e to the authority of Plato,
who often makes use of this expression, "That nothing but virtue can be
entitled to the name of good," agreeably to what Socrates says in
Plato's Gorgias; for it is there related that when some one asked him
if he did not think Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, who was then looked
upon as a most fortunate person, a very happy man, "I do not know,"
replied he, "for I never conversed with him." "What! is there no other
way you can know it by?" "None at all." "You cannot, then, pronounce of
the great king of the Persians whether he is happy or not?" "How can I,
when I do not know how learned or how good a man he is?" "What! do you
imagine that a happy life depends on that?" "My opinion entirely is,
that good men are happy, and the wicked miserable." "Is Archelaus,
then, miserable?" "Certainly, if unjust." Now, does it not appear to
you that he is here placing the whole of a happy life in virtue alone?
But what does the same man say in his funeral oration? "For," saith he,
"whoever has everything that relates to a happy life so entirely
dependent on himself as not to be connected with the good or bad
fortune of another, and not to be affected by, or made in any degree
uncertain by, what befalls another; and whoever is such a one has
acquired the best rule of living; he is that moderate, that brave, that
wise man, who submits to the gain and loss of everything, and
especially of his children, and obeys that old precept; for he will
never be too joyful or too sad, because he depends entirely upon
himself."

XIII. From Plato, therefore, all my discourse shall be deduced, as if
from some sacred and hallowed fountain. Whence can I, then, more
properly begin than from Nature, the parent of all? For whatsoever she
produces (I am not speaking only of animals, but even of those things
which have sprung from the earth in such a manner as to rest on their
own roots) she designed it to be perfect in its respective kind. So
that among trees and vines, and those lower plants and trees which
cannot advance themselves high above the earth, some are evergreen,
others are stripped of their leaves in winter, and, warmed by the
spring season, put them out afresh, and there are none of them but what
are so quickened by a certain interior motion, and their own seeds
enclosed in every one, so as to yield flowers, fruit, or berries, that
all may have every perfection that belongs to it; provided no violence
prevents it.