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They looked for a satirical comedy, in which orthodoxy should be held up for scathing ridicule, or at least for a direful tragedy, the moral of which, like that of the great poem of Lucretius, should be "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
Then, becoming distracted with the remembrance of her misfortunes, "veterum memor illa malorum," she took off howling into the fields of Thrace: Tum quoque Sithonios, ululavit moesta per agros. Juno, Jove's wife and sister, was heard to declare that poor Hecuba did not deserve so terrible a fate: Ipsa Jovis conjuxque sororque, Eventus Hecubam meruisse negaverit illos.
Pico della Mirandola, who spent his life in reconciling Plato with the Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this: 'The sufferings of the Jews, in which the glory of the Divine justice delighted, were so extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration. With these words we may compare the following passage from Senarega: 'The matter at first sight seemed praiseworthy, as regarding the honor done to our religion; yet it involved some amount of cruelty, if we look upon them, not as beasts, but as men, the handiwork of God. A critic of this century can only exclaim with stupefaction: Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!
Plato has said so already, and Cicero repeats it: 'Plato voluptatem dicebat escam malorum. Grace sets over against it a greater pleasure, as St. Augustine observed. All pleasure is a feeling of some perfection; one loves an object in proportion as one feels its perfections; nothing surpasses the divine perfections.
If we attempt to trace, farther back in history, the main source of German character, we are driven to the conclusion that it is Lutheranism which is responsible for the perversion of the German soul, that it is Lutheranism that is the fons et origo malorum. Before the war all our ideas about religion and philosophy in Germany were made up of unmeaning formulas.
It is this difficulty, this primary dependence on others, which develops into the child's first religion, that perpetuates the infantile character of human creeds; and, what is worse, generates the hideous bigotry which justifies that sad reflection of Lucretius: 'Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum! TO turn again to narrative, and to far less serious thoughts.
Cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise "De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum," in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared.
In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to be, not Monsieur, Sir, mein Herr, but my fellow-sufferer, Socî malorum, compagnon de miseres!
In the first place, there is the neglect of the landlord; in the next, the positive oppression of either himself or his agent; in the third, influence of strong party feeling leaning too heavily on one class, and sparing or indulging the other; and perhaps, what is worse than all, and may be considered the fons et origo malorum, the absence of any principle possessing shape or form, or that can be recognized as a salutary duty on the part of the landlord.
This is especially seen in his treatise "De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum," in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he hesitate to declare that happiness consists in the cognition of nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods and men. Yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to indulge.
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