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   Title: The Consolation of Philosophy
   Creator(s): Boethius, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus (480-524)
   Cooper, W. V. (Translator)
   Print Basis: London: J. M. Dent and Company, 1902
   Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: all; classic
   LC Call no: BV 4900.C65
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                         The Consolation of Philosophy

BOETHIUS

Translated by W. V. Cooper

J. M. Dent and Company London

1902
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BOOK I

   ‘To pleasant songs my work was erstwhile given, and bright were all my
   labours then; but now in tears to sad refrains am I compelled to turn. Thus
   my maimed Muses guide my pen, and gloomy songs make no feigned tears bedew
   my face. Then could no fear so overcome to leave me companionless upon my
   way. They were the pride of my earlier bright-lived days: in my later gloomy
   days they are the comfort of my fate; for hastened by unhappiness has age
   come upon me without warning, and grief hath set within me the old age of
   her gloom. White hairs are scattered untimely on my head, and the skin hangs
   loosely from my worn-out limbs.

   ‘Happy is that death which thrusts not itself upon men in their pleasant
   years, yet comes to them at the oft-repeated cry of their sorrow. Sad is it
   how death turns away from the unhappy with so deaf an ear, and will not
   close, cruel, the eyes that weep. Ill is it to trust to Fortune’s fickle
   bounty, and while yet she smiled upon me, the hour of gloom had well-nigh
   overwhelmed my head. Now has the cloud put off its alluring face, wherefore
   without scruple my life drags out its wearying delays.

   ‘Why, O my friends, did ye so often puff me up, telling me that I was
   fortunate? For he that is fallen low did never firmly stand.’

   While I was pondering thus in silence, and using my pen to set down so
   tearful a complaint, there appeared standing over my head a woman’s form,
   whose countenance was full of majesty, whose eyes shone as with fire and in
   power of insight surpassed the eyes of men, whose colour was full of life,
   whose strength was yet intact though she was so full of years that none
   would ever think that she was subject to such age as ours. One could but
   doubt her varying stature, for at one moment she repressed it to the common
   measure of a man, at another she seemed to touch with her crown the very
   heavens: and when she had raised higher her head, it pierced even the sky
   and baffled the sight of those who would look upon it. Her clothing was
   wrought of the finest thread by subtle workmanship brought to an indivisible
   piece. This had she woven with her own hands, as I afterwards did learn by
   her own shewing. Their beauty was somewhat dimmed by the dulness of long
   neglect, as is seen in the smoke-grimed masks of our ancestors. On the
   border below was inwoven the symbol P, on that above was to be read a Th [1]
   And between the two letters there could be marked degrees, by which, as by
   the rungs of a ladder, ascent might be made from the lower principle to the
   higher. Yet the hands of rough men had torn this garment and snatched such
   morsels as they could therefrom. In her right hand she carried books, in her
   left was a sceptre brandished.

   When she saw that the Muses of poetry were present by my couch giving words
   to my lamenting, she was stirred a while; her eyes flashed fiercely, and
   said she, ‘Who has suffered these seducing mummers to approach this sick
   man? Never do they support those in sorrow by any healing remedies, but
   rather do ever foster the sorrow by poisonous sweets. These are they who
   stifle the fruit-bearing harvest of reason with the barren briars of the
   passions: they free not the minds of men from disease, but accustom them
   thereto. I would think it less grievous if your allurements drew away from
   me some uninitiated man, as happens in the vulgar herd. In such an one my
   labours would be naught harmed, but this man has been nourished in the lore
   of Eleatics and Academics; and to him have ye reached? Away with you,
   Sirens, seductive unto destruction! leave him to my Muses to be cared for
   and to be healed.’

   Their band thus rated cast a saddened glance upon the ground, confessing
   their shame in blushes, and passed forth dismally over the threshold. For my
   part, my eyes were dimmed with tears, and I could not discern who was this
   woman of such commanding power. I was amazed, and turning my eyes to the
   ground I began in silence to await what she should do. Then she approached
   nearer and sat down upon the end of my couch: she looked into my face heavy
   with grief and cast down by sorrow to the ground, and then she raised her
   complaint over the trouble of my mind in these words.

   ‘Ah me! how blunted grows the mind when sunk below the o’erwhelming flood!
   Its own true light no longer burns within, and it would break forth to outer
   dark nesses. How often care, when fanned by earthly winds, grows to a larger
   and unmeasured bane. This man has been free to the open heaven: his habit
   has it been to wander into the paths of the sky: his to watch the light of
   the bright sun, his to inquire into the brightness of the chilly moon; he,
   like a conqueror, held fast bound in its order every star that makes its
   wandering circle, turning its peculiar course. Nay, more, deeply has he
   searched into the springs of nature, whence came the roaring blasts that
   ruffle the ocean’s bosom calm: what is the spirit that makes the firmament
   revolve; wherefore does the evening star sink into the western wave but to
   rise from the radiant East; what is the cause which so tempers the season of
   Spring that it decks the earth with rose-blossoms; whence comes it to pass
   that Autumn is prolific in the years of plenty and overflows with teeming
   vines: deeply to search these causes was his wont, and to bring forth
   secrets deep in Nature hid.

   ‘Now he lies there; extinct his reason’s light, his neck in heavy chains
   thrust down, his countenance with grievous weight downcast; ah! the brute
   earth is all he can behold.

   ‘But now,’ said she, ‘is the time for the physician’s art, rather than for
   complaining.’ Then fixing her eyes wholly on me, she said, ‘Are you the man
   who was nourished upon the milk of my learning, brought up with my food
   until you had won you r way to the power of a manly soul? Surely I had given
   you such weapons as would keep you safe, and your strength unconquered; if
   you had not thrown them away. Do you know me? Why do you keep silence? Are
   you dumb from shame or from dull amazement? I would it were from shame, but
   I see that amazement has overwhelmed you.’

   When she saw that I was not only silent, but utterly tongue-tied and dumb,
   she put her hand gently upon my breast, and said, ‘There is no danger: he is
   suffering from drowsiness, that disease which attacks so many minds which
   have been deceived. He has forgotten himself for a moment and will quickly
   remember, as soon as he recognises me. That he may do so, l et me brush away
   from his eyes the darkening cloud of thoughts of matters perishable.’ So
   saying, she gathered her robe into a fold and dried my swimming eyes.

   Then was dark night dispelled, the shadows fled away, and my eyes received
   returning power as before. ’Twas just as when the heavenly bodies are
   enveloped by the west wind’s rush, and the sky stands thick with watery
   clouds; the sun is hidden and the stars are not yet come into the sky, and
   night descending from above o’erspreads the earth: but if the north wind
   smites this scene, launched forth from the Thracian cave, it unlocks the
   imprisoned daylight; the sun shines forth, and thus sparkling Phoebus smites
   with his rays our wondering eyes.

   In such a manner were the clouds of grief scattered. Then I drew breath
   again and engaged my mind in taking knowledge of my physician’s countenance.
   So when I turned my eyes towards her and fixed my gaze upon her, I
   recognised my nurse, Philosophy, in whose chambers I had spent my life from
   earliest manhood. And I asked her, ‘Wherefore have you, mistress of all
   virtues, come down from heaven above to visit my lonely place of banishment?
   Is it that you, as well as I, may be harried, the victim of false
   charges?’ ‘Should I,’ said she, ‘desert you, my nursling? Should I not share
   and bear my part of the burden which has been laid upon you from spite
   against my name? Surely Philosophy never allowed herself to let the innocent
   go upon their journey unbefriended. Think you I would fear calumnies? that I
   would be terrified as though they were a new misfortune? Think you that this
   is the first time that wisdom has been harassed by d angers among men of
   shameless ways? In ancient days before the time of my child, Plato, have we
   not as well as nowadays fought many a mighty battle against the recklessness
   of folly? And though Plato did survive, did not his master, Socrates, win hi
   s victory of an unjust death, with me present at his side? When after him
   the followers of Epicurus, and in turn the Stoics, and then others did all
   try their utmost to seize his legacy, they dragged me, for all my cries and
   struggles, as though to s hare me as plunder; they tore my robe which I had
   woven with mine own hands, and snatched away the fragments thereof: and when
   they thought I had altogether yielded myself to them, they departed. And
   since among them were to be seen certain signs of my outward bearing, others
   ill-advised did think they wore my livery: thus were many of them undone by
   the errors of the herd of uninitiated. But if you have not heard of the
   exile of Anaxagoras, [2] nor the poison drunk by Socrates, [3] nor the
   torture of Zeno, [4] which all were of foreign lands, yet you may know of
   Canius, [5] Seneca, [6] and Soranus, [7] whose fame is neither small nor
   passing old. Naught else brought them to ruin but that, being built up in my
   ways, they appeared at variance with the desires of unscrupulous men. So it
   is no matter for your wonder if, in this sea of life, we are tossed about by
   storms from all sides; for to oppose evil men is the chief aim we set before
   ourselves. Though the band of such men is great in numbers, yet is it to be
   contemned: for it is guided by no leader, but is hurried along at random
   only by error running riot everywhere. If this band when warring against us
   presses too strongly upon us, our leader, Reason, gathers her forces into
   her citadel, while the enemy are busied in plundering useless baggage. As
   they seize the most worthless things, we laugh at them from above,
   untroubled by the whole band of m ad marauders, and we are defended by that
   rampart to which riotous folly may not hope to attain.

   ‘He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud death beneath
   his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad: his
   countenance unconquered he can shew. The rage and threatenings of the sea
   will not move him though they stir from its depths the upheaving swell:
   Vesuvius’s furnaces may never so often burst forth, and he may send rolling
   upwards smoke and fire; the lightning, whose wont it is to smite down lofty
   towers, may flash upon its way, but such men shall they never move. Why then
   stand they wretched and aghast when fierce tyrants rage in impotence? Fear
   naught, and hope naught: thus shall you have a weak man’s rage disarmed. But
   whoso fears with trembling, or desires aught from them, he stands not firmly
   rooted, but dependent: thus has he thrown away his shield; he can be rooted
   up, and he links for himself the very chain whereby he may be dragged.

   ‘Are such your experiences, and do they sink into your soul?’ she asked. ‘Do
   you listen only as “the dull ass to the lyre”? Why do you weep? Wherefore
   flow your tears? “Speak, nor keep secret in thine heart.” If you expect a
   physician to help you, you must lay bare your wound.’ Then did I rally my
   spirit till it was strong again, and answered, ‘Does the savage bitterness
   of my fortune still need recounting? Does it not stand forth plainly enough
   of itself? Does not the very aspect of this place strike you? Is this the
   library which you had chosen for yourself as your sure resting-place in my
   house? Is this the room in which you would so often tarry with me expounding
   the philosophy of things human and divine? Was my condition like this, or my
   countenance, when I probed with your aid the secrets of nature, when you
   marked out with a wand the courses of the stars, when you shaped our habits
   and the rule of all our life by the pattern of the universe? [8] Are these
   the rewards we reap by yielding ourselves to you? Nay, you yourself have
   established this saying by the mouth of Plato, that commonwealths would be
   blessed if they were guided by those who made wisdom their study, or if
   those who guided them would make wisdom their study. [9] By the mouth of
   that same great man did you teach that this was the binding reason why a
   commonwealth should be governed by philosophers, namely that the helm of
   government should not be left to unscrupulous or criminal citizens lest they
   should bring corruption and ruin upon the good citizens. [10] Since, then, I
   had learned from you in quiet and inaction of this view, I followed it
   further, for I desired to practise it in public government. You and God
   Himself, who has grafted you in the minds of philosophers, are my witnesses
   that never have I applied myself to any office of state except that I might
   work for the common welfare of all good men. Thence followed bitter quarrels
   with evil men which could not be appeased, and, for the sake of preserving
   justice, contempt of the enmity of those in power, for this is the result of
   a free and fearless conscience. How often have I withstood Conigastus to his
   face, whenever he has attacked a weak man’s fortune! How often have I turned
   by force Trigulla, [11] the overseer of the Emperor’s household, from an
   unjust act that he had begun or even carried out! How many times have I put
   my own authority in danger by protecting those wretched people who were
   harried with unending false charges by the greed of barbarian Goths which
   ever went unpunished! Never, I say, has any man depraved me from justice to
   injustice. My heart has ached as bitterly as those of the sufferers when I
   have seen the fortunes of our subjects ruined both by the rapacity of
   persons and the taxes of the state. Again, in a time of severe famine, a
   grievous, intolerable sale by compulsion was decreed in Campania, and
   devastation threatened that province. Then I undertook for the sake of the
   common welfare a struggle against the commander of the Imperial guard;
   though the king was aware of it, I fought against the enforcement of the
   sale, and fought successfully. Paulinus was a man who had been consul: the
   jackals of the court had in their own hopes and desires already swallowed up
   his possessions, but I snatched him from their very gaping jaws. I exposed
   myself to the hatred of the treacherous informer Cyprian, that I might
   prevent Albinus, also a former consul, being overwhelmed by the penalty of a
   trumped-up charge. Think you that I have raised up against myself bitter and
   great quarrels enough? But I ought to have been safer among those whom I
   helped; for, from my love of justice, I laid up for myself among the
   courtiers no resource to which I might turn for safety. Who, further, were
   the informers upon whose evidence I was banished? One was Basilius: he was
   formerly expelled from the royal service, and was driven by debt to inform
   against me. Again, Opilio and Gaudentius had been condemned to exile by the
   king for many unjust acts and crimes: this decree they would not obey, and
   they sought sanctuary in sacred buildings, but when the king was aware of
   it, he declared that if they departed not from Ravenna before a certain day,
   they should be driven forth branded upon their foreheads. What could be more
   stringent than this? Yet upon that very day information against me was laid
   by these same men and accepted. Why so? Did my character deserve this
   treatment? Or did my prearranged condemnation give credit and justification
   to my accusers? Did Fortune feel no shame for this? If not for innocence
   calumniated, at any rate for the baseness of the calumniators?

