The Life of Cicero Volume II Part 12

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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sion. I shall be told, perhaps, that here was a man over whom, in spite of his philosophy, his pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sions, 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 pa.s.sions? 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 a.s.sistance 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 G.o.ds he would be nearer to the truth. We have an idea of what was Cicero's real notion of that "dominans in n.o.bis deus"[292]--that G.o.d 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 G.o.ds of which he tells us, either in the first book, in which the G.o.ds of Epicurus are set forth; in the second, in which the Stoics are defended; or the third, in which the G.o.ds, 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 G.o.dhead, escaping from him in the midst of his philosophy, modern, human, and truly Ciceronian: "Lo, it comes to pa.s.s that this G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage in which are inserted many translated verses of the Greek poet Aratus. Cicero when a lad had taken in hand the Phaenomena 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;"

"Ca.s.siopeia;" "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 G.o.ds and their nature. Nothing less effective can be imagined than the repet.i.tion 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.

Farther on he devotes himself to anatomical research, which, for that age, shows an accurate knowledge. But what has it to do with the nature of the G.o.ds? "When the belly which is placed under the stomach becomes the receptacle of meat and drink, the lungs and the heart draw in the air for the stomach. The stomach, which is wonderfully arranged, consists chiefly of nerves. * * * The lungs are light and porous, and like a sponge--just fit for drawing in the breath. They blow themselves out and draw themselves in, so that thus may be easily received that sustenance most necessary to animal life."[297]

The third book is but a fragment, but it begins well with pleasant raillery against Epicurus. Cotta declares that he had felt no difficulty with Epicurus. Epicurus and his allies had found little to say as to the immortal G.o.ds. His G.o.ds had possessed arms and legs, but had not been able to move them. But from Balbus, the Stoic, they had heard much which, though not true, was nevertheless truthlike. In all these discourses it seems that the poor Epicureans are treated with but a moderate amount of mercy. But Cotta continues, and tells many stories of the G.o.ds. He is interrupted in his tale, for the sad hand of destruction has fallen upon the MS., and his arguments have come to us unfinished.

"It is better," he says, "not to give wine to the sick at all, because you may injure them by the application. In the same way I do not know whether it would not be better to refuse that gift of reason, that sharpness and quickness of thought, to men in general, than to bestow it upon them so often to their own destruction."[298] It is thus that is discussed the nature of the G.o.ds in this work of Cicero, which is indeed a discussion on the different schools of philosophy, each in the position which it had reached in his time.

