To acts of piety ... a man—
And nothing can be more true. For a man is not just while he is in a state of alarm. And certainly when he ceases to be in fear, he will not be just. But he will not be afraid if he is able to conceal his actions, or if he is able, by means of his great riches and power, to support what he has done. And he will certainly prefer being regarded as a good man, though he is not one, to being a good man and not being thought one. And so, beyond all question, instead of genuine and active justice, you give us only an effigy of justice, and you teach us, as it were, to disregard our own unvarying conscience, and to go hunting after the fleeting vagabond opinions of others.
And the same may be said of the other virtues also; the foundation of all which you place in pleasure, which is like building on water. For what are we to say? Can we call that same Torquatus a brave man? For I am delighted, though I cannot, as you say, bribe you; I am delighted with your family and with your name. And, in truth, I have before my eyes Aulus Torquatus,[37] a most excellent man, and one greatly attached to me; and both of you must certainly be aware how great and how eminent his zeal in my behalf was in those times which are well known to every one. And that conduct of his would not have been delightful to me, who wish both to be, and to be considered, grateful, if I did not see clearly that he was friendly to me for my own sake, not for his own; unless, indeed, you say, it was for his own sake, because it is for the interest of every one to act rightly. If you say that, we have gained our point. For what we are aiming at, what we are contending for, is, that duty itself is the reward of duty. But that master of yours will not admit this, and requires pleasure to result from every action as a sort of wages.
However, I return to him. If it was for the sake of pleasure that Torquatus, when challenged, fought with the Gaul on the Anio, and out of his spoils took his chain and earned his surname, or if it was for any other reason but that he thought such exploits worthy of a man, then I do not [pg 158] account him brave. And, indeed, if modesty, and decency, and chastity, and, in one word, temperance, is only upheld by the fear of punishment or infamy, and not out of regard to their own sanctity, then what lengths will adultery and debauchery and lust shrink from proceeding to, if there is a hope either of escaping detection, or of obtaining impunity or licence?
What shall I say more? What is your idea, O Torquatus, of this?—that you, a man of your name, of your abilities, of your high reputation, should not dare to allege in a public assembly what you do, what you think, what you contend for, the standard to which you refer everything, the object for the sake of which you wish to accomplish what you attempt, and what you think best in life. For what can you claim to deserve, when you have entered upon your magistracy, and come forward to the assembly, (for then you will have to announce what principles you intend to observe in administering the law, and perhaps, too, if you think fit, you will, as is the ancient custom, say something about your ancestors and yourself,)—what, I say, can you claim as your just desert, if you say that in that magistracy you will do everything for the sake of pleasure? and that you have never done anything all your life except with a view to pleasure? Do you think, say you, that I am so mad as to speak in that way before ignorant people? Well, say it then in the court of justice, or if you are afraid of the surrounding audience, say it in the senate: you will never do so. Why not, except that such language is disgraceful? Do you then think Triarius and me fit people for you to speak before in a disgraceful manner?
XXIII. However, be it so. The name of pleasure certainly has no dignity in it, and perhaps we do not exactly understand what is meant by it; for you are constantly saying that we do not understand what you mean by the word pleasure: no doubt it is a very difficult and obscure matter. When you speak of atoms, and spaces between worlds, things which do not exist, and which cannot possibly exist, then we understand you; and cannot we understand what pleasure is, a thing which is known to every sparrow? What will you say if I compel you to confess that I not only do know what pleasure is (for it is a pleasant emotion affecting the senses), but also what you mean by the word? For at one time you [pg 159] mean by the word the very same thing which I have just said, and you give it the description of consisting in motion, and of causing some variety: at another time you speak of some other highest pleasure, which is susceptible of no addition whatever, but that it is present when every sort of pain is absent, and you call it then a state, not a motion: let that, then, be pleasure. Say, in any assembly you please, that you do everything with a view to avoid suffering pain: if you do not think that even this language is sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently honourable, say that you will do everything during your year of office, and during your whole life, for the sake of your own advantage; that you will do nothing except what is profitable to yourself, nothing which is not prompted by a view to your own interest. What an uproar do you not suppose such a declaration would excite in the assembly, and what hope do you think you would have of the consulship which is ready for you? And can you follow these principles, which, when by yourself, or in conversation with your dearest friends, you do not dare to profess and avow openly? But you have those maxims constantly in your mouth which the Peripatetics and Stoics profess. In the courts of justice and in the senate you speak of duty, equity, dignity, good faith, uprightness, honourable actions, conduct worthy of power, worthy of the Roman people; you talk of encountering every imaginable danger in the cause of the republic—of dying for one's country. When you speak in this manner we are all amazed, like a pack of blockheads, and you are laughing in your sleeve: for, among all those high-sounding and admirable expressions, pleasure has no place, not only that pleasure which you say consists in motion, and which all men, whether living in cities or in the country, all men, in short, who speak Latin, call pleasure, but even that stationary pleasure, which no one but your sect calls pleasure at all.
