into its proper shape, seeing that his stitches be all taut, so that he
do not lose his place among the shoemakers, so fills his time that he
has not a moment for a tear. And it is the same if you go from the
lowest occupation to the highest. Writing Greek philosophy does as well
as the making of shoes. The nature of the occupation depends on the
mind, but its utility on the disposition. It was Cicero's nature to
write. Will any one believe that he might not as well have consoled
himself with one of his treatises on oratory? But philosophy was then to
his hands. It seems to have cropped up in his latter years, after he had
become intimate with Brutus. When life was again one turmoil of
political fever it was dropped.

In the five of the Books of the Tusculan Disputations, still addressed
to Brutus, he contends: 1. That death is no evil; 2. That pain is none;
3. That sorrow may be abolished; 4. That the passions may be conquered;
5. That virtue will suffice to make a man happy. These are the doctrines
of the Stoics; but Cicero does not in these books defend any school
especially. He leans heavily on Epicurus, and gives all praise to
Socrates and to Plato; but he is comparatively free: "Nullius adductus
jurare in verba magistri,"[290] as Horace afterward said, probably
ridiculing Cicero. "I live for the day. Whatever strikes my mind as
probable, that I say. In this way I alone am free."[291]

Let us take his dogmas and go through them one by one, comparing each
with his own life. This, it may be said, is a crucial test to which but
few philosophers would be willing to accede; but if it shall be found
that he never even dreamed of squaring his conduct with his professions,
then we may admit that he employed his time in writing these things
because it did not suit him to make his pair of shoes.

Was there ever a man who lived with a greater fear of death before his
eyes--not with the fear of a coward, but with the assurance that it
would withdraw him from his utility, and banish him from the scenes of a
world in sympathy with which every pulse of his heart was beating? Even
after Tullia was dead the Republic had come again for him, and something
might be done to stir up these faineant nobles! What could a dead man do
for his country? Look back at Cicero's life, and see how seldom he has
put forward the plea of old age to save him from his share of the work
of attack. Was this the man to console himself with the idea that