The De Natura Deorum is followed by two books, De Divinatione, and by the fragment of one, De Fato. Divination is the science of predicting events. By "Fatum" Cicero means destiny, or that which has been fixed beforehand. The three books together may be taken as religious discourses, and his purport seems to have been to show that it might be the duty of the State to foster observances, and even to punish their non-observance--for the benefit of the whole--even though they might not be in themselves true. He is here together with his brother, or with those whom, like his brother, he may suppose to have emanc.i.p.ated themselves from superst.i.tion--and tells him or them that though they do not believe they should feign belief. If the augurs declare by the flight of birds that such a thing should be done, let it be done, although he who has to act in the matter has no belief in the birds. If they declare that a matter has been fixed by fate, let it be as though it were fixed, whether fixed or no. He repudiates the belief as unreasonable or childish, but recommends that men should live as though they believed. In such a theory as this put thus before the reader, there will seem to be dissimulation. I cannot deny that it is so, though most anxious to a.s.sert the honesty of Cicero. I can only say that such dissimulation did prevail then, and that it does prevail now. If any be great enough to condemn the hierarchs of all the churches, he may do so, and may include Cicero with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am not. It seems necessary to make allowance for the advancing intelligence of men, and unwise to place yourself so far ahead as to shut yourself out from that common pale of mankind. I distrust the self-confidence of him who thinks that he can deduce from one acknowledged error a whole scheme of falsehood. I will take our Protestant Church of England religion and will ask some thoughtful man his belief as to its changing doctrines, and will endeavor to do so without shocking the feelings of any. When did Sabbatarian observances begin to be required by the Word of G.o.d, and when again did they cease to be so? If it were worth the while of those who have thought about the subject to answer my question, the replies would be various. It has never begun! It has never wavered! And there would be the intermediate replies of those who acknowledge that the feeling of the country is altering and has altered. In the midst of this, how many a father of a family is there who goes to church for the sake of example? Does not the Church admit prayers for change of weather? Ask the clergyman on his way from church what he is doing with his own haystack, and his answer will let you know whether he believes in his own prayers. He has lent all the sanct.i.ty of his voice to the expression of words which had been written when the ignorance of men as to the works of nature was greater; or written yesterday because the ignorance of man has demanded it. Or they who have demanded it have not perhaps been ignorant themselves, but have thought it well to subserve the superst.i.tion of the mult.i.tude. I am not saying this as against the religious observances of to-day, but as showing that such is still the condition of men as to require the defence which Cicero also required when he wrote as follows: "Former ages erred in much which we know to have been changed by practice, by doctrine, or by time. But the custom, the religion, the discipline, the laws of the augurs and the authority of the college, are retained, in obedience to the opinion of the people, and to the great good of the State. Our Consuls, Claudius and Junius, were worthy of all punishment when they put to sea in opposition to the auspices; for men must obey religion, nor can the customs of our country be set aside so easily."[299] No stronger motive for adhering to religious observances can be put forward than the opinion of the people and the good of the State. There will be they who aver that truth is great and should be allowed to prevail. Though broken worlds should fall in disorder round their heads, they would stand firm amid the ruins. But they who are likely to be made responsible will not cause worlds to be broken.

Such, I think, was the reasoning within Cicero's mind when he wrote these treatises. In the first he encounters his brother Quintus at his Tusculan villa, and there listens to him discoursing in favor of religion. Quintus is altogether on the side of the G.o.ds and the auspices. He is, as we may say, a gentleman of the old school, and is thoroughly conservative. In this way he has an opportunity given him of showing the antiquity of his belief. "Stare super vias antiquas," is the motto of Quintus Cicero. Then he proceeds to show the two kinds of divination which have been in use. There is the one which he calls "Ars," and which we perhaps may call experience. The soothsayer predicts in accordance with his knowledge of what has gone before. He is asked to say, for instance, whether a ship shall put to sea on a Friday. He knows--or thinks that he knows, or in his ignorance declares that he thinks that he knows--that ships that have put to sea on Friday have generally gone to the bottom. He therefore predicts against the going to sea. Although the ship should put forth on the intended day, and should make a prosperous voyage, the prophet has not been proved to be false.

That can only be done by showing that ships that have gone to sea on Friday have generally been subject to no greater danger than others--a process which requires the close observations of science to make good.

That is Art. Then there is the prediction which comes from a mind disturbed--one who dreams, let us say, or prophesies when in a fit--as the Sibyl, or Epimenides of Crete, who lived one hundred and fifty-seven years, but slept during sixty-four of them. Quintus explains as to these that the G.o.d does not desire mankind to understand them, but only to use them.[300]

He tells us many amusing details as to prophetic dreams and the doings of soothsayers and wise men. The book so becomes chatty and full of anecdotes, and interspersed with many pieces of poetry--some by others and some by Cicero. Here are given those lines as to the battle of the eagle and the dragon which I have ventured to call the best amid the nine versions brought forward.[301]

We cannot but sympathize with him in the reason which he prefixes to the second book of this treatise: "I often ask myself and turn in my mind how best I may serve the largest number of my fellow-citizens, lest there should come a time in which I should seem to have ceased to be anxious for the State; and nothing better has occurred to me than that I should make known the way of studying the best arts--which indeed I think I have now done in various books."[302] Then he recapitulates them. There is the opening work on philosophy which he had dedicated to Hortensius, now lost. Then in the four books of the Academics he had put forward his ideas as to that school which he believed to be the least arrogant and the truest--meaning the new Academy. After that, as he had felt all philosophy to be based on the search after good and evil, he had examined that matter. The Tusculan Inquiries had followed, in which he had set forth, in five books, the five great rules of living well.

