rts of philosophy as we esteem them." Why, then (might some
one say to him), do you never cease to oppose and argue against such
and so great men, as if you thought them to err in the principal and
greatest matters? For it is not probable that they writ seriously of
dialectics, and only transitorily and in sport of the beginning, end,
gods, and justice, in which you affirm their discourse to be blind and
contradictory to itself, and to have a thousand other faults.

In one place he says, that the vice called [Greek omitted], or the
rejoicing at other men's harms, has no being; since no good man ever
rejoiced at another's evils. But in his Second Book of Good, having
declared envy to be a sorrow at other men's good,--to wit, in such as
desire the depression of their neighbors that themselves may excel, he
joins to it this rejoicing at other men's harms, saying thus: "To this
is contiguous the rejoicing at other men's harms, in such as for like
causes desire to have their neighbors low; but in those that are
turned according to other natural motions, is engendered mercy." For he
manifestly admits the joy at other men's harms to be subsistent, as
well as envy and mercy; though in other places he affirms it to have no
subsistence; as he does also the hatred of wickedness, and the desire of
dishonest gain.

Having in many places said, that those who have a long time been happy
are nothing more so, but equally and in like manner with those who have
but a moment been partakers of felicity, he has again in many other
places affirmed, that it is not fit to stretch out so much as a finger
for the obtaining momentary prudence, which flies away like a flash of
lightning. It will be sufficient to set down what is to this purpose
written by him in his Sixth Book of Moral Questions. For having said,
that neither does every good thing equally cause joy, nor every good
deed the like glorying, he subjoins these words: "For if a man should
have wisdom only for a moment of time or the final minute of life, he
ought not so much as to stretch out his finger for such a shortlived
prudence." And yet men are neither more happy for being longer so, nor
is eternal felicity more eligible than that which lasts but a moment.
If he had indeed held prudence to be a good, producing felicity, as
Epicurus thought, one should have blamed only the absurdity and the
paradoxicalness of this opinion; but since prudence of itself is not
another thing differin