beginning; and pain
that wbieh we first avoid, and endeavour to divert:
with others, that indolence is our darling, and pain
a nuisance as soon as we are born : others again
are pleased to prefer what they call the prima se-
cundum naturam, the first general provisions and
privileges of nature, such as sound, entire limbs
and organs, neither more nor fewer than a man
ought to have, health, ease, strength, comeliness,
and so forth ; answerable to which the mind has
also her first general provisions, and privileges,
and the kindlings, and foetus, as it were, of virtue.
Under one or other of these three titles must come
,*}^ver affects us, either in order to pur obtaining
25* CICERO OP MORAL ENDS.
or escaping it, for it is impossible that there should
be any fourth, and therefore the .whole concern and
obligation of pursuing this, and eschewing that, is
to be accounted to, and stated by one or other of
these three ; whence it follows that prudence of the
art of living, must have one of these three to lay
hold on for a handle, and for matter to work upon;
and when it appears which of them it is that admi-
nisters the first solicitations or impressions, we can-
not well miss of a right conception of virtue and
honesty. For in conformity to one of these three
generals the essence of virtue will lie, either in
practicing upon a principle and prospect of plea-
sure, though it should be unsuccessfully; or of
indolence, though as unsuccessfully ; or of securing
to ourselves the first general privileges of nature*
Observe by the way, that as manifold as the prin-
ciples in nature are supposed to be, so many and
so various are the accounts of moral ends. There
is another soft of people, who take all these prin-
ciples together, and assign for the scope of duty,
pleasure, indolence, and the first general privileges
of nature, in common, and at large. By this time
I have reckoned up six several opinions concerning
the summum bonum. The first of the three last^
that of pleasure was Aristippus's ; the second that
of indolence, Hieronymus's; arid the third, that of
being furnished with the first general provisions
and privileges of nature, oame from Carneades ;
for though he did not establish it in good earnest
BOOK THE TIFTH. 253
us his own, yet by way of argumentation and ex-
ercise he undertook to defend it These three
hypotheses have taken their chance ; the last of
them has been eagerly and warmly supported,
Indeed it is not to be imagined, how the intent and
resolution of practising upon a pursuit of pleasure,
and that without certainty of success, can imply so
much of virtue, or of any thing simply and solely
good, as that upon the consideration of its being
such, we should drive at pleasure as the end of all
our actions. As nobody ever yet imagined, that
, the escaping of pain and inconvenience, even when
we have the refusal of it, is a thing simply advan-
tageous, but only so upon the comparison. This
we cannot say with regard to the principle of tak-
ing those measures, which may best put or keep us
in possession of what is agreeable to nature. In
the judgment of the stoics there can be no other
princijiJe of virtue, no other notion of gooc[ simply
and for itself desirable, but this. The six uncom-
plete acceptations of summum bonum I have now
laid before you : of which, two had the ill luck to
be thrown up and come to nothing, but the other
four have stood their ground. Thfere are, besides,
three several compound or blended notions of
summum bonum, three and no more, as, if you
search to the bottom of the matter, you will per*
ceive there cannot be ; because it is necessary
either that pleasure, should be coupled with virtue,
according to the project of Callipho and Dinoma-
J54 CICERO OP MORAL EH03.
chus ; or else indolence, as Diodorus would have
it ; or the prima natura, the first general provisions
mid privileges of nature, as the ancients, or the
Aid academics and the peripatetics conceived. It
is not to be expected I should enlarge upon all
these now ; thus much however I may spare time
to advertise, that the principle of pleasure merits
not so much as the favour of connivence, the ends,
for which our being was given us, being abundantly
onore honourable and exalted; whereof more anon.
Indolence has the same objections in a manner,
lying against it, as pleasure. You have seen al-
ready, Brutus, what was insisted upon by Torqua-
tus and me, as to the hypothesis of pleasure ; and
upon that of virtue, considered as the sole good of
man, how I managed the dispute with Cato; so
.that I need only suggest as before, that almost all
the same arguments which bear hard against plea-
sure, will do the doctrine of indolence a like disser-
vice. As little occasion is there that we should
cast about for any other to confute -Carneades. Fix
upon what you will for a summum bonum, if virtue
has no part in it, it will be inconsistent with all
obligations of duty, conscience, and friendship.
Again ; if you graft virtue either upon pleasure or
indolence, the specific excellency of it will turn into
venom* What can be a readier way to overcast,
to sully and tarnish the brightness of virtue than
to assign it a joint influence over us in our coun-
sels and actions, either with a principle according
BOOK THE FIFTH.. 955
to which a man is as happy /as he can be, if he is
not under the sense of any present coil, or else
\vith another which is wholly concerned for the
gratification of the capricious and despicable part
of us ? The masters of the porch are still in the
way, and these have plumed themselves from the
peripatetics and academics, that is, they have taken
their sense of things to themselves, and imposed
new terms of their own devising. Were we to
t&ke all these to task in their order, we should find
our account in it. But the stoics challenge the
opportunity before us, and the rest of them shall
hear from us at a more convenient season. Take
notice, if you please, that Democritus's ei&upa,
or state of inward serenity and good assurance,
cannot enter into the substance of the debate pro-
posed, it being not demanded wherein the happiness
of life consists, but out of what it results: now
Democrit»s's inward satisfaction and complacency
is neither more jior less than happiness of life itself.
Neither are the conceits of Pyrrho, Aristo, and
Herillus, to be fetched into the compass of our
disquisition as now limited ; so that had they not
lost all credit and regard, they would be foreign to
our subject and design. If we will make out any
thing upon the question in hand, concerning the
jinal causes and last consequences of good and evil,
we must turn to what has been taken notice of al-
ready, to that, whatever it be, which is agreeable
to nature, and primarily and simply to be desired*
956 4ICKR6 #P MORAL INDS.
Now this were pure nonsense and folly, if every
thing whose essence is not wholly made up either
of moral goodness or turpitude, had not in it that,
upon the score of which it is more than merely in-
different and insignificant ; and all things that come
under this denomination are every one as good and
MB bad as another, which is what Pyrrho and Aristo
Suppose; and as for Herillus, by resolving the
whole of our good into knowledge or science, he
lias removed the obligations of duty out of sight,
and absolutely vacated the expediency of admoni-
tion and deliberation. Upon the whole; since we
can shew no favour to ever a one of all the other
hypotheses, and it is impossible any beside should
arise, that of the ancients will have its course, and
carry its point in spite of fate. This is it which
the stoics are pleased to make so free with ; and
with this we shall now begin to wade into the main
enquiry. Every {iving creature is possessed by a
love of itself, and is no sooner such than busy
about its own conservation. This zeal and solici-
tousness for its own safety and well-being is im-
planted in it, for that it may be the guardian of
itself, disposed and in a condition to take those
impressions /and measures which nature recom-
mends. Now this fundamental principle of self'
preservation is at the first implicit, confused, and
undistinguished, and it is more than the subject
of it comprehends, what is the nature either of
itself, or of that very propensity, or the force of its
BOOK THE FIFTH. 957
•wn powers ; until it gets ground, and begins to enter-
tain some imaginations and suspicions of things, how
far this and that and the other hath any relation to it,
or can have any effect or influence upon it, and so,
by little and little, it picks up a consciousness and
knowledge of its own compositum. And then the
next thing it sets about is to make prize of those
circumstances which are found agreeable to nature,
and to give the contrary a diversion ; and for this
▼ery purpose the instinct; and prejudice aforesaid
was originally wrought into the soul. The conse-
quence is, that every animal's proper object of
desire must be that in kind which accords to the
measures of nature* And so its final good appears
to be this, that it should live according to nature,
and stand rightly disposed for taking her bent and
for closing with her counsels. To go on ; every
animal has its own species and properties^ and its
final cause is to be commensurate to the capacity %
af its nature. It is true, they all concur in the
more general essentials, and as men and brutes
hoM many qualities in common, so do the brutes
of one predicament with those of another. Never-
theless every species vindicates its distinguishing
and characteristical properties, which are those we
are now concerned for, peculiar, and accommodated
to the purposes and tendencies of its own nature.
Let it therefore be observed, that while we make it
the end of every animal's existence that it should
live according to nature, we neither say nor mean
Si
/
258 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS,
that all animals whatsoever have the very same end
of existence. No art can be without some princi-
plesof science : and so far all arts are equally under
a common necessity ; and yet every art has its
principles of science proper to itself. Thus all
animals are alike concerned to live according
to nature, as different and dissimular as their
natures are from one another; (for the purpose,
a horse's, an oxe's, a man's) because all of
them have their common qualities and affections
wherein they agree. Nor is this only true as to
animals. Every sort and order of things in the
world that subsist in the way of nutrition, growth,
and increase, as we see of the product and fruits of
the earth, pursue their own process of preserving
life, acquiring substance, and attaining the respec-
tive ends of their being. In a word, we may apply
the same observation to all the parts of the universe,
and I will be bold to stand by this assertion, that
every kind of thing is studious of its own safety,
and strives, as after its ultimate end, to fix and en-
sure itself in the very best condition its nature
admits of. And therefore though all things that
have a place in the universe do not exist unto one
and the same end, yet the ends to which they stand
directed, have a near affinity and likeness. And
thus is it fairly proved that living according to na-
ture is the chief and ultimate good of man, that is
to say, living so, as to make the most of our nature,
and to leave no defects in it. What 1 have hitherto
BOOK THE FIFTH. S59
suggested I shall make somewhat clearer yet, be-
speaking your favour, if I overact my part Rea-
sonable allowances are to be ma.de for my young
scholar ; who stands fairly excused, considering his
age, though he should never have known any thing
until now of what' I have told him. You say well;
said I, let me add only this, that there is no part
of your discourse but what young and old too may
find their advantage in. Having shewn, continued
he, the standard whereby we are to judge of the
desirableness of any thing, we must now set forth
and confirm the reasons upon which this rule of
valuation is grounded. And that we may do this
effectually, we will return to the position which
lies at the bottom of all, not only in our method,
but in the order of nature too, namely, that every
animated being loves itself. This, it is certain, is a
principle struck deep, and every sensitive creature
is so necessarily conscious of it, that the man would
be hissed out of all conversation who should venture
to deny it. However, that the least waqt of evi-
dence may not be pretended, I am willing to de-
scend to a more curious demonstration of the truth
of it. Let us take for granted then, though I know
not how we can in modesty so much as put the
case, that some one animal is to be found in the
world which bears a mortal hatred against itself.
That which follows from the supposal is a direct
and immediate contradiction ; as thus : in com-
pliance to that inclination or impulse by which it
260 CICERO OF MORAL SWftA
is prompted to commit hostilities upon itself, it will
earnestly endeavour to give itself the satisfaction of
compassing that which will be prejudicial and inju-
rious to it. Now this it will do to indulge and
gratify itself; and so in the very same act it will
both hate and love itself, which, is impracticable
and impossible. Before any man can truly become
his own enemy, he must learn to turn good into
evil, and evil into good ; avoid what he has all the
reason in the world to pursue, and pursue what he
has all the reason in the world to avoid. And if
be can do that, it is to no purpose to make more
words about life or the ends of it. But how then
are we to account for the practice of self-murder ?
for one fellow's hanging himself, another's drowning
himself, &c. for that resolution of the old man in
Terence, to make his own life miserable in remem-
brance of his child, and by way of tribute to him?
Alas ! these are not designedly and properly their
own enemies. For what if it is the unhappiness of
some people that they give way too much to their
grief, of others that they cannot moderate their
passions, either of desire or anger, and so leap in-
to ruin and destruction with a hearty good will?
They are verily persuaded all the while that they
cannot do themselves a greater piece of service.
