selves high above the earth, some are evergreen, others

are stripped of their leaves in winter, and, warmed by the spring season, put them out afresh, and there are none of them but what are so quickened by a certain interior mo tion, and their own seeds enclosed in every one, so as to yield flowers, fruit, or berries, that all may have every per fection that belongs to it; provided no violence pi-events it. But the force of Nature itself may be more easily dis covered in animals, as she has bestowed sense on them. For someaaniruals she has taught to swim, and designed to be inhabitants of the water; others she has enabled to fly, and has willed that they should enjoy the boundless air ; some others she has made to creep, others to walk. Again, of these very animals, some are solitary, some gre garious, some wild, others tame, some hidden and buried beneath the earth, and every one of these maintains the law of nature, confining itself to what was bestowed on it, and unable to change its manner of life. And as every ani mal has from nature something that distinguishes it, which every one maintains and never quits ; so man has some thing far more excellent, though everything is said to be excellent by comparison. But the human mind, being de rived from the divine reason, can be compared with noth ing but with the Deity itself, if I may be allowed the ex pression. This, then, if it is improved, and when its per ception is so preserved as not to be blinded by errors, be comes a perfect understanding, that is to say, absolute rea son, which is the very same as virtue. And if everything is happy which wants nothing, and is complete and perfect in its kind, and that is the peculiar lot of virtue, certainly all who are possessed of virtue are happy. And in this I agree with Brutus, and also with Aristotle, Xenocrates, Speusippus, Polernon.

XIV. To me such are the only men who appear com pletely happy ; for what can he want to a complete happy life who relies on his own good qualities, or how can he be happy who does not rely on them? But he who makes a threefold division of goods must necessarily be diffident, for how can he depend on having a sound body, or that his fortune shall continue? But no one can be happy with out an immovable, fixed, and permanent good. What,