likewise had
been very celebrated for learning, had known nothing of the monument of
its greatest genius, if it had not been discovered to them by a native
of Arpinum. But to return to the subject from which I have been
digressing. Who is there in the least degree acquainted with the Muses,
that is, with liberal knowledge, or that deals at all in learning, who
would not choose to be this mathematician rather than that tyrant? If
we look into their methods of living and their employments, we shall
find the mind of the one strengthened and improved with tracing the
deductions of reason, amused with his own ingenuity, which is the one
most delicious food of the mind; the thoughts of the other engaged in
continual murders and injuries, in constant fears by night and by day.
Now imagine a Democritus, a Pythagoras, and an Anaxagoras; what
kingdom, what riches, would you prefer to their studies and amusements?
For you must necessarily look for that excellence which we are seeking
for in that which is the most perfect part of man; but what is there
better in man than a sagacious and good mind? The enjoyment, therefore,
of that good which proceeds from that sagacious mind can alone make us
happy; but virtue is the good of the mind: it follows, therefore, that
a happy life depends on virtue. Hence proceed all things that are
beautiful, honorable, and excellent, as I said above (but this point
must, I think, be treated of more at large), and they are well stored
with joys. For, as it is clear that a happy life consists in perpetual
and unexhausted pleasures, it follows, too, that a happy life must
arise from honesty.

XXIV. But that what I propose to demonstrate to you may not rest on
mere words only, I must set before you the picture of something, as it
were, living and moving in the world, that may dispose us more for the
improvement of the understanding and real knowledge. Let us, then,
pitch upon some man perfectly acquainted with the most excellent arts;
let us present him for awhile to our own thoughts, and figure him to
our own imaginations. In the first place, he must necessarily be of an
extraordinary capacity; for virtue is not easily connected with dull
minds. Secondly, he must have a great desire of discovering truth, from
whence will arise that threefold production of the mind; one of which
depends on knowing things, and explaining nature; the other, in
defining what we ought to desire and what to avoid; the third, i