From “Imaginary Conversations.”

(Cicero speaks)

I AM persuaded of the truth in what I have spoken, and yet—ah, Quintus! there is a tear that philosophy cannot dry, and a pang that will rise as we approach the gods.

  Two things tend beyond all others, after philosophy, to inhibit and check our ruder passions as they grow and swell in us, and to keep our gentler in their proper play; and these two things are, seasonable sorrow and inoffensive pleasure, each moderately indulged. Nay, there is also a pleasure, humble, it is true, but graceful and insinuating, which follows close upon our very sorrows, reconciles us to them gradually, and sometimes renders us, at last, undesirous altogether of abandoning them. If ever you have remembered the anniversary of some day whereon a dear friend was lost to you, tell me whether that anniversary was not purer and even calmer than the day before. The sorrow, if there should be any left, is soon absorbed, and full satisfaction takes place of it, while you perform a pious office to Friendship, required and appointed by the ordinances of Nature. When my Tulliola was torn away from me, a thousand plans were in readiness for immortalizing her memory, and raising a monument up to the magnitude of my grief. The grief itself has done it; the tears I then shed over her assuaged it in me, and did everything that could be done for her, or hoped, or wished. I called upon Tulliola: Rome and the whole world heard me. Her glory was a part of mine, and mine of hers, and when Eternity had received her at my hands, I wept no longer. The tenderness wherewith I mentioned, and now mention her, though it suspends my voice, brings what consoles and comforts me; it is the milk and honey left at the sepulchre, and equally sweet, I hope, to the departed.

  The gods, who have given us our affections, permit us rarely the uses and the signs of them. Immoderate grief, like everything else immoderate, is useless and pernicious; but if we did not tolerate and endure it; if we did not prepare for it, meet it, commune with it; if we did not even cherish it in its season,—much of what is best in our faculties, much of our tenderness, much of our generosity, much of our patriotism, much, also, of our genius, would be stifled and extinguished.

  When I hear any one call upon another to be manly and restrain his tears, if they flow from the social and the kind affections, I doubt the humanity and distrust the wisdom of the counselor. Were he humane, he would be more inclined to pity and to sympathize than to lecture and reprove; and were he wise, he would consider that tears are given us by nature as a remedy to affliction, although, like other remedies, they should come to our relief in private. Philosophy, we may be told, would prevent the tears, by turning away the sources of them, and by raising up a rampart against pain and sorrow. I am of opinion that philosophy, quite pure and totally abstracted from our appetites and passions, instead of serving us the better, would do us little or no good at all. We may receive so much light as not to see, and so much philosophy as to be worse than foolish.