Cicero Part 8

"Turn thy swift keel and listen to our lay; Since never pilgrim to these regions came, But heard our sweet voice ere he sailed away, And in his joy pa.s.sed on, with ampler mind".[1]

It is wisdom, not pleasure, which they offer. Hence it is that men devote their days and nights to literature, without a thought of any gain that may accrue from it; and philosophers paint the serene delights of a life of contemplation in the islands of the blest.

[Footnote 1: Odyss. xii. 185 (Worsley).]

Again, our minds can never rest. "Desire for action grows with us;" and in action of some sort, be it politics or science, life (if it is to be life at all) must be pa.s.sed by each of us. Even the gambler must ply the dice-box, and the man of pleasure seek excitement in society. But in the true life of action, still the ruling principle should be honour.

Such, in brief, is Piso's (or rather Cicero's) vindication of the old masters of philosophy. Before they leave the place, Cicero fires a parting shot at the Stoic paradox that the 'wise man' is always happy. How. he pertinently asks, can one in sickness and poverty, blind, or childless, in exile or in torture, be possibly called happy, except by a monstrous perversion of language?[1]

[Footnote 1: In a little treatise called "Paradoxes", Cicero discusses six of these scholastic quibbles of the Stoics.]

Here, somewhat abruptly, the dialogue closes; and Cicero p.r.o.nounces no judgment of his own, but leaves the great question almost as perplexed as when he started the discussion. But, of the two antagonistic theories, he leans rather to the Stoic than to the Epicurean. Self-sacrifice and honour seem, to his view, to present a higher ideal than pleasure or expediency.

II. 'ACADEMIC QUESTIONS'.

Fragments of two editions of this work have come down to us; for almost before the first copy had reached the hands of his friend Atticus, to whom it was sent, Cicero had rewritten the whole on an enlarged scale. The first book (as we have it now) is dedicated to Varro, a n.o.ble patron of art and literature. In his villa at c.u.mae were s.p.a.cious porticoes and gardens, and a library with galleries and cabinets open to all comers.

Here, on a terrace looking seawards, Cicero, Atticus, and Varro himself pa.s.s a long afternoon in discussing the relative merits of the old and new Academies; and hence we get the t.i.tle of the work. Varro takes the lion's share of the first dialogue, and shows how from the "vast and varied genius of Plato" both Academics and Peripatetics drew all their philosophy, whether it related to morals, to nature, or to logic. Stoicism receives a pa.s.sing notice, as also does what Varro considers the heresy of Theophrastus, who strips virtue of all its beauty, by denying that happiness depends upon it.

The second book is dedicated to another ill.u.s.trious name, the elder Lucullus, not long deceased--half-statesman, half-dilettante, "with almost as divine a memory for facts", says Cicero, with something of envy, "as Hortensius had for words". This time it is at his villa, near Tusculum, amidst scenery perhaps even now the loveliest of all Italian landscapes, that the philosophic dialogue takes place. Lucullus condemns the scepticism of the New Academy--those reactionists against the dogmatism of past times, who disbelieve their very eyesight. If (he says) we reject the testimony of the senses, there is neither body, nor truth, nor argument, nor anything certain left us. These perpetual doubters destroy every ground of our belief.

Cicero ingeniously defends this scepticism, which was, in fact, the bent of his own mind. After all, what is our eyesight worth? The s.h.i.+p sailing across the bay yonder seems to move, but to the sailors it is the sh.o.r.e that recedes from their view. Even the sun, "which mathematicians affirm to be eighteen times larger than the earth, looks but a foot in diameter".

And as it is with these things, so it is with all knowledge. Bold indeed must be the man who can define the point at which belief pa.s.ses into certainty. Even the "fine frenzy" of the poet, his pictures of G.o.ds and heroes, are as lifelike to himself and to his hearers as though he actually saw them:

"See how Apollo, fair-haired G.o.d, Draws in and bends his golden bow, While on the left fair Dian waves her torch".

