Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/316

 little towards securing a perfectly happy one, but enough for securing a tolerably happy one.

I have noticed, said he, that you made this distinction a little while ago, and I know that our friend Antiochus used to speak in this manner. But what can be less approved of than the idea of a person being happy, and yet not happy enough? For when anything is enough, then whatever is added to that is excess: and no one is too happy: and no one is happier than a happy man. Therefore, said he, was not Quintus Metellus, who saw three of his sons consuls, one of whom was also censor and celebrated a triumph, and a fourth prætor; and who left them all in safety behind him, and who saw his three daughters married, having been himself consul, censor and augur, and having celebrated a triumph; was he not, I say, in your opinion, (supposing him to have been a wise man,) happier than Regulus, who being in the power of the enemy, was put to death by sleeplessness and hunger, though he may have been equally wise?

XXVIII. Why do you ask me that? said I; ask the Stoics. What answer, then, said he, do you suppose they will make? They will say that Metellus was in no respect more happy than Regulus. Let us, then, said he, hear what they have got to say. But, said I, we are wandering from our subject; for I am not asking what is true, but what each person ought to say. I wish, indeed, that they would say that one man is happier than another: you should see the ruin I would make of them. For, as the chief good consists in virtue alone, and in honourableness; and as neither virtue, as they say, nor honourableness is capable of growth, and as that alone is good which makes him who enjoys it necessarily happy, as that in which alone happiness is placed cannot be increased, how is it possible that one person can be happier than another? Do you not see how all these things agree together? And, in truth, (for I must avow what I feel,) the mutual dependence of all these things on one another is marvellous: the last part corresponds to the first, the middle to each extremity, and each extremity to the other. They see all that follows from, or is inconsistent with them. In geometry, if you grant the premises the conclusion follows. Grant that there is nothing good except what is honourable, and you must grant that happiness is placed in virtue alone. Try it the other