a
modern gentleman; therefore it was that he still busied himself with
finding the optimus orator.

CHAPTER XII.

_CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY._

It will have been observed that in the list given in the previous
chapter the works commonly published as Cicero's Philosophy have been
divided. Some are called his Philosophy and some his Moral Essays. It
seems to be absurd to put forward to the world his Tusculan Inquiries,
written with the declared object of showing that death and pain were not
evils, together with a moral essay, such as that De Officiis, in which
he tells us what it may become a man of the world to do. It is as though
we bound up Lord Chesterfield's letters in a volume with Hume's essays,
and called them the philosophy of the eighteenth century. It might be
true, but it would certainly be absurd. There might be those who regard
the letters as philosophical, and those who would so speak of the
essays; but their meaning would be diametrically opposite. It is so with
Cicero, whose treatises have been lumped together under this name with
the view of bringing them under one appellation. It had been found
necessary to divide his works and to describe them. The happy man who
first thought to put the De Natura Deorum and the De Amicitia into
boards together, and to present them to the world under the name of his
philosophy, perhaps found the only title that could unite the two. But
he has done very much to mislead the world, and to teach readers to
believe that Cicero was in truth one who endeavored to live in
accordance with the doctrine of any special school of philosophy.

He was too honest, too wise, too civilized, too modern for that. He
knew, no one better, that the pleasure of the world was pleasant, and
that the ills are the reverse. When his wife betrayed him, he grieved.
When his daughter died, he sorrowed. When his foe was strong against
him, he hated him. He avoided pain when it came near him, and did his
best to have everything comfortable around him. He was so far an
Epicurean, as we all are. He did not despise death, or pain, or grief.
He was a modern-minded man--if I make myself understood--of robust
tendencies, moral, healthy, and enduring; but he was anything but a
philosopher in his life. Let us remember the way in which he laughs at
the idea of bringing philosophy into real life in the De Oratore. He is
speaking of the manner in which the lawyers would have had to behave
themselves in the