Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/300

 they see; and in their sports and contests with their fellows, they are delighted if they win, and if they are beaten they are dejected and lose their spirits. And we must not think that any of these things happen without reason; for the power of man is produced in such a way by nature, that it seems made for a perception of all excellence: and on that account children, even without being taught, are influenced by likeness of those virtues of which they have the seeds in themselves; for they are the original elements of nature: and when they have acquired growth, then the whole work of nature is accomplished. For as we have been born and created so as to contain in ourselves the principles of doing something, and of loving somebody, and of liberality, and of gratitude; and so as to have minds adapted for knowledge, prudence, and fortitude, and averse to their opposites; it is not without cause that we see in children those sparks, as it were, of virtue which I have mentioned, by which the reason of a philosopher ought to be kindled to follow that guide as if it were a god, and so to arrive at the knowledge of the object of nature.

For, as I have often said already, the power of nature is discerned through a cloud while we are of a weak age and feeble intellect; but when our mind has made progress and acquired strength, then it recognises the power of nature, but still in such a way that it can make more progress still, and that it must derive the beginning of that progress from itself.

XVI. We must therefore enter into the nature of things, and see thoroughly what it demands; for otherwise we cannot arrive at the knowledge of ourselves. And because this precept was too important an one to be discerned by a man, it has on that account been attributed to God. The Pythian Apollo, then, enjoins us to know ourselves: but this knowledge is to know the power of our mind and body, and to follow that course of life which enjoys the circumstances in which it is placed. And since that desire of the mind to have all the things which I have mentioned in the most perfect manner in which nature could provide them, existed from the beginning, we must admit, when we have obtained what we desired, that nature consists in that as its extreme point, and that that is the chief good: which certainly must in every case be sought for spontaneously for its own sake, since it has already been proved, that even all its separate parts