This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
156
CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY.

putting their sons to death to preserve discipline—are not disinterested acts of sacrifice, but the choice of a present pain in order to procure a future pleasure. Vice is but ignorance of real enjoyment. Temperance alone can bring peace of mind; and the wicked, even if they escape public censure, are racked night and day by the anxieties sent upon them by the immortal gods.' We do not, in this, contradict your Stoic; we, too, affirm that only the wise man is really happy. Happiness is as impossible for a mind distracted by passions, as for a city divided by contending factions. The terrors of death haunt the guilty wretch, 'who finds out too late that he has devoted himself to money or power or glory to no purpose.' But the wise man's life is unalloyed happiness. Rejoicing in a clear conscience, he remembers the past with gratitude, enjoys the blessings of the present, ·and disregards the future.' Thus the moral to be drawn is that which Horace (himself, as he expresses it, ‘one of the litter of Epicurus') impresses on his fair friend Leuconöe:—

'Strain your wine, and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more?
In the moment of our talking envious time has slipped away.
Seize the present, trust to-morrow e'en as little as you may.'"

Passing on to the second book of the treatise, we hear the advocate of the counter-doctrine. Why, exclaims the Stoic, introduce Pleasure to the councils of Virtue? Why uphold a theory so dangerous in practice? Your Epicurean soon turns Epicure, and a class