inguished philosopher acknowledge
himself ignorant of many things, and confess that there are many things
which he must learn over and over again? And yet, though these men are
sensible that they are standing still in the very midway of folly, than
which nothing can be worse, they are under no great affliction, because
no opinion that it is their duty to lament is ever mingled with this
knowledge. What shall we say of those who think it unbecoming in a man
to grieve? among whom we may reckon Q. Maximus, when he buried his son
that had been consul, and L. Paulus, who lost two sons within a few
days of one another. Of the same opinion was M. Cato, who lost his son
just after he had been elected praetor, and many others, whose names I
have collected in my book on Consolation. Now what made these men so
easy, but their persuasion that grief and lamentation was not becoming
in a man? Therefore, as some give themselves up to grief from an
opinion that it is right so to do, they refrained themselves, from an
opinion that it was discreditable; from which we may infer that grief
is owing more to opinion than nature.

XXIX. It may be said, on the other side, Who is so mad as to grieve of
his own accord? Pain proceeds from nature, which you must submit to,
say they, agreeably to what even your own Crantor teaches, for it
presses and gains upon you unavoidably, and cannot possibly be
resisted. So that the very same Oileus, in Sophocles, who had before
comforted Telamon on the death of Ajax, on hearing of the death of his
own son, is broken-hearted. On this alteration of his mind we have
these lines:

Show me the man so well by wisdom taught
That what he charges to another's fault,
When like affliction doth himself betide,
True to his own wise counsel will abide.[47]

Now, when they urge these things, their endeavor is to prove that
nature is absolutely and wholly irresistible; and yet the same people
allow that we take greater grief on ourselves than nature requires.
What madness is it, then, in us to require the same from others? But
there are many reasons for our taking grief on us. The first is from
the opinion of some evil, on the discovery and certainty of which grief
comes of course. Besides, many people are persuaded that they are doing
something very acceptable to the dead when they lament bitterly over
them. To these may be added a kind of womanish superstition, in
imagining that when they have been str