WHETHER VIRTUE ALONE BE SUFFICIENT. 197ed from right reason by a vicious disposition, might have

been of this same opinion. Socrates, when on one occasion he saw a great quantity of gold and silver carried in a pro cession, cried out, " How many things are there which I do not want !" Xenocrates, when some ambassadors from Alexander had brought him fifty talents, which was a very large sum of money in those times, especially at Athens, carried the ambassadors to sup in the Academy, and placed just a sufficiency before them, without any apparatus. When they asked him, the next day, to whom he wished the money which they had for him to be paid : " What !" said he, " did you not perceive by our slight repast of yes terday that I had no occasion for money ?" But when he perceived that they were somewhat dejected, he accepted of thirty minae, that he might not seem to treat with dis respect the king's generosity. But Diogenes took a great er liberty, like a Cynic, when Alexander asked him if he wanted anything : " Just at present," said he, " I wish that you would stand a little out of the line between me and the sun," for Alexander was hindering him from sunning himself. And, indeed, this very man used to maintain how much he surpassed the Persian king in his manner of life and fortune; for that he himself was in want of nothing, while the other never had enough ; and that he had no in clination for those pleasures of which the other could nev er get enough to satisfy himself ; and that the other could never obtain his. XXXIII. You see, I imagine, how Epicurus has divided his kinds of desires, not very acutely perhaps, but yet use fully : saying that they are "partly natural and necessary; partly natural, but not necessary; partly neither. That those which are necessary may be supplied almost for nothing; for that the things which nature requires are easily obtained." As to the second kind of desires, his opinion is that any one may easily cither enjoy or go with out them. And with regard to the third, since they are utterly frivolous, being neither allied to necessity nor nat ure, he thinks that they should be entirely rooted out. On this topic a great many arguments are adduced by the Epicureans ; and those pleasures which they do not de

spise in a body, they disparage one by one, and seem rath-