236 //-101 to //-102
doing which they are doing much the same thing as they would be doing
if they claimed that the goal was pleasure or freedom from pain or
something else of the sort. There is something which reveals an internal
conflict in the very utterance [of this formulation of the goal], but there
is nothing which is honourable or could promote happiness. For this is
a consequence of the goal but is not the goal. But if one gets [the
formulation of] the goal right, one can use it to defeat the puzzles which
the sophists advance, but one cannot so use the [formula] 'living according
to experience of what happens in the whole of nature,' which is equivalent
to saying living in agreement, since this makes no small contribution to
achieving things indifferent."
Cicero On Goals 3.16-34 [11-102]
- The school whose views I follow [a Stoic speaks] holds that every
animal, as soon as it is born (for this should be our starting point), is
congenial to itself and inclined to preserve itself and its constitution,
and to like those things which preserve that constitution; but it finds
uncongenial its own death and those things which seem to threaten it.
They confirm this by [noting] that before pleasure or pain can affect
them, babies seek what is salutary and spurn what is not, and this would
not happen unless they loved their constitution and feared death. They
could not, however, desire anything unless they had a perception of
themselves and consequently loved themselves. From this one ought to
see that the principle [of human action] is derived from self-love. 17.
Most Stoics do not think that pleasure should be classed among the
primary natural things; and I strongly agree with them, for fear that, if
nature seemed to have classed pleasure among the primary objects of
impulse, then many shameful consequences would follow. It seems, how-
ever, to be a sufficient argument as to why we love those things which
were first accepted because of nature [to say] that there is no one (when
he has a choice) who would not prefer to have all the parts of his
body in a sound condition to having them dwarfed or twisted, though
equally useful.
They think, moreover, that acts of cognition (which we may call grasps
or perceptions or, if these terms are either displeasing or harder to
understand, katalepseis) are, then, to be accepted for their own sake, since
they have in themselves something which as it were includes and contains
the truth. And this can be seen in babies, who, we see, are delighted if
they figure something out for themselves, even if it does not do them
any good. 18. We also think that the crafts are to be taken for their own
sake, both because there is in them something worth taking and also