The five days debate at Cicero's house in Tusculum between master and sophister.

SECT. XXIX. Laying open the changes common to our condi∣tion allays excessive grief.

WHerefore it is the universal method of cure, as I said before, of all Philosophers not to descant of what nature is the object which moveth our Passion, but to discuss the Passion it self. There∣fore first as to concupiscence it self, it being only propos'd to remove it, we must not enquire whe∣ther the object of that Lust be good or not, but the Lust it self must be remov'd. So that whether honesty be the chiefest Good, or Pleasure, or both of them jointly, or the three sorts of good; how∣ever ordinate be the affection, yet if it become immoderate, the same address by way of dehorta∣tion is to be made to all. Now Humane Nature brought into view, infers all motives of appeasing the Spirit; which that it may be the more plainly discern'd in its colours, the common condition and terms of life, are to be explain'd in our Discourse. Therefore Socrates upon good grounds, when Eu∣ripides first brought upon the Stage his Tragedy of Orestes, is said to have bid repeat him again the three first Verses.

No matchless grief can Poets wit invent, No vengeance from incensed Heav'ns be sent; But Humane Nature may its pressure bear.

Now towards the perswading that such misfor∣tunes both may and ought to be born; the recital of such as have born the like is useful; although the means of allaying Discontent have been ex∣plain'd both in yesterdays Dispute, and in our Treatise of Consolation, which we writ in the midst of our Mourning and Sorrow, (for we were not of them who had attain'd to Perfection) and what Chrysippus forbids the applying remedy, as it were, to the green Sores of the Soul, that did we, and of∣fer'd violence to Nature, that so the Plaister might be as broad as the swelling that it was to discuss.