Part 14 (1/2)

But this chief good, which is understood in the third signification of the definition, and that life which is pa.s.sed in conformity with that good, can happen to the wise man alone, because virtue is connected with it. And that summit of good, as we see it expressed by the Stoics themselves, was laid down by Xenocrates and by Aristotle; and so that first arrangement of the principles of nature, with which you also began, is explained by them in almost these very words.

VII. All nature desires to be a preserver of itself, in order that it may be both safe itself, and that it may be preserved in its kind. They say that for this end arts have been invented to a.s.sist nature, among which that is accounted one of the most important which is the art of living so as to defend what has been given by nature, and to acquire what is wanting; and, at the same time, they have divided the nature of man into mind and body. And, as they said that each of these things was desirable for its own sake, so also they said that the virtues of each of them were desirable for their own sake. But when they extolled the mind with boundless praises, and preferred it to the body, they at the same time preferred the virtues of the mind to the goods of the body.

But, as they a.s.serted that wisdom was the guardian and regulator of the entire man, being the companion and a.s.sistant of nature, they said that the especial office of wisdom was to defend the being who consisted of mind and body,-to a.s.sist him and support him in each particular. And so, the matter being first laid down simply, pursuing the rest of the argument with more subtlety, they thought that the goods of the body admitted of an easy explanation, but they inquired more accurately into those of the mind. And, first of all, they found out that they contained the seeds of justice; and they were the first of all philosophers to teach that the principle that those which were the offspring should be beloved by their parents, was implanted in all animals by nature; and they said, also, that that which precedes the birth of offspring, in point of time,-namely, the marriage of men and women,-was a bond of union suggested by nature, and that this was the root from which the friends.h.i.+ps between relations sprang. And, beginning with these first principles, they proceeded to investigate the origin and progress of all the virtues; by which course a great magnanimity was engendered, enabling them easily to resist and withstand fortune, because the most important events were in the power of the wise man; and a life conducted according to the precepts of the ancient philosophers was easily superior to all the changes and injuries of fortune.

But when these foundations had been laid by nature, certain great increases of good were produced,-some arising from the contemplation of more secret things, because there is a love of knowledge innate in the mind, in which also the fondness for explaining principles and for discussing them originates; and because man is the only animal which has any share of shame or modesty; and because he also covets union and society with other men, and takes pains in everything which he does or says, that he may do nothing which is not honourable and becoming;-these foundations being, as I have said, implanted in us by nature like so many seeds, temperance, and modesty, and justice, and all virtue, was brought to complete perfection.

VIII. You here, O Cato, have a sketch of the philosophers of whom I am speaking; and, now that I have given you this, I wish to know what reason there is why Zeno departed from their established system; and which of all their doctrines it was that he disapproved of? Did he object to their calling all nature a preserver of itself?-or to their saying that every animal was naturally fond of itself, so as to wish to be safe and uninjured in its kind?-or, as the end of all arts is to arrive at what nature especially requires, did he think that the same principle ought to be laid down with respect to the art of the entire life?-or, since we consist of mind and body, did he think that these and their excellences ought to be chosen for their own sakes?-or was he displeased with the preeminence which is attributed by the Peripatetics to the virtue of the mind?-or did he object to what they said about prudence, and the knowledge of things, and the union of the human race, and temperance, and modesty, and magnanimity, and honourableness in general? The Stoics must confess that all these things were excellently explained by the others, and that they gave no reason to Zeno for deserting their school. They must allege some other excuse.

I suppose they will say that the errors of the ancients were very great, and that he, being desirous of investigating the truth, could by no means endure them. For what can be more perverse-what can be more intolerable, or more stupid, than to place good health, and freedom from all pain, and soundness of the eyes and the rest of the senses, among the goods, instead of saying that there is no difference at all between them and their contraries? For that all those things which the Peripatetics called goods, were only things preferable, not good. And also that the ancients had been very foolish when they said that these excellences of the body were desirable for their own sake: they were to be accepted, but not to be desired. And the same might be said of all the other circ.u.mstances of life, which consists of nothing but virtue alone,-that that life which is rich also in the other things which are according to nature is not more to be desired on that account, but only more to be accepted; and, though virtue itself makes life so happy that a man cannot be happier, still something is wanting to wise men, even when they are most completely happy; and that they labour to repel pain, disease, and debility.

IX. Oh, what a splendid force is there in such genius, and what an excellent reason is this for setting up a new school! Go on; for it will follow,-and, indeed, you have most learnedly adopted the principle,-that all folly, and all injustice, and all other vices are alike, and that all errors are equal; and that those who have made great progress, through natural philosophy and learning, towards virtue, if they have not arrived at absolute perfection in it, are completely miserable, and that there is no difference between their life and that of the most worthless of men,-as Plato, that greatest of men, if he was not thoroughly wise, lived no better, and in no respect more happily, than the most worthless of men.

