vices of others, but to forget its own. But since we find that grief is
removed by length of time, we have the greatest proof that the strength
of it depends not merely on time, but on the daily consideration of it.
For if the cause continues the same, and the man be the same, how can
there be any alteration in the grief, if there is no change in what
occasioned the grief, nor in him who grieves? Therefore it is from
daily reflecting that there is no real evil in the circumstance for
which you grieve, and not from the length of time, that you procure a
remedy for your grief.

XXXI. Here some people talk of moderate grief; but if such be natural,
what occasion is there for consolation? for nature herself will
determine, the measure of it: but if it depends on and is caused by
opinion, the whole opinion should be destroyed. I think that it has
been sufficiently said, that grief arises from an opinion of some
present evil, which includes this belief, that it is incumbent on us to
grieve. To this definition Zeno has added, very justly, that the
opinion of this present evil should be recent. Now this word recent
they explain thus: those are not the only recent things which happened
a little while ago; but as long as there shall be any force, or vigor,
or freshness in that imagined evil, so long it is entitled to the name
of recent. Take the case of Artemisia, the wife of Mausolus, King of
Caria, who made that noble sepulchre at Halicarnassus; while she lived,
she lived in grief, and died of it, being worn out by it, for that
opinion was always recent with her: but you cannot call that recent
which has already begun to decay through time. Now the duty of a
comforter is, to remove grief entirely, to quiet it, or draw it off as
much as you can, or else to keep it under, and prevent its spreading
any further, and to divert one's attention to other matters. There are
some who think, with Cleanthes, that the only duty of a comforter is to