always
happy. Nor, indeed, will it be possible for you ever to fill up the idea
of perfect and uninterrupted happiness while you refer everything to
pleasure and pain.

On which account, O Torquatus, we must find out something else which is
the chief good of man. Let us grant pleasure to the beasts, to whom you
often appeal as witnesses on the subject of the chief good. What will you
say, if even the beasts do many things under the guidance of their various
natures, partly out of indulgence to other beasts, and at the cost of
their own labour, as, for instance, it is very visible in bringing forth
and rearing their young, that they have some other object in view besides
their own pleasure? and partly, too, when they rejoice in running about
and travelling; and some assemble in herds, in such a manner as to imitate
in some degree a human state. In some species of birds we see certain
indications of affection, knowledge, and memory; in many we see what even
looks like a regular system of action. Shall there, then, be in beasts
some images of human virtues, quite unconnected with pleasure, and shall
there be no virtue in man except for the sake of pleasure? and though he
is as superior as can be to all the other animals, shall we still affirm
that he has no peculiar attributes given to him by nature?

XXXIV. But we, if indeed all things depend on pleasure, are greatly
surpassed by beasts, for which the earth, of her own accord, produces
various sorts of food, in every kind of abundance, without their taking
any trouble about it; while the same necessaries are scarcely (sometimes I
may even use stronger language still) supplied to us, when we seek them
with great labour. Nor is it possible that I should ever think that the
chief good was the same in the case of a beast and a man. For what can be
the use of having so many means and appliances for the carrying out of the
most excellent arts,--what can be the use of such an assemblage of most
honourable pursuits, of such a crowd of virtues, if they are all got
together for no other end but pleasure? As if, when Xerxes, with such vast
fleets, such countless troops of both cavalry and infantry, had bridged
over the Hellespont and dug through Mount Athos, had walked across the
sea, and sailed(43) over the land, if, when he had invaded Greece with
such irresistible violence, any one had asked him for the cause of
collecting so vast an army, and waging so formidable a war, and he h