ted to the rack, it
raises so reverend a spectacle before our eyes, that happiness seems to
hasten on towards 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,(104) Quintus Caepio,(105) Marcus Aquilius;(106)
and prudence herself, if these representations are more agreeable to you
than the things themselves, restrains happiness, when it is endeavouring
to throw itself into torments, and denies that it has any connexion 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 befal 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, co