   ‘Would you learn the sum of the charges against me? It was said that “I had
   desired the safety of the Senate.” You would learn in what way. I was
   charged with “having hindered an informer from producing papers by which the
   Senate could be accused of treason.” What think you, my mistress? Shall I
   deny it lest it shame you? Nay, I did desire the safety of the Senate, nor
   shall ever cease to desire it. Shall I confess it? Then there would have
   been no need to hinder an informer. Shall I call it a crime to have wished
   for the safety of that order? By its own decrees concerning myself it has
   established that this is a crime. Though want of foresight often deceives
   itself, it cannot alter the merits of facts, and, in obedience to the
   Senate’s command, I cannot think it right to hide the truth or to assent to
   falsehood.

   ‘However, I leave it to your judgment and that of philosophers to decide how
   the justice of this may be; but I have committed to writing for history the
   true course of events, that posterity may not be ignorant thereof. I think
   it unnecessary to speak of the forged letters through which I am accused of
   “ hoping for the freedom of Rome.” Their falsity would have been apparent if
   I had been free to question the evidence of the informers themselves, for
   their confessions have much force in all such business.

   ‘But what avails it? No liberty is left to hope for. Would there were any! I
   would answer in the words of Canius, who was accused by Gaius Cæsar, [12]
   Germanicus’s son, of being cognisant of a plot against himself: “ If I had
   known of it, you would not have.”

   ‘And in this matter grief has not so blunted my powers that I should
   complain of wicked men making impious attacks upon virtue: but at this I do
   wonder, that they should hope to succeed. Evil desires are, it may be, due
   to our natural failings, but that the conceptions of any wicked mind should
   prevail against innocence while God watches over us, seems to me unnatural.
   Wherefore not without cause has one of your own followers asked, “ If Go d
   is, whence come evil things? If He is not, whence come good? “

   ‘Again, let impious men, who thirst for the blood of the whole Senate and of
   all good citizens, be allowed to wish for the ruin of us too whom they
   recognise as champions of the Senate and all good citizens: but surely such
   as I have not deserved the same hatred from the members of the Senate too?

   ‘Since you were always present to guide me in my words and my deeds, I think
   you re member what happened at Verona. When King Theodoric, desiring the
   common ruin of the Senate, was for extending to the whole order the charge
   of treason laid against Albinus, you remember how I laboured to defend the
   innocence of the order without any care for my own danger? You know that I
   declare this truthfully and with no boasting praise of self. For the secret
   value of a conscience, that approves its own action, is lessened somewhat
   each time that it receives the reward of fame by displaying its deeds. But
   you see what end has fallen upon my innocency. In the place of the rewards
   of honest virtue, I am suffering the punishments of an ill deed that was not
   mine. And did ever any direct confession of a crime find its judges so well
   agreed upon exercising harshness, that neither the liability of the human
   heart to err, nor the changeableness of the fortune of all mankind, could
   yield one dissentient voice? If it had been said that I had wished to burn
   down temples, to murder with sacrilegious sword their priests, that I had
   planned the massacre of all good citizens, even so I should have been
   present to plead guilty or to be convicted, before the sentence was
   executed. But here am I, nearly five hundred-miles away, without the
   opportunity of defending myself, condemned to death and the confiscation of
   my property because of my too great zeal for the Senate. Ah! well have they
   deserved that none should ever be liable to be convicted on such a charge!
   Even those who laid information have seen the honour of this accusation,
   for, that they might blacken it with some criminal ingredient, they had need
   to lie, saying that I had violated my conscience by using unholy means to
   obtain offices corruptly. But you, by being planted within me, dispelled
   from the chamber of my soul all craving for that which perishes, and where
   your eyes were looking there could be no place for any such sacrilege. For
   you instilled into my ears, and thus into my daily thoughts, that saying of
   Pythagoras, “Follow after God.” Nor was it seemly that I, whom you had built
   up to such excellence that you made me as a god, should seek the support of
   the basest wills of men. Yet, further, the innocent life within my home, my
   gathering of most honourable friends, my father-in-law Symmachus, [13] a man
   esteemed no less in his public life than for his private conscientiousness,
   these all put far from me all suspicion of this crime. But — O the shame of
   it! -- it is from you that they think they derive the warrant for such a
   charge, and we seem to them to be allied to ill-doing from this very fact
   that we are steeped in the principles of your teaching, and trained in your
   manners of life. Thus it is not enough that my deep respect for you has
   profited me nothing, but you yourself have received wanton contumely from
   the hatred that had rather fallen on me. Yet besides this, is another load
   added to my heap of woes: the judgment of the world looks not to the deserts
   of the case, but to the evolution of chance, and holds that only this has
   been intended which good fortune may chance to foster: whence it comes that
   the good opinion of the world is the first to desert the unfortunate. It is
   wearisome to recall what were the tales by people told, or how little their
   many various opinions agreed. This alone I would fain say: it is the last
   burden laid upon us by unkind fortune, that when any charge is invented to
   be fastened upon unhappy men, they are believed to have deserved all they
   have to bear. For kindness I have received persecutions; I have been driven
   from all my possessions, stripped of my honours, and stained for ever in my
   reputation. I think I see the intoxication of joy in the sin-steeped dens of
   criminals: I see the most abandoned of men intent upon new and evil schemes
   of spying: I see honest men lying crushed with the fear which smites them
   after the result of my perilous case: wicked men one and all encouraged to
   dare every crime without fear of punishment, nay, with hope of rewards for
   the accomplishment thereof: the innocent I see robbed not merely of their
   peace and safety, but even of all chance of defending themselves. So then I
   may cry aloud: —

   ‘Founder of the star-studded universe, resting on Thine eternal throne
   whence Thou turnest the swiftly rolling sky, and bindest the stars to keep
   Thy law; at Thy word the moon now shines brightly with full face, ever
   turned to her brother’s light, and so she dims the lesser lights; or now she
   is herself obscured, for nearer to the sun her beams shew her pale horns
   alone. Cool rises the evening star at night’s first drawing nigh: the same
   is the morning star who casts off the harness that she bore before, and
   paling meets the rising sun. When winter’s cold doth strip the trees, Thou
   settest a shorter span to day. And Thou, when summer comes to warm, dost
   change the short divisions of the night. Thy power doth order the seasons of
   the year, so that the western breeze of spring brings back the leaves which
   winter’s north wind tore away; so that the dog-star’s heat makes ripe the
   ears of corn whose seed Arcturus watched. Naught breaks that ancient law:
   naught leaves undone the work appointed to its place. Thus all things Thou
   dost rule with limits fixed: the lives of men alone dost Thou scorn to
   restrain, as a guardian, within bounds. F or why does Fortune with her
   fickle hand deal out such changing lots? The hurtful penalty is due to
   crime, but falls upon the sinless head: depraved men rest at ease on thrones
   aloft, and by their unjust lot can spurn beneath their hurtful heel the
   necks of virtuous men. Beneath obscuring shadows lies bright virtue hid: the
   just man bears the unjust’s infamy. They suffer not for forsworn oaths, they
   suffer not for crimes glozed over with their lies. But when their will is to
   put forth their strength, with triumph they subdue the mightiest kings whom
   peoples in their thousands fear. O Thou who dost weave the bonds of
   Nature’s self, look down upon this pitiable earth! Mankind is no base part
   of this great work, and we are tossed on Fortune’s wave. Rest rain, our
   Guardian, the engulfing surge, and as Thou dost the unbounded heaven rule,
   with a like bond make true and firm these lands.’

   While I grieved thus in long-drawn pratings, Philosophy looked on with a
   calm countenance, not one whit moved by my complaints Then said she, ‘When I
   saw you in grief and in tears I knew thereby that you were unhappy and in
   exile, but I knew not how distant was your exile until your speech declare d
   it. But you have not been driven so far from your home; you have wandered
   thence yourself: or if you would rather hold that you have been driven, you
   have been driven by yourself rather than by any other. No other could have
   done so to you. For if you recall your true native country, you know that it
   is not under the rule of the many-headed people, as was Athens of old, but
   there is one Lord, one King, who rejoices in the greater number of his
   subjects, not in their banishment. To be guided by his reins, to bow to his
   justice, is the highest liberty. Know you not that sacred and ancient law of
   your own state by which it is enacted that no man, who would establish a
   dwelling-place for himself therein, may lawfully be put forth? For there is
   no fear that any man should merit exile, if he be kept safe therein by its
   protecting walls. But any man that may no longer wish to dwell there, does
   equally no longer deserve to be there. Wherefore it is your looks rather
   than the aspect of this place which disturb me. [14] It is not the walls of
   your library, decked with ivory and glass, that I need, but rather the
   resting-place in your heart, wherein I have not stored books, but I have of
   old put that which gives value to books, a store of thoughts from books of
   mine. As to your services to the common weal, you have spoken truly, though
   but scantily, if you consider your manifold exertions. Of all wherewith you
   have been charged either truthfully or falsely, you have but recorded what
   is well known. As for the crimes and wicked lies of the informers, you have
   rightly thought fit to touch but shortly thereon, for they are better and
   more fruitfully made common in the mouth of the crowd that discusses all
   matters. You have loudly and strongly upbraided the unjust ingratitude of
   the Senate: you have grieved over the charges made against myself, and shed
   tears over the insult to my fair fame: your last outburst of wrath was
   against Fortune, when you complained that she paid no fair rewards according
   to deserts: finally, you have prayed with passionate Muse that the same
   peace and order, that are seen in the heavens, might also rule the earth.
   But you are overwhelmed by this variety of mutinous passions: grief, rage,
   and gloom tear your mind asunder, and so in this present mood stronger
   measures cannot yet come nigh to heal you. Let us therefore use gentler
   means, and since, just as matter in the body hardens into a swelling, so
   have these disquieting influences, let these means soften by kindly handling
   the unhealthy spot, until it will bear a sharper remedy.

   ‘When the sign of the crab doth scorch the field, fraught with the sun’s
   most grievous rays, the husbandman that has freely intrusted his seed to the
   fruitless furrow, is cheated by the faithless harvest-goddess; and he must
   turn him to the oak tree’s fruit.

   ‘When the field is scarred by the bleak north winds, wouldst thou seek the
   wood’s dark carpet to gather violets? If thou wilt enjoy the grapes, wouldst
   thou seek with clutching hand to prune the vines in spring? ’Tis in autumn
   Bacchus brings his gifts. Thus God marks out the times and fits to them
   peculiar works: He has set out a course of change, and lets no confusion
   come. If aught betake itself to headlong ways, and leaves its sure design,
   ill will the outcome be thereto.

   ‘First then,’ she continued, ‘will you let me find out and make trial of the
   state of your mind by a few small questions, that so I may understand what
   should be the method of your treatment?’

   ‘Ask,’ said I, ‘what your judgment would have you ask, and I will answer
   you.’

   Then said she, ‘Think you that this universe is guided only at random and by
   mere chance? or think you there is any rule of reason constituted in it?’

   ‘No, never would I think it could be so, nor believe that such sure motions
   could be made at random or by chance. I know that God, the founder of the
   universe, does overlook His work; nor ever may that day come which shall
   drive me to abandon this belief as untrue.’

   ‘So is it,’ she said, ‘and even so you cried just now, and only mourned that
   mankind alone has no part in this divine guardianship: you were fixed in
   your belief that all other things are ruled by reason. Yet, how strange! how
   much I wonder how it is that you can be so sick though you are set in such a
   health-giving state of mind! But let us look deeper into it: I cannot but
   think there is something lacking. Since you are not in doubt that the
   universe is ruled by God, tell me by what method you think that government
   is guided?’

   ‘I scarcely know the meaning of your question; much less can I answer it.’

   ‘Was I wrong,’ said she, ‘to think that something was lacking, that there
   was some opening in your armour, some way by which this distracting disease
   has crept into your soul? But tell me, do you remember what is the aim and
   end of all things? what the object to which all nature tends?’

   ‘I have heard indeed, but grief has blunted my memory.’

   ‘But do you not some how know whence all things have their source?’

   ‘Yes,’ I said; ‘that source is God.’

   ‘Is it possible that you, who know the beginning of all things, should not
   know their end? But such are the ways of these distractions, such is their
   power, that though they can move a man’s position, they cannot pluck him
   from himself or wrench him from his roots. But this question would I have
   you answer: do you remember that you are a man?’

   ‘How can I but remember that?’

   ‘Can you then say what is a man?’

   ‘Need you ask? I know that he is an animal, reasoning and mortal; that I
   know, and that I confess myself to be.’