Having finished this, he had written his three books on the nature of the G.o.ds, and was now in the act of completing it, and would complete it, by his present inquiries. We cannot but sympathize with him because we know that, though he was not quite in earnest in all this, he was as near it as a man can be who teaches that which he does not quite believe himself. Brutus believed it, and Cato, and that Velleius, and that Balbus, and that Cotta. Or if perchance any of them did not, they lived, and talked, and read, and were as erudite about it, as though they did.

The example was good, and the precepts were the best to be had. Amid it all he chose the best doctrine, and he was undoubtedly doing good to his countrymen in thus representing to them in their native language the learning by which they might best be softened.

"Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes.

Intulit agresti Latio."[303]

Here, too, he explains his own conduct in a beautiful pa.s.sage. "My fellow-citizens," says he, "will pardon me, or perhaps will rather thank me, for that when the Republic fell into the power of one man I neither hid myself nor did I desert them; nor did I idly weep, or carry myself as though angry with the man or with the times; nor yet, forsooth, so flattering the good fortune of another, that I should have to be ashamed of what I had done myself. For I had learned this lesson from the philosophy of Plato--that there are certain changes in public affairs. They will be governed now by the leaders of the State, then by the people, sometimes by a single man."[304] This is very wise, but he goes to work and altogether destroys his brother's argument. He knows that he is preaching only to a few--in such a manner as to make his preaching safe. His language is very pleasing, always civil, always courteous; but not the less does he turn the arguments of his brother into ridicule. And we feel that he is not so much laughing at his brother as at the G.o.ds themselves--they are so clearly wooden G.o.ds--though he is aware how necessary it is for the good of the State that they shall be received. He declares that, in accordance with the theory of his brother--meaning thereby the Stoics--"it is necessary that they, the G.o.ds, should spy into every cottage along the road, so that they may look after the affairs of men."[305] It is playful, argumentative, and satirical. At last he proposes to leave the subject.

Socrates would also do so, never asking for the adhesion of any one, but leaving the full purport of his words to sink into the minds of his audience. Quintus says that he quite agrees to this, and so the discourse De Divinatione is brought to an end.

Of his book on fate we have only a fragment, or the middle part of it.

It is the desire of Cicero to show that, in the sequence of affairs which men call Life, it matters little whether there be a Destiny or not. Things will run on, and will be changed, or apparently be changed, by the action of men. What is it to us whether this or that event has been decreed while we live, and while each follows his own devices? All this, however, is a little tedious, taken at the end of so long a course of philosophy; and we rise at last from the perusal with a feeling of thankfulness that all these books of Chrysippus of which he tells us, are not still existent to be investigated.

Such is the end of those works which I admit to have been philosophical, and of which it seems he understood that they were the work of about eighteen months. They were all written after Caesar's triumph--when it was no longer in the power of any Roman to declare his opinion either in the Senate or in the Forum. Caesar had put down all opposition, and was made supreme over everything--till his death. The De Fato was written, indeed, after he had fallen, but before things had so far shaped themselves as to make it necessary that Cicero should return to public life. So, indeed, were the three last moral essays, which I shall notice in the next chapter; but in truth he had them always in his heart. It was only necessary that he should send them forth to scribes, leaving either to himself or to some faithful Tiro the subsequent duty of rearrangement. But what a head there was there to contain it all!

CHAPTER XIII.

_CICERO'S MORAL ESSAYS._

We have now to deal with the moral essays of this almost inexhaustible contributor to the world's literature, and we shall then have named perhaps a quarter of all that he wrote. I have seen somewhere a calculation that only a tenth of his works remain to us, dug out, as it were, from the buried ruins of literature by the care of sedulous and eager scholars. I make a more modest estimate of his powers. Judging from what we know to have been lost, and from the absence of any effort to keep the greater portion of his letters, I think that I do not exaggerate his writing. Who can say but that as time goes on some future Petrarch or some future Mai may discover writings. .h.i.therto unknown, concealed in convent boxes, or more mysteriously hidden beneath the labors of Middle-Age monks? It was but in 1822 that the De Republica was brought to light--so much of it at least as we still possess; and for more than thirty years afterward Cardinal Mai continued to reproduce, from time to time, collections of Greek and Latin writings. .h.i.therto unheard of by cla.s.sical readers. Let us hope, however, that the zeal of the learned may stop short of that displayed by Simon Du Bos, or we may have whole treatises of Cicero of which he himself was guiltless.[306]