They have this to say, and with very good pretence,
as they conceive, mihi sic usus est, 8$c. it is my
pleasure so to do ; I leave you to yours ; pray leave
me to mine. Else, when they had resolved upon
JIOOK THE FIFTH. «6 rf l
a heart-breaking, and were night and day carry-
ing on the comfortable work of maceration, the
malecontents would never charge themsdves, as
they do* with mismanagement, and confess, in the
very practice, that some time or other, in some
respect or other, they have brought mischief and
inconveniences upon themselves; for by such a
complaint they make it appear, that they mean
w6il, after all, to their own persons. And there-
fore when we say at any time, such a man has
done himself a diskindncss, that he is his own foe y
and stands in his own way, and life is such a bur-
then to him that he cannot endure it, the very
supposition implies, that the person is possessed
with an antecedent concern for and regard to him-
self. But this is not the whole truth yet : for
beside that nobody entertains an hatred against
himself, every body, as it must be acknowledged,
is solicitous to have his condition and circum*
stances sit right and easy upon him. For if it
should be all one to us, whether matters go well
or ill with us, (as in things of an indifferent and
trivial nature we are neuters and careless) then
must the soul be utterly incapable of any act
pf desire. Again ; to imagine that this principle
'of love does not terminate in a man's own person,
but in something else, were absurd to the highest
degree. It is true, when we come to talk of its
efficacy with relation to friendship, good offices,
astd the exercise of particular virtues, it may be
said in one sense to do so, but then the meaning is
%6i CICXRO OP MORAL £KDI.
ebvious and well known, and binders not at all,
but that when we consider it with respect to our
own persons, it should centre in them. Thus, for
example, we love not ourselves for the sake of any
pleasure; no, we love that for the sake of ourselves.
But to what purpose all this ? Is it not certain
that we love, and which is more, that we passion-
ately love ourselves? Where is the man, or, at
least, how great a rarity, who keeps his colour and
*n even pulse when death surprises him ? not but
it is a very culpable weakness, when our time is
come, to be scared out of our wits. The same
remark and rule hold proportionably as to grief or
pain. Though it is enough for my purpose, if, by
these apprehensions in us, it plainly appears, as it
does, that human nature cannot be reconciled to
its own dissolution. And if some people let the
dread of it run away with their discretion ; from
hence we may the more strongly conclude, that
these excessive fears would never appear in some
people, unless nature allowed them in a moderate
degree. Nor are those persons the only instances
of this aversion who fling away from death, either
because it carries them from the enjoyments of
life, or because they have reason to fear they shall
fare amiss in a future state, or because of the con-
flict and agonies under which they shall probably
labour at the time of expiring. Infants, we see,
before they have conceived the least suspicions of
any such ill consequences, are presently under a
BOOK; THE FIFTH. . 26$
consternation if we tell them, with a design to scare
them, that a bullbeggar is a coming. The brute-
beasts themselves
unfurnished with a force of sense
And policy, to plot their own defence,
(Pacuvius is my author) even these have no sooner
death in view but they are struck with amazement
and horror. Nay further; cannot the presence of
it discompose a man of wisdom ? Nobody will
have the confidence to say s'o. It must run against
the grain, to take his last leave of his friends and
the world. Though the vigour and vehemence of
this principle never shews itself more to advantage
than when indigent people are ready, as thousand*
have been, to suffer any thing rather than die to
rights ; and old decrepit creatures are dragged off
so sorely against their will, desiring with Philocte-
tes to protract a miserable life rather than not live
at all, as he made out a subsistence upon the birds
which he shot. So Atticus tells us, configebat tar-
dus celeres, 8$c
The shafts he sent return'd well-fledg'd with prey
To their disabled owner as he lay ;
The plumes his mantle made —
We have traced the principle down from rational
to irrational animals, and, whether the vegetative
world came fortuitously by it, or, as the men of the
best learning and understanding allege., the sove-
tfi4 CICERO OF MORAL EN9S.
reign cause of the universe entailed it upon the
kind, we may follow it into our very orchards and
gardens. It is wonderful to observe how every
vegetable keeps itself sound and fixed ; either by
the munition of its bark, or the distribution of its
root ; as animals are held to their being and their
kind, by a right disposition of their organs and the
continuity of their parts. There are, who assert
nature as the sole ordering of all these things, and
I subscribe to their opinion ; but yet if others will
have different sentiments I cannot help it; they
must enjoy their own constructions ; only let them
know, if they please, that by human nature I mean
nothing else but man. They are both one and the
same ; and until a man has got a way of disperson-
ating himself, he cannot avoid hankering after those
things which will turn to advantage and good ac-
count. And therefore it was not inconsiderably
done of all the greatest philosophers, to choose for
the starting-place of their inquiries about summum
bonum, the first affections and principles of nature;
for they presumed that whatever beings feel them-
selves inwardly solicited to love themselves, are
under the power of an ingenerated principle oblig-
ing them to pursue whatever is accommodated and
agreeable to their natures. This therefore being
evinced, that every man has naturally a near affec-
tion for himself, in the next place we are to settle
our notions about the nature of man, for the whole
controversy will turn upon that.; Man, it is noto-
BOOK THE FIFTH* 265
rious, consists of body and mind ; the last is
the superior half of him ; the first the inferior.
The structure of his body ^is very remarkable ;
and how far it excels that of other living crea-
tures, as well as the noble oeconomy of his soul,
attended with all the sensitive faculties, and
constituted of those intellectual powers which pre-
side in his composition, being the stupendious
instrument and source of his counsels, his reason,
Iris knowledge, and his virtues ; for the parts and
functions of his body lie a great deal more open
and obnoxious to discovery than the nature of his
soul, and are by, a long disproportion less eminent
and valuable. To begin nevertheless with these ;
it is universally known into what an exact regula-
rity the parts, proportions, the shape, and stature
of the body are wrought and adjusted. No one
can be ignorant of the situation, and external form
of the forehead; eyes, ears, &c, that are proper to
an human body. It is moreover well enough un-
derstood how much it imports us, their being in a
good condition, and duly disposed to exercise their
respective offices ; and that none of them be dis-
tempered or damaged. Nature desires it,* and
there is a certain tone or co-operation of the parts
of the body wherein all such motions and conditions
of them conspire as agree best to nature : insomuch
that if they suffer any distortion or injury, or are
twisted into any aukward or untoward motion or
posture; as when a man is for walking upon all
2 m
■j
266 oicero or moral end*.
four, or backward instead of forward, it looks as
if he bad a mind to run away from himself, and
throw off his nature in a pique. And therefore it is
not at all strange that the ways which posture-mas-
ters, buffoo s and libertines have of bestowing their
limbs, their wriglings, and their broken motions,
should seem a force upon nature. The depravity
gets to a head in the soul first, and afterwards to
complete the metamorphosis, it disjoints the body.
And it is therefore much less a wonder that orderly
and graceful actions and gestures appear so na-
tural. To go on ; the bare existence of the mind
ought by no means to content us ; the perfections
of it we are not to leave out or neglect, but care
must be taken that its faculties be no way impaired
or unaccomplished in any of those virtues which
they are capable of attaining. Each external sense
has its proper capacity, by virtue of which it exerts
itself effectually, and very readily and nimbly catchei
the ideal communications of sensible objects. The
powers or virtues of the soul, or rather of the ex-
celling and transcendent half, that is, of the mind
properly so called, though not a few, stand redu-
cible to these two kinds, those that are inbred or
innate, and known by the name of involuntary;
and those out of which it derives an accessional
lustre of merit, and these are called voluntary or
acquired. Of the former sort are docility or apt-
ness of understanding, memory, and in a word, all
that goes to the making up an ingenious man, or a
man of parts, and is called sagacity, and reach or
BOOK THE FIFTH, *6l
richness of sense. But the latter sort is of the true
and sublimest virtues, prudence, temperance, for-
titude, justice, and the rest of them. This sum-
mary account of the mind and body it was neces-
sary to-set before you that we may come the better
to understand what are the occasions of nature, and
what she expects from us. Now it is evident in
the result, that we could not possibly love ourselves,
nor bo heartily wish and solicit the perfection of
all the parts and powers of our minds and bodies,
did they not challenge our favour and affection
upon their own account, and carry in them almost
all that is fundamental to a happy life, because as
he, that makes the preservation of himself his bu-
siness, cannot but stand well-affected to every part
of himself, so the greater the perfection is, and the
more meritorious and improved the significancy of
any part, the more of our esteem and love it com-
mands, that perfection of life to which we aspire
being all one with a complete collection of virtues
and excellencies intellectual and bodily. And this
is the complefnent of summum bonum, in other
words, of that final human good which has no
other good lying out of it. Now then, we see, and
very clearly too, that forasmuch as every man is a
lover of himself, immediately and for his own
proper sake, he can do no less than be kind to
whatever bears a part in the essence of his body
or his soul, or is instrumental and serviceable
in any action or disposition of either, and that for
S,6$ CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
the proper sakes of the severals. A direct and obvi-
ous consequence of all which is this, that the greater
the worth and excellency is of any parts or proper-
ties that belong to our being, the larger is the share
they are entitled to of our love and esteem. And
so the more this or that is to be valued of those
constituent parts, which are singly to be valued
upon their own accounts, the higher ought itsforce
or virtue to be rated. Thus, for instance, the
virtues of the mind take place of the abilities of
the body, and the voluntary virtues, of the involun-
tary* Indeed properly we ought not to give the
title of virtues to any other but the voluntary, to
which as being the effects of reason, the most ex-
alted of our faculties, the involuntary are not com-
parable. The summum bonum of all those unin-
telligent movers which, among her other species,
nature provides and has in charge, is restrained to
the body. It is shrewdly and plausibly supposed by
the virtuosi, that the soul or mechanical principle of
motion in a hog is constituted of saline particles or a-
eids to preserve itfromputrifying. Not but insome
kinds of brutes, as lions, dogs t horses, we discover
a resemblance or imitation of this or that virtue.
And the case stands otherwise with any of these
than with a hog, because beside the ordinary mo-
tion of their bodies one would almost conclude from
their behavior sometimes that they had rational
souls to set them at work. The soul of man is
consummate in his rational faculties ; as virtue^
BOOK THE FIFTH. 2<>9
which owes itself to them, and affords the philoso-
pher so much matter to work upon, is the consum-
mation of those faculties. Again ; the several
classes of vegetables resemble animals, in their pro-
fciency and perfection. Thus, for example, we
say of a vine, that it lives or is dying, and so of
any tree, that it is young or old, in a thriving or
decaying condition. We^ take the same method*
with them as we do with animals ; what their con-
stitutions require and relish, we administer, and
separate what is noxious. It is one part of the
business of agriculture to breed them, and keep
them alive and flourishing, to make incisions, to
prune, to raise, carry up, and fix the branches
upon stock ; in a word, so propitiously to assist
and encourage nature in her course as that the
vine itself, had it a voice, would return thanks for
the dressing and care bestowed on it. Now the
means of this tuition and cultivation of the vine,
(to keep to that instance) are external, it being
unable, if left destitute of all succour and tendence
from without, by itself to work on its own perfec-
tion. Furthermore ; suppose this vine Should
come to have sense, and appetite, and spontaneous
motion ; how, most probably, would it manage
matters then? Over and above continuing and
promoting those advantages which it formerly re-
ceived from the hand of him who dressed it, would
it not befriend and guard its accessional senses,
appetites, and members too, supposing it had any ?
270 €ICER# OF MOEAL ENDS.
And if its care will be thus extended beyond the
substance and properties which it has had all along
to those which afterwards came into it ; its Jinal
cause will not continue the same as when the gar-
diner looked after it ; for it will now endeavour to
be as just as it can to its nature with all its new
additions and improvements about it. And so its
last Jinal cause is analogous to the first, but yet not
the same : the summum bonum of a vegetable is
quitted, and now it is concerned for that of an
animal. Once more; let rationality be superin-
duced upon sensation ; will it no longer make
provision for the parts and powers which it had
before ? Yes : but yet will it not chiefly favour
and consult for the interests of the last addition?
