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Selected Works. Marcus Tullius Cicero
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isbn 9781420971439
Автор произведения Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“Why, of course, one should give place to the other, but that other must be the one whose life is more valuable either for his own sake or for that of his country.”
“But what if these considerations are of equal weight in both?”
“Then there will be no contest, but one will give place to the other, as if the point were decided by lot or at a game of odd and even.”
“Again, suppose a father were robbing temples or making underground passages to the treasury, should a son inform the officers of it?”
“Nay; that were a crime; rather should he defend his father, in case he were indicted.”
“Well, then, are not the claims of country paramount to all other duties”
“Aye, verily; but it is to our country’s interest to have citizens who are loyal to their parents.”
“But once more—if the father attempts to make himself king, or to betray his country, shall the son hold his peace?”
“Nay, verily; he will plead with his father not to do so. If that accomplishes nothing, he will take him to task; he will even threaten; and in the end, if things point to the destruction of the state, he will sacrifice his father to the safety of his country.”
Again he raises the question: “If a wise man should inadvertently accept counterfeit money for good, will he offer it as genuine in payment of a debt after he discovers his mistake?” Diogenes says, “Yes”; Antipater, “No,” and I agree with him.
If a man knowingly offers for sale wine that is spoiling, ought he to tell his customers? Diogenes thinks that it is not required; Antipater holds that an honest man would do so. These are like so many points of the law disputed among the Stoics. “In selling a slave, should his faults be declared—not those only which he seller is bound by the civil law to declare or have the slave returned to him, but also the fact that he is untruthful, or disposed to ramble, or steal, or get drunk?” The one thinks such faults should be declared, the other does not.
“If a man thinks that he is selling brass, when he is actually selling gold, should an upright man inform him that his stuff is gold, or go on buying for one shilling{105} what is worth a thousand?”
It is clear enough by this time what my views are on these questions, and what are the grounds of dispute between the above-named philosophers.
XXIV. The question arises also whether agreements and promises must always be kept, “when,” in the language of the praetors’ edicts, “they have not been secured through force or criminal fraud.”
If one man gives another a remedy for the dropsy, with the stipulation that, if he is cured by it, he shall never make use of it again; suppose the patient’s health is restored by the use of it, but some years later he contracts the same disease once more; and suppose he cannot secure from the man with whom he made the agreement permission to use the remedy again, what should he do? That is the question. Since the man is unfeeling in refusing the request, and since no harm could be done to him by his friend’s using the remedy, the sick man is justified in doing what he can for his own life and health.
Again: suppose that a millionaire is making some wise man his heir and leaving him in his will a hundred million sesterces;{106} and suppose that he has asked the wise man, before he enters upon his inheritance, to dance publicly in broad daylight in the forum; and suppose that the wise man has given his promise to do so, because the rich man would not leave him his fortune on any other condition; should he keep his promise or not? I wish he had made no such promise; that, I think, would have been in keeping with his dignity. But, seeing that he has made it, it will be morally better for him, if he believes it morally wrong to dance in the forum, to break his promise and refuse to accept his inheritance rather than to keep his promise and accept it—unless, perhaps, he contributes the money to the state to meet some grave crisis. In that case, to promote thereby the interests of one’s country, it would not be morally wrong even to dance, if you please, in the forum.
XXV. No more binding are those promises which are inexpedient for the persons themselves to whom they have been given. To go back to the realm of story, the sun-god promised his son Phaethon to do for him whatever he should wish. His wish was to be allowed to ride in his father’s chariot. It was granted. And before he came back to the ground he was consumed by a stroke of lightning. How much better had it been, if in his case the father’s promise had not been kept. And what of that promise, the fulfilment of which Theseus required from Neptune? When Neptune offered him three wishes, he wished for the death of his son Hippolytus, because the father was suspicious of the son’s relations with his step-mother. And when this wish was granted, Theseus was overwhelmed with grief. And once more; when Agamemnon had vowed to Diana the most beautiful creature born that year within his realm, he was brought to sacrifice Iphigenia; for in that year nothing was born more beautiful than she. He ought to have broken his vow rather than commit so horrible a crime.
Promises are, therefore, sometimes not to be kept; and trusts are not always to be restored. Suppose that a person leaves his sword with you when he is in his right mind, and demands it back in a fit of insanity; it would be criminal to restore it to him; it would be your duty not to do so. Again, suppose that a man who has entrusted money to you proposes to make war upon your common country, should you restore the trust? I believe you should not; for you would be acting against the state, which ought to be the dearest thing in the world to you. Thus there are many things which in and of themselves seem morally right, but which under certain circumstances prove to be not morally right: to keep a promise, to abide by an agreement, to restore a trust may, with a change of expediency, cease to be morally right.
With this I think I have said enough about those actions which masquerade as expedient under the guise of prudence, while they are really contrary to justice.
Since, however, in Book One we derived moral duties from the four sources of moral rectitude, let us continue the same fourfold division here in pointing out how hostile to virtue are those courses of conduct which seem to be, but really are not, expedient. We have discussed wisdom, which cunning seeks to counterfeit, and likewise justice, which is always expedient. There remain for our discussion two divisions of moral rectitude, the one of which is discernible in the greatness and pre-eminence of a superior soul, the other, in the shaping and regulation of it by temperance and self-control.
XXVI. Ulysses thought his ruse expedient, as the tragic poets, at least, have represented him. In Homer, our most reliable authority, no such suspicion is cast upon him; but the tragedies charge him with trying to escape a soldier’s service by feigning madness. The trick was not morally right, but, someone may perhaps say, “It was expedient for him to keep his throne and live at ease in Ithaca with parents, wife, and son. Do you think that there is any glory in facing daily toil and danger that can be compared with a life of such tranquillity?”
Nay; I think that tranquillity at such a price is to be despised and rejected; for if it is not morally right, neither is it expedient. For what do you think would have been said of Ulysses, if he had persisted in that pretended madness, seeing that, notwithstanding his deeds of heroism in the war, he was nevertheless upbraided by Ajax thus:
“’Twas he himself who first proposed the oath; ye all
Do know; yet he alone of all his vow did break;
He feigned persistently that he was mad, that thus
He might not have to join the host. And had not then
Palamedes, shrewd and wise, his tricky impudence
Unmasked, he had evaded e’en for aye his vow.”
Nay, for him it had been better to battle not only with the enemy but also with the waves, as he did, than to desert Greece when she was united for waging the war against the barbarians.
But let us leave illustrations both from story and from foreign lands and turn to real events