[Footnote 2:
"Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seemed to be".
—Tennyson: 'In Memoriam'.]
Then follow some maxims which show how thoroughly conservative was the policy of our philosopher. The security of property he holds to be the security of the state. There must be no playing with vested rights, no unequal taxation, no attempt to bring all things to a level, no cancelling of debts and redistribution of land (he is thinking of the baits held out by Catiline), none of those traditional devices for winning favour with the people, which tend to destroy that social concord and unity which make a common wealth. "What reason is there", he asks, "why, when I have bought, built, repaired, and laid out much money, another shall come and enjoy the fruits of it?"
And as a man should be careful of the interests of the social body, so he should be of his own. But Cicero feels that in descending to such questions he is somewhat losing sight of his dignity as a moralist. "You will find all this thoroughly discussed", he says to his son, "in Xenophon's Economics—a book which, when I was just your age, I translated from the Greek into Latin". [One wonders whether young Marcus took the hint.] "And if you want instruction in money matters, there are gentlemen sitting on the Exchange who will teach you much better than the philosophers".
The last book opens with a saying of the elder Cato's, which Cicero much admires, though he says modestly that he was never able in his own case quite to realise it—"I am never less idle than when I am idle, and never less alone than when alone". Retirement and solitude are excellent things, Cicero always declares; generally contriving at the same time to make it plain, as he does here, that his own heart is in the world of public life. But at least it gives him time for writing. He "has written more in this short time, since the fall of the Commonwealth, than in all the years during which it stood".
He here resolves the question, If honour and interest seem to clash, which is to give way? Or rather, it has been resolved already; if the right be always the expedient, the opposition is seeming, not real. He puts a great many questions of casuistry, but it all amounts to this: the good man keeps his oath, "though it were to his own hindrance". But it is never to his hindrance; for a violation of his conscience would be the greatest hindrance of all.
In this treatise, more than in any of his other philosophical works, Cicero inclines to the teaching of the Stoics. In the others, he is rather the seeker after truth than the maintainer of a system. His is the critical eclecticism of the 'New Academy'—the spirit so prevalent in our own day, which fights against the shackles of dogmatism. And with all his respect for the nobler side of Stoicism, he is fully alive to its defects; though it was not given to him to see, as Milton saw after him, the point wherein that great system really failed—the "philosophic pride" which was the besetting sin of all disciples in the school, from Cato to Seneca:
"Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
* * * * *
Much of the soul they talk, but all awry;
And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves
All glory arrogate,—to God give none;
Rather accuse Him under usual names,
Fortune, or Fate, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things".[1]