er make? Has he shown himself to us to be a
man with a leaning toward such attempts? Has he not revelled in his
passions, feeling them to be just, righteous, honest, and becoming a
man? Has he regretted them? Did they occasion him remorse? Will any one
tell me that such a one has lived with the conviction that he might
conquer the evils of the world by controlling his passions? That virtue
will make men happy he might probably have granted, if asked; but he
would have conceded the point with a subterfuge. The commonest Christian
of the day will say as much; but he will say it in a different meaning
from that intended by the philosophers, who had declared, as a rule of
life, that virtue would suffice to make them happy. To be good to your
neighbors will make you happy in the manner described by Cicero in the
fifth book, De Finibus. Love those who come near you. Be good to your
fellow-creatures. Think, when dealing with each of them, what his
feelings may be. Melt to a woman in her sorrow. Lend a man the
assistance of your shoulder. Be patient with age. Be tender with
children. Let others drink of your cup and eat of your loaf. Where the
wind cuts, there lend your cloak. That virtue will make you happy. But
that is not the virtue of which he spoke when he laid down his doctrine.
That was not the virtue with which Brutus was strong when he was
skinning those poor wretches of Salamis. Such was the virtue with which
the heart of Cicero glowed when he saw the tradesmen of the Cilician
town come out into the market-place with their corn.

Cicero begins the second book of the Tusculans by telling us that
Neoptolemus liked to do a little philosophy now and then, but never too
much at a time. With himself the matter was different: "In what else is
there that I can do better?" Then he takes the bit between his teeth and
rushes away with it. The reader feels that he would not stop him if he
could. He does little, indeed, for philosophy; but so much for
literature that he would be a bold man who would want to have him
otherwise employed.

He wrote three treatises, De Natura Deorum. Had he declared that he
would write three treatises to show the ideas which different men had
taken up about the gods he would be nearer to the truth. We have an idea
of what was Cicero's real notion of that "dominans in nobis
deus"[292]--that god which reigns within us--and which he declares in
Scipio's dream to have forbidden us to commit suicide. Noth