XXIV. Take care lest you find yourselves obliged to use our language, though adhering to your own opinions. But if you were to put on a feigned countenance or gait, with the object of appearing more dignified, you would not then be like yourself; and yet are you to use fictitious language, and to say things which you do not think, or, as you have one dress to wear at home, and another in which you appear in court, [pg 160] are you to disguise your opinions in a similar manner, so as to make a parade with your countenance, while you are keeping the truth hidden within? Consider, I intreat you, whether this is proper. My opinion is that those are genuine sentiments which are honourable, which are praiseworthy, which are creditable; which a man is not ashamed to avow in the senate, before the people, in every company and every assembly, so that he will be ashamed to think what he is ashamed to say.
But what room can there be for friendship, or who can be a friend to any one whom he does not love for his own sake? And what is loving, from which verb (amo) the very name of friendship (amicitia) is derived, but wishing a certain person to enjoy the greatest possible good fortune, even if none of it accrues to oneself? Still, you say, it is a good thing for me to be of such a disposition. Perhaps it may be so; but you cannot be so if it is not really your disposition; and how can you be so unless love itself has seized hold of you? which is not usually generated by any accurate computation of advantage, but is self-produced, and born spontaneously from itself. But, you will say, I am guided by prospects of advantage. Friendship, then, will remain just as long as any advantage ensues from it; and if it be a principle of advantage which is the foundation of friendship, the same will be its destruction. But what will you do, if, as is often the case, advantage takes the opposite side to friendship? Will you abandon it? what sort of friendship is that? Will you preserve it? how will that be expedient for you? For you see what the rules are which you lay down respecting friendship which is desirable only for the sake of one's own advantage:—I must take care that I do not incur odium if I cease to uphold my friend. Now, in the first place, why should such conduct incur odium, except because it is disgraceful? But, if you will not desert your friend lest you should incur any disadvantage from so doing, still you will wish that he was dead, to release you from being bound to a man from whom you get no advantage. But suppose he not only brings you no advantage, but you even incur loss of property for his sake, and have to undertake labours, and to encounter danger of your life; will you not, even then, show some regard for yourself, and recollect that every one is born for himself and for his own pleasures? Will you go bail to a [pg 161] tyrant for your friend in a case which may affect your life, as that Pythagorean[38] did when he became surety to the Tyrant of Sicily? or, when you are Pylades, will you affirm that you are Orestes, that you may die for your friend? or, if you were Orestes, would you contradict Pylades, and give yourself up? and, if you could not succeed then, would you intreat that you might be both put to death together?
XXV. You, indeed, O Torquatus, would do all these things. For I do not think that there is anything deserving of great praise, which you would be likely to shrink from out of fear of death or pain: nor is it the question what is consistent with your nature, but with the doctrines of your school—that philosophy which you defend, those precepts which you have learnt, and which you profess to approve of, utterly overthrow friendship—even though Epicurus should, as indeed he does, extol it to the skies. Oh, you will say, but he himself cultivated friendship. As if any one denied that he was a good, and courteous, and kind-hearted man; the question in these discussions turns on his genius, and not on his morals. Grant that there is such perversity in the levity of the Greeks, who attack those men with evil speaking with whom they disagree as to the truth of a proposition. But, although he may have been courteous in maintaining friendships, still, if all this is true, (for I do not affirm anything myself), he was not a very acute arguer. Oh, but he convinced many people. And perhaps it was quite right that he should; still, the testimony of the multitude is not of the greatest possible weight; for in every art, or study, or science, as in virtue itself, whatever is most excellent is also most rare. And to me, indeed, the very fact of he himself having been a good man, and of many Epicureans having also been such, and being to this day faithful in their friendships, and consistent throughout their whole lives, and men of dignified conduct, regulating their lives, not by pleasure, but by their duty, appears to show that the power of what is honourable is greater, and that of pleasure smaller. For some men live in such a manner that their language is refuted by their lives; and as others are considered [pg 162] to speak better than they act, so these men seem to me to act better than they speak.
XXVI. However, all this is nothing to the purpose. Let us just consider those things which have been said by you about friendship, and among them I fancied that I recognized one thing as having been said by Epicurus himself, namely, that friendship cannot be separated from pleasure, and that it ought on that account to be cultivated, because without it men could not live in safety, and without fear, nor even with any kind of pleasantness. Answer enough has been given to this argument. You also brought forward another more humane one, invented by these more modern philosophers, and never, as far as I know, advanced by the master himself, that at first, indeed, a friend is sought out with a view to one's own advantage, but that when intimacy has sprung up, then the man is loved for himself, all hope or idea of pleasure being put out of the question. Now, although this argument is open to attack on many accounts, still I will accept what they grant; for it is enough for me, though not enough for them: for they admit that it is possible for men to act rightly at times, without any expectation of, or desire to acquire pleasure.