Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶34 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶34

Whoever, then, through moderation and constancy is at rest in his mind and in calm possession of himself, so as neither to pine with care nor be dejected with fear nor to be inflamed with desire, coveting something greedily, nor relaxed by extravagant mirth—such a man is that identical wise man whom we are inquiring for. He is the happy man, to whom nothing in this life seems intolerable enough to depress him, nothing exquisite enough to transport him unduly. For what is there in this life that can appear great to him who has acquainted himself with eternity and the utmost extent of the universe? For what is there in human knowledge or the short span of this life that can appear great to a wise man, whose mind is always so upon its guard that nothing can befall him which is unforeseen, nothing which is unexpected, nothing, in short, which is new? Such a man takes so exact a survey on all sides of him, that he always knows the proper place and spot to live in free from all the troubles and annoyances of life, and encounters every accident that fortune can bring upon him with a becoming calmness. Whoever conducts himself in this manner will be free from grief and from every other perturbation. And a mind free from these feelings renders men completely happy, whereas a mind disordered and drawn off from right and unerring reason loses at once not only its resolution but its health. Therefore the thoughts and declarations of the Peripatetics are soft and effeminate, for they say that the mind must necessarily be agitated, but at the same time they lay down certain bounds beyond which that agitation is not to proceed. And do you set bounds to vice? or is it no vice to disobey reason? Does not reason sufficiently declare that there is no real good which you should desire too ardently, or the possession of which you should allow to transport you? and that there is no evil that should be able to overwhelm you, or the suspicion of which should distract you? and that all these things assume too melancholy or too cheerful an appearance through our own error? But if fools find this error lessened by time, so that, though the cause remains the same, they are not affected in the same manner after some time as they were at first, why surely a wise man ought not to be influenced at all by it. But what are those degrees by which we are to limit it? Let us fix these degrees in grief, a difficult subject, and one much canvassed. Fannius writes that P. Rutilius took it much to heart that his brother was refused the consulship, but he seems to have been too much affected by this disappointment, for it was the occasion of his death; he ought, therefore, to have borne it with more moderation. But let us suppose that while he was bearing this with moderation, the death of his children had intervened. Here would have started a fresh grief, which, admitting it to be moderate in itself, yet still must have been a great addition to the other. Now, to these let us add some acute pains of body, the loss of his fortune, blindness, banishment. Supposing, then, each separate misfortune to occasion a separate additional grief, the whole would be too great to be supportable.