to forget its own. But since we find
that grief is removed by length of time, we have the greatest proof that
the strength of it depends not merely on time, but on the daily
consideration of it. For if the cause continues the same, and the man be
the same, how can there be any alteration in the grief, if there is no
change in what occasioned the grief, nor in him who grieves? Therefore it
is from daily reflecting that there is no real evil in the circumstance
for which you grieve, and not from the length of time, that you procure a
remedy for your grief.

XXXI. Here some people talk of moderate grief; but if such be natural,
what occasion is there for consolation? for nature herself will determine
the measure of it; but if it depends on and is caused by opinion, the
whole opinion should be destroyed. I think that it has been sufficiently
said, that grief arises from an opinion of some present evil, which
includes this belief, that it is incumbent on us to grieve. To this
definition Zeno has added very justly, that the opinion of this present
evil should be recent. Now this word recent they explain thus;--those are
not the only recent things which happened a little while ago, but as long
as there shall be any force or vigour or freshness in that imagined evil,
so long it is entitled to the name of recent. Take the case of Artemisia,
the wife of Mausolus king of Caria, who made that noble sepulchre at
Halicarnassus; whilst she lived she lived in grief, and died of it, being
worn out by it, for that opinion was always recent with her: but you
cannot call that recent, which has already begun to decay through time.
Now the duty of a comforter is, to remove grief entirely, to quiet it, or
draw it off as much as you can, or else to keep it under, and prevent its
spreading any further, and to divert one's attention to other matters.
There are some who think with Cleanthes, that the only duty of a comforter
is to prove, that what one is lamenting is by no means an evil. Others, as
the Peripatetics, prefer urging that the evil is not great. Others, with
Epicurus, seek to divert your attention from the evil to good: some think
it sufficient to show, that nothing has happened but what you had reason
to expect, and this is the practice of the Cyrenaics. But Chrysippus
thinks that the main thing in comforting is, to remove the opinion from
the person who is grieving, that to grieve is his bounden duty. There are
others who bring toge