ards them, and not to suffer them to be deserted
by her. But when you take your attention off from this picture and
these images of the virtues to the truth and the reality, what remains
without disguise is, the question whether any one can be happy in
torment? Wherefore let us now examine that point, and not be under any
apprehensions, lest the virtues should expostulate, and complain that
they are forsaken by happiness. For if prudence is connected with every
virtue, then prudence itself discovers this, that all good men are not
therefore happy; and she recollects many things of Marcus Atilius[55],
Quintus Caepio[56], Marcus Aquilius[57]; and prudence herself, if these
representations are more agreeable to you than the things themselves,
restrains happiness when it is endeavoring to throw itself into
torments, and denies that it has any connection with pain and torture.

VI. _M._ I can easily bear with your behaving in this manner, though it
is not fair in you to prescribe to me how you would have me carry on
this discussion. But I ask you if I have effected anything or nothing
in the preceding days?

_A._ Yes; something was done, some little matter indeed.

_M._ But if that is the case, this question is settled, and almost put
an end to.

_A._ How so?

_M._ Because turbulent motions and violent agitations of the mind, when
it is raised and elated by a rash impulse, getting the better of
reason, leave no room for a happy life. For who that fears either pain
or death, the one of which is always present, the other always
impending, can be otherwise than miserable? Now, supposing the same
person--which is often the case--to be afraid of poverty, ignominy,
infamy, or weakness, or blindness, or, lastly, slavery, which doth not
only befall individual men, but often even the most powerful nations;
now can any one under the apprehension of these evils be happy? What
shall we say of him who not only dreads these evils as impending, but
actually feels and bears them at present? Let us unite in the same
person banishment, mourning, the loss of children; now, how can any one
who is broken down and rendered sick in body and mind by such
affliction be otherwise than very miserable indeed? What reason, again,
can there be why a man should not rightly enough be called miserable
whom we see inflamed and raging with lust, coveting everything with an
insatiable desire, and, in proportion as he derives more pleasure from
anything,