Will it not be most wedded to those properties and
affections of the soul which are the worthiest and
the best? And these being the intellectual, must
not the complement of its summum bonum be their
perfection ? Thus then rises the ascent or scale of
advantages, as traced from beings of a more
general character to such as have an interest in
that summum bonum which is made out of the best
condition and circumstances that the body can
desire, together with the consummation of the
rational or intelligent faculties. And this being
the state of the case, I cannot have erred in what
I further off intimated before, that, could every
man be acquainted with himself, and frame a right
estimate of the value and significancy of his nature
BOOK THE FIFTH. S7i
and of every part of it, as soon as he is born, that
consummate and supreme good of his which we
are now enquiring for, could not possibly escape
his knowledge even then, and consequently he could
never be overseen or misled. But alas ! the mis-
fortune is, our constitution lies out of the way, and
is not to be understood until a great many years of
ignorance are gone over our heads, and we come
by a slow and insensible progress a little better to
apprehend ourselves. By an original instinct, and
before we can give an account of it, we are recom-
mended and endeared to our own persons ; and
forced upon self-defence and protection by the
elasticity of that principle of self-love which is
begot and born with us. And afterwards when we
ean look deeper into ourselves, we find out our
own beings, and wherein we and other animals are
uhallied, and thence-forward, perhaps, we try to
make up to the. proper end of our existence. Thus
it is also with brutes ; for some time together they
are fastened to the very place where they drew
their first breath, and ere long they set forward to
seek their fortunes as their inclinations carry them :
the young snakes crawl away ; the ducklings pad-
dle; the blackbirds leave the nest; the calves
butt and run atilt ; and the scorpions play their
stings; each in the way of their respective natures.
So for human kind; infants we see, when once
within the threshold of life, lie still as contentedly
as if their souls were to come after them ; till they
172 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
have gathered a little strength and courage, and
then the first experiment they make with their souls
and senses, is, to get upon their legs, and do feats
with their hands, and take knowledge of their
riurses ; by and by there is nothing to be done
without their play-fellows, and no quiet but when
the knot of sportsmen is met, and business going
forward ; little romances must be told them ,* and
when they have any thing to spare, their favourites
partake of their bounty ; nothing shall pass in the
family, hut they will be making their enquiries and
observations ; and so they go on to form and
compose their own notions, and treasure up other
people's ; nobody can come in their way, but they
will be asking his name ; when they outwit or get
the better of their companions, they exult and tri-
umph ; and when they come by the worst on it,
they are dejected and mortified : the cause and
reason of all which 'may be very easily assigned.
There is wrought into our nature an aptitude ad-
monishing us to acquire good habits and improve-
ments; and children before they have laid any
foundation of learning, while there is no more
virtue in them than the seminal miniature, are for
the essaying at " the imitation of it. Things are
so ordered and contrived within us, that of course
we are led on to action and offices of benevolence,
liberality, and gratitude, and our souls are quali-
fied for and disposed to the earning of knowledge,
and the exercises of prudence, and fortitude ; and
BOOK THE FIFTH. 873
their contraries are a nuisance ; no wonder then
that, when little y we should strike out these first
glimmerings and sparklings of virtue, which at long-
run kindle up philosophy into a luminary that con-
ducts us, as commissioned from God, till it brings
us to the ultimate good of human nature : the
prevalency of the principle aforesaid, as I have al-
ready often observed, betraying itself in the state
of the soul's infancy and impotence. At length,
when it has attained maturity and vigour, it com-
prehends the full force and significancy of human
nature, that is, it first of all acquaints itself with
its own domestic affairs, not but it may, if it pleases,
examine and learn what lies beyond. And therefore
if we design to know what we are, we must retire
into nature, consult seriously her occasions, and
embrace her directions. This advice was too re-
markable and weighty to come from a mere mortal,
and therefore it is ascribed to a deity, it being no
less than the oracular instruction of Apollo Pythius,
that zee should beware of not knowing ourselves :
which is as much as to say, that we should not be
ignorant of the nature and powers of the body and
the mind, and that we should propose to ourselves
that condition of life which takes in the largest
circuit of advantages. Now it being proved, that
there is in the mind of man an inbred and original
inclination to the perfection of condition and pleni-
tude of circumstances above-mentioned, it is very
Mr tain that nature can have no after-game, when
Sir
274 CICERO OF MORAL ZVDS.
once we are in possession of the objects desired,
and so the summum bonum must be an aggregate
of those things which we are inclined to desire and
affect upon their own proper account, unless, after
all, we have not yet demonstrated that every par-
ticular included in that aggregate, is by itself, and
for itself, a desirable good. Perhaps it may look
like an omission, my not bestowing pleasure among
those goods of the body I have lately mentioned.
If it does, I shall take some other time to give my
reasons. For in the present inquiry it makes no
difference, whether pleasure be any of those things
which are primarily desirable in the account of
nature, or not. If it has nothing to do among
them, and for my own part I think it none of the
number, it is well I have not made it so. If it has,
and the other opinion is better grounded, it can
give no disturbance to our idea of the summum
bonum. Let pleasure immediately take its place
among our prima naturte, ourjirst general advan-
tages and desirables, and all that can be said, is,
that the body is capable of another good which we
did not think of. What does our definition of
the summum bonum get or lose by this ? Hitherto
have we been prosecuting the argument taken from
the natural principle of self-love and self-preserva-
tion. We shall now proceed upon another, and
prove, that not only because we love ourselves,
but also because every portion and property, whe-
ther of body or soul, has its peculiar office and
BOOK THE FIFTH. VfS
significancy, therefore the sum of all our interest*
and eoncernments lies adequate to these collectively.
To begin with the body ; if any of its parts are
mis-shaped, enfeebled, or maimed, do we not en- »
deavour to cover it from the eye? If we cannot
bide it quite, do not we make a mighty pother to
keep it at least as concealed as we can ? And what
painful treatment and discipline do we cheerfully
undergo to have all set right again, and the part
restored to its natural form and appearimce, though
pertiaps instead of recovering the perfect use of it,
we shall render it more unserviceable than it was
before ? The reason is apparent. For every man
being under indispensable obligations to love and
value himself throughout, and that purely and
immediately for the sake of himself, he is necessi-
tated too to love and value for their own sakes all
the parts of himself, as constituting that whole
which he loves for itself; And so again, as for
the motions and figurations of the parts of the
body, has not nature ordained a certain rule
of decorum and uniformity in these ? Does it not
lie upon a cavalier to avoid unseemliness arid ab-
surdities in his gate, his manner of sitting, and the
adjustment of his mouth and countenance? Is it
riot shocking, when we see a man's nature tortured
.and distressed, either by the aukwardness of his
action, or his placing himself out of figure ? And
seeing our limbs are under such a regulation as
this, can it be denied of the body's comeliness and
276 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS.
symmetry, that it is for itself desirable and valuable?
We are satisfied that by the body's being disfigured
or dismembered, we are really and immediately
incommoded; is it not all reason then, that a
graceful personage should be reckoned so much
the more a valuable and desirable advantage? If
we are tied to laws in our motions and postures,
can beauty be a thing undeserving our regard ? So
for health, strength, ease, are they not precious and
to be coveted, for the intrinsic good of them as well as
for the consequent benefits and opportunities? For
as certainly as our nature is desirous of consumma-
tion and undefectiveness, so certainly it prizes and
affects irrespectively and for the essential impor-
tance of it, that condition of the body which in-
cludes all these, as being thfe most natural ; for die
measures of nature are utterly broke by sickness,
pain, or loss of strength. Come we forward to
the powers and affections of the soul, an object of
contemplation every way more bright and excellent,
and wherein the drift and purpose of nature is
much more discernible and conspicuous," than in
the frame of the body. And first : our very con-
stitution is seasoned with so passionate a desire
and love of knowledge and information, that it will
not bear the least dispute, whether we should
trouble ourselves about attaining them, were it Hot
for the encouragements they meet with in the
world : for what shall we think of the genius of
those youngsters that will not be brow-beaten or
BOOK THE FIFTH. Vft
whipped out of their contemplations and searches?
but are obstinately inquisitive under the terrors of the
rod, and transported with improvement at any price?
that take a prideand pleasure in being communicative,
and pay their attendance to pompous solemnities,
plays, and the' like public entertainments, and so
heartily admire them, as at any time to lose break-
fast, dinner , and supper for them ? Has not every
body beheld, how furiously some people are ad-*
dieted, and how entirely devoted to study and
science? What pennances, what hardships they
will embrace, what risques they will run of destroy-
ing their health, and how little they value their
money and land, when learning and books have ■
seized their affections? How severely they will
work and rack the brain, and think themselves
richly rewarded in the pleasure of being edified?
Homer, I presume, alluded to this, in the fable of
the sirens and their singing. It was not so much
the melody of their notes, nor the variety of their
divisions, nor the novelty and singularity of their
strains that had power enough to interrupt a voyage,
as their pretences to penetration, and their promises
of instruction. It was an effect of this artifice,
that so many vessels were lodged upon the rocks
thereabouts, and to this very tune they call upon
Ulysses in those lines of Homer, which, with other
parts of him, I have translated upon occasion,
O decus Argolicum, quin puppim flectis Ulysses,
27* CIC£ltO OF MORAL EKD5.
Hero, this way-gently steer,
Hither the pride of Hellas bring,
Bring Ulysses, bring him near,
And let the knowing warrior hear
The wooden which we sing.
We salute in mystic lays,
Each vessel as it ploughs the sea,
In fain upon the canvas plays
▲ waoton gale : the maehin stays
Becalm' d with harmony.
Secrets of nature and of art
We to the passenger impart ;
With learning universal sate his mind ;
And leave no mist of ignorance behind ;
But send him home, the wisest of his kind.
Hark ! thy vicf ries we relate,
The vengeance of the gods, and Troy's deserved fate ;
The kings, the fights, the fleet, the tents,
The cause, the conduct, and events —
By the way, the poet was aware, that if he had
made his hero surrender to the magic of theper-
formance> he must have sunk the credit of his
poem. They promise him, if he will attend, his
understanding shall be enlarged ; and who that
is a true friend and admirer of wisdom, as was
. Ulysses, had not suspended the remembrance of
his native soil upon those terms? No; it is a
fruitless and freakish curiosity to aim at an indefi-
nite expanse of knowledge ; but yet when a man
BOOK THE FIFTH. 275
falls in love with letters and speculations, upon a
view of, and with regard to the more noble objects
and uses of them, it is a certain sign of an exalted
soul. To what a stress of intension were Archi-
medes's thoughts engaged ; who when the enemy
made themselves masters of his country, was so
hard at work with his compasses upon his slate,
as not to perceive or know any thing of the matter ;
how was all the soul of Aristoxenus ravished and
overflowed with music ? What a blessing did Ari-
stophanes account it, that he could spend the full
period of his life in a course of learning? Pythago-
ras, Plato, Democritus, did they think much, to
travel to and over the remotest parts of the world
in quest of improvement and information ? It is
impossible any man, that was ever desirous of or
pleased with the knowledge of any thing worth
knowing, can be a stranger to the truth of all this.
Some people, I grant, will tell you, that it is the
pleasure accompanying concerns of this nature
which induces us to mind them : but then either
they do not observe, or else forget how frequently,
when we have no manner of advantage in prospect,
nay and when it is more likely we shall be losers
and sufferers by it, we perceive a most exquisite
and lively satisfaction in furnishing and filling our
intellectuals ; and therefore, it must needs be,
that all such operations and exercises are valuable
and in esteem with us upon their own account.
