53
53. On one of Caesar’s sayings
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[This short chapter, concerned as it is with that contextura corporis, that ‘bodily structure’, which interested Lucretius, is one of many which contributed thoughts and ideas to ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’ (II, 12).]
[A] If we were occasionally to linger over an examination of ourselves and were to save the time which we spend on finding out about others and in learning about externals so as to use it to make soundings of ourselves, we would soon realize how this structure of ours is made up of weak and deficient elements. Is it not a peculiar sign of our imperfections that we cannot settle our happiness on any single thing, and that even in our wishes and our thoughts we are incapable of choosing the things which we need? Corroboration of this fact is provided by that great dispute which has ever divided philosophers over Man’s sovereign good: it still goes on, and will go on for ever, with no conclusion and no agreement:
[B] dum abest quod avemus, id exuperare videtur Cætera; post aliud cum contigit illud avemus, Et sitis æqua tenet,
[as long as we do not have it, the object of our desire seems greater than anything else: as soon as we enjoy it, we long for something different with an equal craving.]1
[A] No matter what falls within our knowledge, no matter what we enjoy, it fails to make us content and we go gaping after things outside our knowledge, future things, since present goods never leave us satisfied – not in my judgement because they are inadequate to satisfy us but because we clasp them in a sick and immoderate grip:
[B] Nam, cum vidit hic, ad usum quæ flagitat usus, Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata, Divitiis homines et honore et laude potentes Affluere, atque bona natorum excellere fama, Nec minus esse domi cuiquam tamen anxia corda,
Atque animum infestis cogi servire querelis: Intellexit ibi vitium vas efficere ipsum, Omniaque illius vitio corrumpier intus, Quæ collata foris et commoda quæque venirent.
[For when Epicurus saw that almost everything necessary for Man’s life is at his disposal; when he saw men who were replete with honour and wealth and reputation and who were proud of their sons’ good fame, not one of whom was not full of inner anxiety or whose mind was not racked by grievous lamentations: then he realized that the fault was in the vessel itself, corrupting internally any good which came in to it from the outside.]2
[A] Our appetite lacks decision and is uncertain: it can neither have anything nor enjoy anything in the proper way. Man, reckoning that the defect lies in those things themselves, feeds to the full on other things which he neither knows nor understands, and honours and reveres them; as Caesar says: ‘Communi fit vitio naturæ ut invisis, latitantibus atque incognitis rebus magis confidamus, vehementiusque exterreamur.’ [By a defect of nature common to all men, we place our trust, rather, in things unseen, hidden and unknown, and are terrified to distraction by them.]3