This is, forsooth, the Stoic correction and improvement of the old philosophy; but it can never find any entrance into the city, or the forum, or the senate-house. For who could endure to hear a man, who professed to be a teacher of how to pa.s.s life with dignity and wisdom, speaking in such a manner-altering the names of things; and though he was in reality of the same opinion as every one else, still giving new names to the things to which he attributed just the same force that others did, without proposing the least alteration in the ideas to be entertained of them? Would the advocate of a cause, when summing up for a defendant, deny that exile or the confiscation of his client's property was an evil?-that these things were to be rejected, though not to be fled from?-or would he say that a judge ought not to be merciful?

But if he were speaking in the public a.s.sembly,-if Hannibal had arrived at the gates and had driven his javelin into the wall, would he deny that it was an evil to be taken prisoner, to be sold, to be slain, to lose one's country? Or could the senate, when it was voting a triumph to Africa.n.u.s, have expressed itself,-Because by his virtue and good fortune ... if there could not properly be said to be any virtue or any good fortune except in a wise man? What sort of a philosophy, then, is that which speaks in the ordinary manner in the forum, but in a peculiar style of its own in books?

especially when, as they intimate themselves in all they say, no innovations are made by them in the facts,-none of the things themselves are changed, but they remain exactly the same, though in another manner.

For what difference does it make whether you call riches, and power, and health goods, or only things preferred, as long as the man who calls them goods attributes no more to them than you do who call them things preferred? Therefore, Panaetius-a n.o.ble and dignified man, worthy of the intimacy which he enjoyed with Scipio and Laelius-when he was writing to Quintus Tubero on the subject of bearing pain, never once a.s.serted, what ought to have been his main argument, if it could have been proved, that pain was not an evil; but he explained what it was, and what its character was, and what amount of disagreeableness there was in it, and what was the proper method of enduring it; and (for he, too, was a Stoic) all that preposterous language of the school appears to me to be condemned by these sentiments of his.

X. But, however, to come, O Cato, more closely to what you have been saying, let us treat this question more narrowly, and compare what you have just said with those a.s.sertions which I prefer to yours. Now, those arguments which you employ in common with the ancients, we may make use of as admitted. But let us, if you please, confine our discussion to those which are disputed. I do please, said he: I am very glad to have the question argued with more subtlety, and, as you call it, more closely; for what you have hitherto advanced are mere popular a.s.sertions, but from you I expect something more elegant. From me? said I. However, I will try; and, if I cannot find arguments enough, I will not be above having recourse to those which you call popular.

But let me first lay down this position, that we are so recommended to ourselves by nature, and that we have this princ.i.p.al desire implanted in us by nature, that our first wish is to preserve ourselves. This is agreed. It follows, that we must take notice what we are, that so we may preserve ourselves in that character of which we ought to be. We are, therefore, men: we consist of mind and body,-which are things of a particular description,-and we ought, as our first natural desire requires, to love these parts of ourselves, and from them to establish this summit of the chief and highest good, which, if our first principles are true, must be established in such a way as to acquire as many as possible of those things which are in accordance with nature, and especially all the most important of them. This, then, is the chief good which they aimed at. I have expressed it more diffusely,-they call it briefly, living according to nature. This is what appears to them to be the chief good.

XI. Come, now let them teach us, or rather do so yourself, (for who is better able?) in what way you proceed from these principles, and prove that to live honourably (for that is the meaning of living according to virtue, or in a manner suitable to nature) is the chief good; and in what manner, or in what place, you on a sudden get rid of the body, and leave all those things which, as they are according to nature, are out of our own power; and, lastly, how you get rid of duty itself.

I ask, therefore, how it is that all these recommendations, having proceeded from nature, are suddenly abandoned by wisdom? But if it were not the chief good of man that we were inquiring into, but only that of some animal, and if he were nothing except mind (for we may make such a supposition as that, in order more easily to discover the truth), still this chief good of yours would not belong to that mind. For it would wish for good health, for freedom from pain; it would also desire the preservation of itself, and the guardians.h.i.+p of these qualities, and it would appoint as its own end to live according to nature, which is, as I have said, to have those things which are according to nature, either all of them, or most of them, and all the most important ones. For whatever kind of animal you make him out, it is necessary, even though he be incorporeal, as we are supposing him, still that there must be in the mind something like those qualities which exist in the body; so that the chief good cannot possibly be defined in any other manner but that which I have mentioned.