No--we are sure of nothing; and we are happy if, like Socrates, we only know this--that we know nothing. Then, as if in irony, or partly influenced perhaps by the advocate's love of arguing the case both ways, Cicero demolishes that grand argument of design which elsewhere he so carefully constructs,[1] and reasons in the very language of materialism--"You a.s.sert that all the universe could not have been so ingeniously made without some G.o.dlike wisdom, the majesty of which you trace down even to the perfection of bees and ants. Why, then, did the Deity, when he made everything for the sake of man, make such a variety (for instance) of venomous reptiles? Your divine soul is a fiction; it is better to imagine that creation is the result of the laws of nature, and so release the Deity from a great deal of hard work, and me from fear; for which of us, when he thinks that he is an object of divine care, can help feeling an awe of the divine power day and night? But we do not understand even our own bodies; how, then, can we have an eyesight so piercing as to penetrate the mysteries of heaven and earth?"

[Footnote 1: See p. 168.]

The treatise, however, is but a disappointing fragment, and the argument is incomplete.

III. THE 'TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS'.

The scene of this dialogue is Cicero's villa at Tusculum. There, in his long gallery, he walks and discusses with his friends the vexed questions of morality. Was death an evil? Was the soul immortal? How could a man best bear pain and the other miseries of life? Was virtue any guarantee for happiness?

Then, as now, death was the great problem of humanity--"to die and go we know not where". The old belief in Elysium and Tartarus had died away; as Cicero himself boldly puts it in another place, such things were no longer even old wives' fables. Either death brought an absolute unconsciousness, or the soul soared into s.p.a.ce. "_Lex non poena mors_"--"Death is a law, not a penalty"--was the ancient saying. It was, as it were, the close of a banquet or the fall of the curtain. "While we are, death is not; when death has come, we are not".

Cicero brings forward the testimony of past ages to prove that death is not a mere annihilation. Man cannot perish utterly. Heroes are deified; and the spirits of the dead return to us in visions of the night. Somehow or other (he says) there clings to our minds a certain presage of future ages; and so we plant, that our children may reap; we toil, that others may enter into our labours; and it is this life after death, the desire to live in men's mouths for ever, which inspires the patriot and the martyr.

Fame to the Roman, even more than to us, was "the last infirmity of n.o.ble minds". It was so in a special degree to Cicero. The instinctive sense of immortality, he argues, is strong within us; and as, in the words of the English poet,

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting",

so also in death, the Roman said, though in other words:

"Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us. .h.i.ther".

Believe not then, says Cicero, those old wives' tales, those poetic legends, the terrors of a material h.e.l.l, of the joys of a sensual paradise. Rather hold with Plato that the soul is an eternal principle of life, which has neither beginning nor end of existence; for if it were not so, heaven and earth would be overset, and all nature would stand at gaze.

"Men say they cannot conceive or comprehend what the soul can be, distinct from the body. As if, forsooth, they could comprehend what it is, when it is _in_ the body,--its conformation, its magnitude, or its position there.... To me, when I consider the nature of the soul, there is far more difficulty and obscurity in forming a conception of what the soul is while in the body,--in a dwelling where it seems so little at home,--than of what it will be when it has escaped into the free atmosphere of heaven, which seems its natural abode".[1] And as the poet seems to us inspired, as the gifts of memory and eloquence seem divine, so is the soul itself, in its simple essence, a G.o.d dwelling in the breast of each of us. What else can be this power which enables us to recollect the past, to foresee the future, to understand the present?

[Footnote 1: I. c. 22.]

There follows a pa.s.sage on the argument from design which antic.i.p.ates that fine saying of Voltaire--"Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer; mais toute la nature crie qu'il existe". "The heavens", says even the heathen philosopher, "declare the glory of G.o.d". Look on the sun and the stars; look on the alternation of the seasons, and the changes of day and night; look again at the earth bringing forth her fruits for the use of men; the mult.i.tude of cattle; and man himself, made as it were to contemplate and adore the heavens and the G.o.ds. Look on all these things, and doubt not that there is some Being, though you see him not, who has created and presides over the world.

"Imitate, therefore, the end of Socrates; who, with the fatal cup in his hands, spoke with the serenity of one not forced to die, but, as it were, ascending into heaven; for he thought that the souls of men, when they left the body, went by different roads; those polluted by vice and unclean living took a road wide of that which led to the a.s.sembly of the G.o.ds; while those who had kept themselves pure, and on earth had taken a divine life as their model, found it easy to return to those beings from whence they came". Or learn a lesson from the swans, who, with a prophetic instinct, leave this world with joy and singing. Yet do not antic.i.p.ate the time of death, "for the Deity forbids us to depart hence without his summons; but, on just cause given (as to Socrates and Cato), gladly should we exchange our darkness for that light, and, like men not breaking prison but released by the law, leave our chains with joy, as having been discharged by G.o.d".

