Chapter 10

§ VII. Moreover, I should not hesitate to assert[199] that the most formidable peril in connection with this is "the visits of bad women,"[200] and their chatter, and joint lamentation, all which things fan the fire of sorrow and aggravate it, and suffer it not to be extinguished either by others or by itself. I am not ignorant what a time of it you had lately, when you went to the aid of Theon's sister, and fought against the women who came on a visit of condolence and rushed up with lamentation and wailing, adding fuel as it were to her fire of grief in their simplicity. For when people see their friends' houses on fire they put it out as quickly and energetically as they can, but when their souls are on fire they themselves bring fuel. And if anybody has anything the matter with his eyes they will not let him put his hands to them, however much he wish, nor do they themselves touch the inflamed part; but a person in grief sits down and gives himself up to every chance comer, like a river [that all make use of], to stir up and aggravate the sore, so that from a little tickling and discomfort it grows into a great and terrible disease. However, as to all this I know you will be on your guard.

§ VIII. Try also often to carry yourself back in memory to that time when, this little girl not having been then born, we had nothing to charge Fortune with, and to compare that time and this together, as if our circumstances had gone back to what they were then. Otherwise, my dear wife, we shall seem discontented at the birth of our little daughter, if we consider our position before her birth as more perfect. But we ought not to erase from our memory the two years of her life, but to consider them as a time of pleasure giving us gratification and enjoyment, and not to deem the shortness of the blessing as a great evil, nor to be unthankful for what was given us, because Fortune did not give us a longer tenure as we wished. For ever to be careful what we say about the gods, and to be cheerful and not rail against Fortune, brings a sweet and goodly profit; and he who in such conjunctures as ours mostly tries to remember his blessings, and turns and diverts his mind from the dark and disturbing things in life to the bright and radiant, either altogether extinguishes his grief or makes it small and dim from a comparison with his comforts. For as perfume gives pleasure to the nose, and is a remedy against disagreeable smells, so the remembrance of past happiness in present trouble gives all the relief they require to those who do not shut out of their memory the blessings of the past, or always and everywhere rail against Fortune. And this certainly ought not to be our case, that we should slander all our past life because, like a book, it has one erasure in it, when all the other pages have been bright and clean.

§ IX. You have often heard that happiness consists in right calculations resulting in a healthy state of mind, and that the changes which Fortune brings about need not upset it, and introduce confusion into our life. But if we too must, like most people, be governed by external events, and make an inventory of the dealings of Fortune, and constitute other people the judges of our felicity, do not now regard the tears and lamentations of those who visit you, which by a faulty custom are lavished on everybody, but consider rather how happy you are still esteemed by them for your family, your house, and life. For it would be monstrous, if others would gladly prefer your destiny to theirs, even taking into account our present sorrow, that you should rail against and be impatient at our present lot, and in consequence of our bitter grief not reflect how much comfort is still left to us. But like those who quote imperfect verses of Homer[201] and neglect the finest passages of his writings, to enumerate and complain of the trials of life, while you pay no attention to its blessings, is to resemble those stingy misers, who heap up riches and make no use of them when they have them, but lament and are impatient if they are lost. And if you grieve over her dying unmarried and childless, you can comfort yourself with the thought that you have had both those advantages. For they should not be reckoned as great blessings in the case of those who do not enjoy them, and small blessings in the case of those who do. And that she has gone to a place where she is out of pain ought not to pain us, for what evil can we mourn for on her account if her pains are over? For even the loss of important things does not grieve us when we have no need of them. But it was only little things that your Timoxena was deprived of, little things only she knew, and in little things only did she rejoice; and how can one be said to be deprived of things of which one had no conception, nor experience, nor even desire for?

§ X. As to what you hear from some people, who get many to credit their notion, that the dead suffer no evil or pain, I know that you are prevented from believing that by the tradition of our fathers and by the mystic symbols of the mysteries of Dionysus, for we are both initiated. Consider then that the soul, being incorruptible, is in the same condition after death as birds that have been caught. For if it has been a long time in the body, and during this mortal life has become tame by many affairs and long habit, it swoops down again and a second time enters the body, and does not cease to be involved in the changes and chances of this life that result from birth. For do not suppose that old age is abused and ill-spoken of only for its wrinkles and white hair and weakness of body, but this is the worst feature about it, that it makes the soul feeble in its remembrance of things in the other world, and strong in its attachment to things in this world, and bends and presses it, if it retain the form which it had in the body from its experience. But that soul, which does indeed enter the body, but remains only a short time in it, being liberated from it by the higher powers, rears as it were at a damp and soft turning post in the race of life, and hastens on to its destined goal. For just as if anyone put out a fire, and light it again at once, it is soon rekindled, and burns up again quickly, but if it has been out a long time, to light it again will be a far more difficult and irksome task, so the soul that has sojourned only a short time in this dark and mortal life, quickly recovers the light and blaze of its former bright life, whereas for those who have not had the good fortune very early, to use the language of the poet, "to pass the gates of Hades,"[202] nothing remains but a great passion for the things of this life, and a softening of the soul through contact with the body, and a melting away of it as if by the agency of drugs.[203]

