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, lust, 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 pronounced happy whose minds are like some tranquil sea—"alarmed by no fears, wasted by no griefs, inflamed by no lusts, 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 pass 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 noblest 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 noble 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". Noblesse oblige,—and there is no state of life, says Cicero, without its obligations. In their due discharge consists all the nobility, 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 lustre 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, fortitude and temperance; and "if", he says, reproducing the noble 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 noble 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)—