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Ethical Writings of Cicero; De Officiis, De Sennectute, De Amicitia, and Scipio's Dream
Ethical Writings of Cicero De Officiis De Sennectute De Amicitia and Scipio's Dream Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1887 Original Publisher: Little, Brown Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can s... more »elect from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: t three wishes which Neptune had promised to grant him, the third, as the story runs, was his demand in anger for the death of Hippolytus, the granting of which plunged him into the deepest sorrow. Promises, then, are not to be kept, when by keeping them you do harm to those to whom they are made; nor yet if they injure you more than they benefit him. to whom you made them, is it contrary to duty that the greater good should be preferred to the less.1 For instance, if you engaged to appear as an advocate in an impending lawsuit, and meanwhile your child became severely ill, you would not fail in your duty to your client by breaking your promise ; on the other hand, he to whom you made the promise would be false to his duty, if he complained of your deserting him. Again, who does not perceive that promises extorted by fear,2 or obtained by fraud, are not to be kept ? Indeed, such promises are made void, inmost cases by praetorian edict,1 in some by express statutes. 1 The Hebrew conception of righteousness, " He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not," is certainly in closer accordance with the absolute right than this maxim of Cicero. Yet Cicero's example under this head really belongs to another category, that of circumstances so altered as in the very nature of the case to make a promise void. 2 A (promise wrong in itself cannot be rightfully made, even under stress of fear; and if made, should not be kept; for two wrongs cannot make a right. But a promise which one has a right to make, as that of a ransom for one's life, is sacred in the forum of conscien...« less