Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶2 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶2

To these we may add the poets, who, on account of the appearance they exhibit of learning and wisdom, are heard, read, and got by heart, and make a deep impression on our minds. But when to these are added the people, who are, as it were, one great body of instructors, and the multitude, who declare unanimously for what is wrong, then are we altogether overwhelmed with bad opinions, and revolt entirely from nature, so that they seem to deprive us of our best guide who have decided that there is nothing better for man, nothing more worthy of being desired by him, nothing more excellent, than honors and commands, and a high reputation with the people—which indeed every excellent man aims at—but while he pursues that only true honor which nature has in view above all other objects, he finds himself busied in arrant trifles, and in pursuit of no conspicuous form of virtue, but only some shadowy representation of glory. For glory is a real and express substance, not a mere shadow. It consists in the united praise of good men, the free voice of those who form a true judgment of preeminent virtue. It is, as it were, the very echo of virtue, and being generally the attendant on laudable actions, should not be slighted by good men. But popular fame, which would pretend to imitate it, is hasty and inconsiderate, and generally commends wicked and immoral actions, and throws discredit upon the appearance and beauty of honesty by assuming a resemblance of it. And it is owing to their not being able to discover the difference between them that some men, ignorant of real excellence and in what it consists, have been the destruction of their country and of themselves. And thus the best men have erred, not so much in their intentions as by a mistaken conduct. What? is no cure to be attempted to be applied to those who are carried away by the love of money, or the lust of pleasures, by which they are rendered little short of madmen, which is the case of all weak people? or is it because the disorders of the mind are less dangerous than those of the body? or because the body will admit of a cure, while there is no medicine whatever for the mind?