§ XI. And the truth of this is rendered more apparent in our hereditary and time-honoured customs and laws. For when infants die no libations are poured out for them, nor are any other rites performed for them, such as are always performed for adults. For they have no share in the earth or in things of the earth, nor do parents haunt their tombs or monuments, or sit by their bodies when they are laid out. For the laws do not allow us to mourn for such, seeing that it is an impious thing to do so in the case of persons who have departed into a better and more divine place and sphere. I know that doubts are entertained about this, but since to doubt is harder for them than to believe, let us do externally as the laws enjoin, and internally let us be more holy and pure and chaste.[204]

[191] Timoxena, as we see later on, § ix.

[192] Adopting Reiske's reading, [Greek: maston keleuousa, proekaleito kathaper].

[193] Euripides' "Phaethon," which exists only in fragments. Clymene was the daughter of Oceanus, and mother of Phaethon.

[194] An allusion to Euripides, "Bacchæ," 317, 318.

[195] Reading with Reiske [Greek: oudeni logô de], or [Greek: alogôs de]. Some such reading seems necessary to comport with the [Greek: ti gar alogôteron] two lines later.

[196] Reading [Greek: pareiches] with Xylander.

[197] A great craving for sympathy would be the modern way of putting it.

[198] See the Fable of Æsop, entitled [Greek: Penthous geras], No. 355. Halme. See also Plutarch's "Consolation to Apollonius," § xix., where the Fable is told at some length.

[199] Reading with Reiske [Greek: ouk an eipein phobêtheiên].

[200] An allusion to Euripides, "Andromache," 930. See Plutarch's "Conjugal Precepts," § xl.

[201] The whole subject is discussed in full by Athenæus, p. 632, F. F. A false quantity we see was a bugbear even before the days of Universities.

[202] Homer, "Iliad," v. 646; xxiii. 71.

[203] This section is dreadfully corrupt. I have adopted, it will be seen, the suggestions of Wyttenbach.

[204] This Consolatory Letter ends rather abruptly. It is probable that there was more of it.

THAT VIRTUE MAY BE TAUGHT.

§ I. As to virtue we deliberate and dispute whether good sense, and justice, and rectitude can be taught: and then we are not surprised that, while the works of orators, and pilots, and musicians, and house-builders, and farmers, are innumerable, good men are only a name and expression, like Centaurs and Giants and Cyclopes, and that it is impossible to find any virtuous action without alloy of base motives, or any character free from vice: but if nature produces spontaneously anything good, it is marred by much that is alien to it, as fruit choked by weeds. Men learn to play on the harp, and to dance, and to read, and to farm, and to ride on horseback: they learn how to put on their shoes and clothes generally: people teach how to pour out wine, how to cook; and all these things cannot be properly performed, without being learned. The art of good living alone, though all those things I have mentioned only exist on its account, is untaught, unmethodical, inartistic, and supposed to come by the light of nature!

§ II. O sirs, by asserting that virtue is not a thing to be taught, why are we making it unreal? For if teaching produces it, the deprivation of teaching prevents it. And yet, as Plato says, a discord and false note on the lyre makes not brother go to war with brother, nor sets friends at variance, nor makes states hostile to one another, so as to do and suffer at one another's hands the most dreadful things:[205] nor can anyone say that there was ever a dissension in any city as to the pronunciation of Telchines: nor in a private house any difference between man and wife as to woof and warp. And yet no one without learning would undertake to ply the loom, or write a book, or play on the lyre, though he would thereby do no great harm, but he fears making himself ridiculous, for as Heraclitus says, "It is better to hide one's ignorance," yet everyone thinks himself competent to manage a house and wife and the state and hold any magisterial office. On one occasion, when a boy was eating rather greedily, Diogenes gave the lad's tutor a blow with his fist, ascribing the fault not to the boy, who had not learnt how to eat properly, but to the tutor who had not taught him. And can one not properly handle a dish or a cup, unless one has learnt from a boy, as Aristophanes bids us, "not to giggle, nor eat too fast, nor cross our legs,"[206] and yet be perfectly fit to manage a family and city, and wife, and live well, and hold office, when one has not learnt how one should behave in the conduct of life? When Aristippus was asked by someone, "Are you everywhere then?" he smiled and said, "If I am everywhere, I lose my passage money."[207] Why should not you also say, "If men are not better for learning, the money paid to tutors is also lost?" For just as nurses mould with their hands the child's body, so tutors, receiving it immediately it is weaned, mould its soul, teaching it by habit the first vestiges of virtue. And the Lacedæmonian, who was asked, what good he did as a tutor, replied, "I make what is good pleasant to boys." Moreover tutors teach boys to walk in the streets with their heads down,[208] to touch salt fish with one finger only, other fish bread and meat with two, to scratch themselves in such a way, and in such a way to put on their cloak.[209]

