or to understand by the word honourable
anything except what is right, and deservedly to be praised by itself and
for itself, from a regard to its own power and influence and intrinsic
nature.

XVI. Therefore, Torquatus, when you said that Epicurus asserted loudly
that a man could not live pleasantly if he did not also live honourably,
and wisely, and justly, you appeared to me to be boasting yourself. There
was such energy in your words, on account of the dignity of those things
which were indicated by those words, that you became taller, that you rose
up, and fixed your eyes upon us as if you were giving a solemn testimony
that honourableness and justice are sometimes praised by Epicurus. How
becoming was it to you to use that language, which is so necessary for
philosophers, that if they did not use it we should have no great need of
philosophy at all! For it is out of love for those words, which are very
seldom employed by Epicurus--I mean wisdom, fortitude, justice, and
temperance--that men of the most admirable powers of mind have betaken
themselves to the study of philosophy.

"The sense of our eyes," says Plato, "is most acute in us; but yet we do
not see wisdom with them. What a vehement passion for itself would it
excite if it could be beheld by the eyes!" Why so? Because it is so
ingenious as to be able to devise pleasures in the most skilful manner.
Why is justice extolled? or what is it that has given rise to that old and
much-worn proverb, "He is a man with whom you may play(31) in the dark."
This, though applied to only one thing, has a very extensive application;
so that in every case we are influenced by the facts, and not by the
witness.

For those things which you were saying were very weak and powerless
arguments,--when you urged that the wicked were tormented by their own
consciences, and also by fear of punishment, which is either inflicted on
them, or keeps them in constant fear that it will be inflicted. One ought
not to imagine a man timid, or weak in his mind, nor a good man, who,
whatever he has done, keeps tormenting himself, and dreads everything; but
rather let us fancy one, who with great shrewdness refers everything to
usefulness--an acute, crafty, wary man, able with ease to devise plans for
deceiving any one secretly, without any witness, or any one being privy to
it. Do you think that I am speaking of Lucius Tubulus?--who, when as praetor
he had been sitting as judge upon the trial