happy when
they accomplish their desires than when they fail to attain them.
(d) Evil-doers are more fortunate when they expiate their crimes by
suffering punishment than when they escape unpunished. (e) The
wrong-doer is more wretched than he who suffers injury.--CH. V.
Boethius still cannot understand why the distribution of happiness
and misery to the righteous and the wicked seems the result of
chance. Philosophy replies that this only seems so because we do
not understand the principles of God's moral governance.--CH. VI.
The distinction of Fate and Providence. The apparent moral
confusion is due to our ignorance of the secret counsels of God's
providence. If we possessed the key, we should see how all things
are guided to good.--CH. VII. Thus all fortune is good fortune; for
it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is
either useful or just.

BOOK IV.

I.

Softly and sweetly Philosophy sang these verses to the end without
losing aught of the dignity of her expression or the seriousness of her
tones; then, forasmuch as I was as yet unable to forget my deeply-seated
sorrow, just as she was about to say something further, I broke in and
cried: 'O thou guide into the way of true light, all that thy voice hath
uttered from the beginning even unto now has manifestly seemed to me at
once divine contemplated in itself, and by the force of thy arguments
placed beyond the possibility of overthrow. Moreover, these truths have
not been altogether unfamiliar to me heretofore, though because of
indignation at my wrongs they have for a time been forgotten. But, lo!
herein is the very chiefest cause of my grief--that, while there exists
a good ruler of the universe, it is possible that evil should be at all,
still more that it should go unpunished. Surely thou must see how
deservedly this of itself provokes astonishment. But a yet greater
marvel follows: While wickedness reigns and flourishes, virtue not only
lacks its reward, but is even thrust down and trampled under the feet of
the wicked, and suffers punishment in the place of crime. That this
should happen under the rule of a God who knows all things and can do
all things, but wills only the good, cannot be sufficiently wondered at
nor sufficiently lamented.'

Then said she: 'It would indeed be infinitely astounding, and of all
monstrous things most horrible, if, as thou