Indeed the case is so plain that I am ashamed to
S80 CICERO OF MORA!- £NDI.
say more of it. Let every man put the question
to himself, how he fiuds him influenced and af-
fected when he is forming a % judgment either upon
the motions of the, stars and heavenly bodies, or
the occult dispensations in the natural world ; and
what it is which makes history so very agreeable
to him, that he cannot forbear following the series
as far as it will lead him ; that he turns back to
consult afresh those passages which he does not
perfectly retain ; and cannot find it in his heart
to give over till he is come to the close of the nar-
ration, I am sensible too that history is a pro-
fitable and useful study as well as a diverting one ;
but how shall we account for the pleasure and
entertaiment of reading romances and comedies,
which we can make no advantage of? and for our
forwardness to learn the names of men famous in
their generations, of what families they came, the
places of their births, and a thousand other the
like superficial circumstances^ Again; what is the
promising motive with plebeians and mechanics,
and fellows that cannot have the confidence to
suppose they shall ever enterprise any thing con-
siderable ; that these too should be setting up for
historians? and old withered stagers, with one
foot in the grave, when past the possibility of
exerting themselves, do they not, at that time of day
more especially, please themselves with reading and
hearkening to relations of any great exploits or public
transactions? There is therefore no doubt to be made,
' BOOK THE FIFTH* S81
but that we are spirited on to fructify our under*
standings by those encouragements and recom-
mendations, which the means and matter of im-
provement have in them. Agreeably hereunto
the old philosophers represent their wise man as
one of the inhabitants in the fortunate islands,
master at large of his own time and actions, sup-
plied through other hands with all the necessaries
of life, and his only and perpetual business, to
search and examine into the nature of things.
That contemplations of this kind are not only
essentials of positive happiness, but a sovereign
antidote against affliction and sorrow, is certain.
The expedient has been commonly made use of
by the unfortunate, when in a state of captivity
or thraldom, binder confinement, or in exile, to
relieve and amuse their melancholy. Thus Phar
lereus I)emetrius, onee at the head of affairs iq
this very city; when he was driven out of his coun-
try against all right and reason, retired to Alexan-
dria, put himself under the protection of king
Ptolemy, and became a mighty proficient in this
same philosophy which I now recommend. , Theo-
pbrastus was his director ; and he composed many
admirable pieces during that leisure which his
troubles gave him. Nor can we imagine he would
have thus employed himself, under those circum-
stances, for any other end, than purely to cultivate
his faculties, and nourish his reason. Cneius Au-
fidius, cf the praetorian order, an excellent scholar,
S o
£8 J cicsmo or moral ends. •
though he wanted the benefit of his eyes, has de-
clared in my hearing, he would not care what,
external advantages he renounced, if he could
but have his sight. Even sleep we should look
upon as a grievance and inconsistency in nature,
were it not such a refreshment as our bodies re-
quire, and the sovereign restorative when we are
sf>ent and wearied. Otherwise, the best effects
of it are an absolute insensibility and inactivity.
So that we shouW be very well pleased, if things
might be ordered in such a manner, as that either
we could dispense with this repose, octake it out
in a more commgdious way. For when we are
set upon business or studying, we put a force upon
nature, and make a practice of breaking our rest.
There is no one man, no nor animal, but what'
gives very sufficient, and, in truth, most convinc-
ing proofs of the soul's operating perpetually, and
of its utter abhorrence to an eternal stagnation.
This .we may gather from what we find in little
children ; for to them I must refer myself again,
though you may tell me, too much of one thing is
good for nothing ; and yet all the philosophers of
old, and the sect I speak up for especially, were
of the mind, that infants are best able to teach us
what it is our nature would be at, and therefore
they are, ever and. anon looking back to. the crar
die, and the go- cart. Now we may observe,
that though at first the little ones lie helpless
and unactive, yet so ;soon as they are in a condjr
/*
book the rimu SS3:
tton, they become such eager sportsmen, that though
you chastise them, they will not forsake their beloved
recreations, be they never so toilsome and slavish:
and this muddling mercurial humour grows up with
them. It would be a heart- breaking to be condemned
to such a nap as Endymion's, though beforehand we
were sure of a succession of the most glorious and
obliging dreams. Opium can do no more than lay
us finally asleep. It is matter of fact, though very '
unaccountable, that the souls and bodies even of
the greatest miracles of idleness and negligence are
always in motion, and when no longer held in hand
by some obstacle that will not be managed, they
are either for cramming, gaming, or tattlirtg ; and
if they have not had education good enough, to be
able to pass away the time v?ith smatterings of
scholarships then they will employ themselves any
'how to no purpos?, though it were in scratching lines
and figures upon walls and tables. Nay, and the very
brute- animals, which, for a fancy, we keep up and
confine, are disturbed and uneasy under the re-
straint, and impatient to recover that full range and
freedom into which they were born, though they have
more and better feeding than if they were to live
wild. The nobler birth we have had, and the more
generous institutions we have imbibed, the more %
we disdain a total exemption from employment, •
and* a life of luxury and pleasure. The people of a
private station and fortune find themselves work at-
home* Those of a more sanguine, aspiqng temper,
384 CICEBO OF MORAL I»W.
thrust up to a share in the public ministry, and the
tuition of the common- wealth; while others are as
much bigotted to the business of studying and lite-
rature. Now so little of enjoyment and gusto in
it has the sort of life last-mentioned, to flatter those
who follow it, that they must and do make familiar
to them the most earnest intension of thought, and
the harshest acts of self-denial ; and so they may
but turn the imperial, or rather the divine part of
themselves, their understanding and reason, to the
best account, it is all one to them what pleasures
they quit, or what drudgery they do. With reve-
rence they consult the collections of those who have
gone before them, and contribute their own. This
is their occupation, and they are never to be sated.
No ; the meaner concerns of the world are set
aside and forgotten, and they mount after & quarry
worth a thousand of it. So engaging and satisfac-
tory a thing is conversing with books, that those
very men who have set up their rest in the pursuit
of external profit and pleasure, have yet made it
the business of their lives to search into the nature
of things, and account for their dependances and
operations. From all which it is demonstrated,
that man is born to action, of one kind or other:
for action is either^r*f-rate or second; the former
a worthier kind a great deal than the latter. The
principal exercise of all, if you will take my word
for it, and theirs whose hypothesis we are now upon,
is to contemplate and learn the nature and courses
BOOK THE .FIFTH. 185
of the heavenly bodies, and, by dint of reason, *°
dissect and unriddle the secret complications and
communications of the parts of the universe one
with another. The second best is to do the public
what services we can, and to learn and practise all
those duties of prudence, temperance, fortitude,
justice, and every other virtue and habit suitable
to virtue, which are comprised under the title and
character of konestum, and for the knowledge and
practice of which we are beholden to nature, who
shews us the way and trains us to them. For all
things are diminutive and slight in the state of their
imperfection and nonage, and as they come for-
ward they gather bulk and vigour ; nor can it be.
otherwise, because during the first scene of life we
are spiritless, and tender, and uncapable either of
judging or enterprising for the best. Virtue and
a happy life, like the poles, are not to be come at
presently, and a longer time it requires to give our*
selves a thorough knowledge about them. It is a
saying of Plato's, and a golden one, he that can
overtake wisdom, and reach a right seme of things,
though extreme old age overtakes him first, is a
happy man. By this time enough has been said
of the primitive advantages and services of our na-
ture. Next, let the subsequent and more significant
bo considered. In the first formation of an human
body, things, are so contrived, as that it should be
capable of some lesser energies and performances
immediately upon its birth, and afterwards, by de-
286 CICERO OP MORAL EKps.
grees, of "other operations and achievements, till at
last, it becomes able, in a great measure, to act
without the instrumentality of external and adven-
titious aids. And nature has taken much the same
course with the mind ; for she has allowed it the
- privilege of sensor ies, whereby it is so well accom-
modated v with perceptions, as to be in a condition
for working up itself to the use of its powers, jvith
little or no foreign assistance. But yet she has
submitted to the discretion of man, whether bis
greatest excellency shall be in him or not, having
qualified his rational faculties for the entertainment
and exercise- of every virtue, and antecedently to
- any acquisitions of learning imprinted imperfect
ideas of the greatest and most transcendent objects
and things, and brought us so far on our. wa}?, as
just to initiate us in some faint imitations and airy
essays of virtue, only to give us a taste, and put us
in a road. Thence- forward it is our province, whicl*
cannot extend farther than art or industry, to look
about us, and complete the work which nature has
begun, and never to think we have gone far enough
with it, until it is as consummate as it can be.
And when it is so, it will deserve to be deemed in-
finitely more valuable in itself and of higher account
than our senses or any of the other forementionted
perfections or accomplishments - of the body ; infi-
nitely* I say, for the distance of perfection between
the one and the other is so wide that our apprehen-
sion cannot measure it. Thus virtue^ we see, and
• BOOK THE FIFTH. . " 287
the practice which she moves in, demands from us
with a manifest right, our utmost veneration and
application; and whatever of that nature resides
within or is exerted by the soul, comes under the
title of konestum;x>f which more particularly yet
in the sequel, where we shall observe, what ideas
belong to the severals of that denomination, by
what names they are denoted and distinguished,
and what is the force and importance of them. At
present let me rather carry our consequence forward,
and shew you that these honesta (virtuous and
honourable principles and practices) exclusively of
their merit and value resulting from the principle
of self-love, are essentially and for themselves de-
sirable and excellent. And here again the little
children must be summoned, as being the mirrors
which reflect the fairest image of nature. How
eager and emulating are they at their trials of skill?
and how hazardous and difficult are those trials?
How do they hug themselves if they come off
winners ? And how simply they look, if defeated?
How highly they resent it when any thing is laid
to their charge? How well- pleased are they with
commendation and applause ? How furiously will
they bestir themselves - to supplant and over-top
their fellows? How perfect and lasting a remem-
brance do they retain of their benefactors? r How
ready do they shew themselves to make the most
grateful acknowledgments? And the better dis-
•position and temper, they are of, the plainer and
i W CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. *
deeper characters of these hontsta they have about
them. Thus our childhood itself is not without
rudiments and representations of virtue. But
when arrived to an age of maturity and discretion,
what man is there to be found so malevolent and
irreconcileable to human nature, as not to he scan-
dalised at moral turpitude, nor to take a good lik-
ing to moral honesty? The lewdness of some
young libertines, can any one forbear being vexed
at it ? The modesty and staidness of others who,
though a disinterested party, is not delighted and
charmed with? What is more detestable than
' the name of the traitor Pullus Numitor of Fregellse,
1 though the common- wealth of Rome was the better
for him ? On the other hand, is not the memory
of Codrus, reverenced for the dear-bought rescue
of Athens? And are not the daughters of JEric-
theus at this day in great esteem and favour with
every body ? Who speaks a good word for Tubu-
lus? or a slight one of Aristides ? As often as we
read or hear of instances of piety, fidelity, and
generosity can we avoid being strangely won upon
and affected? I do not say we only that are ho-
nourably descended, and have been suitably bred.
How will the base-born blunderers in the upper-
gallery, clap at those words of Pylades in the play,
I am the man, I am Orestes, and at the answer of
Orestes, Believe him not, I am Orestes, If And
when both of them offered to discover himself the
guilty person, and to help out the king at a loss,
BOOK THE riFTH. 885
we heartily wish they might both come off, and
have the satisfaction of living always together.
