from all infelicity and vice, and coming to a certain
sure and firm perfection of virtue. This also is repugnant to common
sense, to hold that the being immutable in one's judgments and
resolutions is the greatest of goods, and yet that he who has attained
to the height wants not this, nor cares for it when he has it, nay, many
times will not so much as stretch forth a finger for this security
and constancy, which nevertheless themselves esteem the sovereign and
perfect good. Nor do the Stoics say only these things, but they add
also this to them,--that the continuance of time increases not any good
thing; but if a man shall be wise but a minute of an hour, he will not
be any way inferior in happiness to him who has all his time practised
virtue and led his life happily in it. Yet, whilst they thus boldly
affirm these things, they on the contrary also say, that a short-lived
virtue is nothing worth; "For what advantage would the attainment of
wisdom be to him who is immediately to be swallowed up by the waves or
tumbled down headlong from a precipice? What would it have benefited
Lichas, if being thrown by Hercules, as from a sling into the sea, he
had been on a sudden changed from vice to virtue?" These therefore
are the positions of men who not only philosophize against the common
conceptions but also confound their own, if the having been but a little
while endued with virtue is no way short of the highest felicity, and
at the same time nothing worth. Nor is this the strangest thing you
will find in their doctrine; but their being of opinion that virtue and
happiness, when present, are frequently not perceived by him who enjoys
them, nor does he discern that, having but a little before been most
miserable and foolish, he is of a sudden become wise and happy. For
it is not only childish to say that he who is possessed of wisdom is
ignorant of this thing alone, that he is wise, and knows not that he is
delivered from folly; but, to speak in general, they make goodness to
have very little weight or strength, if it does not give so much as a
feeling of it when it is present. For according even to them, it is not
by nature imperceptible; nay, even Chrysippus in his books of the End
expressly says that good is sensible, and demonstrates it also, as he
maintains. It remains, then, that by its weakness and littleness it
flies the sense, when being present it is unknown and concealed from
the possessors. It were moreover absur