us, though he has also written many things to the
contrary, lays this for a position, that there is not any vice greater
or any sin more grievous than another, nor any virtue more excellent or
any good deed better than another; so that he says in his Third Book of
Nature: "As it well beseems Jupiter to glory in himself and his life,
to magnify himself, and (if we may so say) to bear up his head, have an
high conceit of himself, and speak big, for that he leads a life worthy
of lofty speech; so the same things do not misbeseem all good men, since
they are in nothing exceeded by Jupiter." And yet himself, in his Third
Book of Justice, says, that they who make pleasure the end destroy
justice, but they who say it is only a good do not destroy it. These are
his very words: "For perhaps, if we leave this to pleasure, that it is a
good but not the end, and that honesty is one of those things which are
eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the honest and
the just a greater good than pleasure." But if that only is good which
is honest, he who affirms pleasure to be a good is in an error, but
he errs less than he who makes it also the end; for the one destroys
justice, the other preserves it; and by the one human society is
overthrown, but the other leaves a place to goodness and humanity. Now
I let pass his saying farther in his book concerning Jupiter, that the
virtues increase and go on, lest I may seem to catch at words; though
Chrysippus is indeed in this kind very sharp upon Plato and others. But
when he forbids the praising of everything that is done according to
virtue, he shows that there is some difference between good deeds. Now
he says thus in his book concerning Jupiter: "For since each virtue has
its own proper effects, there are some of these that are to be praised
more highly than others; for he would show himself to be very frigid,
that should undertake to praise and extol any man for holding out the
finger stoutly, for abstaining continently from an old woman ready to
drop into the grave, and patiently hearing it said that three are not
exactly four." What he says in his Third Book of the Gods is not unlike
to this: "For I moreover think that the praises of such things as to
abstain from an old woman who has one foot in the grave, and to endure
the sting of a fly, though proceeding from virtue, would be very
impertinent." What other reprehender of his doctrines does this man
then expect? For if