We live from hand to mouth, and say anything that strikes our mind with probability, so that we are the only people who are really at liberty.

But, since I just now spoke of consistency, I do not think the inquiry in this place is, if the opinion of Zeno and his pupil Aristo be true that nothing is good but what is honorable; but, admitting that, then, whether the whole of a happy life can be rested on virtue alone.

Wherefore, if we certainly grant Brutus this, that a wise man is always happy, how consistent he is, is his own business; for who, indeed, is more worthy than himself of the glory of that opinion?
Still, we may maintain that such a man is more happy than any one else.
XII.

Though Zeno the Cittiaean, a stranger and an inconsiderable coiner of words, appears to have insinuated himself into the old philosophy; still, the prevalence of this opinion is due to the authority of Plato, who often makes use of this expression, "That nothing but virtue can be entitled to the name of good," agreeably to what Socrates says in Plato's Gorgias; for it is there related that when some one asked him if he did not think Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, who was then looked upon as a most fortunate person, a very happy man, "I do not know," replied he, "for I never conversed with him." "What! is there no other way you can know it by ?" "None at all." "You cannot, then, pronounce of the great king of the Persians whether he is happy or not ?" "How can I, when I do not know how learned or how good a man he is ?" "What! do you imagine that a happy life depends on that ?" "My opinion entirely is, that good men are happy, and the wicked miserable." "Is Archelaus, then, miserable ?" "Certainly, if unjust." Now, does it not appear to you that he is here placing the whole of a happy life in virtue alone?
But what does the same man say in his funeral oration?
"For," saith he, "whoever has everything that relates to a happy life so entirely dependent on himself as not to be connected with the good or bad fortune of another, and not to be affected by, or made in any degree uncertain by, what befalls another; and whoever is such a one has acquired the best rule of living; he is that moderate, that brave, that wise man, who submits to the gain and loss of everything, and especially of his children, and obeys that old precept; for he will never be too joyful or too sad, because he depends entirely upon himself." XIII.

From Plato, therefore, all my discourse shall be deduced, as if from some sacred and hallowed fountain.