The Life of Cicero. Volume II.

"They are all concealed, these things – hidden in thick darkness, so that no human eye can have power enough to look up into the heavens or down on to the earth. We do not know our own bodies, or the nature or strength of their component parts. The doctors themselves, who have opened them and looked at them, are ignorant. The Empirics declare that they know nothing; because, as soon as looked at, they may change. * * * Hicetas, the Syracusan, as Theophrastus tells us, thinks that the heavens and the sun and the moon and the stars all stand still, and that nothing in all the world moves but the earth. Now what do you, followers of Epicurus, say to this?"280 I need not carry the conversation on any farther to show that Cicero is ridiculing the whole thing. This Hicetas, the Syracusan, seems to have been nearer the mark than the others, according to the existing lights, which had not shone out as yet in Cicero's days. "But what was the meaning of it all? Who knows anything about it? How is a man to live by listening to such trash as this?" It is thus that Cicero means to be understood. I will agree that Cicero does not often speak out so clearly as he does here, turning the whole thing into ridicule. He does generally find it well to say something in praise of these philosophers. He does not quite declare the fact that nothing is to be made of them; or, rather, there is existing in it all an under feeling that, were he to do so, he would destroy his character and rob himself of his amusement. But we remember always his character of a philosopher, as attributed to Cato, in his speech during his Consulship for Murena. I have told the story when giving an account of the speech. "He who cuts the throat of an old cock when there is no need, has sinned as deeply as the parricide when breaking his father's neck,"281 says Cicero, laughing at the Stoics. There he speaks out the feelings of his heart – there, and often elsewhere in his orations. Here, in his Academica, he is eloquent on the same side. We cannot but rejoice at the plainness of his words; but it has to be acknowledged that we do not often find him so loudly betraying himself when dealing with the old discussions of the Greek philosophers.

Very quickly after his Academica, in b. c. 45, came the five books, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written as though with the object of settling the whole controversy, and declaring whether the truth lay with the Epicureans, the Stoics, or the Academics. What, at last, is the good thing, and what the evil thing, and how shall we gain the one and avoid the other? If he will tell us this, he will have proved himself to be a philosopher to some purpose. But he does nothing of the kind. At the end of the fifth book we find Atticus, who was an Epicurean, declaring to Quintus Cicero that he held his own opinion just as firmly as ever, although he had been delighted to hear how well the Academician Piso had talked in Latin. He had hitherto considered that these were things which would not sound well unless in the Greek language.

It is again in the form of a dialogue, and, like all his writings at this time, is addressed to Brutus. It is in five books. The first two are supposed to have been held at Cumæ, between Cicero, Torquatus, and Triarius. Here, after a prelude in favor of philosophy and Latin together, Torquatus is allowed to make the best excuse he can for Epicurus. The prelude contains much good sense; for, whether he be right or not in what he says, it is good for every man to hold his own language in respect. "I have always thought and said that the Latin language is not poor as it is supposed to be, but even richer than the Greek."282 "Let us learn," says Torquatus, who has happened to call upon him at Cumæ with Triarius, a grave and learned youth, as we are told, "since we have found you at your house, why it is that you do not approve of Epicurus – he who, alive, seems to have freed the minds of men from error, and to have taught them everything which could tend to make them happy."283 Then Torquatus goes to work and delivers a most amusing discourse on the wisdom of Democritus and his great disciple. The words fly about with delightful power, so as to leave upon our minds an idea that Torquatus is persuading his audience; for it is Cicero's peculiar gift, in whosesoever mouth he puts his words, to make him argue as though he were the victor. We feel sure that, had he in his hand held a theory contrary to that of Torquatus, had he in truth cared about it, he could not have made Torquatus speak so well. But the speaker comes to an end, and assures his hearers that his only object had been to hear – as he had never heard before – what Cicero's own opinion might be on the matter.

