Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/319

 subject in another manner, as lawyers do on trials. And now you approve of this conduct in him. Will you then say that he by changing the names of things escaped the charge of inconsistency, and yet not allow us to do so too?

He asserts that the life of Metellus was not happier than that of Regulus, but admits that it was preferable to it; he says it was not more to be sought after, but still to be taken in preference; and that if one had a choice, one would choose the life of Metellus, and reject that of Regulus. What then he calls preferable, and worthy to be chosen in preference, I call happier; and yet I do not attribute more importance to that sort of life than the Stoics do. For what difference is there between us, except that I call well-known things by well-known names, and that they seek for new terms to express the same ideas? And so, as there is always some one in the senate who wants an interpreter, we, too, must listen to them with an interpreter. I call that good which is in accordance with nature; and whatever is contrary to nature I call evil. Nor do I alone use the definition; you do also, O Chrysippus, in the forum and at home; but in the school you discard it. What then? Do you think that men in general ought to speak in one way, and philosophers in another, as to the importance of which everything is? that learned men should hold one language, and unlearned ones another? But as learned men are agreed of how much importance everything is, (if they were men, they would speak in the usual fashion,) why, as long as they leave the facts alone, they are welcome to mould the names according to their fancy.

XXX. But I come now to the charge of inconsistency, that you may not repeat that I am making digressions; which you think exist only in language, but which I used to consider depended on the subject of which one was speaking. If it is sufficiently perceived (and here we have most excellent assistance from the Stoics), that the power of virtue is so great, that if everything else were put on the opposite side, it would not be even visible, when all things which they admit at least to be advantages, and to deserve to be taken, and chosen, and preferred, and which they define as worthy of being highly estimated; when, I say, I call these things goods which have so many names given them by the Stoics,