Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶69 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 5 ¶69

Besides the emotions of the mind, all griefs and anxieties are assuaged by forgetting them, and turning our thoughts to pleasure. Therefore, it was not without reason that Epicurus presumed to say that a wise man abounds with good things, because he may always have his pleasures; from whence it follows, as he thinks, that that point is gained which is the subject of our present inquiry, that a wise man is always happy. What? though he should be deprived of the senses of seeing and hearing? Yes, for he holds those things very cheap. For, in the first place, what are the pleasures of which we are deprived by that dreadful thing, blindness? For though they allow other pleasures to be confined to the senses, yet the things which are perceived by the sight do not depend wholly on the pleasure the eyes receive, as is the case when we taste, smell, touch, or hear. For in respect of all these senses the organs themselves are the seat of pleasure, but it is not so with the eyes. For it is the mind which is entertained by what we see, but the mind may be entertained in many ways, even though we could not see at all. I am speaking of a learned and a wise man, with whom to think is to live. But thinking in the case of a wise man does not altogether require the use of his eyes in his investigations; for if night does not strip him of his happiness, why should blindness, which resembles night, have that effect? For the reply of Antipater the Cyrenaic to some women who bewailed his being blind, though it is a little too obscene, is not without its significance. “What do you mean?” said he; “do you think the night can furnish no pleasure?” And we find by his magistracies and his actions that old Appius, too, who was blind for many years, was not prevented from doing whatever was required of him with respect either to the republic or his own affairs. It is said that C. Drusus’s house was crowded with clients. When they whose business it was could not see how to conduct themselves, they applied to a blind guide.