Page:1888 Cicero's Tusculan Disputations.djvu/82

 76 about words removed, that which they with reason embrace, and which we call honest, right, becoming, and sometimes include under the general name of virtue, appears so far superior to everything else that all other things which are looked upon as the gifts of fortune, or the good things of the body, seem trifling and insignificant; and no evil whatever, nor all the collective body of evils together, appears to be compared to the evil of infamy. Wherefore, if, as you granted in the beginning, infamy is worse than pain, pain is certainly nothing; for while it appears to you base and unmanly to groan, cry out, lament, or faint under pain; while you cherish notions of probity, dignity, honor, and, keeping your eye on them, refrain yourself, pain will certainly yield to virtue, and, by the influence of imagination, will lose its whole force.—For you must either admit that there is no such thing as virtue, or you must despise every kind of pain. Will you allow of such a virtue as prudence, without which no virtue whatever can even be conceived? What, then? Will that suffer you to labor and take pains to no purpose? Will temperance permit you to do anything to excess? Will it be possible for justice to be maintained by one who through the force of pain discovers secrets, or betrays his confederates, or deserts many duties of life? Will you act in a manner consistently with courage, and its attendants, greatness of soul, resolution, patience, and contempt for all worldly things? Can you hear yourself called a great man when you lie grovelling, dejected, and deploring your condition with a lamentable voice; no one would call you even a man while in such a condition. You must therefore either abandon all pretensions to courage, or else pain must be put out of the question.

XIV. You know very well that, even though part of your Corinthian furniture were gone, the remainder might be safe without that; but if you lose one virtue (though virtue in reality cannot be lost), still if, I say, you should acknowledge that you were deficient in one, you would be stripped of all. Can you, then, call yourself a brave man, of a great soul, endued with patience and steadiness above the frowns of fortune? or Philoctetes? for I choose to instance him, rather than yourself, for he certainly was not