But Chrysippus, when explaining the differences between living creatures, says, that some excel in their bodies, others in their minds, some in both. And then he argues that there ought to be a separate chief good for each description of creature. But as he had placed man in such a cla.s.s that he attributed to him excellence of mind, he determined that his chief good was not that he appeared to excel in mind, but that he appeared to be nothing else but mind.

XII. But in one case the chief good might rightly be placed in virtue alone, if there were any animal which consisted wholly of mind; and that, too, in such a manner that that mind had in itself nothing that was according to nature, as health is. But it cannot even be imagined what kind of thing that is, so as not to be inconsistent with itself. But if he says that some things are obscure, and are not visible because they are very small, we also admit that; as Epicurus says of pleasure, that those pleasures which are very small are often obscured and overwhelmed. But that kind has not so many advantages of body, nor any which last so long, or are so great. Therefore, in those in which obscuration follows because of their littleness, it often happens that we confess that it makes no difference to us whether they exist at all or not; just as when the sun is out, as you yourself said, it is of no consequence to add the light of a candle, or to add a penny to the riches of Crsus. But in those matters in which so great an obscuration does not take place, it may still be the case, that the matter which makes a difference is of no great consequence.

As if, when a man had lived ten years agreeably, an additional month's life of equal pleasantness were given to him, it would be good, because any addition has some power to produce what is agreeable; but if that is not admitted, it does not follow that a happiness of life is at once put an end to.

But the goods of the body are more like this instance which I have just mentioned. For they admit of additions worthy of having pains taken about them; so that on this point the Stoics appear to me sometimes to be joking, when they say that, if a bottle or a comb were given as an addition to a life which is being pa.s.sed with virtue, a wise man would rather choose that life, because these additions were given to it, but yet that he would not be happier on that account. Now, is not this simile to be upset by ridicule rather than by serious discourse? For who would not be deservedly ridiculed, if he were anxious whether he had another bottle or not? But if any one relieves a person from any affection of the limbs, or from the pain of any disease, he will receive great grat.i.tude. And if that wise man of yours is put on the rack of torture by a tyrant, he will not display the same countenance as if he had lost his bottle; but, as entering upon a serious and difficult contest, seeing that he will have to fight with a capital enemy, namely, pain, he will summon up all his principles of fort.i.tude and patience, by whose a.s.sistance he will proceed to face that difficult and important battle, as I have called it.

We will not inquire, then, what is obscured, or what is destroyed, because it is something very small; but what is of such a character as to complete the whole sum of happiness. One pleasure out of many may be obscured in that life of pleasure; but still, however small an one it may be, it is a part of that life which consists wholly of pleasure. One coin is lost of the riches of Crsus, still it is a part of his riches. Wherefore those things, too, which we say are according to nature, may be obscured in a happy life, still they must be parts of the happy life.

XIII. But if, as we ought to agree, there is a certain natural desire which longs for those things which are according to nature, then, when taken altogether, they must be considerable in amount. And if this point is established, then we may be allowed to inquire about those things at our leisure, and to investigate the greatness of them, and their excellence, and to examine what influence each has on living happily, and also to consider the very obscurations themselves, which, on account of their smallness, are scarcely ever, or I may say never, visible.

What should I say about that as to which there is no dispute? For there is no one who denies that that which is the standard to which everything is referred resembles every nature, and that is the chief thing which is to be desired. For every nature is attached to itself. For what nature is there which ever deserts itself, or any portion of itself, or any one of its parts or faculties, or, in short, any one of those things, or motions, or states which are in accordance with nature? And what nature has ever been forgetful of its original purpose and establishment? There has never been one which does not observe this law from first to last. How, then, does it happen that the nature of man is the only one which ever abandons man, which forgets the body, which places the chief good, not in the whole man, but in a part of man? And how, as they themselves admit, and as is agreed upon by all, will it be preserved, so that that ultimate good of nature, which is the subject of our inquiry, shall resemble every nature?

For it would resemble them, if in other natures also there were some ultimate point of excellence. For then that would seem to be the chief good of the Stoics. Why, then, do you hesitate to alter the principles of nature? For why do you say that every animal, the moment that it is born, is p.r.o.ne to feel love for itself, and is occupied in its own preservation?

Why do you not rather say that every animal is inclined to that which is most excellent in itself, and is occupied in the guardians.h.i.+p of that one thing, and that the other natures do nothing else but preserve that quality which is the best in each of them? But how can it be the best, if there is nothing at all good besides? But if the other things are to be desired, why, then, is not that which is the chief of all desirable things inferred from the desire of all those things, or of the most numerous and important of them? as Phidias can either begin a statue from the beginning, and finish it, or he can take one which has been begun by another, and complete that.

