Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/122

 enjoyments men seek simple happiness as it seems to them, for every man accounts that the best and highest good for him which he loves above all things, and thinks he shall be truly happy when he shall have attained it. And yet I do not deny that happiness and prosperity are the highest blessings of this life of ours, for the reason just given; and when a man is convinced that the possession of a thing will bring him great happiness, then he desires it most. Is not this semblance of false happiness clearly revealed, namely possessions, honours, power, and vain glory, and carnal pleasure? Speaking of carnal pleasure, Epicurus the philosopher, when investigating all the various kinds of happiness we have spoken about, said that pleasure is the highest good, for all the forms of happiness we have spoken of flatter and encourage the mind. Pleasure, however, alone flatters the body most exclusively.

'Let us talk yet further on the nature of men and their strivings. Though their minds and natures be obscured, and they be hastening on the downward course to evil, yet they desire the highest good, as far as their knowledge and power go. Even as a drunken man knoweth that he should go to his home and his rest, but cannot find the way thither, so it is with the mind when it is weighed down with the cares of this world, for drugged and led astray therewith it cannot find the direct road to what is good. Nor do men think that they at all err that desire to get hold of so much that they need not strive after more; but they believe they