   ‘Know you naught else that you are?’ asked Philosophy.

   ‘Naught,’ said I.

   ‘Now,’ said she, ‘I know the cause, or the chief cause, of your sickness.
   You have forgotten what you are. Now therefore I have found out to the full
   the manner of your sickness, and how to attempt the restoring of your
   health. You are overwhelmed by this forgetfulness of yourself: hence you
   have been thus sorrowing that you are exiled and robbed of all your
   possessions. You do not know the aim and end of all things; hence you think
   that if men are worthless and wicked, they are powerful and fortunate. You
   have forgotten by what methods the universe is guided; hence you think that
   the chances of good and bad fortune are tossed about with no ruling hand.
   These things may lead not to disease only, but even to death as well. But
   let us thank the Giver of all health, that your nature has not altogether
   left you. We have yet the chief spark for your health’s fire, for you have a
   true knowledge of the hand that guides the universe: you do believe that its
   government is not subject to random chance, but to divine reason. Therefore
   have no fear. From this tiny spark the fire of life shall forthwith shine
   upon you. But it is not time to use severer remedies, and since we know that
   it is the way of all minds to clothe themselves ever in false opinions as
   they throw off the true, and these false ones breed a dark distraction which
   confuses the true insight, therefore will I try to lessen this darkness for
   a while with gentle applications of easy remedies, that so the shadows of
   deceiving passions may be dissipated, and you may have power to perceive the
   brightness of true light.’

   ‘When the stars are hidden by black clouds, no light can they afford. When
   the boisterous south wind rolls along the sea and stirs the surge, the
   water, but now as clear as glass, bright as the fair sun’s light, is dark,
   impenetrable to sight, with stirred and scattered sand. The stream, that
   wanders down the mountain’s side, must often find a stumbling-block, a stone
   within its path torn from the hill’s own rock. So too shalt thou: if thou
   wouldst see the truth in undimmed light, choose the straight road, the
   beaten path; away with passing joys! away with fear! put vain hopes to
   flight! and grant no place to grief! Where these distractions reign, the
   mind is clouded o’er, the soul is bound in chains.’
     _________________________________________________________________

   [1] P and Th are the first letters of the Greek words denoting Practical and
   Theoretical, the two divisions of philosophy.

   [2] Anaxagoras went into exile from Athens about 450 B.C.

   [3] Socrates was executed by the Athenian state, B.C. 399.

   [4] Zeno of Elea was tortured by Nearchus, tyrant of Elea, about 440 B.C.

   [5] Canius was put to death by Caligula, c. A.D. 40.

   [6] Seneca was driven to commit suicide by Nero, A.D. 66.

   [7] Soranus was condemned to death by Nero, A.D. 66.

   [8] Boethius means that his chief ‘philosophical’ studies had been physics,
   astronomy, and ethics.

   [9] Plato, Repub. v. 473.

   [10] Plato, Repub. vi. 488, 489.

   [11] Conigastus and Trigulla were favourite officers of the Emperor,
   Theodoric, the Goth: they used their influence with him for the oppression
   of the weak.

   [12] The Emperor Caligula.

   [13] Symmachus was executed by Theodoric at the same time as Boethius.

   [14] Cp. Prose iv. of this book, p. 9.
     _________________________________________________________________

BOOK II

   THEN for a while she held her peace. But when her silence, so discreet, made
   my thoughts to cease from straying, she thus began to speak: ‘If I have
   thoroughly learned the causes and the manner of your sickness, your former
   good fortune has so affected you that you are being consumed by longing for
   it. The change of one of her this alone has overturned your peace of mind
   through your own imagination. I understand the varied disguises of that
   unnatural state. I know how Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to
   those whom she strives to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief
   beyond bearing, by deserting them when least expected. If you recall her
   nature, her ways, or her deserts, you will see that you never had in her,
   nor have lost with her, aught that was lovely. Yet, I think, I shall not
   need great labour to recall this to your memory. For then too, when she was
   at your side with all her flattery, you were wont to reproach her in strong
   and manly terms; and to revile her with the opinions that you had gathered
   in worship of me with my favoured ones. But no sudden change of outward
   affairs can ever come without some upheaval in the mind. Thus has it
   followed that you, like others, have fallen somewhat away from your calm
   peace of mind. But it is time now for you to make trial of some gentle and
   pleasant draught, which by reaching your inmost parts shall prepare the way
   for yet stronger healing draughts. Try therefore the assuring influence of
   gentle argument which keeps its straight path only when it holds fast to my
   instructions. And with this art of orators let my handmaid, the art of song,
   lend her aid in chanting light or weighty harmonies as we desire.

   ‘What is it, mortal man, that has cast you down into grief and mourning? You
   have seen something unwonted, it would seem, something strange to you. But
   if you think that Fortune has changed towards you, you are wrong. These are
   ever her ways: this is her very nature. She has with you preserved her own
   constancy by her very change. She was ever changeable at the time when she
   smiled upon you, when she was mocking you with the allurements of false good
   fortune. You have discovered both the different faces of the blind goddess.
   To the eyes of others she is veiled in part: to you she has made herself
   wholly known. If you find her welcome, make use of her ways, and so make no
   complaining. If she fills you with horror by her treachery, treat her with
   despite; thrust her away from you, for she tempts you to your ruin. For
   though she is the cause of this great trouble for you, she ought to have
   been the subject of calmness and peace. For no man can ever make himself
   sure that she will never desert him, and thus has she deserted you. Do you
   reckon such happiness to be prized, which is sure to pass away? Is good
   fortune dear to you, which is with you for a time and is not sure to stay,
   and which is sure to bring you unhappiness when it is gone? But seeing that
   it cannot be stayed at will, and that when it flees away it leaves misery
   behind, what is such a fleeting thing but a sign of coming misery? Nor
   should it ever satisfy any man to look only at that which is placed before
   his eyes. Prudence takes measure of the results to come from all things. The
   very changeableness of good and bad makes Fortune’s threats no more fearful,
   nor her smiles to be desired. And lastly, when you have once put your neck
   beneath the yoke of For tune, you must with steadfast heart bear whatever
   comes to pass within her realm. But if you would dictate the law by which
   she whom you have freely chosen to be your mistress must stay or go, surely
   you will be acting without justification; and your very impatience will make
   more bitter a lot which you cannot change. If you set your sails before the
   wind, will you not move forward whither the wind drives you, not whither
   your will may choose to go? If you intrust your seed to the furrow, will you
   not weigh the rich years and the barren against each other? You have given
   yourself over to Fortune’s rule, and you must bow yourself to your
   mistress’s ways. Are you trying to stay the force of her turning wheel? Ah!
   dull-witted mortal, if Fortune begin to stay still, she is no longer
   Fortune.

   ‘As thus she turns her wheel of chance with haughty hand, and presses on
   like the surge of Euripus’s tides, fortune now tramples fiercely on a
   fearsome king, and now deceives no less a conquered man by raising from the
   ground his humbled face. She hears no wretch’s cry, she heeds no tears, but
   wantonly she mocks the sorrow which her cruelty has made. This is her sport:
   thus she proves her power; if in the selfsame hour one man is raised to
   happiness, and cast down in despair, ’tis thus she shews her might.

   ‘Now would I argue with you by these few words which Fortune herself might
   use: and do you consider whether her demands are fair “Why, O man,” she
   might say, “do you daily accuse me with your complainings? What injustice
   have I wrought upon you? Of what good things have I robbed you? Choose your
   judge whom you will, and before him strive with me for the right to hold
   your wealth and honours. If you can prove that any one of these does truly
   belong to any mortal man, readily will I grant that these you seek to regain
   were yours. When nature brought you forth from your mother’s womb, I
   received you in my arms naked and bare of all things; I cherished you with
   my gifts, and I brought you up all too kindly with my favouring care,
   wherefore now you cannot bear with me, and I surrounded you with glory and
   all the abundance that was mine to give. Now it pleases me to withdraw my
   hand: be thankful, as though you had lived upon my loans. You have no just
   cause of complaint, as though you had really lost what was once your own.
   Why do you rail against me? I have wrought no violence towards you. Wealth,
   honours, and all such are within my rights. They are my handmaids; they know
   their mistress; they come with me and go when I depart. Boldly will I say
   that if these, of whose loss you com plain, were ever yours, you would never
   have lost them at all. Am I alone to be stayed from using my rightful power?
   The heavens may grant bright sunlit days, and hide the same beneath the
   shade of night. The year may deck the earth’s countenance with flowers and
   fruits, and again wrap it with chilling clouds. The sea may charm with its
   smoothed surface, but no less justly it may soon bristle in storms with
   rough waves. Is the insatiate discontent of man to bind me to a constancy
   which belongs not to my ways? Herein lies my very strength; this is my
   unchanging sport. I turn my wheel that spins its circle fairly; I delight to
   make the lowest turn to the top, the highest to the bottom. Come you to the
   top if you will, but on this condition, that you think it no unfairness to
   sink when the rule of my game demands it. Do you not know my ways? Have you
   not heard how Croesus, [15] king of Lydia, who filled even Cyrus with fear
   but a little earlier, was miserably put upon a pyre of burning faggots, but
   was saved by rain sent down from heaven? Have you forgotten how Paulus shed
   tears of respect for the miseries of his captive, King Perses? [16] For what
   else is the crying and the weeping in tragedies but for the happiness of
   kings overturned by the random blow of fortune? Have you never learnt in
   your youth the ancient allegory that in the threshold of Jove’s hall there
   stand two vessels, one full of evil, and one of good? What if you have
   received more richly of the good? What if I have not ever withheld myself
   from you? What if my changing nature is itself a reason that you should hope
   for better things? In any way, let not your spirit eat itself away: you are
   set in the sphere that is common to all, let your desire therefore be to
   live with your own lot of life, a subject of the kingdom of the world.

   “If Plenty with o’erflowing horn scatter her wealth abroad, abundantly, as
   in the storm-tossed sea the sand is cast around, or so beyond all measure as
   the stars shine forth upon the studded sky in cloudless nights; though she
   never stay her hand, yet will the race of men still weep and wail. Though
   God accept their prayers freely and give gold with ungrudging hand, and deck
   with honours those who deserve them, yet when they are gotten, these gifts
   seem naught. Wild greed swallows what it has sought, and still gapes wide
   for more. What bit or bridle will hold within its course this headlong lust,
   when, whetted by abundance of rich gifts, the thirst for possession burns?
   Never call we that man rich who is ever trembling in haste and groaning for
   that he thinks he lack

   ‘If Fortune should thus defend herself to you,’ said Philosophy, ‘you would
   have naught, I think, to utter on the other part. But if you have any just
   defence for your complaining, you must put it forward. We will grant you the
   opportunity of speaking.’

   Then I answered, ‘Those arguments have a fair form and are clothed with all
   the sweetness of speech and of song. When a man listens to them, they
   delight him; but only so long. The wretched have a deeper feeling of their
   misfortunes. Wherefore when these pleasing sounds fall no longer upon the
   ear, this deep-rooted misery again weighs down the spirit.’

   ‘It is so,’ she said. ‘For these are not the remedies for your sickness, but
   in some sort are the applications for your grief which chafes against its
   cure. When the time comes, I will apply those which are to penetrate deeply.
   But that you may not be content to think yourself wretched, remember how
   many and how great have been the occasions of your good fortune. I will not
   describe how, when you lost your father, men of the highest rank received
   you into their care: how you were chosen by the chief men in the state to be
   allied to them by marriage; [17] and you were dear to them before you were
   ever closely related; which is the most valuable of all relationships. Who
   hesitated to pronounce you most fortunate for the greatness of your wives’
   families, for their virtues, and for your blessings in your sons too? I need
   not speak of those things that are familiar, so I pass over the honours
   which are denied to most old men, but were granted to you when yet young. I
   choose to come to the unrivalled crown of your good fortune. If the
   enjoyment of anything mortal can weigh at all in the balance of good
   fortune, can your memory of one great day ever be extinguished by any mass
   of accumulated ills? I mean that day when you saw your two sons proceed
   forth from your house as consuls together, amid the crowding senators, the
   eager and applauding populace: when they sat down in the seats of honour and
   you delivered the speech of congratulation to the king, gaining thereby
   glory for your talent and your eloquence: when in the circus you sat in the
   place of honour between the consuls, and by a display of lavishness worthy
   of a triumphing general, you pleased to the full the multitude who were
   crowded around in expectation.

   ‘While Fortune then favoured you, it seems you flaunted her, though she
   cherished you as her own darling. You carried off a bounty which she had
   never granted to any citizen before. Will you then balance accounts with
   Fortune? This is the first time that she has looked upon you with a grudging
   eye. If you think of your happy and unhappy circumstances both in number and
   in kind, you will not be able to say that you have not been fortunate until
   now. And if you think that you were not fortunate because these things have
   passed away which then seemed to bring happiness, these things too are
   passing away, which you now hold to be miserable, wherefore you cannot think
   that you are wretched now. Is this your first entrance upon the stage of
   life? Are you come here unprepared and a stranger to the scene? Think you
   that there is any certainty in the affairs of mankind, when you know that
   often one swift hour can utterly destroy a man? For though the chances of
   life may seldom be depended upon, yet the last day of a lifetime seems to be
   the end of Fortune’s power, though it perhaps would stay. What, think you,
   should we therefore say; that you desert her by dying, or that she deserts
   you by leaving you?’

