[9]
The consideration necessary to determine conduct1
is, therefore, as Panaetius thinks, a threefold one:
first, people question whether the contemplated act
is morally right or morally wrong; and in such
deliberation their minds are often led to widely
divergent conclusions. And then they examine and
consider the question whether the action contemplated is or is not conducive to comfort and happiness
in life, to the command of means and wealth, to
influence, and to power, by which they may be able
to help themselves and their friends; this whole
matter turns upon a question of expediency. The
third type of question arises when that which seems
to be expedient seems to conflict with that which is
morally right; for when expediency seems to be pulling one way, while moral right seems to be calling
back in the opposite direction, the result is that the
mind is distracted in its inquiry and brings to it the
irresolution that is born of deliberation.
1 The threefold classification of Panaetius.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.