The second book is a continuation of the same meeting. The word is taken up by Cicero, and he refutes Torquatus. It seems to us, however, that poor Epicurus is but badly treated – as has been generally the case in the prose works which have come down to us. We have, indeed, the poem of Lucretius, and it is admitted that it contains fine passages. But I was always told when young that the writing of it had led him to commit suicide – a deed on his part which seems to have been painted in black colors, though Cato and Brutus, the Stoics, did the same thing very gloriously. The Epicureans are held to be sensualists, because they have used the word "pleasure" instead of "happiness," and Cicero is hard upon them. He tells a story of the dying moments of Epicurus, quoting a letter written on his death-bed. "While I am writing," he says, "I am living my last hour, and the happiest. I have so bad a pain in my stomach that nothing can be worse. But I am compensated for it all by the joy I feel as I think of my philosophical discourses."284 Cicero then goes on to declare that, though the saying is very noble, it is unnecessary; he should not, in truth, have required compensation. But whenever an opinion is enunciated, the reader feels it to be unnecessary. He does not want opinion. He is satisfied with the language in which Cicero writes about the opinions of others, and with the amusing manner in which he deals with things of themselves heavy and severe.

In the third book he, some time afterward, discusses the Stoic doctrine with Cato at the Tusculan villa of Lucullus, near to his own. He had walked over, and finding Cato there by chance, had immediately gone to work to demolish Cato's philosophical doctrines. He tells us what a glutton Cato was over his books, taking them even into the Senate with him. Cicero asks for certain volumes of Aristotle, and Cato answers him that he would fain put into his hand those of Zeno's school. We can see how easily Cato falls into the trap. He takes up his parable, and preaches his sermon, but he does it with a marvellous enthusiasm, so that we cannot understand that the man who wrote it intended to demolish it all in the next few pages. I will translate his last words of Cato's appeal to the world at large: "I have been carried farther than my intention. But in truth the admirable order of the system, and the incredible symmetry of it, has led him on. By the gods, do you not wonder at it? In nature there is nothing so close packed, nor in art so well fitted. The latter always agrees with the former – that which follows with that which has gone before. Not a stone in it all can be moved from its place. If you touch but one letter it falls to the ground. How severe, how magnificent, how dignified stands out the person of the wise man, who, when his reason shall have taught him that virtue is the only good, of a necessity must be happy! He shall be more justly called king than Tarquin, who could rule neither himself nor others; more rightly Dictator than Sulla, the owner of the three vices, luxury, avarice, and cruelty; more rightly rich than Crassus, who, had he not in truth been poor, would never have crossed the Euphrates in quest of war. All things are justly his who knows how to use them justly. You may call him beautiful whose soul is more lovely than his body. He is free who is slave to no desire. He is unconquered for whose mind you can forge no chains; you need not wait with him for the last day to pronounce him happy. If this be so, then the good man is also the happy man. What can be better worth our study than philosophy, or what more heavenly than virtue?"285 All of this was written by Cicero in most elaborate language, with a finish of words polished down to the last syllable, because he had nothing else wherewith to satisfy the cravings of his intellect.

The fourth book is a continuation of the argument "Which when he had said he (made) an end. – But I (began)."286 With no other introduction Cicero goes to work and demolishes every word that Cato had said. He is very courteous, so that Cato cannot but admit that he is answered becomingly; but, to use a common phrase, he does not leave him a leg to stand upon. Although during the previous book Cato has talked so well that the reader will think that there must be something in it, he soon is made to perceive that the Stoic budge is altogether shoddy.

The fifth and last book, De Finibus, is supposed to recount a dialogue held at Athens, or, rather, gives the circumstances of a discourse pretended to have been delivered there by Pupius Piso to the two Ciceros, and to their cousin Lucius, on the merits of the old Academy and the Aristotelian Peripatetics; for Plato's philosophy had got itself split into two. There was the old and the new, and we may perhaps doubt to which Cicero devoted himself. He certainly was not an Epicurean, and he certainly was not a Stoic. He delighted to speak of himself as a lover of Plato. But in some matters he seems to have followed Aristotle, who had diverged from Plato, and he seems also to have clung to Carneades, who had become master of the new Academy. But, in truth, to ascertain the special doctrine of such a man on such a subject is vain. As we read these works we lose ourselves in admiration of his memory; we are astonished at the industry which he exhibits; we are delighted by his perspicuity; and feel ourselves relieved amid the crowd of names and theories by flashes of his wit; but there comes home to us, as a result, the singular fact of a man playing with these theories as the most interesting sport the world had produced, but not believing the least in any of them. It was not that he disbelieved; and perhaps among them all the tenets of the new Academy were those which reconciled themselves the best to his common-sense. But they were all nothing to him but an amusement.