I can hardly content myself with cla.s.sifying the De Republica and the De Legibus under the same name with these essays of Cicero, which are undoubtedly moral in their nature. But it may pa.s.s, perhaps, without that distinct contradiction which had to be made as to the enveloping the De Officiis in the garb of philosophy. It has been the combining of the true and false in one set, and handing them down to the world as Cicero's philosophy, which has done the mischief. The works reviewed in the last chapter contained disputations on the Greek philosophy which Cicero thought might be well handled in the Latin language for the benefit of his countrymen. It would be well for them to know what Epicurus taught, or Zeno, and how they differed from Socrates and Plato, and this he told them. Now in these moral essays he gives them his own philosophy--if that may be called philosophy which is intended to teach men how to live well. There are six books on government, called the De Republica, and three on law; and there are the three treatises on old age and friendship, each in one book, and that on the duty of man to man, in three.

There is a common error in the world as to the meaning of the word republic. It has come to have a sweet savor in the nostrils of men, or a most evil scent, according to their politics. But there is, in truth, the Republic of Russia, as there is that of the United States, and that of England. Cicero, in using it as the name of his work, simply means "the government;" and the treatise under that head contains an account of the Roman Empire, and is historical rather than argumentative and scientific. He himself was an oligarch, and had been brought up amid a condition of things in which that most deleterious form of government recommended itself to him as containing all that had been good and magnificent in the Roman Empire. The great men of Rome, whom the empire had demanded for its construction, had come up each for the work of a year; and, when succeeding, had perhaps been elected for a second. By the expulsion of their kings, the cla.s.s from whom these men had been chosen showed their personal desire for honor, and the marvel is that through so many centuries those oligarchs should have flourished. The reader, unless he be strongly impregnated with democratic feelings, when he begins to read Roman history finds himself wedded to the cause of these oligarchs. They have done the big deeds, and the opposition comes to them from vulgar hands. Let me ask any man who remembers the reading of his Livy whether it was not so with him. But it was in truth the democratic element opposed to these leaders, and the battles they won from time to time within the walls of the city, which produced the safety of Rome and enabled the government to go on. Then by degrees the people became enervated and the leaders became corrupt, and by masterhood over foreign people and external subjects slaves were multiplied, and the work appertaining to every man could be done by another man's hand. Then the evils of oligarchy began. Plunder, rapine, and luxury took the place of duty performed. A Verres ruled where a Marcellus had conquered. Cicero, who saw the difference plainly enough in regard to the individuals, did not perceive that this evil had grown according to its nature. That state of affairs was produced which Mommsen has described to us as having been without remedy. But Cicero did not see it. He had his eyes on the greatness of the past--and on himself--and would not awake to the fact that the glory was gone from Rome. He was in this state of mind when he wrote his De Republica, nine years before the time in which he commenced his philosophical discussions. Then he still hoped. Caesar was away in Gaul, and Pompey maintained at Rome the ghost of the old Republic. He could still open his mouth and talk boldly of freedom. He had not been as yet driven to find consolation amid that play of words which const.i.tutes the Greek philosophy.

I must remind the readers again that the De Republica is a fragment: the first part is wanting. We find him telling us the story of the elder Cato, in order that we may understand how good it is that we should not relax in our public work as long as our health will sustain us. Then he gives instances to show that the truly good citizen will not be deterred by the example of men who have suffered for their country, and among the number he names himself. But he soon introduces the form of dialogue which he afterward continues, and brings especially the younger Scipio and Laelius upon the scene. The lessons which are given to us are supposed to come from the virtue of the t.i.tular grandson of the greater Scipio who out-manoeuvred Hannibal. He continues to tell story after story out of the Roman chronicles, and at last a.s.sures us that that form of government is the best in which the monarchical element is tempered by the authority of the leading citizens, and kept alive by the voices of the people. Is it only because I am an Englishman that he seems to me to describe that form of government which was to come in England?

