Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/317

 way. If you grant this conclusion, you must grant the premises; but this is not the case with the arguments of your school. There are three kinds of goods. The assertions go trippingly on: he comes to the conclusion: he sticks fast: he is in a difficulty; for he wishes to say, that nothing can be wanting to a wise man to complete his happiness—a very honourable sentiment, one worthy of Socrates, or even of Plato. Well, I do venture to assert that, says he. It is impossible, unless you remodel your premises: if poverty is an evil, no beggar can be happy be he ever so wise. But Zeno ventured to call such a man not only happy, but also rich.

To be in pain is an evil; the man who is fastened to a cross cannot be happy. Children are a good; childlessness is an evil. One's country is a good; exile is an evil. Health is a good; disease is an evil. Vigour of body is a good; feebleness is an evil. Clear sight is a good; blindness is an evil. But, though a man may be able to alleviate any single one of these evils by consolation, how will he be able to endure them all? For, suppose one person were blind, feeble, afflicted with grievous sickness, banished, childless, in indigence, and put to the torture; what will you call him, Zeno? Happy, says he. Will you call him most perfectly happy? To be sure I will, says he, when I have taught him that happiness does not admit of degrees any more than virtue, the mere possession of which makes him happy. This seems to you incredible that he can call him perfectly happy. What is your own doctrine? is that credible? For if you appeal to the people, you will never convince them that a man in such a condition is happy. If you appeal to prudent men, perhaps they will doubt as to one point, namely, whether there is so much force in virtue that men endued with that can be happy, even in Phalaris's bull; but they will not doubt at all that the Stoic language is consistent with itself and that yours is not.

Do you then, says he, approve of the book of Theophrastus on a happy life? We are wandering from our subject; and that I may not be too tedious—if, said I, Piso, those things are evils, I wholly approve of it. Do not they then, said he, seem to you to be evils? Do you ask that? said I; whatever answer I give you, you will find yourself in embarrassment. How so? said he. Because, if they are evils, a man