De Finibus

by Cicero

Fourth Book

Chapter XV

But now you say that virtue cannot properly be established, if those things which are external to virtue have any influence on living happily. But the exact contrary is the case. For virtue cannot possibly be introduced, unless everything which it chooses and which it neglects is all referred to one general end. For if we entirely neglect ourselves, we then fall into the vices and errors of Ariston, and shall forget the principles which we have attributed to virtue itself. But if we do not neglect those things, and yet do not refer them to the chief good, we shall not be very far removed from the trivialities of Herillus. For we shall have to adopt two different plans of conduct in life: for he makes out that there are two chief goods unconnected with each other; but if they were real goods, they ought to be united; but at present they are separated, so that they never can be united. But nothing can be more perverse than this. Therefore, the fact is exactly contrary to your assertion: for virtue cannot possibly be established firmly, unless it maintains those things which are the principles of nature as having an influence on the object. For we have been lookingfor a virtue which should preserve nature, not for one which should abandon it. But that of yours, as you represent it, preserves only one part, and abandons the rest.

And, indeed, if the custom of man could speak, this would be its language. That its first beginnings were, as it were, beginnings of desire that it might preserve itself in that nature in which it had been born. For it had not yet been sufficiently explained what nature desired above all things. Let it therefore be explained. What else then will be understood but that no part of nature is to be neglected? And if there is nothing in it besides reason, then the chief good must be in virtue alone. But if there is also body, then will that explanation of nature have caused us to abandon the belief which we held before the explanation. Is it, then, being in a manner suitable to nature to abandon nature? As some philosophers do, when having begun with the senses they have seen something more important and divine, and then abandoned the senses; so, too, these men, when they had beheld the beauty of virtue developed in its desire for particular things, abandoned everything which they had seen for the sake of virtue herself, forgetting that the whole nature of desirable things was so extensive that it remained from beginning to end; and they do not understand that they are taking away the very foundations of these beautiful and admirable things.


Fourth Book, Chapter XVI


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