onsiderable coiner of
words, appears to have insinuated himself into the old philosophy; still
the prevalence of this opinion is due to the authority of Plato, who often
makes use of this expression, "that nothing but virtue can be entitled to
the name of good," agreeably to what Socrates says in Plato's Gorgias; for
it is there related that when some one asked him if he did not think
Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, who was then looked upon as a most
fortunate person, a very happy man: "I do not know," replied he, "for I
never conversed with him." "What, is there no other way you can know it
by?" "None at all." "You cannot, then, pronounce of the great king of the
Persians, whether he is happy or not?" "How can I, when I do not know how
learned or how good a man he is?" "What! do you imagine that a happy life
depends on that?" "My opinion entirely is, that good men are happy, and
the wicked miserable." "Is Archelaus, then, miserable?" "Certainly, if
unjust." Now does it not appear to you, that he is here placing the whole
of a happy life in virtue alone? But what does the same man say in his
funeral oration? "For," saith he, "whoever has everything that relates to
a happy life so entirely dependent on himself as not to be connected with
the good or bad fortune of another, and not to be affected by, or made in
any degree uncertain by, what befals another; and whoever is such a one
has acquired the best rule of living; he is that moderate, that brave,
that wise man, who submits to the gain and loss of everything, and
especially of his children, and obeys that old precept; for he will never
be too joyful or too sad, because he depends entirely upon himself."

XIII. From Plato, therefore, all my discourse shall be deduced, as if from
some sacred and hallowed fountain. Whence can I, then, more properly begin
than from nature, the parent of all? For whatsoever she produces (I am not
speaking only of animals, but even of those things which have sprung from
the earth in such a manner as to rest on their own roots) she designed it
to be perfect in its respective kind. So that among trees and vines, and
those lower plants and trees which cannot advance themselves high above
the earth, some are evergreen, others are stripped of their leaves in
winter, and, warmed by the spring season, put them out afresh, and there
are none of them but what are so quickened by a certain interior motion,
and their own seeds enclosed in every one, so