In this book there are some exquisite bits. He says, speaking of Athens, that, "Go where you will through the city, you place your footsteps on the vestiges of history."287 He says of a certain Demetrius, whom he describes as writing books without readers in Egypt, "that this culture of his mind was to him, as it were, the food by which his humanity was kept alive."288 And then he falls into the praise of our love for our neighbors, and introduces us to that true philosophy which was the real guide of his life. "Among things which are honest," he says, "there is nothing which shines so brightly and so widely as that brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that general love for the human race. It comes from our original condition, in which children are loved by their parents; and then binding together the family, it spreads itself abroad among relations, connections, friends, and neighbors. Then it includes citizens and those who are our allies. At last it takes in the whole human race, and that feeling of the soul arises which, giving every man his own, and defending by equal laws the rights of each, is called justice."289 It matters little how may have been introduced this great secret which Christ afterward taught, and for which we look in vain through the writings of all the philosophers. It comes here simply from Cicero himself in the midst of his remarks on the new Academy, but it gives the lesson which had governed his life: "I will do unto others as I would they should do unto me." In this is contained the rudiments of that religion which has served to soften the hearts of us all. It is of you I must think, and not of myself. Hitherto the schools had taught how a man should make himself happy, whether by pleasure, whether by virtue, or whether by something between the two. It seems that it had never as yet occurred to a man to think of another except as a part of the world around him. Then there had come a teacher who, while fumbling among the old Greek lessons which had professed to tell mankind what each should do for himself, brings forth this, as it were, in preparation for the true doctrine that was to come: "Ipsa caritas generis humani!" – "That love of the human race!" I trust I may be able to show, before I have finished my work, that this was Cicero's true philosophy. All the rest is merely with him a play of words.

Our next work contains the five books of the Tusculan Disputations, addressed to Brutus: Tusculanarum Disputationum, ad M. Brutum, libri i., ii., iii., iv., and v. That is the name that has at last been decided by the critics and annotators as having been probably given to them by Cicero. They are supposed to have been written to console himself in his grief for the death of Tullia. I have great doubt whether consolation in sorrow is to be found in philosophy, but I have none as to the finding it in writing philosophy. Here, I may add, that the poor generally suffer less in their sorrow than the rich, because they are called upon to work for their bread. The man who must make his pair of shoes between sunrise and the moment at which he can find relief from his weary stool, has not time to think that his wife has left him, and that he is desolate in the world. Pulling those weary threads, getting that leather into its proper shape, seeing that his stitches be all taut, so that he do not lose his place among the shoemakers, so fills his time that he has not a moment for a tear. And it is the same if you go from the lowest occupation to the highest. Writing Greek philosophy does as well as the making of shoes. The nature of the occupation depends on the mind, but its utility on the disposition. It was Cicero's nature to write. Will any one believe that he might not as well have consoled himself with one of his treatises on oratory? But philosophy was then to his hands. It seems to have cropped up in his latter years, after he had become intimate with Brutus. When life was again one turmoil of political fever it was dropped.

In the five of the Books of the Tusculan Disputations, still addressed to Brutus, he contends: 1. That death is no evil; 2. That pain is none; 3. That sorrow may be abolished; 4. That the passions may be conquered; 5. That virtue will suffice to make a man happy. These are the doctrines of the Stoics; but Cicero does not in these books defend any school especially. He leans heavily on Epicurus, and gives all praise to Socrates and to Plato; but he is comparatively free: "Nullius adductus jurare in verba magistri,"290 as Horace afterward said, probably ridiculing Cicero. "I live for the day. Whatever strikes my mind as probable, that I say. In this way I alone am free."291

Let us take his dogmas and go through them one by one, comparing each with his own life. This, it may be said, is a crucial test to which but few philosophers would be willing to accede; but if it shall be found that he never even dreamed of squaring his conduct with his professions, then we may admit that he employed his time in writing these things because it did not suit him to make his pair of shoes.