The second book also begins with the praises of Cato. Scipio then commences with Romulus, and tells the history of Rome's kings. Tarquin is banished, and the Consulate established. He tells us, by no means with approbation, how the Tribunate was established, and then, alas!

there comes a break in the MS.

In the third we have, as a beginning, a fragment handed down to us by Augustine, in which Cicero complains of the injustice of Nature in having sent man into the world, as might a step-mother, naked, weak, infirm, with soul anxious, timid, and without force, but still having within it something of divine fire not wholly destroyed. Then, after a while, through many "lacunae," Scipio, Laelius, and one Philus fall into a discourse as to justice. There is a remarkable pa.s.sage, from which we learn that the Romans practised protection with a rigor exceeding that of modern nations. They would not even permit their transalpine allies to plant their olives and vineyards, lest their produce should make their way across Italy--whereby they raised the prices against themselves terribly of oil and wine.[307] "There is a kind of slavery which is unjust," says one, "when those men have to serve others who might 'properly belong to themselves.' But when they only are made to be slaves who--" We may perceive that the speaker went on to say that they who were born slaves might properly be kept in that position. But it is evidently intended to be understood that there exists a cla.s.s who are slaves by right. Carneades, the later master of the new Academy, has now joined them, and teaches a doctrine which would not make him popular in this country. "If you should know," he says, "that an adder lay hid just where one were about to sit down whose death would be a benefit to you, you would do wrong unless you were to tell him of it. But you would do it with impunity, as no one could prove that you knew it." From this may be seen the nature of the discourses on justice.

The next two books are but broken fragments, treating of morals and manners. In the sixth we come to that dream of Scipio which has become so famous in the world of literature that I do not know whether I can do better than translate it, and add it on as an appendix to the end of my volume. It is in itself so beautiful in parts that I think that all readers will thank me. (See appendix to this chapter). At the same time it has to be admitted that it is in parts fantastic, and might almost be called childish, were it not that we remember, when reading it, at what distance of time it was written, and with what difficulty Cicero strove to master subjects which science has made familiar to us. The music of the spheres must have been heard in his imagination before he could have told us of it, as he has done in language which seems to be poetic now as it was then--and because poetic, therefore not absurd. The length of the year's period is an extravagance. You may call your s.p.a.ce of time by what name you will; it is long or short in proportion to man's life. He tells us that we may not hope that our fame shall be heard of on the other side of the Ganges, or that our voices shall come down through many years. I myself read this dream of Scipio in a volume found in Australia, and read it two thousand years after it was written. He could judge of this world's future only by the past. But when he tells us of the soul's immortality, and of the heaven to be won by a life of virtue, of the duty upon us to remain here where G.o.d has placed us, and of the insufficiency of fame to fill the cravings of the human heart, then we have to own that we have come very near to that divine teaching which he was not permitted to hear.

Two years afterward, about the time that Milo was killing Clodius, he wrote his treatise in three books, De Legibus. It is, we are told, a copy from Plato. As is the Topica a copy from Aristotle, written on board ship from memory, so may this be called a copy. The idea was given to him, and many of the thoughts which he has worked up in his own manner. It is a dialogue between him and Atticus and his brother Quintus, and treats rather of the nature and origin of law, and how law should be made to prevail, than of laws as they had been as yet constructed for the governance of man. All that is said in the first book may be found scattered through his philosophic treatises. There are some pretty morsels, as when Atticus tells us that he will for the nonce allow Cicero's arguments to pa.s.s, because the music of the birds and the waters will prevent his fellow-Epicureans from hearing and being led away by mistaken doctrine.[308] Now and again he enunciates a great doctrine, as when he declares that "there is nothing better than that men should understand that they are born to be just, and that justice is not a matter of opinion, but is inherent in nature."[309] He constantly opposes the idea of pleasure, recurring to the doctrine of his Greek philosophy. It was not by them, however, that he had learned to feel that a man's final duty here on earth is his duty to other men.

