hibit of learning and wisdom, are heard, read, and got by heart, and
make a deep impression on our minds. But when to these are added the
people, who are as it were one great body of instructors, and the
multitude, who declare unanimously for what is wrong, then are we
altogether overwhelmed with bad opinions, and revolt entirely from nature;
so that they seem to deprive us of our best guide, who have decided that
there is nothing better for man, nothing more worthy of being desired by
him, nothing more excellent than honours and commands, and a high
reputation with the people; which indeed every excellent man aims at; but
whilst he pursues that only true honour, which nature has in view above
all other objects, he finds himself busied in arrant trifles, and in
pursuit of no conspicuous form of virtue, but only some shadowy
representation of glory. For glory is a real and express substance, not a
mere shadow. It consists in the united praise of good men, the free voice
of those who form a true judgment of preeminent virtue; it is, as it were,
the very echo of virtue; and being generally the attendant on laudable
actions, should not be slighted by good men. But popular fame, which would
pretend to imitate it, is hasty and inconsiderate, and generally commends
wicked and immoral actions, and throws discredit upon the appearance and
beauty of honesty, by assuming a resemblance of it. And it is owing to
their not being able to discover the difference between them that some
men, ignorant of real excellence, and in what it consists, have been the
destruction of their country and of themselves. And thus the best men have
erred, not so much in their intentions, as by a mistaken conduct. What, is
no cure to be attempted to be applied to those who are carried away by the
love of money, or the lust of pleasures, by which they are rendered little
short of madmen, which is the case of all weak people? or is it because
the disorders of the mind are less dangerous than those of the body? or
because the body will admit of a cure, while there is no medicine whatever
for the mind?

III. But there are more disorders of the mind than of the body, and they
are of a more dangerous nature; for these very disorders are the more
offensive, because they belong to the mind, and disturb it; and the mind,
when disordered, is, as Ennius says, in a constant error; it can neither
bear nor endure anything, and is under the perpetual influence of desires.