WHETHER VIRTUE ALONE BE SUFFICIENT. 181grief, and uninfluenced by any immoderate joy or desire, cannot be otherwise than happy ; but a wise man is always so, therefore he is always happy. Moreover, how can a good man avoid referring all his actions and all his feel ings to the one standard of whether or not it is laudable ? But he does refer everything to the object of living hap pily : it follows, then, that a happy life is laudable ; but nothing is laudable without virtue : a happy life, then, is the consequence of virtue. And this is the unavoidable conclusion to be drawn from these arguments. XVII. A wicked life has nothing which we ought to speak of or glory in ; nor has that life which is neither happy nor miserable. But there is a kind of life that ad mits of being spoken of, and gloried in, and boasted of, as Epaminondas saith, The wings ot Sparta's pride my counsels clipp'd. And Africanus boasts, Who, from beyond Mteotis to the place Where the sun rises, deeds like mine can trace ? If, then, there is such a thing as a happy life, it is to be gloried in, spoken of, and commended by the person who enjoys it; for there is nothing excepting that which cnn be spoken of or gloried in ; and when that is once admit ted, you know what follows. Now, unless an honorable life is a happy life, there must, of course, be something preferable to a happy life ; for that which is honorable all men will certainly grant to be preferable to anything else. And thus there will be something better than a happy life : but what can be more absurd than such an assertion ? What ! when they grant vice to be effectual to the render ing life miserable, must they not admit that there is a cor responding power in virtue to make life happy ? For con traries follow from contraries. And here* I ask what weight they think there is in the balance of Critolaus, who having put the goods of the mind into one scale, and the goods of the body and other external advantages into the other, thought the goods of the mind outweighed the oth ers so far that they would require the whole earth and sea

to equalize the scale.