can be spoken of or gloried in; and when
that is once admitted, 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 rendering
life miserable, must they not admit that there is a corresponding power
in virtue to make life happy? For contraries 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 others so far that they would
require the whole earth and sea to equalize the scale.

XVIII. What hinders Critolaus, then, or that gravest of philosophers,
Xenocrates (who raises virtue so high, and who lessens and depreciates
everything else), from not only placing a happy life, but the happiest
possible life, in virtue? And, indeed, if this were not the case,
virtue would be absolutely lost. For whoever is subject to grief must
necessarily be subject to fear too, for fear is an uneasy apprehension
of future grief; and whoever is subject to fear is liable to dread,
timidity, consternation, cowardice. Therefore, such a person may, some
time or other, be defeated, and not think himself concerned with that
precept of Atreus,

And let men so conduct themselves in life,
As to be always strangers to defeat.

But such a man, as I have said, will be defeated; and not only
defeated, but made a slave of. But we would have virtue always free,
always invincible; and were it not so, there would be an end of virtue.
But if virtue has in herself all that is necessary for a good life, she
is certainly sufficient for happiness: virtue is certainly sufficient,
too, for our living with courage; if with courage, then with a
magnanimous spirit, and indeed so as never to be under any fear, and
thus to be always invincible. Hence it follows that there can be
nothing to be repented of, no wants, no lets or hinderances. Thus all
things will be prosperous, perfect, and as you would have them, and,
consequently, happy; but virtue is sufficient for living with courage,
and therefore virtue is able by he