De consolatione ethnica et christiana, censura theologica

I confess that the strength of Socrates, and the tolerance and equanimity of Phocion, are worthy of great praise, and that they bore adverse events and death less turbulently than Cicero, Alcibiades, and certain others. But since the ultimate end of human life and death is the glory of God the Creator: and since the former were not grounded in Him, it is certain that no argument of solid Consolation returned to them from death.

V.

These are the internal principles of the same Ethnic Consolation.

1. Matter. It has been said wittily by Plautus: He does nothing who consoles a diffident person with his own words. Yet those who have need of consolation are either enemies or friends. If they are enemies, even if they use silken words, they do not easily pull the suspicion of ἐπιχαιρεκακίᾳ rejoicing in others' evil from their lungs, and thus they have less faith in the Consoler. But if they are friends, they will testify that they will be consoled not so much by words, which they know are often born only on the tongue, but by offices of humanity of every kind. And if they desire these, they will be affected little by the consoler, even if you apply the marrow of Persuasion.

2. Form. So that it may become manifest what philosophers thought about the form of Ethnic Consolation, I will transcribe the words of Cicero which exist in Tusculan Disputations, Book 3.64: These therefore are the duties of those who console: to remove the distress fundamentally, or to soothe it, or to withdraw it as much as possible, or to suppress it and not allow it to flow any further, or to translate it to another. There are those who think the one duty of the consoler is to show that that evil is not an evil at all, as pleases Cleanthes. There are those who think it is not a great evil, as the Peripatetics. There are those who lead away from evils to goods, as Epicurus. There are those who think it enough to show that nothing unexpected has happened, nothing of evil. Chrysippus, however, thinks the head of the matter in consoling is to draw that opinion from the one who is distressed, if he thinks he is performing a duty that is just and owed. There are also those who collect all these kinds of consoling: for one is moved in one way and another in another, so that we generally throw everything into one consolation: for the soul was in a tumor, and all healing was held in that, etc.