Whenever this drama comes upon the stage; to
what extasies are we raised of concern and admi-
ration ? Which makes it a clear case, that to be
ready and. resolved to acquit ourselves like men of
honour, especially when there is nothing to be got
by it, and a great deal to be lost, is such a disposi-
tion of soul as every body is really constrained to
encourage and applaud. Neither are the examples
of this kind recorded among the poets and mytko-
logists only ; 4be historians have them in plenty
too, and none so many as our own. When there
was occasion for a person of most exemplary piety
and integrity to conduct into Rome the image of
the IdtR&n goddess, we found such a one in Publius
Scipio ; from us monarchs have received their de-
liverers and protectors; we have had generals
that, to divert the ruin of their country, have thrown
themselves without reluctance into the jaws of
death ; and consuls that precautioned a king, one
of the worst enemies, Rome ever contested with,
when they might have had him poisoned, and ex-
pected him with his army, every hour, before the
walls of the city. We can pride ourselves in the
example of a woman that having been forced, struck
a dagger to her heart, to expiate the pollution, and
a father that did as much for his daughter, to
prevent it. Now it is notorious in these and a
thousand other transactions of the same nature
2 P
290 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS*
unspecified that the agents had so just a sense of
the merit of the action, as rather than they would
not go through-stitch, to throw up the greatest ad-
vantages and satisfactions ; and that when we cele-
brate them for what they did, the worthiness of the
practice is the sole reason inducing us to recognize
it. These historical premisses take up little room,
and a much greater number of instances, I might
appeal to, but these, though there were no more,
will make good our co?iclusion, that every species of
virtue and that honestum which results from it and
is essential to it, is desirable and valuable upon its
wen account. Further ; this honestum has not, in
the latitude of it, any thing of a more glorious and
general importance than the obligations and laws of
human society, and the mutual intercourses of com-
merce and kindness between man and man. These
commence from that natural affection which the
parents bear to their issue, and to one another in
the relation to husband and wife, extending pro-
portionably to all the individuals of the same family;
and spread in order to relations and kinsfolk, whe-
ther by blood or marriage; to friends, neighbours^
fellow-citizens, political colleagues and confederates^
.and ultimately to all mankind. The purpose and
effect of this principle is, that every man gives every
man his due, and, as much as in him lies, keeps up
the spirit of concord and humanity in the world ;
and this is the meaning t)f justice, and those other
virtues which concur with justice^ natural affection^
fcOOK THE FIITTI*. 291
good-nature, liberality, beneficence, courtcousness,
and the like. All which have* their dependance
upon justice ; not' but they conspire and co-operate •
with every other virtue. For that principle being
wedged into human nature which the Greeks call
fc-oXirixoVj the principle of correspondence apd
uniting our interests, every sort of virtue, must
have a communication with those of agreement,
unity and benevolence in societies, as justice reci-
procally influences, enforces and seeks to every
other virtue. From whence it follows that honesty
miist be impracticable without courage and wisdom.
So that this honest urn, it seems, is equivalent to the
. aforesaid Concurrence and combination of virtues,
and compounded of virtue in the habit, and virtue
in the practice. Consequently a course of life
which answers to such a conjunction and course of
virtues is entitled to the appellations of regular,
honest, consistent, steady, and agreeable to nature.
By the way ; though the philosophers confess that
all the virtues ' are thus united and blended with
one another, yet at the same time they find no
difficulty to distinguish and sort them. It is true,
they are in such a manner connected and compli-
cated as that they enter into the essence of each
other, and cannot be dispersed, However each
virtue keeps its peculiar province. Fortitude
carries us through labours, disasters, and dangers;
temperance curbs us in the fruition of pleasure •
frudtnce discerns between good and evil; justice
29* cicero Of moral ends.
distributes to every man his due. And forasmuch
as each virtue has its concern for and regard unto
persons and things abroad, and is desirous and
effective of the good of others, it is moreover evi-
dent that our friends, our brethren, relations, coun-
trymen, and the great universal society, all mankind
in consort, are propter se expetendi, to be valued
and loved upon their own account, and for their
men proper sakes. Nevertheless they constitute no
part of the essence of our ultimate and final good.
So then here are two different kinds of the propter
se expetenda, things to be valued and heed upon
their awn account, the first of those which makes
out the summum bonum, and refer to the mind and
body ; the other, of those external and remste ones,
in which the mind and body have not an immediate
interest, as friends, parents, children, relations,
native country, which are all dear and valuable for
their own sakes too but not in the same nature and
respect as the former. Indeed if all such valuable
externals were a part of the summum bonum, it
were plainly impossible that we should any way
make ourselves masters of it. You will ask me,
how it is that they come into the definition of the
summum bonum, the relations of friendship, consan-
guinity, affinity, §c. and yet make no part of it ? 1 an-
swer that the business of every virtue in its own way
and kind is to vindicate and support these externals by
the discharge of its respective duties. It is in itself of
singular advantage and good consequence to love
j
BOOK THE FIFTH, IJ>9
and honour our friends and our parents, because
the discharge of those duties goes among the recte
facta, the just and good practices which are the
results of virtue. These good practices the men
of an accomplished wisdom are addicted to at the
mere motion and direction of nature ; whereas the
less perfect and improved, though they may be
persons very gallantly disposed and resolved, pro-
ceed upon the motives of glory and repute, which
mimic virtue and honour so to the lite, as to be
frequently mistaken for them. How then would
it feast the souls of some people with delight and
satisfaction, could they but once let go the shadow
that inchants them, and gain a just apprehension
and an adequate knowledge of the most laudable
and illustrious excellency of all, a finished virtue?
Did ever any man, though the most wretched slave
to pleasure, or delirious with his fever of appetite
and passion, taste half that rapture in the enjoy-
ment of bis wishes, as the elder Africanus in the
rout of Hannibal, or the younger in the demolishing
of Carthage ? Who of all the company th&t re-
. galed themselves upon that festivity in their barges
on the Tyber, was flushed with as exquisite an
elevation and joy as the conqueror Lucius Paulus
himself, when he brought his prisoner king Perses
up the river ? Now then, my Lucius make good
use of your time, and let all the virtues in constel-
lation shine in your soul. For by what has
been urged you understand, that whoever . is
j *.
194 C1CIR0 Or MORAL ENDS.
sufficiently practised in them, has bis mind so
ennobled and fortified, that be cannot help be-
ing happy, and when virtue and principles are
at stake, is indifferent to the best and worst
vicissitudes of fortune, and will be the same steady *
cheerful man in spite of all changes and revo-
lutions. For though, it is true, the goods of the
body, as aforesaid, serve to fill up the largest and
completest measure possible of human happiness,
yet a man may be very happy without them :
and so mean and inconsiderable is their quota that
like stars before the meridian sun, they^ are lost
and buried in the radiancy of virtue. But yet
as little room as, we know, they take up among
the constituents of our happiness, to deny they
have any at all would be a bold and a partial
award, and they that have passed it, may do well
to consider whether or no they remember what
first natural principles they stand toj No harm
can come of doing justice to these inferior advan*
tages, provided the extent of their significancy
be rightly stated. A philosopher that studies truth,
not ostentation, will be equally inclined not to
over- rate those conveniences which even the vain-
est boasters of the high-flown sect allow to be
secundum naturam, agreeable to nature; and to
magnify the power and supremacy, as I may say,
of virtue and honesty to so high a pitch, that
the other diminutive advantages, though real,
'shall hardly stand for any in comparison of virtue*
BOOK THE FIFTH* SJ?5
This is doing what is fair on both sides, when we
give virtue all her line, and yet value other things
according to the worth of them. To be short ;
the dimensions and latitude of summum bonum f
must reach so far as we now suppose, and can-
reach no further. And all that the other schools
have done, has been only to take, each for itself,
a limb of this hypothesis, and make a whole one
out of it. Aristotle and Theophrastus frequently
run high in the commendations of science, and ite
intrinsic excellency, What does Herillus in
his zeal but set up science for the summum bonum,
and swear that nothing in the world beside is
valuable and desirable for itself? The ancients
are very full upon the topic of slighting and de-
spising externals. Aristo flies away with U all,
,and assures you that it is not worth while to avoid
any thing but vice, nor to pursue any thing but
virtue. The ancients have made indolence one
of those things which are agreeable to nature ;
and this has been since Hieronymus's summum bo-
num. Callipho had an aching tooth to pleasure^
and, after him, Diodorus conceived as high an
opinion of indolence; but they thought it. their
best way to fetch in virtue too; the good which.
we had principally recommended to them. And
let the patrons of pleasure leap from one little
evasion to another as long as they please ; let
them talk big all the day about virtue, and at last
ayer that pleasure is the only first desirable;
896 CICERO OF MORAL EKDS.
and again, that use or custom is a second nature,
and yet by reason of that second nature, they do
a great many things without proposing pleasure
for the end of their acting — I say no more of
them, but come in the last place to the stoics.
Now these gentlemen have not retailed, but rob-
bed us of all our philosophy at once. And as
it is the trick of common felons, when they have
stole a parcel of goods, to deface and change the
mark of the owner ; so when the stoics had car-
ried off our principles, they disguised the pro-
priety by altering the terms of expression. And
therefore the remaining system which is ours, is
the only one well worthy all men of understanding,
ingenuity, letters, character ; up to magistrates and
monarchs. Here Piso stopped, and after a short
silence, welly says he, what do you think ? Have
I spoke to purpose in vindication of my cause ?
This is not the first time by a great many sir, said
I, of your giving us so right a notion of these
things, as to make us wish we could have your
help at every turn, and then there would be little
occasion for the assistance of the Greeks. Besides,
I should be so much the more pleased with yours,
because I remember, Staseas the Neapolitan, a
peripatetic of the Jirst form, and your preceptor,
when he would set out the sense of this institution,
went another way to work, as being one of those
who maintain, that prosperous or adverse fortune,
external or circumstantial good and ill, carry a
JfcpOK THE FIFTH. SJ97
considerable sway with them. True, said he^
and this exposition, which is that of my friend
Antiochus, is better and more generous a great
deal than that of Staseas. But what business
is it of mine, whether my discourse has made im-
pressions upon you or not ? If you can but kidnap
your kinsman, I desire no more. For my part,
said Lucius, I think you have given us demonstra-
tion, and so, I do verily believe, does my brother.
What say you? said Pisoto me, shall he be mine?
Or is he destined to grow famous in the science of
scepticism, that is, of knowing nothing ? He is left
to his liberty, said I, but withal recollect, if you
please, that I have my liberty too, to prove and
approve what, I must be convinced, is very proba-
ble and reasonable. No, no, said he, poor man,
you cannot conceive, comprehend, or know any
thing ! not you ! Soft and fair, Piso, said I, there
is no such great misunderstanding betwixt us as you
imagine. Had you been a stoic, I should have
dealt plainly with you, and told you that, for my
life, I could have no clear perception of things,
because according to that definition of perception,
which has obtained in the porch, it is impossible to
be satisfied of any but those truths which are self-
evident and cannot be false. This is the ground of
the quarrel between them and us, but as for the
peripatetics, we are their hearty friends. However
we will let alone this ball of eternal strife. — One
affirmation! it should seem you dropped a little in
3d
2£S CICERO Of MORAL ENDS.
haste, which was, that a wise man is always happy.
You slipped it over cunningly, I do not know how.
And yet if it will not hold, I am afraid Tbeophras-
tus's doctrine must, that misfortune, tr&uble, and
bodily pain, have power to ruin the happiness of
Ufe. Methinks it implies a staring repugnancy,
that the same person should at the same time be
happy and encompassed with evils and calamities.
