The Life of Cicero, vol 1 | Page 7

into his doings, struggling to find whether, in searching
for what was his duty, he should go to this side or to that. Might he best
hope a return to that state of things which he thought good for his

country by adhering to Caesar or to Pompey? We see the workings of
his conscience, and, as we remember that Scipio's dream of his, we feel
sure that he had, in truth, within him a recognition of a future life.
In discussing the character of a man, there is no course of error so
fertile as the drawing of a hard and fast line. We are attracted by salient
points, and, seeing them clearly, we jump to conclusions, as though
there were a light-house on every point by which the nature of the coast
would certainly be shown to us. And so it will, if we accept the light
only for so much of the shore as it illumines. But to say that a man is
insincere because he has vacillated in this or the other difficulty, that he
is a coward because he has feared certain dangers, that he is dishonest
because he has swerved, that he is a liar because an untrue word has
been traced to him, is to suppose that you know all the coast because
one jutting headland has been defined to you. He who so expresses
himself on a man's character is either ignorant of human nature, or is in
search of stones with which to pelt his enemy. "He has lied! He has
lied!" How often in our own political contests do we hear the cry with a
note of triumph! And if he have, how often has he told the truth? And if
he have, how many are entitled by pure innocence in that matter to
throw a stone at him? And if he have, do we not know how lies will
come to the tongue of a man without thought of lying? In his stoutest
efforts after the truth a man may so express himself that when
afterward he is driven to compare his recent and his former words, he
shall hardly be able to say even to himself that he has not lied. It is by
the tenor of a man's whole life that we must judge him, whether he be a
liar or no.
To expect a man to be the same at sixty as he was at thirty, is to
suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colors which
adorn its setting. And there are men whose intellects are set on so fine a
pivot that a variation in the breeze of the moment, which coarser minds
shall not feel, will carry them round with a rapidity which baffles the
common eye. The man who saw his duty clearly on this side in the
morning shall, before the evening come, recognize it on the other; and
then again, and again, and yet again the vane shall go round. It may be
that an instrument shall be too fine for our daily uses. We do not want a
clock to strike the minutes, or a glass to tell the momentary changes in
the atmosphere. It may be found that for the work of the world, the

coarse work--and no work is so coarse, though none is so important, as
that which falls commonly into the hands of statesmen--instruments
strong in texture, and by reason of their rudeness not liable to sudden
impressions, may be the best. That it is which we mean when we
declare that a scrupulous man is impractical in politics. But the same
man may, at various periods of his life, and on various days at the same
period, be scrupulous and unscrupulous, impractical and practical, as
the circumstances of the occasion may affect him. At one moment the
rale of simple honesty will prevail with him. "Fiat justitia, ruat
coelum." "Si fractus illabatur orbis Impavidum ferient ruinae." At
another he will see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the
many. He will tell himself that if the best cannot be done, he must
content himself with the next best. He must shake hands with the
imperfect, as the best way of lifting himself up from a bad way toward
a better. In obedience to his very conscience he will temporize, and,
finding no other way of achieving good, will do even evil that good
may come of it. "Rem si possis recte; si non, quocunque modo rem." In
judging of such a character as this, a hard and fast line will certainly
lead us astray. In judging of Cicero, such a hard and fast line has too
generally been used. He was a man singularly sensitive to all influences.
It