Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/229

 one. From this it follows, that a happy life must be an honourable one. And since the man to whom it happens to be deservedly praised has some eminent qualities tending to credit and glory, so that he may rightly be called happy on account of such important qualities; the same thing is properly predicated of the life of such a man. And so, if a happy life is discerned by its honourableness, then what is honourable ought to be considered the sole good. And, as this cannot possibly be denied, what man do we say can ever exist of a stable and firm and great mind,—whom, in fact, can we ever call brave,—unless the point is established, that pain is not an evil? For as it is impossible that the man who ranks death among evils should not fear it, so in every case it is impossible for a man to disregard what he judges to be an evil, and to despise it. And when this point has been laid down, and ratified by universal assent, this is assumed next, that the man who is of a brave and magnanimous spirit despises and utterly disregards every accident which can befal a man. And as this is the case, the consequence is, that there is nothing evil which is not disgraceful. And that man of lofty and excellent spirit,—that magnanimous and truly brave man, who considers all human accidents beneath his notice,—the man I mean whom we wish to make so, whom at all events we are looking for,—ought to confide in himself, and in his own life both past and to come, and to form a favourable judgment of himself, laying down as a principle, that no evil can happen to a wise man. From which again the same result follows, that the sole good is that which is honourable; and that to live happily is to live honourably, that is, virtuously.

IX. Not that I am ignorant that the opinions of philosophers have been various, of those I mean who have placed the chief good, that which I call the end, in the mind. And although some people have followed them very incorrectly, still I prefer their theory, not only to that of the three sects who have separated virtue from the chief good, while ranking either pleasure, or freedom from pain, or the original gifts of nature among goods, but also to the other three who have thought that virtue would be crippled without some reinforcement, and on that account have each added to it one of those other particulars which I have just enumerated. I,