Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/225

 by nature because of the use which, they are of to us, as, for instance, the hands, legs, and feet, and also those internal organs of the body, of which I may leave it to the physicians to explain the exceeding usefulness; but others with no view to utility, but for ornament as it were, as the tail is given to the peacock, plumage of many colours to the dove, breasts and a beard to man. Perhaps you will say this is but a dry enumeration; for these things are, as it were, the first elements of nature, which cannot well have any richness of language employed upon them; nor indeed am I thinking of displaying any; but when one is speaking of more important matters, then the subject itself hurries on the language: and then one's discourse is at the same time more impressive and more ornate. It is as you say, said I; but still everything which is said in a lucid manner about a good subject appears to me to be said well. And to wish to speak of subjects of that kind in a florid style is childish; but to be able to explain them with clearness and perspicuity, is a token of a learned and intelligent man.

VI. Let us then proceed, said he, since we have digressed from these first principles of nature, which everything which follows ought to be in harmony with. But this is the first division of the subject. A thing is said to be estimable: for so we may, I think, call that which is either itself in accordance with nature, or else which is the efficient cause of something of such a character that it is worthy of being selected because it has in it some weight worth appreciating, which he calls ἀχία; and, on the other hand, something not estimable, which is the contrary of the preceding. The first principles, therefore, being laid down, that those things which are according to nature are to be chosen for their own sakes, and those which are contrary to it are in like manner to be rejected; the first duty (for that is how I translate the word καθῆκον) is, for a man to preserve himself in his natural condition; next to that, to maintain those things which are in accordance with nature, and reject what is opposite to it; and when this principle of selection and rejection has been discovered, then follows selection in accordance with duty; and then that third kind, which is perpetual, and consistent to the end, and corresponding to nature, in which there first begins to be a proper understand-