   ‘When o’er the heaven Phoebus from his rose-red car begins to shed his light
   abroad, his flames oppress the paling stars and blunt their whitened rays.
   When the grove grows bright in spring with roses ‘neath the west wind’s
   warming breath, let but the cloudy gale once wildly blow, and their beauty
   is gone, the thorns alone remain. Often the sea is calmly glistening bright
   with all untroubled waves, but as often does the north wind stir them up,
   making the troubling tempest boil. If then the earth’s own covering so
   seldom constant stays, if its changes are so great, shalt thou trust the
   brittle fortunes of mankind, have faith in fleeting good? For this is sure,
   and this is fixed by everlasting law, that naught which is brought to birth
   shall constant here abide.’

   Then I answered her, ‘Cherisher of all the virtues, you tell me but the
   truth: I cannot deny my rapid successes and my prosperity. But it is such
   remembrances that torment me more than others. For of all suffering from
   Fortune, the unhappiest misfortune is to have known a happy fortune.’

   ‘But,’ said Philosophy, ‘you are paying him penalty for your mistaken
   expectations, and with this you cannot justly charge your life’s
   circumstances. If you are affected by this empty name of Fortune’s gift of
   happiness, you must listen while I recall how many and how great are your
   sources of happiness: and thus, if you have possessed that which is the most
   precious among all Fortune’s gifts, and if that is still safe and unharmed
   in your possession, you will never, while you keep these better gifts, be
   able to justly charge Fortune with unkindness. Firstly, your wife’s father,
   Symmachus, is still living and hale; and what more precious glory has the
   human race than him? And he, because your worth is undiminished and your
   life still so valuable, is mourning for the injustice you suffer, this man
   who is wholly made up of wisdom and virtue. Again, your wife lives, a woman
   whose character is full of virtue, whose modesty excels its kind; a woman
   who (to put in a word the gifts she brought you) is like her father. She
   lives, and, hating this life, for your sake alone she clings to it. Herein
   only will I yield to allow you unhappiness; she pines with tears and grief
   through her longing for you. Need I speak of your sons who have both been
   consuls, and whose lives, as when they were boys, are yet bright with the
   character of their grandfather and their father? Wherefore, since mortals
   desire exceedingly to keep a hold on life, how happy you should be, knew you
   but your blessings, since you have still what none doubts to be dearer than
   life itself? Wherefore now dry your tears. Fortune’s hatred has not yet been
   so great as to destroy all your holds upon happiness: the tempest that is
   fallen upon you is not too great for you: your anchors hold yet firm, and
   they should keep ever nigh to you confidence in the present and hope for
   future time.

   ‘And may they continue to hold fast,’ said I, ‘that is my prayer: while they
   are firm, we will reach the end of our voyage, however things may be. But
   you see how much my glory has departed.’

   And she answered, ‘We have made some progress, if you are not now weary
   entirely of your present lot. But I cannot bear this dallying so softly, so
   long as you complain that your happiness lacks aught, so long as you are
   full of sorrow and care. Whose happiness is so firmly established that he
   has no quarrel from any side with his estate of life? For the condition of
   our welfare is a matter fraught with care: either its completeness never
   appears, or it never remains. One man’s wealth is abundant, but his birth
   and breeding put him to shame. Another is famous for his noble birth, but
   would rather be unknown because he is hampered by his narrow means. A third
   is blessed with wealth and breeding, but bewails his life because he has no
   wife. Another is happy in his marriage, but has no children, and saves his
   wealth only for an heir that is no son of his. Another is blessed with
   children, but weeps tears of sorrow for the misdeeds of son or daughter. So
   none is readily at peace with the lot h is fortune sends him. For in each
   case there is that which is unknown to him who has not experienced it, and
   which brings horror to him who has experienced it. Consider further, that
   the feelings of the most fortunate men are the most easily affected,
   wherefore, unless all their desires are supplied, such men, being unused to
   all adversity, are cast down by every little care: so small are the troubles
   which can rob them of complete happiness.

   ‘How many are they, think you, who would think themselves raised to heaven
   if the smallest part of the remnants of your good fortune fell to them? This
   very place, which you call a place of exile, is home to those who live
   herein. Thus there is nothing wretched unless you think it to be so: and in
   like manner he who bears all with a calm mind finds his lot wholly blessed.
   Who is so happy but would wish to change his estate, if he yields to
   impatience of his lot? With how much bitterness is the sweetness of man’s
   life mingled! For even though its enjoyment seem pleasant, yet it may not be
   surely kept from departing when it will. It is plain then how wretched is
   the happiness of mortal life which neither endures for ever with men of calm
   mind, nor ever wholly delights the care-ridden. Wherefore, then, O mortal
   men, seek ye that happiness without, which lies within yourselves? Ye are
   confounded by error and ignorance. I will shew you as shortly as I may, the
   pole on which turns the highest happiness. Is there aught that you value
   more highly than your own self? You will answer that there is nothing. If
   then you are master of yourself, you will be in possession of that which you
   will never wish to lose, and which Fortune will never be able to take from
   you. Yet consider this further, that you may be assured that happiness
   cannot be fixed in matters of chance: if happiness is the highest good of a
   man who lives his life by reason, and if that which can by any means be
   snatched away, is not the highest good (since that which is best cannot be
   snatched away), it is plain that Fortune by its own uncertainty can never
   come near to reaching happiness. Further, the man who is borne along by a
   happiness which may stumble, either knows that it may change, or knows it
   not: if he knows it not, what happiness can there be in the blindness of
   ignorance? If he knows it, he must needs live in fear of losing that which
   he cannot doubt that he may lose; wherefore an ever-present fear allows not
   such an one to be happy. Or at any rate, if he lose it without unhappiness,
   does he not think it worthless? For that, whose loss can be calmly borne, is
   indeed a small good. You, I know well, are firmly persuaded that men’s
   understandings can never die; this truth is planted deep in you by many
   proofs: since then it is plain that the happiness of fortune is bounded by
   the death of the body, you cannot doubt that, if death can carry away
   happiness, the whole race of mortals is sinking into wretchedness to be
   found upon the border of death. But we know that many have sought the
   enjoyment of happiness not only by death, but even by sorrow and sufferings:
   how then can the presence of this life make us happy, when its end cannot
   make us unhappy?

   ‘He that would build on a lasting resting-place; who would be firm to resist
   the blasts of the storming wind; who seeks, too, safety where he may contemn
   the surge and threatening of the sea; must leave the lofty mountain’s top,
   and leave the thirsting sands. The hill is swept by all the might of the
   headstrong gale: the sands dissolve, and will not bear the load upon them.
   Let him fly the danger in a lot which is pleasant rest unto the eye: let him
   be mindful to set his house surely upon the lowly rock. Then let the wind
   bellow, confounding wreckage in the sea, and thou wilt still be founded upon
   unmoving peace, wilt be blessed in the strength of thy defence: thy life
   will be spent in calmness, and thou mayest mock the raging passions of the
   air.

   ‘But now,’ she continued, ‘the first remedies of reasoning are reaching you
   more deeply, and I think I should now use those that are somewhat stronger.
   If the gifts of Fortune fade not nor pass quickly away, even so, what is
   there in them which could ever be truly yours, or which would not lose its
   value when examined or thought upon?

   ‘Are riches valuable for their own nature, or on account of your and other
   men’s natures? Which is the more valuable, the gold itself or the power of
   the stored up money? Surely wealth shines more brightly when spent than when
   put away in masses. Avarice ever brings hatred, while generous spending
   brings honour. But that cannot remain with one person which is handed over
   to another: therefore money becomes valuable to its possessor when, by being
   scattered, it is transferred to others, and ceases to be possessed. And if
   all that is heaped together among mankind comes to one man, it makes the
   others all poor. A voice indeed fills equally the ears of all that hear: but
   your riches cannot pass to others without being lessened: and when they
   pass, they make poor those whom they leave. How strait then and poor are
   those riches, which most men may not have, and which can only come to one by
   making others poor!

   ‘Think again of precious stones: does their gleam attract your eyes? But any
   excellence they have is their own brilliance, and belongs not to men:
   wherefore I am amazed that men so strongly admire them. What manner of thing
   can that be which has no mind to influence, which has no structure of parts,
   and yet can justly seem to a living, reasoning mind to be beautiful? Though
   they be works of their creator, and by their own beauty and adornment have a
   certain low beauty, yet are they in rank lower than your own excellence, and
   have in no wise deserved your admiration.

   ‘Does the beauty of landscape delight you?’

   ‘Surely, for it is a beautiful part of a beautiful creation: and in like
   manner we rejoice at times in the appearance of a calm sea, and we admire
   the sky, the stars, the sun, and the moon.

   ‘Does any one of these,’ said she, ‘concern you? Dare you boast yourself of
   the splendid beauty of any one of such things? Are you yourself adorned by
   the flowers of spring? Is it your richness that swells the fruits of autumn?
   Why are you carried away by empty rejoicing. Why do you embrace as your own
   the good things which are outside yourself? Fortune will never make yours
   what Nature has made to belong to other things. The fruits of the earth
   should doubtless serve as nourishment for living beings, but if you would
   satisfy your need as fully as Nature needs, you need not the abundance of
   Fortune. Nature is content with very little, and if you seek to thrust upon
   her more than is enough, then what you cast in will become either unpleasing
   or even harmful

   ‘Again, you think that you appear beautiful i n many kinds of clothing. But
   if their form is pleasant to the eyes, I would admire the nature of the
   material or the skill of the maker. Or are you made happy by a long line of
   attendants? Surely if they are vicious, they are but a burden to the house,
   and full of injury to their master himself; while if they are honest, how
   can the honesty of others be counted among your possessions?

   ‘Out of all these possessions, then, which you reckon as your wealth, not
   one can re ally be shown to be your own. For if they have no beauty for you
   to acquire, what have they for which you should grieve if you lose them, or
   in keeping which you should rejoice? And if they are beautiful by their own
   nature, how are you the richer thereby? For these would have been pleasing
   of themselves, though cut out from your possessions. They do not become
   valuable by reason that they have come into your wealth; but you have
   desired to count them among your wealth, because they seemed valuable. Why
   then do you long for them with such railing against Fortune? You seek, I
   believe, to put want to flight by means of plenty. But you find that the
   opposite results. The more various is the beauty of furniture, the more
   helps are needed to keep it beautiful; and it is ever true that they who
   have much, need much; and on the other hand, they need least who measure
   their wealth by the needs of nature, not by excess of display.

   Is there then no good which belongs to you and is implanted within you, that
   you seek your good things elsewhere, in things without you and separate from
   you? Have things taken such a turn that the animal, whose reason gives it a
   claim to divinity, cannot seem beautiful to itself except by the possession
   of. lifeless trappings? Other classes of things are satisfied by their
   intrinsic possessions; but men, though made like God in understanding, seek
   to find among the lowest things adornment for their higher nature: and you
   do not understand that you do a great wrong thereby to your Creator. He
   intended that the human race should be above all other earthly beings; yet
   you thrust down your honourable place below the lowest.

   For if every good thing is allowed to be more valuable than that to which it
   belongs, surely you are putting yourselves lower than them in your
   estimation, since you think precious the most worthless of things; and this
   is indeed a just result. Since, then, this is the condition of human nature,
   that it surpasses other classes only when it realises what is in itself; as
   soon as it ceases to know itself, it must be reduced to a lower rank than
   the beasts. To other animals ignorance of themselves is natural; in men it
   is a fault. How plainly and how widely do you err by thinking that anything
   can be adorned by ornaments that belong to others! Surely that cannot be.
   For if anything becomes brilliant by additions thereto, the praise for the
   brilliance belongs to the additions. But the subject remains in its own
   vileness, though hidden and covered by these externals.

   ‘Again, I say that naught can be a good thing which does harm to its
   possessor. Am I wrong? “No,” you will say. Yet many a time do riches harm
   their possessors, since all base men, who are therefore the most covetous,
   think that they themselves alone are worthy to possess all gold and precious
   stones. You therefore, who now go in fear of the cudgel and sword of the
   robber, could laugh in his face if you had entered upon this path with empty
   pockets. [18] How wonderful is the surpassing blessing of mortal wealth! As
   soon as you have acquired it, your cares begin!

   ‘O happy was that early age of men, contented with their trusted and
   unfailing fields, nor ruined by the wealth that enervates. Easily was the
   acorn got that used to satisfy their longwhile fast. They knew not
   Bacchus’ gifts, nor honey mixed therewith. They knew not how to tinge with
   Tyre’s purple dyes the sheen of China’s silks. Their sleep kept health on
   rush and grass; the stream gave them to drink as it flowed by: the lofty
   pine to them gave shade. Not one of them yet clave the ocean’s depths, nor,
   carrying stores of merchandise, had visited new shores. Then was not heard
   the battle’s trump, nor had blood made red with bitter hate the bristling
   swords of war. For why should any madness urge to take up first their arms
   up on an enemy such ones as knew no sight of cruel wounds nor knew rewards
   that could be reaped in blood? Would that our times could but return to
   those old ways! but love of gain and greed of holding burn more fiercely far
   than Ætna’s fires. Ah! who was the wretch who first unearthed the mass of
   hidden gold, the gems that only longed to lie unfound? For full of danger
   was the prize he found.

