The Good Book (17 page)

12. Something of pain and trouble is necessary for everyone at all times: a ship without ballast is unstable and will not sail straight in the sea.

13. Work, worry, labour and trouble form the lot of almost all men all their lives.

14. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? What would they do with the time that would then oppress?

15. In youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised,

16. Eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is fortunate that we do not know what is going to happen.

17. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners,

18. Condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.

19. Yet everyone desires to reach old age; a state of life of which it may be said: ‘It is bad today, and it will be worse tomorrow; and so on till the worst of all.’

20. If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when old, the chief feeling they will have at sight of each other will be disappointment at life as a whole;

21. For their thoughts will go back to that earlier time when life seemed so promising,

22. As it lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn: only to end in so many failures and sufferings.

23. This feeling will so predominate that they will not consider it necessary to speak of it;

24. But on either side it will be silently assumed, and form the ground of all they talk about.

25. He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession.

26. The tricks were meant to be seen only once, and when they are no longer a novelty they cease to deceive; their effect is gone.

27. Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say, ‘He is dead’; it means he has done his task.

28. If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue?

29. Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence?

30. I shall be told philosophy is comfortless, because it speaks the truth; and people prefer illusions.

31. Go to the illusionists, then, and leave philosophers in peace! At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to your hopes.

32. That is what those rascals of illusion will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it.

Chapter 11

  1. Every state of well-being, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative;

  2. It merely consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.

  3. It follows that the happiness of any given life is to be measured not by its joys and pleasures,

  4. But by the extent to which it has been free from suffering.

  5. If this is the true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy a happier destiny than man.

  6. However varied the forms taken by human happiness and misery,

  7. Leading a man to seek the one and shun the other, the basis of it all is bodily pleasure or pain.

  8. The chief source of all passion is thought for what is absent or lies in the future; these are what exercise such a powerful influence on all we do.

  9. This is the origin of our cares, hopes and fears – emotions unknown to the brutes.

10. In his powers of reflection, memory and foresight, man possesses an instrument for condensing and storing up his pleasures and sorrows.

11. But the brute has nothing of the kind; whenever it is in pain, it is as though it were suffering for the first time,

12. Even though the same thing should have previously happened to it times out of number.

13. It has no power of summing up its feelings. Hence its careless and placid temper: how much one envies it!

14. But in man reflection enters, with all the emotions to which it gives rise;

15. And it develops his susceptibility to happiness and misery to so great a degree,

16. That at one moment he is delighted, at another he is in the depths of suicidal despair.

17. In order to increase his pleasures, man adds to the number and pressure of his needs,

18. Which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute.

19. Hence luxury in all its forms: rich food, tobacco and opium, alcohol, fine clothes, a thousand other things he considers necessary for existence.

20. And above and beyond all this, there is a yet greater source of pleasure and pain:

21. Ambition and the feeling of honour and shame; and with it anxiety about the opinion others have of him.

22. It is true that besides the sources of pleasure he shares with the brutes, man has the pleasures of the mind as well.

23. These vary from the most trifling to the highest intellectual achievements; but there is anguish to be set against them on the side of suffering,

24. Anguish that only intellect can know, and reason, reflecting on the sorrow of things.

25. Anguish is a form of suffering unknown to brutes in their natural state.

Chapter 12

  1. The crowd of miserable wretches whose one aim in life is to fill their purses,

  2. But never their heads! offers a singular instance of self-inflicted suffering.

  3. Their wealth becomes a punishment by being an end in itself and a substitute for life.

  4. They hasten about, travelling restlessly. No sooner do they arrive somewhere than they anxiously seek to know what amusements it offers, just like beggars asking where they can receive a dole!

  5. But all this only increases the measure of suffering in human life, out of all proportion to its pleasures;

  6. And the pains of life are made worse for man by the fact that death is something real to him.

  7. The brute flies from death instinctively without knowing what it is,

  8. And therefore without ever contemplating it as man does, who has the prospect of it always before him.

  9. The brute is more content with mere existence than is a human; the plant is wholly so; and humans find satisfaction in life just in proportion as they are dull and obtuse.

10. Accordingly, the life of the brute has far less sorrow in it, but also less joy, when compared with a human life;

11. And while this may be traced to the brute’s freedom from the torments of care and anxiety, it is also because the illusion of hope is unknown to it.

12. There is thus one respect in which brutes show greater wisdom than humans: their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.

