hen diffidence is a
fear of an expected and impending evil: and if hope is an expectation of
good, fear must of course be an expectation of evil. Thus fear and other
perturbations are evils. Therefore as constancy proceeds from knowledge,
so does perturbation from error. Now they who are said to be naturally
inclined to anger, or to pity, or to envy, or to any feeling of this kind;
their minds are constitutionally, as it were, in bad health, yet they are
curable, as the disposition of Socrates is said to have been; for when
Zopyrus, who professed to know the character of every one from his person,
had heaped a great many vices on him in a public assembly, he was laughed
at by others, who could perceive no such vices in Socrates; but Socrates
kept him in countenance, by declaring that such vices were natural to him,
but that he had got the better of them by his reason. Therefore, as any
one who has the appearance of the best constitution, may yet appear to be
naturally rather inclined to some particular disorder, so different minds
may be more particularly inclined to different diseases. But as to those
men who are said to be vicious, not by nature, but their own fault; their
vices proceed from wrong opinions of good and bad things, so that one is
more prone than another to different motions and perturbations. But, just
as it is in the case of the body, an inveterate disease is harder to be
got rid of than a sudden disorder; and it is more easy to cure a fresh
tumour in the eyes, than to remove a defluxion of any continuance.

XXXVIII. But as the cause of perturbations is now discovered, for all of
them arise from the judgment or opinion, or volition, I shall put an end
to this discourse. But we ought to be assured, since the boundaries of
good and evil are now discovered, as far as they are discoverable by man,
that nothing can be desired of philosophy greater, or more useful, than
the discussions which we have held these four days. For besides instilling
a contempt of death, and relieving pain so as to enable men to bear it; we
have added the appeasing of grief, than which there is no greater evil to
man. For though every perturbation of mind is grievous, and differs but
little from madness: yet we are used to say of others, when they are under
any perturbation, as of fear, joy, or desire, that they are agitated and
disturbed; but of those who give themselves up to grief, that they are
miserable, afflicted, wretched, unh