§ III. What then? He that says that the doctor's skill is wanted in the case of a slight skin-eruption or whitlow, but is not needed in the case of pleurisy, fever, or lunacy, in what respect does he differ from the man that says that schools and teaching and precepts are only for small and boyish duties, while great and important matters are to be left to mere routine and accident? For, as the man is ridiculous who says we ought to learn to row but not to steer, so he who allows all other arts to be learnt, but not virtue, seems to act altogether contrary to the Scythians. For they, as Herodotus tells us,[210] blind their slaves that they may remain with them, but such an one puts the eye of reason into slavish and servile arts, and takes it away from virtue. And the general Iphicrates well answered Callias, the son of Chabrias, who asked him, "What are you? an archer? a targeteer? cavalry, or infantry?" "None of these," said he, "but the commander of them all." Ridiculous therefore is he who says that the use of the bow and other arms and the sling and riding are to be taught, but that strategy and how to command an army comes by the light of nature. Still more ridiculous is he who asserts that good sense alone need not be taught, without which all other arts are useless and profitless, seeing that she is the mistress and orderer and arranger of all of them, and puts each of them to their proper use. For example, what grace would there be in a banquet, though the servants had been well-trained, and had learnt how to dress and cook the meat and pour out the wine,[211] unless there was good order and method among the waiters?[212]

[205] Plato, "Clitophon," p. 407, C.

[206] Aristophanes, "Clouds," 983.

[207] Does Juvenal allude to this, viii. 97?

[208] So as to look modest and be "Ingenui vultus pueri, ingenuique pudoris."

[209] Reading with Salmasius, [Greek: anabalein].

[210] Herodotus, iv. 2. The historian, however, assigns other reasons for blinding them.

[211] A line from "Odyssey," xv. 323.

[212] "Malim [Greek: daitumonas]." Wyttenbach, who remarks generally on this short treatise, "Non integra videtur esse nec continua disputatio, sed disputationis, Plutarcheæ tamen, excerptum compendium."

ON VIRTUE AND VICE.

§ I. Clothes seem to warm a man, not by throwing out heat themselves (for in itself every garment is cold, whence in great heat or in fevers people frequently change and shift them), but the heat which a man throws out from his own body is retained and wrapped in by a dress fitting close to the body, which does not admit of the heat being dissipated when once it has got firm hold. A somewhat similar case is the idea that deceives the mass of mankind, that if they could live in big houses, and get together a quantity of slaves and money, they would have a happy life. But a happy and cheerful life is not from without, on the contrary, a man adds the pleasure and gratification to the things that surround him, his temperament being as it were the source of his feelings.[213]

"But when the fire blazes the house is brighter to look at."[214]

So, too, wealth is pleasanter, and fame and power more splendid, when a man has joy in his heart, seeing that men can bear easily and quietly poverty and exile and old age if their character is a contented and mild one.

§ II. For as perfumes make threadbare coats and rags to smell sweet, while the body of Anchises sent forth a fetid discharge, "distilling from his back on to his linen robe," so every kind of life with virtue is painless and pleasurable, whereas vice if infused into it makes splendour and wealth and magnificence painful, and sickening, and unwelcome to its possessors.

"He is deemed happy in the market-place, But when he gets him home, thrice miserable, His wife rules all, quarrels, and domineers."[215]

And yet there would be no great difficulty in getting rid of a bad wife, if one was a man and not a slave. But a man cannot by writing a bill of divorce to his vice get rid of all trouble at once, and enjoy tranquillity by living apart: for it is ever present in his vitals, and sticks to him night and day, "and burns without a torch, and consigns him to gloomy old age,"[216] being a disagreeable fellow-traveller owing to its arrogance, and a costly companion at table owing to its daintiness, and an unpleasant bed-fellow, disturbing and marring sleep by anxiety and care and envy. For during such a one's sleep the body indeed gets rest, but the mind has terrors, and dreams, and perturbations, owing to superstition,

"For when my trouble catches me asleep, I am undone by the most fearful dreams,"

as one says. For thus envy, and fear, and anger, and lust affect one. During the daytime, indeed, vice looks abroad and imitates the behaviour of others, is shy and conceals its evil desires, and does not altogether give way to its propensities, but often even resists and fights stoutly against them; but in sleep it escapes the observation of people and the law, and, being as far as possible removed from fear or modesty, gives every passion play, and excites its depravity and licentiousness, for, to borrow Plato's expression,[217] "it attempts incest with its mother, and procures for itself unlawful meats, and abstains from no action whatever," and enjoys lawlessness as far as is practicable in visions and phantasies, that end in no complete pleasure or satisfaction, but can only stir up and inflame the passions and morbid emotions.

