Hence proceed all things that are beautiful, honorable, and excellent, as I said above (but this point must, I think, be treated of more at large), and they are well stored with joys.

For, as it is clear that a happy life consists in perpetual and unexhausted pleasures, it follows, too, that a happy life must arise from honesty.
XXIV.

But that what I propose to demonstrate to you may not rest on mere words only, I must set before you the picture of something, as it were, living and moving in the world, that may dispose us more for the improvement of the understanding and real knowledge.

Let us, then, pitch upon some man perfectly acquainted with the most excellent arts; let us present him for awhile to our own thoughts, and figure him to our own imaginations.

In the first place, he must necessarily be of an extraordinary capacity; for virtue is not easily connected with dull minds.