not inform me of that: but show me, that it makes no
difference to me whether I am in pain or not. It has never anything to do,
say you, with a happy life, for that depends upon virtue alone; but yet
pain is to be avoided. If I ask, why? it is disagreeable, against nature,
hard to bear, woful and afflicting.

XIII. Here are many words to express that by so many different forms,
which we call by the single word, evil. You are defining pain, instead of
removing it, when you say, it is disagreeable, unnatural, scarcely
possible to be endured or borne: nor are you wrong in saying so; but the
man who vaunts himself in such a manner should not give way in his
conduct, if it be true that nothing is good but what is honest, and
nothing evil but what is disgraceful. This would be wishing, not
proving.--This argument is a better one, and has more truth in it, that all
things which nature abhors are to be looked upon as evil; that those which
she approves of, are to be considered as good: for when this is admitted,
and the dispute about words removed, that which they with reason embrace,
and which we call honest, right, becoming, and sometimes include under the
general name of virtue, appears so far superior to everything else, that
all other things which are looked upon as the gifts of fortune, or the
good things of the body, seem trifling and insignificant: and no evil
whatever, nor all the collective body of evils together, appears to be
compared to the evil of infamy. Wherefore, if, as you granted in the
beginning, infamy is worse than pain, pain is certainly nothing; for while
it appears to you base and unmanly to groan, cry out, lament, or faint
under pain--while you cherish notions of probity, dignity, honour, and
keeping your eye on them, refrain yourself--pain will certainly yield to
virtue, and by the influence of imagination, will lose its whole
force.--For you must either admit that there is no such thing as virtue, or
you must despise every kind of pain. Will you allow of such a virtue as
prudence, without which no virtue whatever can even be conceived? What
then? will that suffer you to labour and take pains to no purpose? Will
temperance permit you to do anything to excess? Will it be possible for
justice to be maintained by one who through the force of pain discovers
secrets, or betrays his confederates, or deserts many duties of life? Will
you act in a manner consistently with courage, and its attendants,
greatness