   ‘What am I to say of power and of the honours of office, which you raise to
   heaven because you know not true honoured power? What fires belched forth
   from Ætna’s flames, what overwhelming flood could deal such ruin as these
   when they fall into the hands of evil men? I am sure you remember how your
   forefathers wished to do away with the consular power, which had been the
   very foundation of liberty, because of the overbearing pride of the consuls,
   just as your ancestors had too in earlier times expunged from the state the
   name of king on account of the same pride. But if, as rarely happens, places
   of honour are granted to honest men, what else is delightful in them but the
   honesty they practise thereby? Wherefore honour comes not to virtue from
   holding office, but comes to office from virtues there practised.

   ‘But what is the power which you seek and esteem so highly? O creatures of
   the earth, can you not think over whom you are set? If you saw in a
   community of mice, one mouse asserting his rights and his power over the
   others, with what mirth you would greet the sight! Yet if you consider the
   body, what can you find weaker than humanity? Cannot a tiny gnat by its
   bite, or by creeping into the inmost parts, kill that body? How can any
   exercise right upon any other except upon the body alone, or that which is
   below the body, whereby I mean the fortunes? Can you ever impose any law
   upon a free spirit? Can you ever disturb the peculiar restfulness which is
   the property of a mind that hangs together upon the firm basis of its
   reason? When a certain tyrant thought that by tortures he would compel a
   free man [19] to betray the conspirators in a plot against his life, the
   philosopher bit through his tongue and spat it out in the tyrant’s face.
   Thus were the tortures, which the tyrant intended to have cruel results,
   turned by the philosopher into subjects of high courage. Is there aught that
   one man can do to another, which he may not suffer from another in his turn?
   We have heard how Busiris, who used to kill strangers, was killed by
   Hercules when he came to Egypt. Regulus, [20] who had cast into chains many
   a Carthaginian captive, soon yielded himself a prisoner to their chains. Do
   you think that power to be any power, whose possessor cannot ensure his own
   escape from suffering at another’s hands what he inflicts upon some other?

   ‘Further, if there were any intrinsic good in the nature of honours and
   powers themselves, they could never crowd upon the basest men. For opposites
   will not be bound together. Nature refuses to allow contraries to be linked
   to each other. Wherefore, while it is undoubted that for the most part
   offices of honour are enjoyed by bad men, it is also manifest that those
   things are not by nature good, which allow themselves to cling to evil men.
   And this indeed may worthily be held of all the gifts of fortune which come
   with the greatest success to the most unscrupulous. And in this matter we
   must also think on this fact, that no one doubts a man to be brave in whom
   he has found by examination that bravery is implanted: and whoever has the
   quality of swiftness is plainly swift. So also music makes men musical,
   medicine makes men physicians, oratory makes men orators. The nature of each
   quality acts as is peculiar to itself: it is not confused with the results
   of contrary qualities, but goes so far as to drive out those qualities which
   are opposed to it. Wealth cannot quench the insatiable thirst of avarice:
   nor can power ever make master of himself the man whom vicious passions hold
   fast in unbreakable chains. Honours, when joined to dishonest men, so far
   from making them honour- able, betray them rather, and show them to be
   dishonourable. Why is this so? It is because you rejoice to call things by
   false names which belong not to them—their names are refuted by the reality
   of their qualities: wherefore neither riches, nor that kind of power, nor
   these honours, can justly so be called. Lastly, we may come to the same
   conclusion concerning all the aspects of Fortune: nothing is to be sought in
   her, and it is plain she has no innate good, for she is not always joined
   with good men, nor does she make good those with whom she is joined.’

   ‘We have heard what ruin Nero wrought when Rome was burnt and senators were
   slain. We know how savagely he did to death his brother, [21] how he was
   stained by the spilling of his own mother’s blood, and how he looked upon
   her cold body and yet no tear fell upon his cheek: yet could this man be
   judge of the morals that were dead. Nay, he was ruler of the peoples whom
   the sun looks upon from the time he rises in the east until he hides his
   rays beneath the waves, and those whom the chilling northern Wain o’errules,
   and those whom the southern gale burns with its dry blast, as it heats the
   burning sands. Say, could great power chasten Nero’s maddened rage? Ah!
   heavy fate, how often is the sword of high injustice given where is already
   most poisonous cruelty!’

   Then I said, ‘You know that the vain-glory of this world has had but little
   influence over me; but I have desired the means of so managing affairs that
   virtue might not grow aged in silence.’

   ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘but there is one thing which can attract minds, which,
   though by nature excelling, yet are not led by perfection to the furthest
   bounds of virtue; and that thing is the love of fame and reputation for
   deserving well of one’s country. Think then thus upon it, and see that it is
   but a slight thing of no weight. As you have learnt from astronomers’
   shewing, the whole circumference of the earth is but as a point compared
   with the size of the heavens. That is, if you compare the earth with the
   circle of the universe, it must be reckoned as of no size at all. And of
   this tiny portion of the universe there is but a fourth part, as you have
   learnt from the demonstration of Ptolemæus, [22] which is inhabited by
   living beings known to us. If from this fourth part you imagine subtracted
   all that is covered by sea and marsh, and all the vast regions of thirsty
   desert, you will find but the narrowest space left for human habitation. And
   do you think of setting forth your fame and publishing your name in this
   space, which is but as a point within another point so closely
   circumscribed? And what size or magnificence can fame have which is shut in
   by such close and narrow bounds? Further, this narrow enclosure of
   habitation is peopled by many races of men which differ in language, in
   customs, and in their whole scheme of living; and owing to difficulty of
   travelling, differences of speech, and rareness of any intercourse, the fame
   of cities can not reach them, much less the fame of men. Has not Cicero
   written somewhere that in his time the fame of Rome had not reached the
   mountains of the Caucasus, though the Republic was already well grown and
   striking awe among the Parthians and other nations in those parts? Do you
   see then how narrow and closely bounded must be that fame which you wish to
   extend more widely? Can the fame of a Roman ever reach parts to which the
   name of Rome cannot come?

   Further, the manners and customs of different races are so little in
   agreement, that what is make his name known, because he takes pleasure in a
   glorious fame. So each man shall be content if his fame travels throughout
   his own countrymen, and the immortality of his name shall be bounded by the
   limits of one nation. But how many men, the most famous of their times, are
   wiped out by oblivion because no man has written of them! [23] And yet what
   advantage is there in much that is written? For with their authors these
   writings are overwhelmed in the length and dimness of age. Yet when you
   think upon your fame in future ages, you seem to think that you are
   prolonging it to immortality. But if you think upon the unending length of
   eternity, what enjoyment do you find in the long endurance of your name? For
   though one moment bears but the least proportion to ten thousand years, yet
   there is a definite ratio, because both are limited spaces of time. But even
   ten thousand years, or the greatest number you will, cannot even be compared
   with eternity. For there will always be ratio between finite things, but
   between the finite and the infinite there can never be any comparison.
   Wherefore, however long drawn out may be the life of your fame, it is not
   even small, but it is absolutely nothing when compared with eternity. You k
   now not how to act rightly except for the breezes of popular opinion and for
   the sake of empty rumours; thus the excellence of conscience and of virtue
   is left behind, and you seek rewards from the tattle of other men. Listen to
   the witty manner in which one played once upon the shallowness of this
   pride. A certain man once bitterly attacked another who had taken to himself
   falsely the name of philosopher, not for the purpose of true virtue, but for
   pride of fame; he added to his attack that he would know soon whether he was
   a philosopher, when he saw whether the other bore with meekness and patience
   the insults he heaped upon him. The other showed patience for a while and
   took the insults as though he scoffed at them, until he said, “Do you now
   see that I am a philosopher?” “I should have, had you kept silence,” said
   the other stingingly. But we are speaking of great men: and I ask, what do
   they gain from fame, though they seek glory by virtue? what have they after
   the body is dissolved at death? For if men die utterly, as our reason
   forbids us to believe, there is no glory left to them at all, since they
   whose it is said to be, do not exist. If, on the other hand, the mind is
   still conscious and working when it is freed from its earthly prison, it
   seeks heaven in its freedom and surely spurns all earthly traffic: it enjoys
   heaven and rejoices in its release from the of this world.

   ‘The mind that rushes headlong in its search for fame, thinking that is its
   highest good, should look upon the spreading regions of the air, and then
   upon the bounded tracts that are this world: then will shame enter it; that,
   though fame grow, yet can it never fill so small a circle. Proud men! why
   will ye try in vain to free your necks from the yoke mortality has set
   thereon? Though fame may be wide scattered and find its way through distant
   lands, and set the tongues there talking; though a splendid house may draw
   brilliance from famous names and tales; yet death regards not any glory,
   howsoever great. Alike he overwhelms the lowly and the lofty head, and
   levels high with low.

   ‘Where are Fabricius’s [24] bones, that honourable man? What now is Brutus?
   [25] or unbending Cato? [26] Their fame survives in this: it has no more
   than a few slight letters shewing forth an empty name. We see their noble
   names engraved, and only know thereby that they are brought to naught. Ye
   lie then all unknown, and fame can give no knowledge of you. But if you
   think that life can be prolonged by the breath of mortal fame, yet when the
   slow time robs you of this too, then there awaits you but a second death.

   ‘But,’ she said, ‘do not think that I would urge implacable war upon
   Fortune. There are times when her deception of men has certain merits: I
   mean when she discovers herself, unveils her face, and proclaims her ways.
   Perhaps you do not yet understand what I would say. It is a strange thing
   that I am trying to say, and for that reason I can scarcely explain myself
   in words. I think that ill fortune is of greater advantage to men than good
   fortune. Good fortune is ever lying when she seems to favour by an
   appearance of happiness. Ill fortune is ever true when by her changes she
   shews herself inconstant. The one deceives; the other edifies. The one by a
   deceitful appearance of good things enchains the minds of those who enjoy
   them: the other frees them by a knowledge that happiness is so fragile. You
   see, then, that the one is blown about by winds, is ever moving and ever
   ignorant of its own self; the other is sober, ever prepared and ever made
   provident by the undergoing of its very adversities. Lastly, good fortune
   draws men from the straight path of true good by her fawning: ill fortune
   draws most men to the true good, and holds them back by her curved staff.

   ‘And do you think that this should be reckoned among the least benefits of
   this rough, unkind, and terrible ill fortune, that she has discovered to you
   the minds of your faithful friends? Fortune has distinguished for you your
   sure and your doubtful friends; her departure has taken away her friends and
   left you yours. At what price could you have bought this benefit if you had
   been untouched and, as you thought, fortunate? Cease then to seek the wealth
   you have lost. You have found your friends, and they are the most precious
   of all riches.

   ‘Through Love [27] the universe with constancy makes changes all without
   discord: earth’s elements, though contrary, abide in treaty bound: Phoebus
   in his golden car leads up the glowing day; his sister rules the night that
   Hesperus brought: the greedy sea confines its waves in bounds, lest the
   earth’s borders be changed by its beating on them: all these are firmly
   bound by Love, which rules both earth and sea, and has it s empire in the
   heavens too. If Love should slacken this its hold, all mutual love would
   change to war; and these would strive to undo the scheme which now their
   glorious movements carry out with trust and with accord. By Love are peoples
   too kept bound together by a treaty which they may not break. Love binds
   with pure affection the sacred tie of wedlock, and speaks its bidding to all
   trusty friends. O happy race of mortals, if your hearts are ruled as is the
   universe, by Love! [28]
     _________________________________________________________________

   [15] The proverbially rich and happy king; defeated and condemned to death
   by Cyrus, king of Media, in 546 B.C., but spared by him.

   [16] The last king of Macedonia, defeated at Pydna, 168 B. C., by L. Æmilius
   Paulus.

   [17] Boethius’s first wife was Elpis, daughter of Festus: his second was
   Rusticiana, daughter of Symmachus, a senator and consul, A.D. 485. His
   second wife was the mother of the two sons mentioned below. (See Appendix,
   p. 169.)

   [18] This is an application of Juvenal’s lines (Sat. x. 19) which contrast
   the terror of the money-laden traveller with the careless happiness of the
   man who meets highwayman with no purse and empty pockets.

   [19] This story is told of Anaxagoras and Nicocreon, king of Cyprus, c. B.C.
   323.

   [20] Regulus was the Roman general in Sicily in the first Punic War, taken
   prisoner in 255 B.C., and put to death in 250.

   [21] Britannicus, son of Nero’s father, the Emperor Claudius, put to death
   A.D. 55.

   [22] A mathematician, astronomer, and geographer of Alexandria. Fl. 140-160
   A.D. Boethius translated one of his works.

   [23] Boethius is thinking of Horace, Odes iv. 9.

   Ere Agamemnon saw the light,

   There lived brave men: but tearless all

   Enfolded in eternal night,

   For lack of sacred minstrels, fall.
   (Mr. Gladstone’s translation.)

   [24] Fabricius was the Roman general whom Pyrrhus could neither bribe nor
   intimidate, B.C. 280.

   [25] L. Junius Brutus, who led the Romans to expel the last of the kings,
   and was elected the first consul, B.C. 509.

