flee from.

XLI. This is the very same which is said by Epicurus and Hieronymus.
Now, if those philosophers, whose opinion it is that virtue has no
power of itself, and who say that the conduct which we denominate
honorable and laudable is really nothing, and is only an empty
circumstance set off with an unmeaning sound, can nevertheless maintain
that a wise man is always happy, what, think you, may be done by the
Socratic and Platonic philosophers? Some of these allow such
superiority to the goods of the mind as quite to eclipse what concerns
the body and all external circumstances. But others do not admit these
to be goods; they make everything depend on the mind: whose disputes
Carneades used, as a sort of honorary arbitrator, to determine. For, as
what seemed goods to the Peripatetics were allowed to be advantages by
the Stoics, and as the Peripatetics allowed no more to riches, good
health; and other things of that sort than the Stoics, when these
things were considered according to their reality, and not by mere
names, his opinion was that there was no ground for disagreeing.
Therefore, let the philosophers of other schools see how they can
establish this point also. It is very agreeable to me that they make
some professions worthy of being uttered by the mouth of a philosopher
with regard to a wise man's having always the means of living happily.

XLII. But as we are to depart in the morning, let us remember these
five days' discussions; though, indeed, I think I shall commit them to
writing: for how can I better employ the leisure which I have, of
whatever kind it is, and whatever it be owing to? And I will send these
five books also to my friend Brutus, by whom I was not only incited to
write on philosophy, but, I may say, provoked. And by so doing it is
not easy to say what service I may be of to others. At all events, in
my own various and acute afflictions, which surround me on all sides, I
cannot find any better comfort for myself.

THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

* * * * *

BOOK I.

I. There are many things in philosophy, my dear Brutus, which are not
as yet fully explained to us, and particularly (as you very well know)
that most obscure and difficult question concerning the Nature of the
Gods, so extremely necessary both towards a knowledge of the human mind
and the practice of true religion: concerning which the opinions of men
are so various, and so diff