I cannot tell what to make of it. Shall virtue,
said he, suffice in her own name, and by her own
strength, to make a man happy ? Will you allow
that ? or if you do, will you deny the possibility of
a virtuous and good man's being happy under the
sense of some lesser evils ? I am persuaded, said
I, that the efficacy and power of virtue reaches a
great way ; how far exactly I shall take some other
time to determine. At present I would learn,
which way it can extend so far, if any thing besides
virtue has a real goodness in it Strange ! said he,
that when the stoics affirm virtue to be sufficient in
its pur is naturalibus to render us happy, you should
so easily acquiesce, and not when the peripatetics
tell you so ! What they scruple to call mala, evils 9 at
the same time styling them severities,inconveniences 9
uneligible, and cross to nature, we call evils, with
the limitation of little or diminutive. So that if a
man may be happy in the midst of rugged and
ineligible circumstances, he may certainly be so in
the midst of our diminutive evils. Experience has
taught me, Piso, said I, that nobody better discern*
~H
BOOK THE FIFTH. $99
what comes up to the point upon all controversial
occasions, than yourself : which obliges me to think
the fault mine, if you do not conceive what it is I
make a question of, and therefore, pray attend. I
will do you reason, said he, but then you must
answer my question too. I do, said I, in acquaint-
ing you, that I propose not at this time to compute
the forces of virtue, but to examine whether posi-
tions be consistent with positions. In what process?
said he. Zeno, said I, has uttered it with the ma-
jesty of an oracle, virtue is alone sufficient to render
us happy. But wherefore ? He lets you know ;
because there is no other human good beside virtue.
No matter whether this be true or false; thus
much I am sure of, that he talks as consistently
with himself as can be desired. On the contrary,
Epicurus has blurted it out more than once or
twice, that a wise man is always happy, yes, and
if you will believe him, would express his absolute
unconcernedness, nay/ and his satisfaction too,
while he suffered the extremities of a torture*
Now, in this place, I am not angry with him for
ascribing such a predominancy to his summum bo-
num; but this gives me offence, that having before
concluded pain to be the worst of evils, he should
run into such a contradiction blind-fold* Much
the same objection lies at your door. Health,
strength, stature, shape, and all the perfections of
a complete human body, even to the very nails upon
the fingers, you dignify with the name of good, and
300 4ICIE0 OF MORAL ENDS.
the contrary, deformity, disease, infirmity, you call
coil, as do those who never 'knew whether a philo-
sopher were a man or a monster. And of these
externals you make very little account. Though
nevertheless on the score of the body they are good,
and therefore you justly look upon whatever is
effective of them, or may be a means of procuring
them, to be good, as friends, children, relations,
riches, honours, power. Take notice I object no-
thing against all this. But if, as you say, such and
such things are evils, and yet may be the lot of the
wisest, how is it in the power of wisdom alone to ren-
der us happy ? Why not ? answered Piso, t«
render us happy, though not as happy as it is pos-
sible for us to be ? I have not forgot, said I, how
little a while since you suggested this distinction,
and that our friend Antiochus is never without it.
But then the supposition is harsher still, that a
man can be properly happy, and not sufficiently so.
The addition of more to enough ends in too much,
whereas no man can be too happy, nor happier
than happy. So that by your rule Quintus Metel-
lus, said he, a man of as great wisdom probably as
Regulus, and who lived to see three of his sons
consuls, one of those three created censor, and
honoured with a triumph ; a fourth a prcetor ; and
afterwards left them all in a flourishing condition, -
and his daughter well married, having been consul,
censor, qugur, himself, and honoured with a tri-
umph too : bad no more happiness to bis share
BOOK THE FIFTH. 301
than Regulus, (a man of as great wisdom as Metel-
lus,) though Regulus fell into the enemies clutched,
and was starved and watched to death ! Why that
to vine ? said I, you take me for a stoic sure. How
would the stoics confront me? said he. They
would be positive with you, Metellus was no hap-
pier than Regulus. Abide by that, said he, and
let us hear you go on. We straggle, said I : it is
not my design to examine what is true or false, but
who talks consistently. With all my heart, the
stoics, if they please, may affirm that one of them
was happier than the other, but let them look to it,
and when they have wholly resolved our good into
virtue and honest principles and practices, and de-
clared these to be incapable of intension or im-
provement, and that the man who has attained this
single good, this same single good, which is not a
growing one, must be happy in spite of his heart,
let them shew me afterwards, if they can, how one
man may be happier than another. Their sen-
tences have more of a mutual congruity than this
comes to. The coincidence of the several parts of
their philosophy, to give them their due, is admir-
able. All their positions close exactly with one
another ; the initial match with the concluding, and
the intermediate with both. In a word ; they have
the whole Jcnack of separating consequences from
repugnances. By granting a geometrician h\sjirst
principles, you give up all. So if you let it pass,
that nothing but virtue is good, you are obliged to
SOt CICERO OF MORAL ENDS*
admit virtue for the sole constituent of a happy life.
Try it the #ther way, and if the latter is, the former
must be allowed. Now your philosophy cannot
pretend to this. Of the things entitled good there
are three lands : and so your hypothesis trundles
down-hill till it comes to the bottom, and there it
lodges. For, if you could have your wish, the up-
shot of the whole should be, that a man of wisdom
stands in need of nothing else for the establishment
of his happiness. This is a venerable dictate, and
worthy of Socrates and Plato. I will stand to it,
said he. Do so, said I, but then you are to dis-
prove this reasoning, if poverty is an evil, a wise
beggar cannot be a happy man. It is true, Zeno
could presume to stand to it, not only that he must
be a happy man, but a rich one too. Pain is an
mil ; if so, then he cannot be happy that is under
the hands of the executioner. Children are a
blessing ; to lose them, a misfortune. The liberty
of living at home is an advantage; banishment an
evil; health an advantage; sickness an evil; a
carcass whole and sound an advantage ; to be dis-
abled or dismembered an evil: good eyes an advan-
tage ; blindness an evil: now though a wise man
can find a way to be easy, perhaps, under one or
more of these calamities, what will he do with them
all together ? Suppose him blind, bedrid, visited
with the worst of distempers, banished, childless,
indigent, broke upon the. wheel; what will Zeno
think now of his condition? Is he still happy?
■H
JB00K THE FIFTH. 903
Yes. Most happy ? Yes, for it has been Zeno's
opinion ail along, that happiness is as absolute and
unimprovable as virtue, because both are the same.
Most happy? say you, that is inconceivable. And
is your notion a more likely one I beseech you ?
Seeing if we will be concluded by the vulgar, there
is nothing to be said for the happiness of a man
thus loaded with afflictions ; if by the people of
better understanding, they may question indeed,
whether human nature by dint of virtue might
enjoy itself in the bull of Phalaris, but can never
make it a doubt, whether this is reconcileable with
other things, in stoicism, or irreconcileable in your
philosophy. I perceive, said he, Theophrastus's
book of a happy life has prejudiced you. We are
turning out of the road again, said I, but however,
to be free with you, if the circumstances above are
truly evils, I declare for the book. Do not you
take them to be evils ? said he. That is an un*
luckly demand, said I. For let me answer which
way 1 will, I shall force you to shuffle and dodge.
Why so? said he. Either they are evils or not
evils : if the first, no man can be happy that is
involved in them ; if the last, then farewell, all
at once, to the scheme of the peripatetics. I smell
a rat, said he laughing, which is, that you smell
one another. There is danger of your pupil'*
revolt. If he is inclined, said 1, to go over to you,
he may with my free consent. When he is in
your interest he must be in mine. Whereupon,
3*4 CICZRO OP MORAL INDS.
said he to Lucius, Prepare for fresh instructions,
for to you (as Theophrastus has it) I shall direct
my discourse. Philosophy pretends to no merit or
dignity further than as it is the means of accom-
plishing our happiness ; after which all our faculties
and inclinations croud. Herein your brother and
I are agreed. The next inquiry is, whether the
philosophers with all their skill can help us to it.
It is certain we have a very fair chance. To what
purpose else did Plato travel to and over JEgypt,
collecting arithmetical, astronomical, and astro-
logical observations among the barbarian priests?
What errand carried him afterwards to Archytas of
Tarentum, and t* those other Pythagoreans at Lo-
cris, Echecrates, Timseus, Acrion, unless it were
to crown the Socratic philosophy, in which its au-
thor had made him a perfect master, with the
Pythagorean, and contract an acquaintance with
all those parts of knowledge which Socrates disre-
garded ? What led Pythagoras himself over iEgypt
and to the Persian Magi? What made him sail
over so many seas, and foot it over such extended
lengths of barbarous ground? Why did Demo^
critus put himself to the like inconveniences? Of
whom it is at least reported that, to have his thoughts
less desultory and distracted, he put out his eyes;
that he let his estate run to rack, is certain. . And
why did he take no more care of it, but because
he thought his only business was to make his life
happy ? And therefore he devoted himself wholly
*00K THE IIFTH. N -305
to contemplating and examining the ceconomy of
Ihiags, upoft a prospect that he should at last by
that means obtain his ix^u^ia, serenity and cheer-
fulness of .saul, or. as he frequently calls it, bis
q&ap&'a, security , which was his notion ofsummum
bonum ; and an excellent one, but, for all that,
Democritus was far from * bringing philosophy to
perfection* What he has contributed touching
the principles qf morality and virtue is inconsider-
able, and ill-digested. This province was left for
Socrates who begun with it privately in this city,
and afterwards exercised it publicly in th^ place
where we are met. It was taken for granted at
that time of day that a happy life as well as a good
one is wrapped up in virtue. The men of our
school made Zeno sensible of this* and what does
be presently but move in another form, as the
lawyer* word it ? For his sense is the same with
ours ; and yet you make no exceptions, against
him! We are charged with repugnancies, and I
know not what, while he slips his neck out of the
collar by absurdly changing the terms ! Metullus* -
quoth Zeno, was no happier than Regulus, not
but he had the better fortune of the two, that i$ #
the more eligible, though not the more desirable,
and were a man left to his own discretion, he
would rather be Metellus than Regulus. Here is
the difference in short ; I style that thfe happier
condition which he calls the preferable and more
eligible, though at the same time I set no more by
2 Jt
306 ' CICKRO OF MORAL ENDS;
it than the stoics. I signify things by their ordi-
nary names, and they trump up their own ! So
that whenever they begin to speak, we most have
an interpreter, as when ambassadors or foreigners
are to concert affairs with the senate. Whatever
is according to nature^ that I term good; and
whatever is contrary, evil. So does Chrysippus
in the streets or at home, as well as I, though the
man is definition-bound in the school. And is there
then any such great necessity that the philosophers
and the learned should express the value of things
in a different strain from unlearned and ordinary
people ? For after all, had not these adepti thought
their very beings of a superior kind, when they
had settled their valuations, they might as well
have spoke in the language of their fcltow-mortals !
But let them coin their own words till they are
weary, they cannot alter the nature of things. Now
then, lest you correct me a third time for expa-
tiating, let us return to the charge of inconsistency.
You are pleased to fix it upon the terms, whereas
it rather seems to lie in the thing, as you will see
if yeu take it all together. First, the most eminent
stoics contend as much as we for the truth of this
doctrine, that so great is the consequence and im-
portance of virtue, as infinitely to exceed all lesser
considerations : secondly, those advantages which
the stoics represent in such a manner, as though
they had a mind they should make the best figure
possible, and which they recommend for accept-
BOOK THE FIFTH. 307
able, eligible, preferable, and mention either in
terms unheard of and invented by themselves,
product a, for instance, and reductm, (as if om
Should say promotables and rejectibles) m in terms
equivalent to thQse they are displeased at; for
where is the difference between having an inclina-
tion to a thing and being ready to choose it ? If
there is any, that which is in election, and chosen;
bas in my apprehension the better 'of it:, these
advantages, I say, pass with me for good : thirdly,
the question' is, how good and valuable I pretend
them to be. And if these bona, good things, as I
call them, are no more desirable and valuable in
my account than the productd of the stoics are
eligible in theirs, it is sure that upon being com-
pared with and placed near the beams of virtue %
they must necessarily disappear, &nd shrink off.