In the second book he inculcates the observance of religious ceremonies in direct opposition to that which he afterward tells us in his treatise De Divinatione. But in this, De Legibus, we may presume that he intends to give instructions for the guidance of the public, whereas in the other he is communicating to a few chosen friends those esoteric doctrines which it would be dangerous to give to the world at large.

There is a charming pa.s.sage, in which we are told not to devote the rich things of the earth to the G.o.ds. Gold and silver will create impure desire. Ivory, taken from the body of an animal, is a gift not simple enough for a G.o.d. Metals, such as iron, are for war rather than for worship. An image, if it is to be used, let it be made of one bit of wood, or one block of stone. If cloth is given, let it not be more than a woman can make in a month. Let there be no bright colors. White is best for the G.o.ds; and so on.[310] Here we have the wisdom of Plato, or of those from whom Plato had borrowed it, teaching us a lesson against which subsequent ages have rebelled. It is not only that a G.o.d cannot want our gold and silver, but that a man does want them. That rule as to the woman's morsel of cloth was given in some old a.s.sembly, lest her husband or her brother should lose the advantage of her labor. It was seen what superst.i.tion would do in collecting the wealth of the world round the shrines of the G.o.ds. How many a man has since learned to regret the lost labor of his household; and yet what G.o.d has been the better? There may be a question of aesthetics, indeed, with which Cicero does not meddle.

In the third book he descends to practical and at the same time political questions. There had been no matter contested so vehemently among Romans as that of the establishment and maintenance of the Tribunate. Cicero defends its utility, giving, with considerable wit, the task of attacking it to his brother Quintus. Quintus, indeed, is very violent in his onslaught. What can be more "pestiferous," or more p.r.o.ne to sedition? Then Cicero puts him down. "O Quintus," he says, "you see clearly the vices of the Tribunate! but can there be anything more unjust than, in discussing a matter, to remember all its evils and to forget all its merits? You might say the same of the Consuls; for the very possession of power is an evil in itself. But without that evil you cannot have the good which the inst.i.tution contains. The power of the Tribunes is too great, you say. Who denies it? But the violence of the people, always cruel and immodest, is less so under their own leader than if no leader had been given them. The leader will measure his danger; but the people itself know no such measurement."[311] He afterward takes up the question of the ballot, and is against it on principle. "Let the people vote as they will," he says, "but let their votes be known to their betters."[312] It is, alas, useless now to discuss the matter here in England! We have been so impetuous in our wish to avoid the evil of bribery--which was quickly going--that we have rushed into that of dissimulation, which can only be made to go by revolutionary changes. When men vote by tens of thousands the ballot will be safe, but no man will then care for the ballot. It is, however, strange to see how familiar men were under the Roman Empire with matters which are perplexing us to-day.

We now come to the three purely moral essays, the last written of his works, except the Philippics and certain of his letters, and the Topica.

Indeed, when you reach the last year or two of his life, it becomes difficult to a.s.sign their exact places to each. He mentions one as written, and then another; but at last this latter appears before the former. They were all composed in the same year, the year before his death--the most active year of his life, as far as his written works are concerned--and I shall here treat De Senectute first, then De Amicitia, and the De Officiis last, believing them to have been published in that order.

The De Senectute is an essay written in defence of old age, generally called Cato Major. It is supposed to have been spoken by the old Censor, 149 B.C., and to have been listened to by Scipio and Laelius. This was the same Scipio who had the dream--who, in truth, was not a Scipio at all, but a son of Paulus aemilius, whom we remember in history as the younger Africa.n.u.s. Cato rushes at once into his subject, and proves to us his point by insisting on all those commonplace arguments which were probably as well known before his time as they have been since. All men wish for old age, but none rejoice when it has come. The answer is that no man really wishes for old age, but simply wishes for a long life, of which old age is the necessary ending. It creeps on us so quickly! But in truth it does not creep quicker on youth than does youth on infancy; but the years seem to fly fast because not marked by distinct changes.

