s
discerned by its honourableness, then what is honourable ought to be
considered the sole good. And, as this cannot possibly be denied, what man
do we say can ever exist of a stable and firm and great mind,--whom, in
fact, can we ever call brave,--unless the point is established, that pain
is not an evil? For as it is impossible that the man who ranks death among
evils should not fear it, so in every case it is impossible for a man to
disregard what he judges to be an evil, and to despise it. And when this
point has been laid down, and ratified by universal assent, this is
assumed next, that the man who is of a brave and magnanimous spirit
despises and utterly disregards every accident which can befal a man. And
as this is the case, the consequence is, that there is nothing evil which
is not disgraceful. And that man of lofty and excellent spirit,--that
magnanimous and truly brave man, who considers all human accidents beneath
his notice,--the man I mean whom we wish to make so, whom at all events we
are looking for,--ought to confide in himself, and in his own life both
past and to come, and to form a favourable judgment of himself, laying
down as a principle, that no evil can happen to a wise man. From which
again the same result follows, that the sole good is that which is
honourable; and that to live happily is to live honourably, that is,
virtuously.

IX. Not that I am ignorant that the opinions of philosophers have been
various, of those I mean who have placed the chief good, that which I call
the end, in the mind. And although some people have followed them very
incorrectly, still I prefer their theory, not only to that of the three
sects who have separated virtue from the chief good, while ranking either
pleasure, or freedom from pain, or the original gifts of nature among
goods, but also to the other three who have thought that virtue would be
crippled without some reinforcement, and on that account have each added
to it one of those other particulars which I have just enumerated. I,
however, as I said, prefer to all these the men, whoever they may be, who
have described the chief good as consisting in the mind and in virtue. But
nevertheless, those also are extremely absurd who have said that to live
with knowledge is the highest good, and who have asserted that there is no
difference between things, and so, that a wise man will surely be a happy
one, never at any moment of his life preferring one thing to ano