The feeling of these ancients with regard to suicide, we must here remember, was very different from our own. There was no distinct idea of the sanct.i.ty of life; no social stigma and consequent suffering were brought on the family of the suicide. Stoic and Epicurean philosophers alike upheld it as a lawful remedy against the pangs of disease, the dotage of old age, or the caprices of a tyrant. Every man might, they contended, choose his own route on the last great journey, and sleep well, when he grew wearied out with life's fitful fever. The door was always open (said Epictetus) when the play palled on the senses. You should quit the stage with dignity, nor drain the flask to the dregs. Some philosophers, it is true, protested against it as a mere device of cowardice to avoid pain, and as a failure in our duties as good citizens.

Cicero, in one of his latest works, again quotes with approval the opinion of Pythagoras, that "no man should abandon his post in life without the orders of the Great Commander". But at Rome suicide had been glorified by a long roll of ill.u.s.trious names, and the protest was made in vain.

But why, continues Cicero, why add to the miseries of life by brooding over death? Is life to any of us such unmixed pleasure even while it lasts? Which of us can tell whether he be taken away from good or from evil? As our birth is but "a sleep and a forgetting", so our death may be but a second sleep, as lasting as Endymion's. Why then call it wretched, even if we die before our natural time? Nature has lent us life, without fixing the day of payment; and uncertainty is one of the conditions of its tenure. Compare our longest life with eternity, and it is as short-lived as that of those ephemeral insects whose life is measured by a summer day; and "who, when the sun sets, have reached old age".

Let us, then, base our happiness on strength of mind, on a contempt of earthly pleasures, and on the strict observance of virtue. Let us recall the last n.o.ble words of Socrates to his judges. "The death", said he, "to which you condemn me, I count a gain rather than a loss. Either it is a dreamless sleep that knows no waking, or it carries me where I may converse with the spirits of the ill.u.s.trious dead. _I_ go to death, _you_ to life; but which of us is going the better way, G.o.d only knows".

No man, then, dies too soon who has run a course of perfect virtue; for glory follows like a shadow in the wake of such a life. Welcome death, therefore, as a blessed deliverance from evil, sent by the special favour of the G.o.ds, who thus bring us safely across a sea of troubles to an eternal haven.

The second topic which Cicero and his friends discuss is, the endurance of pain. Is it an unmixed evil? Can anything console the sufferer? Cicero at once condemns the sophistry of Epicurus. The wise man cannot pretend indifference to pain; it is enough that he endure it with courage, since, beyond all question, it is sharp, bitter, and hard to bear. And what is this courage? Partly excitement, partly the impulse of honour or of shame, partly the habituation which steels the endurance of the gladiator. Keep, therefore--this is the conclusion--stern restraint over the feminine elements of your soul, and learn not only to despise the attacks of pain, but also

"The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune".

From physical, the discussion naturally pa.s.ses to mental, suffering.

For grief, as well as for pain, he prescribes the remedy of the Stoics--_aequanimitas_--"a calm serenity of mind". The wise man, ever serene and composed, is moved neither by pain or sorrow, by fear or desire. He is equally undisturbed by the malice of enemies or the inconstancy of fortune. But what consolation can we bring to ease the pain of the Epicurean? "Put a nosegay to his nostrils--burn perfumes before him--crown him with roses and woodbine"! But perfumes and garlands can do little in such case; pleasures may divert, but they can scarcely console.

Again, the Cyrenaics bring at the best but Job's comfort. No man will bear his misfortunes the more lightly by bethinking himself that they are unavoidable--that others have suffered before him--that pain is part and parcel of the ills which flesh is heir to. Why grieve at all? Why feed your misfortune by dwelling on it? Plunge rather into active life and forget it, remembering that excessive lamentation over the trivial accidents of humanity is alike unmanly and unnecessary. And as it is with grief, so it is with envy, l.u.s.t, anger, and those other "perturbations of the mind" which the Stoic Zeno rightly declares to be "repugnant to reason and nature". From such disquietudes it is the wise man who is free.