It is the part of a wise man to see that each portion of his five-act poem shall be well performed. Cato goes on with his lesson, and tells us perhaps all that could be said on behalf of old age at that period of the world's history. It was written by an old man to an old man; for it is addressed to Atticus, who was now sixty-seven, and of course deals much in commonplaces. But it is full of n.o.ble thoughts, and is pleasant, and told in the easiest language; and it leaves upon the reader a sweet savor of the dignity of age. Let the old man feel that it is not for him to attempt the pranks of youth, and he will already have saved himself from much of the evil which Time can do to him. I am ready for you, and you cannot hurt me. "Let not the old man a.s.sume the strength of the young, as a young man does not that of the bull or the elephant. * * *

But still there is something to be regretted by an orator, for to talk well requires not only intellect but all the powers of the body. The melodious voice, however, remains, which--and you see my years--I have not yet lost. The voice of an old man should always be tranquil and contained."[313] He tells a story of Ma.s.sinissa, who was then supposed to be ninety. He was stiff in his joints, and therefore when he went a journey had himself put upon a horse, and never left it, or started on foot and never mounted.[314] "We must resist old age, my Laelius. We must compensate our shortness by our diligence, my Scipio. As we fight against disease, so let us contend with old age.[315] * * * Why age should be avaricious I could never tell. Can there be anything more absurd than to demand so great a preparation for so small a journey?"[316] He tells them that he knew their fathers, and that "he believes they are still alive--that, though they have gone from this earth, they are still leading that life which can only be considered worthy of the name."[317]

The De Amicitia is called Laelius. It is put into the mouth of Laelius, and is supposed to be a discourse on friendship held by him in the presence of his two sons-in-law, Caius Fannius and Mucius Scaevola, a few days after the death of Scipio his friend. Not Damon and Pythias were more renowned for their friendship than Scipio and Laelius. He discusses what is friendship, and why it is contracted; among whom friendship should exist; what should be its laws and duties; and, lastly, by what means it should be preserved.

Cicero begins by telling the story of his own youth; how he had been placed under the charge of Scaevola the augur, and how, having changed his toga, he never left the old man's side till he died; and he recalls how once, sitting with him in a circle with friends, Scaevola fell into that mode of conversation which was usual with him, and told him how once Laelius had discoursed to them on friendship. It is from first to last fresh and green and cooling, as is the freshness of the early summer gra.s.s to men who live in cities. The reader feels, as he goes on with it, that he who had such thoughts and aspirations could never have been altogether unhappy. Coming at the end of his life, in the telling the stories of which we have had to depend so much on his letters to Atticus, it reminds me of the love that existed between them. He has sometimes been querulous with his Atticus. He has complained of bad advice, of deficient care, of halting friendship--in reading which accusations we have, all of us, declared him to be wrong. But Atticus understood him. He knew that the privileges and the burden must go together, and told himself how much more than sufficient were the privileges to compensate the burden. When we make our histories on the bases of such loving letters, we should surely open them with careful hands, and deal with them in sympathy with their spirit. In writing this treatise De Amicitia especially for the eyes of Atticus, how constantly the heart must have gone back to all that had pa.s.sed between them--how confident he must have been of the truth of his friend! He who, after nearly half a century of friendship, could thus write to his friend on friendship cannot have been an unhappy man.

"Should a new friendship spring up," he tells us, "let it not be repressed. You shall still gather fruit from young trees; but do not let it take the place of the old. Age and custom will have given the old fruit a flavor of its own. Who is there that would ride a new horse in preference to one tried--one who knows your hand?"[318]

I regard the De Officiis as one of the most perfect treatises on morals which the world possesses, whether for the truth of the lessons given, for their universality, or for the beauty and lightness of the language.

