peasing the mind, if you succeed in showing
that there is no good in that which has given rise to joy and lust, nor
any evil in that which has occasioned fear or grief. But certainly the
most effectual cure is to be achieved by showing that all perturbations
are of themselves vicious, and have nothing natural or necessary in them.
As we see grief itself is easily softened when we charge those who grieve
with weakness and an effeminate mind; or when we commend the gravity and
constancy of those who bear calmly whatever befals them here, as accidents
to which all men are liable; and, indeed, this is generally the feeling of
those who look on these as real evils, but yet think they should be borne
with resignation. One imagines pleasure to be a good, another money; and
yet the one may be called off from intemperance, the other from
covetousness. The other method and address, which, at the same time that
it removes the false opinion, withdraws the disorder, has more subtilty in
it; but it seldom succeeds, and is not applicable to vulgar minds, for
there are some diseases which that medicine can by no means remove. For,
should any one be uneasy because he is without virtue, without courage,
destitute of a sense of duty, or honesty; his anxiety proceeds from a real
evil, and yet we must apply another method of cure to him; and such a one
as all the philosophers, however they may differ about other things, agree
in. For they must necessarily agree in this, that commotions of the mind
in opposition to right reason are vicious; and that even admitting those
things to be evils, which occasion fear or grief, and those to be goods
which provoke desire or joy, yet that very commotion itself is vicious;
for we mean by the expressions magnanimous and brave, one who is resolute,
sedate, grave, and superior to everything in this life: but one who either
grieves, or fears, or covets, or is transported with passion, cannot come
under that denomination; for these things are consistent only with those
who look on the things of this world as things with which their minds are
unequal to contend.

XXIX. Wherefore, as I before said, the philosophers have all one method of
cure, so that we need say nothing about what sort of thing that is which
disturbs the mind, but we must speak only concerning the perturbation
itself. Thus, first, with regard to desire itself, when the business is
only to remove that the inquiry is not to be, whether that thing