Was there ever a man who lived with a greater fear of death before his eyes – not with the fear of a coward, but with the assurance that it would withdraw him from his utility, and banish him from the scenes of a world in sympathy with which every pulse of his heart was beating? Even after Tullia was dead the Republic had come again for him, and something might be done to stir up these fainéant nobles! What could a dead man do for his country? Look back at Cicero's life, and see how seldom he has put forward the plea of old age to save him from his share of the work of attack. Was this the man to console himself with the idea that death was no evil? And did he despise pain, or make any attempt at showing his disregard of it? You can hardly answer this question by looking for a man's indifference when undergoing it. It would be to require too much from philosophy to suppose that it could console itself in agony by reasoning. It would not be fair to insist on arguing with Cato in the gout. The clemency of human nature refuses to deal with philosophy in the hard straits to which it may be brought by the malevolence of evil. But when you find a man peculiarly on the alert to avoid the recurrence of pain, when you find a man with a strong premeditated antipathy to a condition as to which he pretends an indifference, then you may fairly assert that his indifference is only a matter of argument. And this was always Cicero's condition. He knew that he must at any rate lose the time passed by him under physical annoyance. His health was good, and by continued care remained so to the end; but he was always endeavoring to avoid sea-sickness. He was careful as to his baths, careful as to his eyes, very careful as to his diet. Was there ever a man of whom it might be said with less truth that he was indifferent as to pain?

The third position is that sorrow may be abolished. Read his letters to Atticus about his daughter Tullia, written at the very moment he was proving this. He was a heart-broken, sorrow-stricken man. It will not help us now to consider whether in this he showed strength or weakness. There will be doubt about it, whether he gained or lost more by that deep devotion to another creature which made his life a misery to him because that other one had gone; whether, too, he might not have better hidden his sorrow than have shown it even to his friend. But with him, at any rate, it was there. He can talk over it, weep over it, almost laugh over it; but if there be a thing that he cannot do, it is to treat it after the manner of a Stoic.

His passions should be conquered. Look back at every period of his life, and see whether he has ever attempted it. He has always been indignant, or triumphant, or miserable, or rejoicing. Remember the incidents of his life before and after his Consulship – the day of his election and the day of his banishment – and ask the philosophers why he had not controlled his passion. I shall be told, perhaps, that here was a man over whom, in spite of his philosophy, his passion had the masterhood. But what attempt did he ever make? Has he shown himself to us to be a man with a leaning toward such attempts? Has he not revelled in his passions, feeling them to be just, righteous, honest, and becoming a man? Has he regretted them? Did they occasion him remorse? Will any one tell me that such a one has lived with the conviction that he might conquer the evils of the world by controlling his passions? That virtue will make men happy he might probably have granted, if asked; but he would have conceded the point with a subterfuge. The commonest Christian of the day will say as much; but he will say it in a different meaning from that intended by the philosophers, who had declared, as a rule of life, that virtue would suffice to make them happy. To be good to your neighbors will make you happy in the manner described by Cicero in the fifth book, De Finibus. Love those who come near you. Be good to your fellow-creatures. Think, when dealing with each of them, what his feelings may be. Melt to a woman in her sorrow. Lend a man the assistance of your shoulder. Be patient with age. Be tender with children. Let others drink of your cup and eat of your loaf. Where the wind cuts, there lend your cloak. That virtue will make you happy. But that is not the virtue of which he spoke when he laid down his doctrine. That was not the virtue with which Brutus was strong when he was skinning those poor wretches of Salamis. Such was the virtue with which the heart of Cicero glowed when he saw the tradesmen of the Cilician town come out into the market-place with their corn.

