Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/276

 any addition can be made to that which you call the chief good. But you, while what you ought to do is to try and illustrate what is doubtful by what is evident, endeavour to get rid of what is evident by what is doubtful. And, therefore, you will find yourself hampered by the same reasoning which I used just now. For if it follows that some vices are not greater than others, because no addition can be made to that chief good which you describe, since it is quite evident that the vices of all men are not equal, you must change your definition of the chief good. For we must inevitably maintain this rule, that when a consequence is false, the premises from which the consequence proceeds cannot be true.

XXV. What, then, is the cause of these difficulties? A vain-glorious parade in defining the chief good. For when it is positively asserted that what is honourable is the sole good, all care for one's health, all attention to one's estate, all regard for the government of the republic, all regularity in transacting business, all the duties of life, in short, are put an end to. Even that very honourableness, in which alone you assert that everything is comprised, must be abandoned. All which arguments are carefully urged against Ariston by Chrysippus. And from that embarrassment it is that all those fallaciously speaking wiles, as Attius calls them, have arisen. For because wisdom had no ground on which to rest her foot, when all the duties were taken away, (and duties were taken away when all power of selection and discrimination was denied; for what choice, or what discrimination could there be when all things were so completely equal that there was no difference whatever between them?) from these difficulties there arose worse errors than even those of Aristo. For his arguments were at all events simple; those of your school are full of craft.

For suppose you were to ask Aristo whether these things, freedom from pain, riches, and good health, appear to him to be goods? He would deny it. What next? Suppose you ask him whether the contraries of these things are bad? He would deny that equally. Suppose you were to ask Zeno the same question? He would give you the same answer, word for word. Suppose further, that we, being full of astonishment, were to ask them both how it will be possible for us to live, if we think that it makes not the least difference to