l admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing
out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things
cannot be happy; the happy man should be safe, well fenced, well
fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, not like a man under
trifling apprehensions, but free from all such. As he is not called
innocent who but slightly offends, but he who offends not at all; so it is
he alone who is to be considered without fear who is free from all fear,
not he who is but in little fear. For what else is courage but an
affection of mind, that is ready to undergo perils, and patient in the
endurance of pain and labour without any alloy of fear? Now this certainly
could not be the case, if there were anything else good but what depended
on honesty alone. But how can any one be in possession of that desirable
and much-coveted security (for I now call a freedom from anxiety a
security, on which freedom a happy life depends) who has, or may have, a
multitude of evils attending him? How can he be brave and undaunted, and
hold everything as trifles which can befal a man, for so a wise man should
do, unless he be one who thinks that everything depends on himself? Could
the Lacedaemonians without this, when Philip threatened to prevent all
their attempts, have asked him, if he could prevent their killing
themselves? Is it not easier, then, to find one man of such a spirit as we
are inquiring after, than to meet with a whole city of such men? Now, if
to this courage I am speaking of we add temperance, that it may govern all
our feelings and agitations, what can be wanting to complete his happiness
who is secured by his courage from uneasiness and fear; and is prevented
from immoderate desires and immoderate insolence of joy, by temperance? I
could easily show that virtue is able to produce these effects, but that I
have explained on the foregoing days.

XV. But as the perturbations of the mind make life miserable, and
tranquillity renders it happy; and as these perturbations are of two
sorts, grief and fear, proceeding from imagined evils, and as immoderate
joy and lust arise from a mistake about what is good, and as all these
feelings are in opposition to reason and counsel; when you see a man at
ease, quite free and disengaged from such troublesome commotions, which
are so much at variance with one another can you hesitate to pronounce
such an one a happy man? Now the wise man is always in such a disposition,
therefo