   [26] Probably Cato Major, the great censor, B.C. 184, the rigid champion of
   the stern old Roman morals; or possibly Cato Minor, who committed suicide at
   Utica after the battle of Thapsus, B.C. 46, because he considered that
   Cæsar’s victory was fatal to the Republic and the liberty of Rome.

   [27] Boethius in this passage is probably thinking of Empedocles’s doctrine
   of Love which unites, and Strife which divides, the two primal forces in the
   universe.

   [28] Cp. Bk. I. Prose iv, p. 10.
     _________________________________________________________________

BOOK III

   When she finished her lay, its soothing tones left me spellbound with my
   ears alert in my eagerness to listen. So a while afterwards I said,
   ‘Greatest comforter of weary minds, how have you cheered me with your deep
   thoughts and sweet singing too! No more shall I doubt my power to meet the
   blows of Fortune. So far am I from terror at the remedies which you did
   lately tell me were sharper, that I am longing to hear them, and eagerly I
   beg you for them.’

   Then said she, ‘I knew it when you laid hold upon my words in silent
   attention, and I was waiting for that frame of mind in you, or more truly, I
   brought it about in you. They that remain are indeed bitter to the tongue,
   but sweet to the inner man. But as you say you are eager to hear, how
   ardently you would be burning, if you knew whither I am attempting to lead
   you!’

   ‘Whither is that?’ I asked.

   ‘To the true happiness, of which your soul too dreams; but your sight is
   taken up in imaginary views thereof, so that you cannot look upon itself.’

   Then said I, ‘I pray you shew me what that truly is, and quickly.’

   ‘I will do so,’ she said, ‘for your sake willingly. But first I will try to
   picture in words and give you the form of the cause, which is already better
   known to you, that so, when that picture is perfect and you turn your eyes
   to the other side, you may recognise the form of true happiness.

   ‘When a man would sow in virgin soil, first he clears away the bushes, cuts
   the brambles and the ferns, that the corn-goddess may go forth laden with
   her new fruit. The honey, that the bee has toiled to give us, is sweeter
   when the mouth has tasted bitter things. The stars shine with more pleasing
   grace when a storm has ceased to roar and pour down rain. After the morning
   star has dispersed the shades of night, the day in all its beauty drives its
   rosy chariot forth. So thou hast looked upon false happiness first; now draw
   thy neck from under her yoke: so shall true happiness now come into thy
   soul.’

   She lowered her eyes for a little while as though searching the innermost
   recesses of her mind; and then she continued: — ‘The trouble of the many and
   various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go forward
   by different paths but strive to reach one end, which is happiness. And that
   good is that, to which if any man attain, he can desire nothing further. It
   is that highest of all good things, and it embraces in itself all good
   things: if any good is lacking, it cannot be the highest good, since then
   there is left outside it something which can be desired. Wherefore happiness
   is a state which is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end
   all men seek to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is
   implanted by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but
   error leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.

   ‘Some men believe that the highest good is to lack nothing, and so they are
   at pains to possess abundant riches. Others consider the true good to be
   that which is most worthy of admiration, and so they strive to attain to
   places of honour, and to be held by their fellow-citizens in honour thereby.
   Some determine that the highest good lies in the highest power; and so they
   either desire to reign themselves, or try to cleave to those who do reign.
   Others think that renown is the greatest good, and they therefore hasten to
   make a famous name by the arts of peace or of war. But more than all measure
   the fruit of good by pleasure and enjoyment, and these think that the
   happiest man is abandoned to pleasure.

   ‘Further, there are those who confuse the aims and the causes of these good
   things: as those who desire riches for the sake of power or of pleasure, or
   those who seek power for the sake of money or celebrity. In these, then, and
   other things like to them, lies the aim of men’s actions and prayers, such
   as renown and popularity, which seem to afford some fame, or wife and
   children, which are sought for the pleasure they give. On the other hand,
   the good of friends, which is the most honourable and holy of all, lies not
   in Fortune’s but in Virtue’s realm. All others are adopted for the sake of
   power or enjoyment.

   ‘Again, it is plain that the good things of the body must be accounted to
   those false causes which we have mentioned; for bodily strength and stature
   seem to make men more able and strong; beauty and swiftness seem to give
   renown; health seems to give pleasure. By all these happiness alone is
   plainly desired. For each man holds that to be the highest good, which he
   seeks before all others. But we have defined the highest good to be
   happiness. Wherefore what each man desires above all others, he holds to be
   a state of happiness.

   ‘Wherefore you have each of these placed before you as the form of human
   happiness: wealth, honours, power, glory, and pleasure. Epicurus [29]
   considered these forms alone, and accordingly determined upon pleasure as
   the highest good, because all the others seemed but to join with it in
   bringing enjoyment to the mind.

   ‘But to return to the aims of men: their minds seem to seek to regain the
   highest good, and their memories seem to dull their powers. It is as though
   a drunken man were seeking his home, but could not remember the way thither.
   Can those people be altogether wrong whose aim it is to lack nothing? No,
   there is nothing which can make happiness so perfect as an abundant
   possession of good things, needing naught that belongs to others, but in all
   ways sufficing for itself. Surely those others too are not mistaken who
   think that what is best is also most worthy of reverence and respect. It
   cannot be any cheap or base thing, to attain which almost all men aim and
   strive. And is power not to be accounted a good thing? Surely it is: can
   that be a weak thing or forceless, which is allowed in all cases to excel?
   Is renown of no value ? We cannot surrender this; that whatever is most
   excellent, has also great renown. It is hardly worth saying that happiness
   has no torturing cares or gloom, and is not subject to grief and trouble;
   for even in small things, the aim is to find that which it is a delight to
   have and to enjoy. These, then, are the desires of men: they long for
   riches, places of honour, kingdoms, glory, and pleasure; and they long for
   them because they think that thereby they will find satisfaction,
   veneration, power, renown, and happiness. It is the good then which men seek
   by their different desires; and it is easy to shew how great a force nature
   has put therein, since in spite of such varying and discordant opinions,
   they are all agreed in the goal they seek, that of the highest good.

   ‘I would to pliant strings set forth a song of how almighty Nature turns her
   guiding reins, telling with what laws her providence keeps safe this
   boundless universe, binding and tying each and all with cords that never
   shall be loosed. The lions of Carthage, though they bear the gorgeous bonds
   and trappings of captivity, and eat the food that is given them by hand, and
   though they fear their harsh master with his lash they know so well; yet if
   once blood has touched their bristling jaws, their old, their latent wills
   return; with deep roaring they remember their old selves; they loose their
   bands and free their necks, and their tamer is the first torn by their cruel
   teeth, and his blood is poured out by their rage and wrath.

   ‘If the bird who sings so lustily upon the high tree-top, be caught and
   caged, men may minister to him with dainty care, may give him cups of liquid
   honey and feed him with all gentleness on plenteous food; yet if he fly to
   the roof of his cage and see the shady trees he loves, he spurns with his
   foot the food they have put before him; the woods are all his sorrow calls
   for, for the woods he sings with his sweet tones.

   ‘The bough which has been downward thrust by force of strength to bend its
   top to earth, so soon as the pressing hand is gone, looks up again straight
   to the sky above.

   ‘Phoebus sinks into the western waves, but by his unknown track he turns his
   car once more to his rising in the east.

   ‘All things must find their own peculiar course again, and each rejoices in
   his own return. Not one can keep the order handed down to it, unless in some
   way it unites its rising to its end, and so makes firm, immutable, its own
   encircling course.

   ‘And you too, creatures of the earth, do dream of your first state, though
   with a dim idea. With whatsoever thinking it may be, you look to that goal
   of happiness, though never so obscure your thoughts: thither, to true
   happiness, your natural course does guide you, and from the same your
   various errors lead you. For I would have you consider whether men can reach
   the end they have resolved upon, namely happiness, by these ways by which
   they think to attain thereto. If money and places of honour and such-like do
   bring anything of that sort to a man who seems to lack no good thing, then
   let us acknowledge with them that men do become happy by the possession of
   these things. But if they cannot perform their promises, and there is still
   lack of further good things, surely it is plain that a false appearance of
   happiness is there discovered. You, therefore, who had lately abundant
   riches, shall first answer me. With all that great wealth, was your mind
   never perturbed by torturing care arising from some sense of injustice?’

   ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I cannot remember that my mind was ever free from some such
   care.’

   ‘Was it not because something was lacking, which you missed, or because
   something was present to you which you did not like to have?’

   ‘Yes ,’ I answered.

   ‘You desired, then, the presence of the one, and the absence of the
   other?’

   ‘I acknowledge it.’

   ‘Then,’ said she, ‘such a man lacks what he desires.’

   ‘He does.’

   ‘But while a man lacks anything, can he possibly satisfy himself?’

   ‘No,’ said I.

   ‘Then, while you were bountifully supplied with wealth, you felt that you
   did not satisfy yourself?’

   ‘I did indeed.’

   ‘Then,’ said she, ‘wealth cannot prevent a man from lacking or make him
   satisfied. And this is what it apparently professed to do. And this point
   too I feel is most important: money has in itself, by its own nature,
   nothing which can prevent its being carried off from those, who possess it,
   against their will.’

   ‘It has not,’ I said.

   ‘No, you cannot deny that any stronger man may any day snatch it from them.
   For how come about the quarrels of the law-courts? Is it not because people
   try to regain money that has been by force or by fraud taken from them?’
   ‘Yes,’ I answered.

   ‘Then,’ said she, ‘a man will need to seek from the outside help to guard
   his own money.’

   ‘That cannot be denied,’ I said.

   ‘And a man will not need that unless he possesses money which he can
   lose.’

   ‘Undoubtedly he will not.’

   ‘Then the argument turns round the other way,’ she said. ‘The riches which
   were thought to make a man all-sufficient for himself , do really put him in
   need of other people’s help. Then how can need be separated from wealth? Do
   the rich never feel hunger nor thirst? Do the limbs of moneyed men never
   feel the cold of winter? You will say, “Yes, but the rich have the
   wherewithal to satisfy hunger and thirst, and drive away cold.” But though
   riches may thus console wants, they cannot entirely take them away. For,
   though these ever crying wants, these continual requests, are satisfied, yet
   there must exist that which is to be satisfied. I need not say that nature
   is satisfied with little, greed is never satisfied. Wherefore, I ask you, if
   wealth cannot remove want, and even creates its own wants, what reason is
   there that you should think it affords satisfaction to a man?

   ‘Though the rich man with greed heap up from ever-flowing streams the wealth
   that cannot satisfy, though he deck himself with pearls from the Red Sea’s
   shore, and plough his fertile field with oxen by the score, yet gnawing care
   will never in his lifetime leave him, and at his death his wealth will not
   go with him, but leave him faithlessly.’

   ‘But,’ I urged, ‘places of honour make the man, to whom they fall, honoured
   and venerated.’

   ‘Ah!’ she answered, ‘have those offices their force in truth that they may
   instil virtues into the minds of those that hold them, and drive out vices
   therefrom? And yet we are too well accustomed to see them making wickedness
   conspicuous rather than avoiding it. Wherefore we are displeased to see such
   places often falling to the most wicked of men, so that Catullus called
   Nonius “a diseased growth,” [30] though he sat in the highest chair of
   office. Do you see how great a disgrace high honours can add to evil men?
   Their unworthiness is less conspicuous if they are not made famous by
   honours. Could you yourself have been induced by any dangers to think of
   being a colleague with Decoratus, [31] when you saw that he had the mind of
   an unscrupulous buffoon, and a base informer? We cannot consider men worthy
   of veneration on account of their high places, when we hold them to be
   unworthy of those high places. But if you see a man endowed with wisdom, you
   cannot but consider him worthy of veneration, or at least of the wisdom with
   which he is endowed. For such a man has the worth peculiar to virtue, which
   it transmits directly to those in whom it is found. But since honours from
   the vulgar crowd cannot create merit, it is plain that they have not the
   peculiar beauty of this worth. And here is a particular point to be noticed:
   if men are the more worthless as they are despised by more people, high
   position makes them all the worse because it cannot make venerable those
   whom it shews to so many people to be contemptible. And this brings its
   penalty with it: wicked people bring a like quality into their positions,
   and stain them with their infection.

   ‘Now I would have you consider the matter thus, that you may recognise that
   true veneration cannot be won through these shadowy honours. If a man who
   had filled the office of consul many times in Rome, came by chance into a
   country of barbarians, would his high position make him venerated by the
   barbarians? Yet if this were a natural quality in such dignities, they would
   never lose their effective function in any land, just as fire is never aught
   but hot in all countries. But since they do not receive this quality of
   veneration from any force peculiar to themselves, but only from a connexion
   in the untrustworthy opinions of men, they become as nothing as soon as they
   are among those who do not consider these dignities as such.

   ‘But that is only in the case of foreign peoples. Among the very peoples
   where they had their beginnings, do these dignities last for ever? Consider
   how great was the power in Rome of old of the office of Præfect: now it is
   an empty name and a heavy burden upon the income of any man of Senator’s
   rank.’ The præfect then, who was commissioner of the corn-market, was held
   to be a great man. Now there is no office more despised. For, as I said
   before, that which has no intrinsic beauty, sometimes receives a certain
   glory, sometimes loses it, according to the opinion of those who are
   concerned with it. If then high offices cannot make men venerated, if
   furthermore they grow vile by the infection of bad men, if changes of time
   can end their glory, and, lastly, if they are held cheaply in the estimation
   of whole peoples, I ask you, so far from affording true beauty to men, what
   beauty have they in themselves which men can desire?