Still, that cannot be properly a happy life,, which
has the least alloy of evil in it. And so by the
same logic a yielding, full-eared crop, if it harbours
a weed, would not make amends for the reaping !
Nor a ship full of jewels be worth unlading, if a.
cable has suffered in the voyage! For is not each of
these every way parallel to the case ©f a happy
life ? And will you not make a judgment of the
whole from what is known of the most material
part? I hope I may with better assurance call
whatever is according to nature, good, and refuse t
to cancel an immemorial title than affect innova-
tions, and disgrace virtue so as to put other things
308 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS,
in the scale against it, for this the stoics themselves
do by their distinctions, whereas virtue turns the
balance agaioat the globe. It Is a received usage
to give a thing its denomination from that which it
principally consists of. As we say, suppose of this
or that man that he is always merry or pleasant.
And will it justify ..our inverting the character, if
once in his life he should have a fit of the spleen;
Lucilius observes that Marcus Crassus was seen
one single time to laugh, and yet, says the same
author, he restrained his badge of ayl\wrog or
irrisible to his dying day. Polycrates, the Samian,
is a known instance of felicity, who never had sus-
tained any loss or inconvenience till he threw a
ring, which was highly prized by him, into the sea
with his own hand. So he wilfully created himself
one miscarriage, which nevertheless was afterward*
retrieved when the fish that had swallowed the ring,
was taken, and cut up. And yet either this man
was never truly happy, as being a tyrant, and
caaaequentiy wanting in wisdom : or if he had
been a wise man, even then he could not have been
unhappy, when Darius's prafect, Oroetes, drove
him to bis execution. But was he not very cruelly
dealt with? He was; and for all that, virtue
might have made a moot-point of his calamities.
Are the peripatetics permitted to maintain that the
." proportion of^ootf in the life of a good man, that
is to say, of a man wise and virtuous, through-
out preponderates the proportion of his evilf -And,
fiOOK THE tf fTH. 309
pray by the way, whose assertion, fs* tftftH ? The
stoics ? Not sol It is the doctrine of that jtarty
that make pleasure and pain the test of^all good
and evil; they declare loudly that the condition of
a wise man is never without more of the former
than 6f the latter ! Now if those people who pro-
fess they would not, but for the sake of a conse-
quent pleasure, j>o much as rise off their couches
for virtue^ ascribe so much td it ; how are we to
express ourselves, we who vouch ever a one of the
lowest perfections of the mind to transcend so in-
comparably all the advantages, taken together,
which belong to the body, ^b in a manner to null
and erase their very being? Had ever any of tit
the impudence to imagine that a wise man though
never so embarrassed would, if it were in his
power, depart from his virtue to purchase his ease?
Or that it may possibly be more advisable, and the
better way, to act basely, and thrive, than honestly ,
and suffer ; notwithstanding we make no scruple
of calling those things evils which the stoics call
adversities ? We can as little pardon the defection
of Dionysius Heracleotes, who for a pain in his
eyes deserted . his sect, as the hoics themselves.
Zeno had done his best to persuade him that pain,
is no pain, and yet for his life could he not be con-
vinced (as, in truth, how should any one?) that,
because it implies no moral turpitude, and may be
managed, therefore there is nothing of evil in it.
Had he been one of us, he would infallibly have
316 tICERO Of MORAL ENDS.
i stood his ground, because we must have acknow-
ledged it an evil. The rules we inculcate for a
man's bearing up with courage against it, are the
same as the stoics press, nay, and your own Arce-
silas too, who in his heart was as good a peripate-
tic as Polemo his master, only he must have leave
to splutter and wrangle in his way. For when he
jvas tormented with the gout, Carneades, Epicu-
rus s great crony, payed him a visit, and perceiving
that Carneades moved in dudgeon towards the
door. Hark you, my friend, says he,' not so fast,
(and laid his hand upon his feet and his breast,)
it is not ascended hither yet. Still, I warrant him,
.Jie would have been glad to be rid of it. Thus it
appears what a J»yndle of inconsistencies you meet
with in my philosophy! To be short, since under
virtue are comprehended such divine and celestial
excellencies, that wherever it resides, and exerts
itself in laudable practices and memorable actions,
thither misery and xvretchtdness cannot approach,
though pain and molestation may ; it goes with me
for unquestionable, that all kvise men are always
happy, and yet one wise man may be happier than
another. Drive the nail home, Piso, said I, and
arm that assertion at all points, for if you can
maintain' that post, we shall be both your prose-
lytes, my dear Cicero and myself. Seriously, I
think, said Quintus, there wants no further corro-
boration: and I am excessively pleased to find
true what has been so generally denied, that that
BOOK THE FIFTH, 311
philosophy is the best laid together, the furniture
and equipage of which I always preferred to the
whole estate and substance of any other ; having
by experience found it so pregnant and fruitful as
to supply me with whatever materials or utensils
my sort of study required. No, said Pomponius
bantering, My philosophy for solidity and subtilty,
against a thousand ! Well but in good earnest,
you have obliged me, Piso, by rendering what I
was confident could never be rendered, jnto Latin,
and as pure and proper too as the Greek of the
respective originals. But our time is up, gentle-
men ; let us, if you please, adjourn to my quarters.
Accordingly it being conceived we had done
enough for once, we went along with Pomponius
to his end of the town.
THE 'END.
SfS
AN
APPENDIX,
iY THE
TRANSLATOR.
OUtt philosopher having in a direct and methodical way
of confutation, first overthrown the system of Epicurus by
that of the stoics, and the stoical by that of the old academy,
and the peripatetics; or in other words, having effectually
and demonstratively proved that in sensual or corporeal
pleasure cannot lie the perfection of human happiness,
because there are in virtue satisfactions better accommo* '
dated and more truly grateful to human nature; and again,
that virtue alone without all the external goods of body
and fortune cannot accomplish, our happiness, because we
are born with a capacity of enjoying also those lesser ad-
vantages : it yet remains to be considered, whether virtue
in concert with such externals, reaches the measure, and
makes out the whole extent of that felicity which falls within
the condition of our nature. And the rather, because Piso
himself has been obliged in the last period of his discourse
to make this concession, that let a man, after all, be never
jo wise, virtuous, fortunate, and happy, yet disappointment,
and trouble, and vexation, may gaul him ever and anon,
which, even upon the footing of his own principles, is as
much as to say that no man in this world can be happy ;
for if our happiness must be deficient when any of those
tilings are wanting to it which are agreeable to nature, as cer-
tainly as ease, prosperity, and quiet, are agreeable to nature,
so certainly when our affairs are discouraging, the comforts
fj»d fmmnientea of life denied or detained, or any of oar
2»
314 APPENDIX.
pursuits or stratagems defeated, we must be at least pro*
portionably unhappy, and out of sorts. Wherefore, con-
sidering the general uncertainty and variety of interests and
events, and that immediate union and communication be*
tween the several parts, and powers of our nature, by virtue
of which not a fibre in our bodies can be affected with
any disagreeable -sensation, but our whole being is in an
iustant disordered and upon the fret, it is impossible that
these untoward circumstances should uot frequently betide
us, and consequently our happiness will be precarious,
incoherent, incompetent, instead of that to which the
goodness of heaven has most evidently created us, accord-
ing to that capacity of being happy which it has made
peculiar to human nature. Since therefore so complete a
blessedness is unattainable in this life, or rather, since even
a tolerable degree of happiness is more than comes to
the share of the majority of human kind, we may an^ must
as assuredly depend upon its completion in a future state,
provided we do not wilfully run the risk of forfeiting our
.title, as upon the divine benevolence or veracity itself.
Tins argument has, from three known and experimental
proofs, that of the fickleness and mutability of a comfort-
able or a prosperous estate; that of its necessary brevity ;
that of its unfrequency and imperfectness, been enforced
and illustrated, as by many others, so particularly by a
near relation of mine, now among the blessed, in his book
Of the demonstration oftfte law of nature, from sect. HSth
to the end ; so that it would be as superfluous as unbecom-
ing to review those evidences of a future .state, which these
obvious and inevitable conditions of sublunary happiness
afford. But beside these there is a lamentable imperfec-
tion essential to it, and which, though fortune were as
much at our command, as entire, steady, and constant as
virtue, can neither be remedied nor supplied, but by a
jstate of more perfect and plenary happiness in reversion;
and that is the inadequacy of the fullest and the most
consummate happiness imaginable on earth, to that
capacity of being happy w hich belongs to human nature ;
for upou supposition, that after any man has obtained,
which no man ever could, a confluence of all the blessings
and enjoyments which are compatible to his mortality, his
faculties and powers are still capable of other and greater
*no! iuojs durable, satisfactions, as undoubtedly as nature
-^
APPENDIX. 3l£
always acts for ends, and every end must be adequate and
answerable to the capacity of that being whose end it
is, which has been all along, and must ever be presup-
posed in this question, there is reserved for us after the
period of this present life another condition of happiness,
to fill up the measure and reach the full breadth of th^t
capacity of being happy, which is proper to the nature of
man. bo that if this supposition be demonstrated, the
peripatetic model stands equally self-condemned with all
the rest, or rather more than any of them, because that
especially insists upon an exact proportion and parity be-
tween the end and the capacity of the pursuant.
I shall not examine whether our corporeal organs and
. .sensories are iu their present condition capable of more
exquisite and transcendent satisfactions, than those general
and ordinary ones which are common to mankind. I do
not doubt but the patriarchs, prophets, and holy men, in
those visions and representations which God exhibited to
them, found the impressions which were then made upon
their senses more exhilarating and delightful, than any of
the most innocent and delicious gratia" cations, natural to
the constitution of an human body; and hence, I conceive,
it was that St. Peter upon mount Tabor proposed the
erecting of three tabernacles or residences, for . he was
there an eye-witness of the pey*\u6rris of Christ, his majesty
and regal splendor, and of the honour and «£ tow &>£*;> the
imperial glory and grandeur which he received of thfe
Father ; and for this reason, i conceive, as well as for the
benefit of those oracular and important discourses which
passed. between Christ and his two Prophets, the Apostle
took for granted that it was good for him and his fellow-
disciples to abide there. But then from cases so extraor-
dinary as these, we can hardly infer, that our organs are in
themselves qualified for the perception and enjoyment of
any satisfactions more lively and copious, than those which
vulgar objects and methods excite. And though perhaps
by a long series of arguments, and a more careful and cu-
rious inspection into the structure of the parts of the body
this might be shewn, or at least made probable ; yet in
regard the pro.of requires more time and paper than can
be. conveniently allotted to this appendix, and because by
a shorter medium, and the more sure word of prophesy we
are certified, that hereafter the Son of God will change our
316 APPENDIX.
tile body that it may be like unto his glorious body,
and that then we shall be admitted to a sight and sense of
those good things which neither eye has seen, nor ear-
heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man to
conceive. I shall decline all further inquiries upon this
head.
Hie soul of man takes in the three faculties,of appre-
hension, judgment, and will, so that if by virtue of its ap-
prehensive power it is able to entertain purer and larger
ideas, and a greater variety, than it can procure and collect
in the station to which it is here confined ; and so the
judgment being more improved and better furnished, might
Compare, distinguish, and determine more clearly, com-
prehensively, directly, and swiftly than now ; and the will
by the advantage of such easier and more authentic direc-
tions, take right measures, and follow the best bias ;
then it is in a condition to pursue and attain higher ends,
and a more perfect felicity, than that of the peripatetical
sttmmum bonum? the known and ordinary goods of the
mind and body. And if it is in the power of our appre-
hensions to receive ideas of greater and more delectable
objects, or at least more genuine, expressive, and fair ideas
of them, than any of these familiar ones which we meet
with in this life, it will follow that our judgment, and will,
and those benefits and advantages which flow from a right
use of them, are proportionably improvable, seeing all the
wrong* motions and errors of the judgment and will are
occasioned by our apprehending either imperfectly or
falsely, what we seem to apprehend entirely and really ; and
were our simple conceptions clear and adequate, the prin-
ciple of self-love and self-preservation would necessitate
us not to confound or misunderstand their mutual relations
designedly, and if this never happened, the elective faculty,
under the influence of the same principle. Could not but
Jmrsue and choose as it ought, and consequently with good
uccess.