The fifth and last book discusses the great question, Is virtue of itself sufficient to make life happy? The bold conclusion is, that it is sufficient. Cicero is not content with the timid qualifications adopted by the school of the Peripatetics, who say one moment that external advantages and worldly prosperity are nothing, and then again admit that, though man may be happy without them, he is happier with them,--which is making the real happiness imperfect after all. Men differ in their views of life. As in the great Olympic games, the throng are attracted, some by desire of gain, some by the crown of wild olive, some merely by the spectacle; so, in the race of life, we are all slaves to some ruling idea, it may be glory, or money, or wisdom. But they alone can be p.r.o.nounced happy whose minds are like some tranquil sea--"alarmed by no fears, wasted by no griefs, inflamed by no l.u.s.ts, enervated by no relaxing pleasures,--and such serenity virtue alone can produce".

These 'Disputations' have always been highly admired. But their popularity was greater in times when Cicero's Greek originals were less read or understood. Erasmus carried his admiration of this treatise to enthusiasm.

"I cannot doubt", he says, "but that the mind from which such teaching flowed was inspired in some sort by divinity".

IV. THE TREATISE 'ON MORAL DUTIES'.

The treatise 'De Officiis', known as Cicero's 'Offices, to which we pa.s.s next, is addressed by the author to his son, while studying at Athens under Cratippus; possibly in imitation of Aristotle, who inscribed his Ethics to his son Nicomachus. It is a treatise on the duties of a gentleman--"the n.o.blest present", says a modern writer, "ever made by parent to a child".[1] Written in a far higher tone than Lord Chesterfield's letters, though treating of the same subject, it proposes and answers multifarious questions which must occur continually to the modern Christian as well as to the ancient philosopher. "What makes an action right or wrong? What is a duty? What is expediency? How shall I learn to choose between my principles and my interests? And lastly (a point of casuistry which must sometimes perplex the strictest conscience), of two 'things honest',[2] which is most so?"

[Footnote 1: Kelsall.]

[Footnote 2: The English "Honesty" and "Honour" alike fail to convey the full force of the Latin _honestus_. The word expresses a progress of thought from comeliness and grace of person to a n.o.ble and graceful character--all whose works are done in honesty and honour.]

The key-note of his discourse throughout is Honour; and the word seems to carry with it that magic force which Burke attributed to chivalry--"the unbought grace of life--the nurse of heroic sentiment and manly enterprise". _n.o.blesse oblige_,--and there is no state of life, says Cicero, without its obligations. In their due discharge consists all the n.o.bility, and in their neglect all the disgrace, of character. There should be no selfish devotion to private interests. We are born not for ourselves only, but for our kindred and fatherland. We owe duties not only to those who have benefited but to those who have wronged us. We should render to all their due; and justice is due even to the lowest of mankind: what, for instance (he says with a hardness which jars upon our better feelings), can be lower than a slave? Honour is that "unbought grace"

which adds a l.u.s.tre to every action. In society it produces courtesy of manners; in business, under the form of truth, it establishes public credit. Again, as equity, it smooths the harsh features of the law. In war it produces that moderation and good faith between contending armies which are the surest basis of a lasting peace. And so in honour are centred the elements of all the virtues--wisdom and justice, fort.i.tude and temperance; and "if", he says, reproducing the n.o.ble words of Plato, as applied by him to Wisdom, "this 'Honour' could but be seen in her full beauty by mortal eyes, the whole world would fall in love with her".

Such is the general spirit of this treatise, of which only the briefest sketch can be given in these pages.

Cicero bases honour on our inherent excellence of nature, paying the same n.o.ble tribute to humanity as Kant some centuries after: "On earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind". Truth is a law of our nature. Man is only "lower than the angels"; and to him belong prerogatives which mark him off from the brute creation--the faculties of reason and discernment, the sense of beauty, and the love of law and order. And from this arises that fellow--feeling which, in one sense, "makes the whole world kin"--the spirit of Terence's famous line, which Cicero notices (applauded on its recitation, as Augustin tells us, by the cheers of the entire audience in the theatre)--

"h.o.m.o sum--humani nihil a me alienum puto:" [1]