grieve, is a feeling which cannot affect a
wise man. Now, though these reasonings of the Stoics, and their
conclusions, are rather strained and distorted, and ought to be expressed
in a less stringent and narrow manner, yet great stress is to be laid on
the opinions of those men who have a peculiarly bold and manly turn of
thought and sentiment. For our friends the Peripatetics, notwithstanding
all their erudition, gravity, and fluency of language, do not satisfy me
about the moderation of these disorders and diseases of the soul which
they insist upon; for every evil, though moderate, is in its nature great.
But our object is to make out that the wise man is free from all evil; for
as the body is unsound if it is ever so slightly affected, so the mind
under any moderate disorder loses its soundness: therefore the Romans
have, with their usual accuracy of expression, called trouble, and
anguish, and vexation, on account of the analogy between a troubled mind
and a diseased body, disorders. The Greeks call all perturbation of mind
by pretty nearly the same name; for they name every turbid motion of the
soul {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, that is to say, a distemper. But we have given them a more
proper name; for a disorder of the mind is very like a disease of the
body. But lust does not resemble sickness; neither does immoderate joy,
which is an elated and exulting pleasure of the mind. Fear, too, is not
very like a distemper, though it is akin to grief of mind, but properly,
as is also the case with sickness of the body, so too sickness of mind has
no name separated from pain. And therefore I must explain the origin of
this pain, that is to say, the cause that occasions this grief in the
mind, as if it were a sickness of the body. For as physicians think they
have found out the cure, when they have discovered the cause of the
distemper; so we shall discover the method of curing melancholy, when the
cause of it is found out.

XI. The whole cause, then, is in opinion; and this observation applies not
to this grief alone, but to every other disorder of the mind, which are of
four sorts, but consisting of many parts. For as every disorder or
perturbation is a motion of the mind, either devoid of reason, or in
despite of reason, or in disobedience to reason, and as that motion is
excited by an opinion o