ing
yourself with many, or all its branches, nor can you well take a few
subjects without selecting them out of a great number; nor can any one,
who has acquired the knowledge of a few points, avoid endeavoring with
the same eagerness to understand more. But still, in a busy life, and
in one mainly occupied with military matters, such as that of
Neoptolemus was at that time, even that limited degree of acquaintance
with philosophy may be of great use, and may yield fruit, not perhaps
so plentiful as a thorough knowledge of the whole of philosophy, but
yet such as in some degree may at times deliver us from the dominion of
our desires, our sorrows, and our fears; just as the effect of that
discussion which we lately maintained in my Tusculan villa seemed to be
that a great contempt of death was engendered, which contempt is of no
small efficacy towards delivering the mind from fear; for whoever
dreads what cannot be avoided can by no means live with a quiet and
tranquil mind. But he who is under no fear of death, not only because
it is a thing absolutely inevitable but also because he is persuaded
that death itself hath nothing terrible in it, provides himself with a
very great resource towards a happy life. However, I am not tolerant
that many will argue strenuously against us; and, indeed, that is a
thing which can never be avoided, except by abstaining from writing at
all. For if my Orations, which were addressed to the judgment and
approbation of the people (for that is a popular art, and the object of
oratory is popular applause), have been criticised by some people who
are inclined to withhold their praise from everything but what they are
persuaded they can attain to themselves, and who limit their ideas of
good speaking by the hopes which they conceive of what they themselves
may attain to, and who declare, when they are overwhelmed with a flow
of words and sentences, that they prefer the utmost poverty of thought
and expression to that plenty and copiousness (from which arose the
Attic kind of oratory, which they who professed it were strangers to,
though they have now been some time silenced, and laughed out of the
very courts of justice), what may I not expect, when at present I
cannot have the least countenance from the people by whom I used to be
upheld before? For philosophy is satisfied with a few judges, and of
her own accord industriously avoids the multitude, who are jealous of
it, and utterly displeased