at we must take notice what we are, that so we may
preserve ourselves in that character of which we ought to be. We are,
therefore, men: we consist of mind and body,--which are things of a
particular description,--and we ought, as our first natural desire
requires, to love these parts of ourselves, and from them to establish
this summit of the chief and highest good, which, if our first principles
are true, must be established in such a way as to acquire as many as
possible of those things which are in accordance with nature, and
especially all the most important of them. This, then, is the chief good
which they aimed at. I have expressed it more diffusely,--they call it
briefly, living according to nature. This is what appears to them to be
the chief good.

XI. Come, now let them teach us, or rather do so yourself, (for who is
better able?) in what way you proceed from these principles, and prove
that to live honourably (for that is the meaning of living according to
virtue, or in a manner suitable to nature) is the chief good; and in what
manner, or in what place, you on a sudden get rid of the body, and leave
all those things which, as they are according to nature, are out of our
own power; and, lastly, how you get rid of duty itself.

I ask, therefore, how it is that all these recommendations, having
proceeded from nature, are suddenly abandoned by wisdom? But if it were
not the chief good of man that we were inquiring into, but only that of
some animal, and if he were nothing except mind (for we may make such a
supposition as that, in order more easily to discover the truth), still
this chief good of yours would not belong to that mind. For it would wish
for good health, for freedom from pain; it would also desire the
preservation of itself, and the guardianship of these qualities, and it
would appoint as its own end to live according to nature, which is, as I
have said, to have those things which are according to nature, either all
of them, or most of them, and all the most important ones. For whatever
kind of animal you make him out, it is necessary, even though he be
incorporeal, as we are supposing him, still that there must be in the mind
something like those qualities which exist in the body; so that the chief
good cannot possibly be defined in any other manner but that which I have
mentioned.

But Chrysippus, when explaining the differences between living creatures,
says, that some excel in their bodies, o