That the apprehensive faculty is capable of receiving
and entertaining clearer and more perfect ideas, and of
more perfect objects than those of this life, every man,
as .he is conscious of his own nature, cannot but- know ;
for that by observation and application we daily multiply,
rectify, and improve our ideas - of such objects as occur,
and yet we find ourselves as capable of enlarging and im-
APPENDIX. 317
proving our stock at the end of life as at the beginning ;
and the happier we have been in our acquisitions of this
kind, and the more time we have spent in heaping up no*
tices and conceptions, the more sensible we are as well of
the paucity of them, as the obscurity and the inadequacy,
and of the sufficiency of our apprehensive faculty to admit
a great many more, and those, as well srs others collected
and received, abundantly more clear and perfect, indeed
there are no ideas (except the abstracted) so entire and
consummate, however genuine according to the measure
and proportion of their significancy, but what might be
more full, conspicuous, and entire, than as they are exhi-
bited. Thus for instance, our idea of light 9 though ge-
nuine and true as we conceive it that which affects our
orgajns of seeing after such a peculiar manner 9 yet is de-
fective and general, and takes not in a distinct and adequate
notion of die matter, modifications, and affections, out of
which light results. And we are convinced that our op*
prehension is capable of much clearer and more perfect
ideas of that matter and those modifications ano^ affections^
if clearer and more perfect ideas were offered.
And as it is not for want of sufficiency in our faculties
that we have no clearer and more expressive ideas and imp*
pressions of objects in general, so in particular of those
objects, from the contemplation of which our most na-
tural, happiness and sovereign satisfaction arises ; for as it
is the effect of ideas and impressions communicated from
without, that we feel any symptoms or degrees either of
pleasure or pain, so the more ample and perfect those ideas
and impressions are which affect with pleasure or pain, the
greater and more exquisite .must be the pleasure or pain.
Of amiable and beatific objects the most excellent is that
eternal Being which is infinitely good and perfect, infi-
nitely, powerful, wise, gracious, just, and holy ; for if no
ideas but of good and excellent objects can possibly affect
us with comfort and delight, then the better, and clearer
idea we have of the best and most excellent of all objects,
the more a great deal we must perceive ourselves delighted
and blessed. And therefore as this BEING, infinitely wise,
benevolent and faithful, has created man with intuitive and ,
apprehensive faculties, of force, though by no means to
comprehend an adequate idea of his perfections, for then
his perfections were not infinite, yet to receive and enter-
SIS APPENDIX.
tain a fuller and a more distinct conception of his gloriovs
attributes than that which he vouchsafes us in this life ;
so will he, being infinitely wise, benevolent and faithful,
and therefore never erring, never acting in vain or falla-
ciously, fill up the measure and satisfy the capacity of
those faculties ; that is, he will most graciously vouchsafe
us a fuller and a more distinct conception of his glorious,
attributes in another life.
• Nor can it be disputed whether our intuitive and appre-
hensive faculties are in themselves capable of entertaining
a more full and distinct idea of the divine attributes, than
what is afforded in this life, because, notwithstanding those
attributes are infinite, and consequently incomprehensible,
yet we are conscious to ourselves, that were it not for the
distance of the object, we are capable of apprehending
yet more of that excellency (and thai more clearly and
distinctly) which is infinite and incomprehensible. When
I say distance, let me not be mistaken, as if I meant that
word to the derogation of God's ubiquity and omnipresence
(God forbid I should)^br he is not Jar from every one of
vs, and in him we live, move y and have our being; but
that which 1 would signify by it, is the remoteness of his
essential glories and excellencies from our apprehensive
faculty in this life, in respect of that clearer idea which
we are capacitated to have of them in another. We know
that we can receive and entertain ideas or conceptions of
the excellencies of a transcendent Being more distinct and
lively than those we have already, if they might be .com-
municated ; though we cannot comprehend adequate ideas
of them, for that we cannot of those finite beings whose
natures are more immediately perceived by us, and more
intimately known to us. And although there is no gra-
dation in the essential perfections of Gnd!s attributes,
yet since our faculties are finite, there may, and must be
in our manner of apprehending them. Thus in the first
place we acknowledge it most certain that a Being infi-
nitely perfect and excellent exists, and then, to make out
as much of the idea of his perfections and excellencies as
we can, we gather into One all the ideas of perfection and
excellence which in this life we can collect ; and as we
find our apprehensive faculty capable of receiving and en-
teitaining more distinct and full ideas of perfection and ex-
cellence than all these, we are sure, as I said before, that
APPENDIX* 319
God will in another state fill up and satisfy that capacity
(Lest the end of its existing should in any measure be vaca-
ted) with those more distinct and full ideas of perfection
and excellence, which will constitute a more distinct and
perfect idea of the divine attributes.
Forasmuch therefore as the ideas and impressions of
good and excellent objects, so far as they are good and
excellent, are the efficient cause of all our happiness ; and
as the end of our having a capacity to entertain such ideas
is, that we should entertain them ; and seeing that we can*
not entertain them till they are communicated ; and since
we are capable of receiving and entertaining a more dis-
tinct and perfect idea of the most excellent, and conse*-
quently the most beatific object, than that which is in this
life communicated ; it is as certain as that an infinitely
wise and benevolent BEING acts not in vain or fallaci-
ously, that that more perfect and distinct idea of himself
will be vouchsafed to us hereafter in another life, if on .our
parts we make that use of our faculties and powers which
he requires and expects we should ; for since along with
our very beings he has given us a law and rule of practice
adapted to the strength and dignity of our nature, if we
obstinately refuse performance, we violate very fair con-
ditions, and have reason to look for a treatment directly
ppposite to that which our obedience would have been
rewarded with ; for if we abuse the,, mercies and provoke
the justice of the Almighty, we are as capable and as
worthy of more terrible and vindictive ideas and per-
ceptions in another state than. any known to us in this, as
we are of more glorious, rich, and satisfactory ideas than
those of this life, if we submit and conform ourselves to
his good pleasure and commands. >
Now then at last we have carried np their own argu-
ment to what the philosophers of old could neither agree
about nor find, the true and proper summum bonum of
man, the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls,
the beatific vision itself ; ybr now we know but in part,
but when that which is 'perfect is come, than that which
is in part shall be done away, for now we see through <i
flass darkly, but then face to face; now we know in part t
ut then shall we know, even as also we are known, and
being equal unto the angels shall >in Heaven always be-
hold the fa.ee of our Father .which is sin Heaven. Te
3£0 APPENDIX. '
what clearer accounts and fuller discoveries we shall be
admitted of the natures of created beings, whether supe-
rior or inferior to ourselves, is as little material as certain ;
for although we are also capable ot much more distinct
and comprehensive ideas of these, yet they cannot be, as
thoseyirftire ideas of the divine attributes, finally, simp/y,
and supremely good, but barely in dependence upon, and
consideration of the ideas of the divine attributes , our
knowledge of the creatures being only directive and intro T
ductory to the knowledge of the Creator, the most glorious*
and beatific object of contemplation, and therefore most
evidently the summum bonum, to the contemplating of
which, the capacity of our faculties is principally de-
signed.
And be it observed that the proof now advanced of a
future state, wherein the full measure of our summum bo-
num shall be filled up, which in this life we cannot have
complete and commensurate to our faculties, is a reason-
ing that holds equally just, whether the soul be an imma-
terial or material substance, because though it were • the
last (which, I have elsewhere in famiL letters shewn it is
not) the capacity of its apprehension will be nevertheless '
as large as, by die consciousness and experience which we
have of it, we find and know it to be.
What now can more surprise a man than that the phi-
losopkers of old, after all their tedious inquiries and close
disputes should miss of the true summum bonum by stop-
ping short of so plain a consequence as this ? That they
should employ their whole lives in searches after the final
good of human nature, and at last take up with a partial
and imperfect one, (as did the peripatetics themselves,
though theirs was the most extensive of them all) for want
of examining a little whether the completion of it is re-
served for another state r Especially considering the proof
I have^offered, obviously and directly proceeds upon that
very first principle, which ail the schools (not Epicurus's
excepted) presupposed as postulatum, that the summum
bonum of man and of every thing else ought to be com-
mensurate to the capacity of their respective natures; and
Piso himself has already confessed that the largest com-
bination of virtues and the goods both of body and fortune
cannot be so. Neither k it possible to account for the
strange Mimlhes* of all those wise and penetrating persons,
APPENDIX. 321
$y \i through so long a succession of generations, in this as well
eniif* as other instances, but by confessing that God in an extra-
cerfaa ordinary and miraculous way darkened and bridled their
fa apprehensions, having ordained that the Messiah should
fy» first convince the Gentiles of the certainty of another life,
mfltt, and enforce an universal submission to that more austere,
UNI and spiritual scheme of morality, which he was to intro-
fftv duce and establish, by bringing that life and immortality
/into to light through the Oospel, which the profoundest doctor*
irx of the heathen world only talked of in conjectures and
reo$ dreams, though a demonstrative proof of it from the na-
i[ii|f ture and constitution of things lay just before them.
ft it Let us all therefore, as many as profess the faith of
Christ, and have been by his Gospel confirmed in the be-
etjj lief and hope of the consummation of our summum bonum
[liV . in a future state, bless and magnify the name of God, who
)t \r by a peculiar favour and mercy has reserved us for the
m times of the evangelical dispensation; let us not only ex-
m press our thankfulness with our lips, but our gratitude in
> re i our actions and behaviour, especially those children of God
nt and heirs of eternal life, whem he has been pleased to
die appoint unto sufferings in this world for the testimony of
chr "his truth and the observation of his laws. O what a ra-
vishing prospect ! and how sure an expectation are they
? v fixed upon of approaching glory and blessedness ! The
$ cruelties and furies of oppressors and tyrants can neither
s!C j terrify nor shock them ; the impiety and cowardice of
fc apostates and hypocrites never discourage nor surprise
tig them ; no scandalous, atheistical reuunciations of moral
duties for the sake of religion, though never so general
r , ' and popular, can confound their understandings or infect
t their "consciences :.no little foolish vanities, not all those
:r kingdoms nor the glory of them which the tempter shewed
$ our blessed Saviour in a moment of time, can prevail with
ft him to fall down and worship the Devil in their principles
§ and practice. They know that they have in Heaven a
i better and more enduring substance, and that their light
} afflictions which are but for a moment, work for them a
, far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. And
therefore they caunot help being easy and cheerful in the
midst of those circumstances which had utterly dejected a
Zeno or a Chrysippus ; when the chastizing hand is over
them, they joyfully receive that severity which comes as
ST
/
$22. AFPEXDIX.
the earnest of an hundredfold and everlasting life. In
the bull of Phalaris they would celebrate the loving- kind-
ness of their heavenly Father, encouraged by his immut-
able promises, and supported by his holy Spirit. No won-
der then if indeed they are found to take pleasure in infir-
mities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in
distresses for Christ's sake. These are not so much as
the stoical rejicienda, what one would rather refuse than
wish to have, in proportion to those innumerable, super*
lative, eternal pleasures and advantages which will infi-
nitely more than compensate for them in another state,
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them jrom the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
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