I forbear to mention riches, which, as anyone, 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 grief, 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.
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 said,
The wings of Sparta’s pride my counsels clipt.
And Africanus boasts,
Who, from beyond Maeotis 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.
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