   ‘Though Nero decked himself proudly with purple of Tyre and snow-white gems,
   none the less that man of rage and luxury lived ever hated of all. Yet would
   that evil man at times give his dishonoured offices to men who were revered.
   Who then could count men blessed, who to such a villain owed their high
   estate?

   ‘Can kingdoms and intimacies with kings make people powerful? “Certainly,”
   some Thee may answer, “in so far as their happiness is lasting.” But
   antiquity and our times too are full of examples of the contrary; examples
   of men whose happiness as kings has been exchanged for disaster. What
   wonderful power, which is found to be powerless even for its own
   preservation! But if this kingly power is really a source of happiness,
   surely then, if it fail in any way, it lessens the happiness it brings, and
   equally causes unhappiness. However widely human empires may extend, there
   must be still more nations left, over whom each king does not reign. And so,
   in whatever direction this power ceases to make happy, thereby comes in
   powerlessness, which makes men unhappy; thus therefore there must be a
   greater part of unhappiness in every king’s estate. That tyrant 1 had learnt
   well the dangers of his lot, who likened the fear which goes with kingship
   to the terror inspired by a sword ever hanging overhead. What then is such a
   power, which cannot drive away the bite of cares, nor escape the stings of
   fear?

   ‘Yet these all would willingly live without fear, but they cannot, and yet
   they boast of their power. Think you a man is powerful when you see that he
   longs for that which he cannot bring to pass? Do you reckon a man powerful
   who walks abroad with dignity and attended by servants? A man who strikes
   fear into his subjects, yet fears them more himself? Damocles, what it was
   to be a tyrant, by setting him in his own seat at a sumptuous banquet,’ but
   hung a sword above him by a hair. A man who must be at the mercy of those
   that serve him, in order that he may seem to have power?

   ‘Need I speak of intimacies with kings when kingship itself is shewn to be
   full of weakness? Not only when kings’ powers fall are their friends laid
   low, but often even when their powers are intact. Nero compelled his friend
   and tutor, Seneca, [32] to choose how he would die. Papinianus, [33] for a
   long while a powerful courtier, was handed over to the soldiers’ swords by
   the Emperor Antoninus. Yet each of these was willing to surrender all his
   power. Seneca even tried to give up all his wealth to Nero, and to seek
   retirement. But the very weight of their wealth and power dragged them down
   to ruin, and neither could do what he wished.

   ‘What then is that power, whose possessors fear it? in desiring to possess
   which, you are not safe, and from which you cannot escape, even though you
   try to lay it down? What help are friends, made not by virtue but by
   fortune? The friend gained by good fortune becomes an enemy in ill-fortune.
   And what plague can more effectually injure than an intimate enemy?

   ‘The man who would true power gain, must needs subdue his own wild thoughts:
   never must he let his passions triumph and yoke his neck by their foul
   bonds. For though the earth, as far as India’s shore, tremble before the
   laws you give, though Thule bow to your service on earth’s farthest bounds,
   yet if thou canst not drive away black cares, if thou canst not put to
   flight complaints, then is no true power thine.

   ‘How deceitful is fame often, and how base a thing it is! Justly did the
   tragic poet cry out, [34] “O Fame, Fame, how many lives of men Of naught
   hast thou puffed up! “ For m any men have got a great name from the false
   opinions of the crowd. And what could be baser than such a thing? For those
   who are falsely praised, must blush to hear their praises. And if they are
   justly won by merits, what can they add to the pleasure of a wise man’s
   conscience? For he measures his happiness not by popular talk, but by the
   truth of his conscience. If it attracts a man to make his name widely known,
   he must equally think it a shame if it be not made known. But I have already
   said that there must be yet more lands into which the renown of a single man
   can never come; wherefore it follows that the man, whom you think famous,
   will seem to have no such fame in the next quarter of the earth.

   ‘Popular favour seems to me to be unworthy even of mention under this head,
   for it comes not by any judgment, and is never constant.

   ‘Again, who can but see how empty a name, and how futile, is noble birth?
   For if its glory is due to renown, it belongs not to the man. For the glory
   of noble birth seems to be praise for the merits of a man’s forefathers. But
   if praise creates the renown, it is the renowned who are praised. Wherefore,
   if you have no renown of your own, that of others cannot glorify you. But if
   there is any good in noble birth, I conceive it to be this, and this alone,
   that the highborn seem to be bound in honour not to show any degeneracy from
   their fathers’ virtue.

   ‘From like beginning rise all men on earth, for there is one Father of all
   things; one is the guide of everything. ’Tis He who gave the sun his rays,
   and horn s unto the moon. ’Tis He who set mankind on earth, and in the
   heavens the stars. He put within our bodies spirits which were born in
   heaven. And thus a highborn race has He set forth in man. Why do ye men rail
   on your forefathers? If ye look to your be ginning and your author, which is
   God, is any man degenerate or base but he who by his own vices cherishes
   base things and leaves that beginning which was his?

   ‘And now what am I to say of the pleasures of the body? The desires of the
   flesh are full of cares, their fulfilment is full of remorse. What terrible
   diseases, what unbearable griefs, truly the fruits of sin, do they bring
   upon the bodies of those who enjoy them! I know not what pleasure their
   impulse affords, but any who cares to recall his indulgences of his
   passions, will know that the results of such pleasures are indeed gloomy. If
   any can shew that those results are blest with happiness, then may the
   beasts of the field be justly called blessed, for all their aims are urged
   toward the satisfying of their bodies’ wants. The pleasures of wife and
   children may be most honourable; but nature makes it all too plain that some
   have found torment in their children. How bitter is any such kind of
   suffering, I need not tell you now, for you have never known it, nor have
   any such anxiety now. Yet in this matter I would hold with my philosopher
   Euripides, [35] that he who has no children is happy in his misfortune.

   ‘All pleasures have this way: those who enjoy them they drive on with
   stings. Pleasure, like the winged bee, scatters its honey sweet, then flies
   away, and with a clinging sting it strikes the hearts it touches.

   ‘There is then no doubt that these roads to happiness are no roads, and they
   cannot lead any man to any end whither they profess to take him. I would
   shew you shortly with what great evils they are bound up. Would you heap up
   money? You will need to tear it from its owner. Would you seem brilliant by
   the glory of great honours? You must kneel before their dispenser, and in
   your desire to surpass other men in honour, you must debase yourself by
   setting aside all pride. Do you long for power? You will be subject to the
   wiles of all over whom you have power, you will be at the mercy of many
   dangers. You seek fame? You will be drawn to and fro among rough paths, and
   lose all freedom from care. Would you spend a life of pleasure? Who would
   not despise and cast off such servitude to so vile and brittle a thing as
   your body? How petty are all the aims of those who put before themselves the
   pleasures of the body, how uncertain is the possession of such? In bodily
   size will you ever surpass the elephant? In strength will you ever lead the
   bull, or in speed the tiger? Look upon the expanse of heaven, the strength
   with which it stands, the rapidity with which it moves, and cease for a
   while to wonder at base things. This heaven is not more wonderful for those
   things than for the design which guides it. How sweeping is the brightness
   of outward form, how swift its movement, yet more fleeting than the passing
   of the flowers of spring. But if, as Aristotle says, many could use the eyes
   of lynxes to see through that which meets the eye, then if they saw into the
   organs within, would not that body, though it had the most fair outside of
   Alcibiades, [36] seem most vile within? Wherefore it is not your own nature,
   but the weakness of the eyes of them that see you, which makes you seem
   beautiful. But consider how in excess you desire the pleasures of the body,
   when you know that howsoever you admire it, it can be reduced to nothing by
   a three-days’ fever. To put all these points then in a word: these things
   cannot grant the good which they promise; they are not made perfect by the
   union of all good things in them; they do not le ad to happiness as a path
   thither; they do not make men blessed. [37]

   ‘Ah! how wretched are they whom ignorance leads astray by her crooked path!
   Ye seek not gold upon green trees, nor gather precious stones from vines,
   nor set your nets on mountain tops to catch the fishes for your feast, nor
   hunt the Umbrian sea in search of goats. Man knows the depths of the sea
   themselves, hidden though they be beneath its waves; he knows which water
   best yields him pearls, and which the scarlet dye. But in their blindness
   men are content, and know not where lies hid the good which they desire.
   They sink in earthly things, and there they seek that which has soared above
   the star-lit heavens. What can I call down upon them worthy of their
   stubborn folly? They go about in search of wealth and honours; and only when
   they have by labours vast stored up deception for themselves, do they at
   last know what is their true good.

   ‘So far,’ she continued, ‘we have been content to set forth the form of
   false happiness. If you clearly understand that, my next duty is to shew
   what is true happiness.’

   ‘I do see,’ said I, ‘that wealth cannot satisfy, that power comes not to
   kingdoms, nor veneration to high offices; that true renown cannot accompany
   ambition, nor true enjoyment wait upon the pleasures of the body.’

   ‘Have you grasped the reasons why it is so?’ she asked.

   ‘I seem to look at them as through a narrow chink, but I would learn more
   clearly from you.’

   ‘The reason is to hand,’ said she; ‘human error takes that which is simple
   and by nature impossible to divide, tries to divide it, and turns its truth
   and perfection into falsity and imperfection. Tell me, do you think that
   anything which lacks nothing, can be without power?’

   ‘Of course not.’

   ‘You are right; for if anything has any weakness in any part, it must lack
   the help of something else.’

   ‘That is so,’ I said.

   ‘Then perfect satisfaction and power have the same nature?’

   ‘Yes, it seems so.’

   ‘And do you think such a thing contemptible, or the opposite, worthy of all
   veneration?’

   ‘There can be no doubt that it is worthy.’

   ‘Then let us add veneration to that satisfaction and power, and so consider
   these three as one.’

   ‘Yes, we must add it if we wish to proclaim the truth.’

   ‘Do you then think that this whole is dull and of no reputation, or renowned
   with all glory? For consider it thus: we have granted that it lacks nothing,
   that it has all power and is worthy of all veneration; it must not therefore
   lack the glory which it cannot supply for itself, and thereby seem to be in
   any direction contemptible.’

   ‘No,’ I said, ‘I must allow that it has glory too.’

   ‘Therefore we must rank this glory equally with the other three.’

   ‘Yes, we must.’

   ‘Then that which lacks nothing from outside itself, which is all-powerful by
   its own might, which has renown and veneration, must surely be allowed to be
   most happy too?’

   ‘I cannot imagine from what quarter unhappiness would creep into such a
   thing, wherefore we must grant that it is full of happiness if the other
   qualities remain existent.’

   ‘Then it follows further, that though perfect satisfaction, power, glory,
   veneration, and happiness differ in name, they cannot differ at all in
   essence?’

   ‘They cannot.’

   ‘This then,’ said she, ‘is a simple, single thing by nature, only divided by
   the mistakes of base humanity; and while men try to gain a part of that
   which has no parts, they fail both to obtain a fraction, which cannot exist,
   and the whole too after which they do not strive.’

   ‘Tell me how they fail thus,’ I said.

   ‘One seeks riches by fleeing from poverty, and takes no thought of power,’
   she answered, ‘and so he prefers to be base and unknown, and even deprives
   himself of natural pleasures lest he should part with the riches which he
   has gathered. Thus not even that satisfaction reaches the man who loses all
   power, who is stabbed by sorrow, lowered by his meanness, hidden by his lack
   of fame. Another seeks power only: he scatters his wealth, he despises
   pleasures and honours which have no power, and sets no value upon glory. You
   see how many things such an one lacks. Sometimes he goes without necessaries
   even, sometimes he feels the bite and torture of care; and as he cannot rid
   himself of these, he loses the power too which he sought above all things.
   The same argument may be applied to offices, glory, and pleasure. For since
   each one of these is the same as each other, any man who seeks one without
   the others, gains not even that one which he desires.’

   ‘What then?’ I asked.

   ‘If any man desires to obtain all together, he will be seeking the sum of
   happiness. But will he ever find that in these things which we have shewn
   cannot supply what they promise?’ ‘No.’

   ‘Then happiness is not to be sought for among these things which are
   separately believed to supply each thing so sought.’

   ‘Nothing could be more plainly true,’ I said.

   ‘Then you have before you the form of false happiness, and its causes; now
   turn your attention in the opposite direction, and you will quickly see the
   true happiness which I have promised to shew you.’

   ‘But surely this is clear even to the blindest, and you shewed it before
   when you were trying to make clear the causes of false happiness. For if I
   mistake not, true and perfect happiness is that which makes a man truly
   satisfied, powerful, venerated, renowned, and happy. And (for I would have
   you see that I have looked deeply into the matter) I realise without doubt
   that that which can truly yield any one of these, since they are all one, is
   perfect happiness.

   ‘Ah! my son,’ said she, ‘I do see that you are blessed in this opinion, but
   I would have you add one thing.’

   ‘What is that?’ I asked.

