The Good Book
Page 12
16. The first task is to win something; the second, to banish the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it is a burden.
17. Surely, human life is a mistake. Man is a compound of needs and necessities which are hard to satisfy,
18. And even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but the danger of boredom.
19. This is proof that existence has no value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life?
20. If life – the craving for which is the very essence of our being – had intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom:
21. Existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.
22. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something;
23. And then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us: an illusion which vanishes when we reach it.
24. When we are not occupied by thought or striving, when we cast upon existence itself,
25. Its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is the essence of nullity.
26. If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole,
27. And the generations of people as they live their little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in rapid succession;
28. If we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it seems!
29. It is like a drop of water under a microscope, a single drop teeming with small things; or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye.
30. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle with one another in so tiny a space!
31. And whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity is merely comic.
32. It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of time and space.
Chapter 10
1. Unless suffering is the object of life, our existence must entirely fail in its aim.
2. It is absurd to look upon the pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all.
3. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.
4. We find pleasure not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and we find pain much more painful.
5. We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.
6. So it is that in our good days we are all unconscious of the evil that might presently be in store for us – sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or reason.
7. No little part of the torment of existence lies in this, that time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath,
8. But always coming after us, a taskmaster with a whip.
9. If at any moment time stays its hand, it is only when we are delivered over to misery.
10. But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed,
11. So, if people were relieved of all need and adversity, if everything they undertook were successful, they would go mad.
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 b
rother you had left, not the brother you knew,
8. Not him to whom you had with mutual tears bidden farewell as he followed you on your departure for your province:
9. Not a trace even or faint image of him, but rather what I may call the likeness of a living corpse.
10. And oh! that you had sooner seen me or heard of me as a corpse!
11. Oh that I could have left you to survive, not my life merely, but my undiminished rank!
12. But I call everyone to witness that the one argument which recalled me from death was, that all declared that to some extent your life depended upon mine.
13. In which matter I made an error and acted culpably. For if I had taken my life, my death would have given clear evidence of my fidelity and love to you.
14. As it is, I have allowed you to be deprived of my aid, though I am alive, and with me still living to need the help of others;
15. And my voice, of all others, to fail when dangers threatened my family, which had so often been successfully used in the defence of strangers.
16. For as to my not writing, it was because of a numbness of my faculties, and a seemingly endless deluge of tears and sorrows.
17. How many tears do you suppose these very words have cost me?
18. As many as I know they will cost you to read them! Can I ever refrain from thinking of you or ever think of you without tears?
19. For when I miss you, is it only a brother that I miss?
20. Rather it is almost a twin brother in the charm of his companionship, a son in his consideration for my wishes, a father in the wisdom of his advice!
21. What pleasure did I ever have without you, or you without me? And what must my case be when at the same time I miss a daughter:
22. How affectionate! how modest! how clever! The express image of my face, of my speech, of my very heart! Or again a son, the prettiest boy, the very joy of my heart?
23. Cruel inhuman monster that I am, I dismissed him from my arms better schooled in the world than I could have wished: for the poor child began to understand what was going on.
24. So, too, your own son, your own image, whom my little boy loved as a companion, and was beginning to respect as an elder brother!
25. Need I mention also how I refused to allow my unhappy wife – the truest of helpmates – to accompany me,