13. This contributes to the delight we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified, and make us feel the value of every hour that is free from troubles,

14. A fact which we, with our thoughts and preoccupations, always ignore.

15. But humans, those selfish and heartless creatures, misuse this quality of the brute,

16. And work it to such an extent that they allow the brute absolutely nothing more than mere, bare life.

17. The bird which can wander over half of the world, they shut in a cage, there to die a slow death in longing and crying for freedom;

18. For in a cage it does not sing from pleasure, but despair.

19. And when I see how humans misuse their dogs, their most loyal friends; how they tie up these intelligent animals with chains,

20. I feel acute sympathy with the brute, and indignation against their owners.

21. Yet even the brutes suffer in nature, from disease or accident, and from the ravages of the beasts of prey.

22. We are forced to ask, Why does all this torment and agony exist, among brutes and among humankind?

23. Alas: the truth is that we suffer, and carry the burden of existence, and there is no remedy other than illusion.

24. The conviction that the world and humanity had better not have been,

25. Is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another.

26. From this point of view, we might well consider that the proper way to address each other is, ‘my fellow-sufferer, my companion in miseries’.

27. This may sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light;

28. And it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life:

29. Tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbour, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, we each owe to our fellows.

Chapter 13

  1. Wife! Yes, I do write to you less often than I ought, because, though I am always wretched,

  2. Yet when I write to you or read a letter from you, I am in such floods of tears that I cannot endure it.

  3. Oh, that I had clung less to life! I should at least never have known real sorrow, or not so much of it.

  4. Yet if I have any hope of recovering any position ever again, I was not utterly wrong to do so:

  5. If these miseries are to be permanent, I only wish, my dear, to see you as soon as possible and to die in your arms,

  6. For the good we have striven to do has been thankless and goes unrecompensed.

  7. I have been thirteen days at Brundisium in the house of Laenius, an excellent man, who has despised the risk to his own safety to keep me safe,

  8. Nor has he been induced by the penalty of a most iniquitous law to refuse me the rights and good offices of hospitality and friendship.

  9. May I sometime have the opportunity of repaying him! Feel gratitude I always shall.

10. What a fall! What a disaster! What can I say? Should I ask you to come – a woman of weak health and broken heart? Should I refrain from asking you? Am I to be without you, then?

11. I think the best course is this: if there is any hope of my restoration, stay to promote it and push the thing on:

12. But if, as I fear, it proves hopeless, pray come to me by any means in your power.

13. Be sure of this, that if I have you I shall not think myself wholly lost. But what is to become of our beloved daughter Tullia?

14. You must see to that now: I can think of nothing. But certainly, however things turn out, we must do everything to promote that poor girl’s happiness and reputation.

15. Again, what is my son to do? Let him, at any rate, be ever in my bosom and in my arms.

16. I cannot write more. A fit of weeping hinders me. I do not know how you have got on; whether you are left in possession of anything, or have been, as I fear, entirely plundered.

17. To your advice that I should keep up my courage and not give up hope of recovering my position, I say that I only wish there were any grounds for such a hope.

18. As it is, when, alas! shall I get a letter from you? Who will bring it me? I would have waited for it at Brundisium, but the sailors would not allow it, being unwilling to lose a favourable wind.

19. For the rest, put as dignified a face on the matter as you can, my dear Terentia.

20. Our life is over: we have had our day: it is not any fault of ours that has ruined us, but our virtue.

21. I have made no false step, except in not losing my life when I lost my honours.

22. But since our children asked me to keep living, let us bear everything else, however intolerable.

23. And yet I, who encourage you, cannot encourage myself.

24. Take the greatest care of your health, and believe me that I am more affected by your distress than my own.

25. My dear Terentia, most faithful and best of wives, and my darling daughter, and that last hope of my race, young Cicero, goodbye!

Chapter 14

  1.   Brother! My brother! Did you really fear that I had been induced by anger not to write to you? Or even that I did not wish to see you?

  2. I to be angry with you! Is it possible for me to be angry with you? Why, one would think that it was you that brought me low!

  3. Your enemies, your unpopularity, that miserably ruined me, and not I that unhappily ruined you!

  4. The fact is, the much-praised consulate of mine has deprived me of you, of children, country, fortune; from you I should hope it will have taken nothing but myself.

  5. From you I have experienced nothing but what was honourable and gratifying: from me you have grief for my fall and fear for yourself, and regret, mourning, desertion.

  6. I not wish to see you? The truth is rather that I was unwilling to be seen by you.

  7. For you would not have seen your brother – not the brother you had left, not the brother you knew,