§ III. Where then is the pleasure of vice, if there is nowhere in it freedom from anxiety and pain, or independence, or tranquillity, or rest?[218] A healthy and sound constitution does indeed augment the pleasures of the body, but for the soul there can be no lasting joy or gratification, unless cheerfulness and fearlessness and courage supply a calm serenity free from storms; for otherwise, even if hope or delight smile on the soul, it is soon confused and disturbed by care lifting up its head again, so that it is but the calm of a sunken rock.

§ IV. Pile up gold, heap up silver, build covered walks, fill your house with slaves and the town with debtors, unless you lay to rest the passions of the soul, and put a curb on your insatiable desires, and rid yourself of fear and anxiety, you are but pouring out wine for a man in a fever, and giving honey to a man who is bilious, and laying out a sumptuous banquet for people who are suffering from dysentery, and can neither retain their food nor get any benefit from it, but are made even worse by it. Have you never observed how sick persons turn against and spit out and refuse the daintiest and most costly viands, though people offer them and almost force them down their throats, but on another occasion, when their condition is different, their respiration good, their blood in a healthy state, and their natural warmth restored, they get up, and enjoy and make a good meal of simple bread and cheese and cress? Such, also, is the effect of reason on the mind. You will be contented, if you have learned what is good and honourable. You will live daintily and be a king in poverty, and enjoy a quiet and private life as much as the public life of general or statesman. By the aid of philosophy you will live not unpleasantly, for you will learn to extract pleasure from all places and things: wealth will make you happy, because it will enable you to benefit many; and poverty, as you will not then have many anxieties; and glory, for it will make you honoured; and obscurity, for you will then be safe from envy.

[213] Happiness comes from within, not from without. The true seat of happiness is the mind. Compare Milton, "Paradise Lost," Book i. 254, 255:--

"The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

[214] Homeric Epigrammata, xiii. 5.

[215] Wyttenbach thinks these lines are by Menander. Plutarch quotes them again "On Contentedness of Mind," § xi.

[216] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 705.

[217] Plato, "Republic," ix. p. 571, D. Quoted again, "How one may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue," § xii.

[218] And so Dr. Young truly says,--

"A man of pleasure is a man of pains."

_Night Thoughts._

ON MORAL VIRTUE.

§ I. I propose to discuss what is called and appears to be moral virtue (which differs mainly from contemplative virtue in that it has emotion for its matter, and reason for its form), what its nature is, and how it subsists, and whether that part of the soul which takes it in is furnished with reason of its own, or participates in something foreign, and if the latter, whether as things that are mixed with something better than themselves, or rather as that which is subject to superintendence and command, and may be said to share in the power of that which commands. For I think it is clear that virtue can exist and continue altogether free from matter and mixture. My best course will be to run briefly over the views of others, not so much to display my research as because, when their ideas have been set forth, mine will become more clear and be on a firmer basis.

§ II. Menedemus of Eretria took away the number and differences of virtues, on the ground that virtue was one though it had many names; for that just as mortal is synonymous with man, so temperance and bravery and justice were the same thing. And Aristo of Chios also made virtue one in substance, and called it soundness of mind: its diversities and varieties only existing in certain relations, as if one called our sight when it took in white objects white-sight, and when it took in black objects black-sight, and so on. For virtue, when it considers what it ought to do and what it ought not to do, is called prudence; and when it curbs passion, and sets a fit and proper limit to pleasure, it is called self-control; and when it is associated with our dealings and covenants with one another, it is called justice; just as a knife is one article, though at different times it cuts different things in half: and so, too, fire acts on different matter though it has but one property. And Zeno of Cittium seems to incline somewhat to the same view, as he defines prudence in distribution as justice, in choice as self-control, in endurance as fortitude: and those who defend these views maintain that by the term prudence Zeno means knowledge. But Chrysippus, thinking each particular virtue should be arranged under its particular quality, unwittingly stirred up, to use Plato's language, "a whole swarm of virtues,"[219] unusual and unknown. For as from brave we get bravery, and from mild mildness, and from just justice, so from acceptable he got acceptableness, and from good goodness, and from great greatness, and from the honourable honourableness, and he made virtues of many other such clevernesses, affabilities, and versatilities, and filled philosophy, which did not at all require it, with many strange names.