   ‘Do you think that there is anything among mortals, and in our perishable
   lives, which could yield such a state?’

   ‘I do not think that there is, and I think that you have shewn this beyond
   the need of further proof.’

   ‘These then seem to yield to mortals certain appearances of the true good,
   or some such imperfections; but they cannot give true and perfect good.’

   ‘No.’

   ‘Since, then, you have seen what is true happiness, and what are the false
   imitations thereof, it now remains that you should learn whence this true
   happiness may be sought.’

   ‘For that,’ said I, ‘I have been impatiently waiting.’

   ‘But divine help must be sought in small things as well as great (as my
   pupil Plato says in his Timoeus); [38] so what, think you, must we do to
   deserve to find the place of that highest good?’

   ‘Call,’ I said, ‘upon the Father of all, for if we do not do so, no
   undertaking would be rightly or duly begun.’

   ‘You are right,’ said she; and thus she cried aloud: — [39]

   ‘Thou who dost rule the universe with everlasting law, founder of earth and
   heaven alike, who hast bidden time stand forth from out Eternity, for ever
   firm Thyself, yet giving movement unto all. No causes were without Thee
   which could thence impel Thee to create this mass of changing matter, but
   within Thyself exists the very idea of perfect good, which grudges naught,
   for of what can it have envy? Thou makest all things follow that high
   pattern. In perfect beauty Thou movest in Thy mind a world of beauty, making
   all in a like image, and bidding the perfect whole to complete its perfect
   functions. All the first principles of nature Thou dost bind together by
   perfect orders as of numbers, so that they may be balanced each with its
   opposite: cold with heat, and dry with moist together; thus fire may not fly
   upward too swiftly because too purely, nor may the weight of the solid earth
   drag it down and overwhelm it. Thou dost make the soul as a third between
   mind and material bodies: to these the soul gives life and movement, for
   Thou dost spread it abroad among the members of the universe, now working in
   accord. Thus is the soul divided as it takes its course, making two circles,
   as though a binding thread around the world. Thereafter it returns unto
   itself and passes around the lower earthly mind; and in like manner it gives
   motion to the heavens to turn their course. Thou it is who dost carry
   forward with like inspiration these souls and lower lives. Thou dost fill
   these weak vessels with lofty souls, and send them abroad throughout the
   heavens and earth, and by Thy kindly law dost turn them again to Thyself and
   bring them to seek, as fire doth, to rise to Thee again.

   ‘Grant then, O Father, that this mind of ours may rise to Thy throne of
   majesty; grant us to reach that fount of good. Grant that we may so find
   light that we may set on Thee unblinded eyes; cast Thou therefrom the heavy
   clouds of this material world. Shine forth upon us in Thine own true glory.
   Thou art the bright and peaceful rest of all Thy children that worship Thee.
   To see Thee clearly is the limit of our aim. Thou art our beginning, our
   progress, our guide, our way, our end.

   ‘Since then you have seen the form both of the imperfect and the perfect
   good, I think I should now shew you where lies this perfection of happiness.
   In this I think our first inquiry must be whether any good of this kind can
   exist in the very nature of a subject; for we must not let any vain form of
   thought make us miss the truth of this matter. But there can be no denial of
   its existence, that it is as the very source of all good. For if anything is
   said to be imperfect, it is held to be so by some loss of its perfection.
   Wherefore if in any kind of thing a particular seems imperfect, there must
   also be a perfect specimen in the same kind. For if you take away the
   perfection, it is impossible even to imagine whence could come the so-called
   imperfect specimen. For nature does not start from degenerate or imperfect
   specimens, but starting from the perfect and ideal, it degenerates to these
   lower and weaker forms. If then, as we have shewn above, there is an
   uncertain and imperfect happiness to be found in the good, then there must
   doubtless be also a sure and perfect happiness therein.’ [40]

   ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘that is quite surely proved to be true.’

   ‘Now consider,’ she continued, ‘where it lies. The universally accepted
   notion of men proves that God, the fountain-head of all things, is good. For
   nothing can be thought of better than God, and surely He, than whom there is
   nothing better, must without doubt be good. Now reason shews us that God is
   so good, that we are convinced that in Him lies also the perfect good. For
   if it is not so, He cannot be the fountain-head; for there must then be
   something more excellent, possessing that perfect good, which appears to be
   of older origin than God: for it has been proved that all perfections are of
   earlier origin than the imperfect specimens of the same: wherefore, unless
   we are to prolong the series to infinity, we must allow that the highest
   Deity must be full of the highest, the perfect good. But as we have laid
   down that true happiness is perfect good, it must be that true happiness is
   situated in His Divinity.’

   ‘Yes, I accept that; it cannot be in any way contradicted.’

   ‘But,’ she said, ‘I beg you, be sure that you accept with a sure conscience
   and determination this fact, that we have said that the highest Deity is
   filled with the highest good.’

   ‘How should I think of it?’ I asked.

   ‘You must not think of God, the Father of all , whom we hold to be filled
   with the highest good, as having received this good into Himself from
   without, nor that He has it by nature in such a manner that you might
   consider Him, its possessor, and the happiness possessed, as having
   different essential existences. For if you think that good has been received
   from without, that which gave it must be more excellent than that which
   received it; but we have most rightly stated that He is the most excellent
   of all things. And if you think that it is in Him by His nature, but
   different in kind, then, while we speak of God as the fountain-head of all
   things, who could imagine by whom these different kinds can have been
   united? Lastly, that which is different from anything cannot be the thing
   from which it differs. So anything which is by its nature different from the
   highest good, cannot be the highest good. And this we must not think of God,
   than whom there is nothing more excellent, as we have agreed. Nothing in
   this world can have a nature which is better than its origin, wherefore I
   would conclude that that which is the origin of all things, according to the
   truest reasoning, is by its essence the highest good.’

   ‘Most truly,’ I said.

   ‘You agree that the highest good is happiness?’

   ‘Yes.’

   ‘Then you must allow that God is absolute happiness?’

   ‘I cannot deny what you put forward before, and I see that this follows
   necessarily from those propositions.’

   ‘Look then,’ she said, ‘whether it is proved more strongly by this too:
   there cannot be two highest goods which are different. For where two good
   things are different, the one cannot be the other; wherefore neither can be
   the perfect good, while each is lacking to the other. And that which is not
   perfect cannot be the highest, plainly. Therefore if two things are highest
   good, they cannot be different. Further, we have proved to ourselves that
   both happiness and God are each the highest good. Therefore the highest
   Deity must be identical with the highest happiness.’

   ‘No conclusion,’ I said, ‘could be truer in fact, or more surely proved by
   reason, or more worthy of our God.’

   ‘Besides this let me give you corollary, as geometricians do, when they wish
   to add a point drawn from the propositions they have proved. Since men
   become happy by acquiring happiness, and happiness is identical with
   divinity, it is plain that they become happy by acquiring divinity. But just
   as men become just by acquiring the quality of justice, and wise by wisdom,
   so by the same reasoning, by acquiring divinity they become divine. Every
   happy man then is divine. But while nothing prevents as many men as possible
   from being divine, God is so by His nature, men become so by
   participation.’

   ‘This corollary,’ I said, ‘or whatever you call it, is indeed beautiful and
   very precious.’

   ‘Yes, but nothing can be more beautiful than this too which reason would
   have us add to what we have agreed upon.’

   ‘What is that?’ I asked.

   ‘Happiness seems to include many things: do all these join it together as
   into a whole which is happiness, as though each thing were a different part
   thereof, or is any one of them a good which fulfils the essence of
   happiness, and do the others merely bear relations to this one?’

   ‘I would have you make this plain by the enunciation of these
   particulars.’

   ‘Do we not,’ she asked, ‘hold that happiness is a good thing?’

   ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘the highest good.’

   ‘But you may apply this quality of happiness to them all. For the perfect
   satisfaction is the same, and the highest power, and veneration, and renown,
   and pleasure; these are all held to be happiness.

   ‘What then?’ I asked.

   ‘Are all these things, satisfaction, power, and the others, as it were,
   members of the body, happiness, or do they all bear their relation to the
   good, as members to a head?’

   ‘I understand what you propose to examine, but I am waiting eagerly to hear
   what you will lay down.’

   ‘I would have you take the following explanation,’ she said. ‘If these were
   all members of the one body, happiness, they would differ individually. For
   this is the nature of particulars, to make up one body of different parts.
   But all these have been shewn to be one and the same. Therefore they are not
   as members; and further, this happiness will then appear to be joined
   together into a whole body out of one member, which is impossible.’

   ‘That is quite certain,’ said I, ‘but I would hear what is to come.’

   ‘It is plain that the others have some relation to the good. It is for that
   reason, namely because it is held to be good, that this satisfaction is
   sought, and power likewise, and the others too; we may suppose the same of
   veneration, renown, and pleasure. The good then is the cause of the desire
   for all of these, and their consummation also. Such a thing as has in itself
   no real or even pretended good, cannot ever be sought. On the other hand,
   such things as are not by nature good, but seem to be so, are sought as
   though they were truly good. Wherefore we may justly believe that their good
   quality is the cause of the desire f or them, the very hinge on which they
   turn, and their consummation. The really important object of a desire, is
   that for the sake of which anything is sought, as a means. For instance, if
   a man wishes to ride for the sake of his health, he does not so much desire
   the motion of riding, as the effect, namely health. As, therefore, each of
   these things is desired for the sake of the good, the absolute good is the
   aim, rather than themselves. But we have agreed that the other things are
   desired for the sake of happiness, wherefore in this case too, it is
   happiness alone which is the object of the desire. Wherefore it is plain
   that the essence of the good and of happiness is one and the same.’

   ‘I cannot see how any one can think otherwise.’

   ‘But we have shewn that God and true happiness are one and the same.’

   ‘Yes.’

   ‘Therefore,’ said she, ‘we may safely conclude that the essence of God also
   lies in the absolute good and nowhere else.

   ‘Come hither all who are the prey of passions, bound by their ruthless
   chains; those deceiving passions which blunt the minds of men. Here shall
   you find rest from your labours; here a haven lying in tranquil peace; this
   shall be a resting-place open to receive within itself all the miserable on
   earth. Not all the wealth of Tagus’s golden sands, nor Hermus’s gleaming
   strand, [41] nor Indus, nigh earth’s hottest zone, mingling its emeralds and
   pearls, can bring light to the eyes of any soul, but rather plunge the soul
   more blindly in their shade. In her deepest caverns does earth rear all that
   pleases the eye and excites the mind. The glory by which the heavens move
   and have their being, has nought to do with the darknesses which bring ruin
   to the soul. Whosoever can look on this true light will scarce allow the
   sun’s rays to be clear.’

   ‘I cannot but agree with that,’ I said, ‘for it all stands woven together by
   the strongest proofs.’ Then she said, ‘At what would you value this, namely
   if you could find out what is the absolute good?’

   ‘I would reckon it,’ I said, ‘at an infinite value, if I could find out God
   too, who is the good.’

   ‘And that too I will make plain by most true reasoning, if you will allow to
   stand the conclusions we have just now arrived at.’

   ‘They shall stand good.’

   ‘Have I not shewn,’ she asked, ‘that those upon the things which most men
   seek are for this reason not perfect goods, because they differ between the
   highest themselves; they are lacking to one another, and so cannot afford
   full, absolute good? But when they are gathered together, as it were, into
   one form and one operation, so that complete satisfaction, power,
   veneration, renown, and pleasure are all the same, then they become the true
   good. Unless they are all one and the same, they have no claim to be
   reckoned among the true object s of men’s desires.’

   ‘That has been proved beyond all doubt.’

   ‘Then such things as differ among themselves are not goods, but they become
   so when they begin to be a single unity. Is it not then the ca se these
   become goods by the attainment of unity?’

   ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it seems so.’

   ‘But I think you allow that every good is good by participation in good?’

   ‘Yes, I do.’

   ‘Then by reason of this likeness both unity and good must be allowed to be
   the same thing; for such things as have by nature the same operation, have
   the same essence.’

   ‘Undeniably.’

   ‘Do you realise that everything remains existent so long as it keeps its
   unity, but perishes in dissolution as soon as it loses its unity?’

   ‘How so?’ I asked.

   ‘In the case of animals,’ she said, ‘so long as mind and body remain united,
   you have what you call an animal. But as soon as this unity is dissolved by
   the separation of the two, the animal perishes and can plainly be no longer
   called an animal. In the case of the body, too, so long as it remains in a
   single form by the union of its members, the human figure is presented. But
   if the division or separation of the body’s parts drags that union asunder,
   it at once ceases to be what it was. In this way one may go through every
   subject, and it will be quite evident that each thing exists individually,
   so long as it is one, but perishes so soon as it ceases to be one.’

   ‘Yes, I see the same when I think of other cases.’

   ‘Is there anything,’ she then asked, ‘which, in so far as it acts by nature,
   ever loses its desire for self-preservation, and would voluntarily seek to
   come to death and corruption?’

   ‘No,’ I said; ‘while I think of animals which have volition in their nature,
   I can find in them no desire to throw away their determination to remain as
   they are, or to hasten to perish of their own accord, so long as there are
   no external forces compelling them thereto. Every animal labours for its
   preservation, shunning death and extinction. But about trees and plants, I
   have great doubts as to what I should agr