Cicero begins the second book of the Tusculans by telling us that Neoptolemus liked to do a little philosophy now and then, but never too much at a time. With himself the matter was different: "In what else is there that I can do better?" Then he takes the bit between his teeth and rushes away with it. The reader feels that he would not stop him if he could. He does little, indeed, for philosophy; but so much for literature that he would be a bold man who would want to have him otherwise employed.

He wrote three treatises, De Natura Deorum. Had he declared that he would write three treatises to show the ideas which different men had taken up about the gods he would be nearer to the truth. We have an idea of what was Cicero's real notion of that "dominans in nobis deus"292– that god which reigns within us – and which he declares in Scipio's dream to have forbidden us to commit suicide. Nothing can be farther removed from that idea than the gods of which he tells us, either in the first book, in which the gods of Epicurus are set forth; in the second, in which the Stoics are defended; or the third, in which the gods, in accordance with the Academy, are maintained; not but that, either for the one or for the other, the man who speaks up for that sect does not say the best that is to be said. Velleius is eloquent for the Epicureans, Balbus for the Stoics, and Cotta for the Academy. And in that which each says there is to be found a germ of truth – though indeed Cicero makes his Epicurean as absurd as he well can do. But he does not leave a trace behind of that belief in another man's belief which an energetic preacher is sure to create. The language is excellent, the stories are charming, the arguments as used against each other are courteous, clever, and such that on the spur of the moment a man cannot very well reply to them; but they leave on the mind of the reader a sad feeling of the lack of reality.

In the beginning he again repeats his reasons for writing on such subjects so late in life. "Being sick with ease, and having found the condition of the Republic to be such that it has to be ruled by one man, I have thought it good, for the sake of the Republic, to write about philosophy in a language that shall be understood by all our citizens, believing it to be a matter of great import to the glory of the State that things of such weight should be set forth in the Latin tongue;"293 not that the philosophy should be set forth, but what the different teachers said about it. His definition of eternity – or rather the want of definition – is singular: "There has been from all time an eternity which no measurement of time can describe. Its duration cannot be understood – that there should have been a time before time existed."294 Then there comes an idea of the Godhead, escaping from him in the midst of his philosophy, modern, human, and truly Ciceronian: "Lo, it comes to pass that this god, of whom we are sure in our minds, and of whom we hold the very footprints on our souls, can never appear to us."295

By-and-by we come to a passage in which we cannot but imagine that Cicero does express something of the feeling of his heart, as for a moment he seems to lose his courtesy in abusing the Epicureans: "Therefore do not waste your salt, of which your people are much in want, in laughing at us. Indeed, if you will listen to me, you will not try to do so; it does not become you; it is not given to you; you have not the power. I do not say this to you," he says, addressing Velleius, "for your manners have been polished, and you possess the courtesy of our people; but I am thinking of you all as a body, and chiefly of him who is the father of your rules – a man without science, without letters – one who insults all, without critical ability, without weight, without wit."296 Cicero, I think, must have felt some genuine dislike for Epicurus when he spoke of him in such terms as these.

Then, alas! there is commenced a passage in which are inserted many translated verses of the Greek poet Aratus. Cicero when a lad had taken in hand the Phænomena of Aratus, and here he finds a place in which can be introduced some of his lines. Aratus had devoted himself to the singing of the stars, and has produced for us many of the names with which we are still familiar: "The Twins;" "The Bull;" "The Great Bear;" "Cassiopeia;" "The Waterman;" "The Scorpion;" these and many others are made to come forward in hexameters – and by Cicero in Latin, as by Aratus in their Greek guise. We may suppose that the poem as translated had fallen dead – but here it is brought to life and is introduced into what is intended as at least a rationalistic account of the gods and their nature. Nothing less effective can be imagined than the repetition of uninteresting verses in such a place; for the reader, who has had Epicurus just handled for him, is driven to remember that their images are at any rate as false as the scheme of Epicurus, and is made to conclude that Balbus does not believe in his own argument. It has been sometimes said of Cicero that he is too long. The lines have probably been placed here as a joke, though they are inserted at such a length as to carry the reader away altogether into another world.