Now wisdom is like this: for wisdom is not herself the parent of man, but she has received him after he has been commenced by nature. And without regard to her, she ought to complete that work of her's, as an artist would complete a statue. What kind of man, then, is it that nature has commenced? and what is the office and task of wisdom? What is it that ought to be finished and completed by her? If there is nothing to be made further in man, except some kind of motion of the mind, that is to say, reason, then it follows, that the ultimate object is to mould the life according to virtue. For the perfection of reason is virtue. If there is nothing but body, then the chief goods must be good health, freedom from pain, beauty, and so on. The question at this moment is about the chief good of man.

XIV. Why do we hesitate, then, to inquire as to his whole nature, what has been done? For as it is agreed by all, that the whole duty and office of wisdom is to be occupied about the cultivation of man, some (that you may not think that I am arguing against none but the Stoics) bring forward opinions in which they place the chief good among things of a kind which are wholly out of our own power, just as if they were speaking of one of the brute beasts; others, on the contrary, as if man had no body at all, so entirely exclude everything from their consideration except the mind, (and this, too, while the mind itself, in their philosophy, is not some unintelligible kind of vacuum, but something which exists in some particular species of body,) that even that is not content with virtue alone, but requires freedom from pain. So that both these cla.s.ses do the same thing, as if they neglected the left side of a man, and took care only of the right; or as if they (as Herillus did) attended only to the knowledge of the mind itself, and pa.s.sed over all action. For it is but a crippled system which all those men set up who pa.s.s over many things, and select some one in particular to adhere to. But that is a perfect and full system which those adopt who, while inquiring about the chief good of man, pa.s.s over in their inquiry no part either of his mind or body, so as to leave it unprotected. But your school, O Cato, because virtue holds, as we all admit, the highest and most excellent place in man, and because we think those who are wise men, perfect and admirable men, seeks entirely to dazzle the eyes of our minds with the splendour of virtue. For in every living creature there is some one princ.i.p.al and most excellent thing, as, for instance, in horses and dogs; but those must be free from pain and in good health. Therefore, you do not seem to me to pay sufficient attention to what the general path and progress of nature is. For it does not pursue the same course in man that it does in corn, (which, when it has advanced it from the blade to the ear, it leaves and considers the stubble as nothing,) and leave him as soon as it has conducted him to a state of reason. For it is always taking something additional, without ever abandoning what it has previously given. Therefore, it has added reason to the senses; and when it has perfected his reason, it still does not abandon the senses.

As if the culture of the vine, the object of which is to cause the vine, with all its parts, to be in the best possible condition, (however that is what we understand it to be, for one may, as you often do yourselves, suppose anything for the purpose of ill.u.s.tration,) if, then, that culture of the vine be in the vine itself, it would, I presume, desire everything else which concerns the cultivation of the vine, to be as it has been before. But it would prefer itself to every separate part of the vine, and it would feel sure that nothing in the vine was better than itself. In like manner sense, when it has been added to nature, protects it indeed, but it also protects itself. But when reason is also added, then it is placed in a position of such predominant power, that all those first principles of nature are put under its guardians.h.i.+p. Therefore it does not abandon the care of those things over which it is so set, that its duty is to regulate the entire life: so that we cannot sufficiently marvel at their inconsistency. For they a.s.sert that the natural appet.i.te, which they call ???, and also duty, and even virtue herself, are all protectors of those things which are according to nature. But when they wish to arrive at the chief good, they overleap everything, and leave us two tasks instead of one-namely, to choose some things and desire others, instead of including both under one head.

XV. But now you say that virtue cannot properly be established, if those things which are external to virtue have any influence on living happily.

But the exact contrary is the case. For virtue cannot possibly be introduced, unless everything which it chooses and which it neglects is all referred to one general end. For if we entirely neglect ourselves, we then fall into the vices and errors of Ariston, and shall forget the principles which we have attributed to virtue itself. But if we do not neglect those things, and yet do not refer them to the chief good, we shall not be very far removed from the trivialities of Herillus. For we shall have to adopt two different plans of conduct in life: for he makes out that there are two chief goods unconnected with each other; but if they were real goods, they ought to be united; but at present they are separated, so that they never can be united. But nothing can be more perverse than this. Therefore, the fact is exactly contrary to your a.s.sertion: for virtue cannot possibly be established firmly, unless it maintains those things which are the principles of nature as having an influence on the object. For we have been looking for a virtue which should preserve nature, not for one which should abandon it. But that of yours, as you represent it, preserves only one part, and abandons the rest.