XIV. To me such are the only men who appear completely happy; for what can he want to a complete happy life who relies on his own good qualities, or how can he be happy who does not rely on them? But he who makes a threefold division of goods must necessarily be diffident, for how can he depend on having a sound body, or that his fortune shall continue? But no one can be happy without an immovable, fixed, and permanent good. What, 178then, is this opinion of theirs? So that I think that saying of the Spartan may be applied to them, who, on some merchant’s boasting before him that he had despatched ships to every maritime coast, replied that a fortune which depended on ropes was not very desirable. Can there be any doubt that whatever may be lost cannot be properly classed in the number of those things which complete a happy life? for of all that constitutes a happy life, nothing will admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things cannot be happy: the happy man should be safe, well fenced, well fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, not like a man under trifling apprehensions, but free from all such. As he is not called innocent who but slightly offends, but he who offends not at all, so it is he alone who is to be considered without fear who is free from all fear, not he who is but in little fear. For what else is courage but an affection of mind that is ready to undergo perils, and patient in the endurance of pain and labor without any alloy of fear? Now, this certainly could not be the case if there were anything else good but what depended on honesty alone. But how can any one be in possession of that desirable and much-coveted security (for I now call a freedom from anxiety a security, on which freedom a happy life depends) who has, or may have, a multitude of evils attending him? How can he be brave and undaunted, and hold everything as trifles which can befall a man? for so a wise man should do, unless he be one who thinks that everything depends on himself. Could the Lacedæmonians without this, when Philip threatened to prevent all their attempts, have asked him if he could prevent their killing themselves? Is it not easier, then, to find one man of such a spirit as we are inquiring after, than to meet with a whole city of such men? Now, if to this courage I am speaking of we add temperance, that it may govern all our feelings and agitations, what can be wanting to complete his happiness who is secured by his courage from uneasiness and fear, and is prevented from immoderate desires and immoderate insolence of joy by temperance? I could easily show that virtue is able to 179produce these effects, but that I have explained on the foregoing days.
XV. But as the perturbations of the mind make life miserable, and tranquillity renders it happy; and as these perturbations are of two sorts, grief and fear, proceeding from imagined evils, and as immoderate joy and lust arise from a mistake about what is good, and as all these feelings are in opposition to reason and counsel; when you see a man at ease, quite free and disengaged from such troublesome commotions, which are so much at variance with one another, can you hesitate to pronounce such a one a happy man? Now, the wise man is always in such a disposition; therefore the wise man is always happy. Besides, every good is pleasant; whatever is pleasant may be boasted and talked of; whatever may be boasted of is glorious; but whatever is glorious is certainly laudable, and whatever is laudable doubtless, also, honorable: whatever, then, is good is honorable (but the things which they reckon as goods they themselves do not call honorable); therefore what is honorable alone is good. Hence it follows that a happy life is comprised in honesty alone. Such things, then, are not to be called or considered goods, when a man may enjoy an abundance of them, and yet be most miserable. Is there any doubt but that a man who enjoys the best health, and who has strength and beauty, and his senses flourishing in their utmost quickness and perfection—suppose him likewise, if you please, nimble and active, nay, give him riches, honors, authority, power, glory—now, I say, should this person, who is in possession of all these, be unjust, intemperate, timid, stupid, or an idiot—could you hesitate to call such a one miserable? What, then, are those goods in the possession of which you may be very miserable? Let us see if a happy life is not made up of parts of the same nature, as a heap implies a quantity of grain of the same kind. And if this be once admitted, happiness must be compounded of different good things, which alone are honorable; if there is any mixture of things of another sort with these, nothing honorable can proceed from such a composition: now, take away honesty, and how can you imagine anything happy? For whatever is good is desirable on that account; whatever is desirable 180must certainly be approved of; whatever you approve of must be looked on as acceptable and welcome. You must consequently impute dignity to this; and if so, it must necessarily be laudable: therefore, everything that is laudable is good. Hence it follows that what is honorable is the only good. And should we not look upon it in this light, there will be a great many things which we must call good.
XVI. I forbear to mention riches, which, as any one, let him be ever so unworthy, may have them, I do not reckon among goods; for what is good is not attainable by all. I pass over notoriety and popular fame, raised by the united voice of knaves and fools. Even things which are absolute nothings may be called goods; such as white teeth, handsome eyes, a good complexion, and what was commended by Euryclea, when she was washing Ulysses’s feet, the softness of his skin and the mildness of his discourse. If you look on these as goods, what greater encomiums can the gravity of a philosopher be entitled to than the wild opinion of the vulgar and the thoughtless crowd? The Stoics give the name of excellent and choice to what the others call good: they call them so, indeed; but they do not allow them to complete a happy life. But these others think that there is no life happy without them; or, admitting it to be happy, they deny it to be the most happy. But our opinion is, that it is the most happy; and we prove it from that conclusion of Socrates. For thus that author of philosophy argued: that as the disposition of a man’s mind is, so is the man; such as the man is, such will be his discourse; his actions will correspond with his discourse, and his life with his actions. But the disposition of a good man’s mind is laudable; the life, therefore, of a good man is laudable; it is honorable, therefore, because laudable; the unavoidable conclusion from which is that the life of good men is happy. For, good Gods! did I not make it appear, by my former arguments—or was I only amusing myself and killing time in what I then said?—that the mind of a wise man was always free from every hasty motion which I call a perturbation, and that the most undisturbed peace always reigned in his breast? A man, then, who is temperate and consistent, free from fear or 181grief, and uninfluenced by any immoderate joy or desire, cannot be otherwise than happy; but a wise man is always so, therefore he is always happy. Moreover, how can a good man avoid referring all his actions and all his feelings to the one standard of whether or not it is laudable? But he does refer everything to the object of living happily: it follows, then, that a happy life is laudable; but nothing is laudable without virtue: a happy life, then, is the consequence of virtue. And this is the unavoidable conclusion to be drawn from these arguments.
XVII. A wicked life has nothing which we ought to speak of or glory in; nor has that life which is neither happy nor miserable. But there is a kind of life that admits of being spoken of, and gloried in, and boasted of, as Epaminondas saith,
The wings of Sparta’s pride my counsels clipp’d.
And Africanus boasts,
Who, from beyond Mæotis to the place
Where the sun rises, deeds like mine can trace?
If, then, there is such a thing as a happy life, it is to be gloried in, spoken of, and commended by the person who enjoys it; for there is nothing excepting that which can be spoken of or gloried in; and when that is once admitted, you know what follows. Now, unless an honorable life is a happy life, there must, of course, be something preferable to a happy life; for that which is honorable all men will certainly grant to be preferable to anything else. And thus there will be something better than a happy life: but what can be more absurd than such an assertion? What! when they grant vice to be effectual to the rendering life miserable, must they not admit that there is a corresponding power in virtue to make life happy? For contraries follow from contraries. And here I ask what weight they think there is in the balance of Critolaus, who having put the goods of the mind into one scale, and the goods of the body and other external advantages into the other, thought the goods of the mind outweighed the others so far that they would require the whole earth and sea to equalize the scale.
182XVIII. What hinders Critolaus, then, or that gravest of philosophers, Xenocrates (who raises virtue so high, and who lessens and depreciates everything else), from not only placing a happy life, but the happiest possible life, in virtue? And, indeed, if this were not the case, virtue would be absolutely lost. For whoever is subject to grief must necessarily be subject to fear too, for fear is an uneasy apprehension of future grief; and whoever is subject to fear is liable to dread, timidity, consternation, cowardice. Therefore, such a person may, some time or other, be defeated, and not think himself concerned with that precept of Atreus,