Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶28 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶28

But to come to the analogy of the state of body and mind, which I shall sometimes make use of, though more sparingly than the Stoics: Some men are more inclined to particular disorders than others; and, therefore, we say that some people are rheumatic, others dropsical, not because they are so at present, but because they are often so: some are inclined to fear, others to some other perturbation. Thus in some there is a continual anxiety, owing to which they are anxious; in some a hastiness of temper, which differs from anger, as anxiety differs from anguish: for all are not anxious who are sometimes vexed, nor are they who are anxious always uneasy in that manner, as there is a difference between being drunk and drunkenness; and it is one thing to be a lover, another to be given to women. And this disposition of particular people to particular disorders is very common, for it relates to all perturbations; it appears in many vices, though it has no name. Some are therefore said to be envious, malevolent, spiteful, fearful, pitiful, from a propensity to those perturbations, not from their being always carried away by them. Now this propensity to these particular disorders may be called a sickness from analogy with the body, meaning, that is to say, nothing more than a propensity towards sickness. But with regard to whatever is good, as some are more inclined to different good qualities than others, we may call this a facility or tendency; this tendency to evil is a proclivity or inclination to falling; but where anything is neither good nor bad, it may have the former name.