It is then characteristic of a rightly ordered mind to be pleased at what is good and grieved at the reverse.
Cicero: “It is then characteristic of a rightly ordered mind to be pleased at what is good and grieved at the reverse.”
Editor's note · Context
In his philosophical discussion of the mind, Cicero defines a well-ordered intellect as one that naturally finds pleasure in goodness and sorrow in its opposite.
Share
More from Cicero
For they secure one sort of justice, to be sure, in that they do no positive wrong to anyone, but they fall into the opposite injustice; for hampered by their pursuit of learning they leave to their fate those whom they ought to defend.
For if we bring a certain amount of propriety and order into the transactions of daily life, we shall be conserving moral rectitude and moral dignity.
Accordingly, in encountering danger we should do as doctors do in their practice: in light cases of illness they give mild treatment; in cases of dangerous sickness they are compelled to apply hazardous and even desperate remedies.
To this passion for discovering truth there is added a hungering, as it were, for independence, so that a mind well-moulded by Nature is unwilling to be subject to anybody save one who gives rules of conduct or is a teacher of truth or…





