I said, but not always, nor with
every person; for some reject it, but much depends on the application of
it; for you ought rather to show, not how men in general have been
affected with such evils, but how men of sense have borne them. As to
Chrysippus's method, it is certainly founded in truth; but it is difficult
to apply it in time of distress. It is a work of no small difficulty to
persuade a person in affliction that he grieves, merely because he thinks
it right so to do. Certainly then, as in pleadings we do not state all
cases alike, (if I may adopt the language of lawyers for a moment,) but
adapt what we have to say to the time, to the nature of the subject under
debate, and to the person; so too in alleviating grief, regard should be
had to what kind of cure the party to be comforted can admit of. But,
somehow or other, we have rambled from what you originally proposed. For
your question was concerning a wise man, with whom nothing can have the
appearance of evil, that is not dishonourable: or at least, anything else
would seem so small an evil, that by his wisdom he would so over-match it,
as to make it wholly disappear; and such a man makes no addition to his
grief through opinion, and never conceives it right to torment himself
above measure, nor to wear himself out with grief, which is the meanest
thing imaginable. Reason, however, it seems, has demonstrated, (though it
was not directly our object at the moment to inquire whether anything can
be called an evil except what is base,) that it is in our power to
discern, that all the evil which there is in affliction has nothing
natural in it, but is contracted by our own voluntary judgment of it, and
the error of opinion.

XXXIV. But the kind of affliction of which I have treated is that which is
the greatest; in order that when we have once got rid of that, it may
appear a business of less consequence to look after remedies for the
others. For there are certain things which are usually said about poverty;
and also certain statements ordinarily applied to retired and
undistinguished life. There are particular treatises on banishment, on the
ruin of one's country, on slavery, on weakness, on blindness, and on every
incident that can come under the name of an evil. The Greeks divide these
into different treatises and distinct books: but they do it for the sake
of employment: not but that all such discussions are full of
entertainment; and yet, as physicians, in