It is on a subject generally heavy, but is treated with so much art and grace as to make it a delight to have read it, and an important part of education to know it. It is addressed to his son, and is as good now as when it was written. There is not a precept taught in it which is not modern as well as ancient, and which is not fit alike for Christians and Pagans. A system of morality, we might have said, should be one which would suit all men alike. We are bound to acknowledge that this will suit only gentlemen, because he who shall live in accordance with it must be worthy of that name. The "honestum" means much more in Latin than it does in English. Neither "honor" nor "honesty" will give the rendering--not that honor or that honesty which we know. Modern honor flies so high that it leaves honesty sometimes too nearly out of sight; while honesty, though a sterling virtue, ignores those sentiments on which honor is based. "Honestum" includes it all; and Cicero has raised his lessons to such a standard as to comprise it all. But he so teaches that listeners delight to hear. He never preaches. He does not fulminate his doctrine at you, bidding you beware of backslidings and of punishments; but he leads you with him along the gra.s.sy path, till you seem to have found out for yourself what is good--you and he together, and together to have learned that which is manly, graceful, honest, and decorous.

In Cicero's essays is to be found always a perfect withdrawal of himself from the circ.u.mstances of the world around him; so that the reader shall be made to suppose that, in the evening of his life, having reached at last, by means of work done for the State, a time of blessed rest, he gives forth the wisdom of his age, surrounded by all that a tranquil world can bestow upon him. Look back through the treatises written during the last two years, and each shall appear to have been prepared in some quiet and undisturbed period of his life; but we know that the last polish given by his own hands to these three books De Officiis was added amid the heat and turmoils of the Philippics. It is so singular, this power of adapting his mind to whatever pursuit he will, that we are taught almost to think that there must have been two Ciceros, and that the one was eager in personal conflict with Antony, while the other was seated in the garden of some Italian villa meditating words by obeying which all men might be enn.o.bled.

In the dialectical disputations of the Greek philosophers he had picked up a mode of dividing his subject into numbers which is hardly fitted for a discourse so free and open as is this. We are therefore somewhat offended when we are told that virtue is generally divided "into three headings."[319] If it be so, and if it be necessary that we should know it, it should, I think, be conveyed to us without this attempt at logical completeness. It is impossible to call this a fault. Accuracy must, indeed, be in all writers a virtue. But feeling myself to be occasionally wounded by this numbering, I mention it. In the De Officiis he divides the entire matter into three parts, and to each part he devotes a book. In the first he considers whether a thing is fit to be done or left undone--that is, whether it be "honestum" or "turpe;" in the second, whether it be expedient, that is "utile," or the reverse; and in the third he compares the "honestum" and the "utile," and tells us what to choose and what to avoid.

The duty due by a citizen to his country takes with him a place somewhat higher than we accord to it. "Parents are dear, children are dear to us, so are relations and friends; but our country embraces it all, for what good man would not die so that he might serve it? How detestable, then, is the barbarity of those who wound their country at every turn, and have been and are occupied in its destruction."[320] He gives us some excellent advice as to our games, which might be read with advantage, perhaps, by those who row in our university races. But at the end of it he tells us that the hunting-field affords an honest and fitting recreation.[321] I have said that he was modern in his views--but not altogether modern. He defends the suicide of Cato. "To them," he says, speaking of Cato's companions in Africa, "it might not have been forgiven. Their life was softer and their manners easier. But to Cato nature had given an invincible gravity of manners which he had strengthened with all the severity of his will. He had always remained steadfast in the purpose that he would never stand face to face with the tyrant of his country."[322] There was something terribly grand in Cato's character, which loses nothing in coming to us from the lips of Cicero. So much Cicero allows to the stern nature of the man's character. Let us look back and we shall find that we make the same allowance. This is not, in truth, a lesson which he gives us, but an apology which he makes.

Read his advice given in the following line for the outward demeanor of a gentleman: "There are two kinds of beauty. The one is loveliness, which is a woman's gift. But dignity belongs to the man. Let all ornament be removed from the person not worthy of a man to wear--and all fault in gesture and in motion which is like to it. The manners of the wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him.

Let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but just avoiding a rustic harshness. The same measure is to be taken with your clothes as with other matters in which a middle course is best."[323]