Now
that is to be unjust. Every one therefore that is injured, by whomsoever
it is, is unjust also to himself."

He says, that the doctrine concerning good and evil which himself
introduces and approves is most agreeable to life, and does most of all
reach the inbred prenotions; for this he has affirmed in his Third Book
of Exhortations. But in his First Book he says, that this doctrine
takes a man off from all other things, as being nothing to us, nor
co-operating anything towards felicity. See, now, how consonant he is
to himself, when he asserts a doctrine which takes us off from life,
health, indolence, and integrity of the senses, and says that those
things we beg of the gods are nothing to us, though most agreeable to
life and to the common presumptions. But that there may be no denial of
his speaking contradictions, in his Third Book of Justice he has said
thus: "Wherefore also, from the excellence of their greatness and
beauty, we seem to speak things like to fictions, and not according to
man or human nature." Is it then possible that any one can more plainly
confess his speaking things contrary to himself than this man does, who
affirms those things which (he says) for their excellency seem to be
fictions and to be spoken above man and human nature, to be agreeable to
life, and most of all to reach the inbred prenotions?

In every one of his natural and ethical books, he asserts vice to be
the very essence of unhappiness; writing and contending that to live
viciously is the same thing as to live unhappily. But in his Third Book
of Nature, having said that it is profitable for a fool to live rather
than to die, though he is never to become wise, he subjoins: "For such
is the nature of good things among mortals, that evil things are in some
sort chosen before indifferent ones." I let pass therefore, that having
elsewhere said that nothing is profitable to fools, he here says that
to live foolishly is profitable to them. Now those things being by them
called indifferent which are neither bad nor good, when he says that bad
things precede them, he says nothing else but that evil things precede
those that are not evil, and that to be unhappy is more profitable than
not to be unhappy; and if so, he esteems not to be unhappy to be
more unprofitable--and if more unprofitable, more hurtful--than to
be unhappy. Desiring therefore to mitigate this absurdity, he adds
concerning evils: "But it is not these evils that hav