Ethics 251
maintain, Lucilius, that the good is not found in just any body, nor in
just any age; it is as far from the state of infancy as the last is from the
first and as the perfect is from its starting point; so it is not found in a
young body, still immature and in the process of formation. Of course
it is not found there, any more than it is found in the seed!
- You could put it like this: we are familiar with the good in a tree
or a plant: it does not lie in the first sprouts which are just breaking the
soil as they sprout. There is something good in a stalk of wheat, but it
is not yet present in the sappy sprout nor when the tender ear [first]
emerges from the husk, but when it ripens with the heat of summer and
its proper maturity. Just as every nature refuses to bring forth its good
until it is finished, so too man's good is not present in man until his
reason is perfected. 12. But what is this good? I shall say: a free and
upright mind, superior to other things and inferior to nothing. So far is
infancy from having this good that childhood does not hope for it, and
adolescence is wrong to hope for it. We are lucky if it comes with old
age as a result of long and serious effort. If this is what is good, it is
also intelligible.
- He says, "You said that there was a certain [kind of] good which
belongs to a tree and to a plant; so there can also be a certain [kind of]
good in an infant." The true good is not in trees or dumb animals; what
is good in them is called good by courtesy. "What is this?" you say.
[Merely] that which is in accord with the nature of each. But the good
can in no way apply to a dumb animal; it belongs to a happier and better
nature. Where there is no room for reason, there is no good. 14. There
are these four kinds of natures: that of a tree, of an animal, of a man
and of a god. The latter two are rational and have the same nature and
differ [only] in that the one is immortal and the other mortal. Nature
perfects the goodness of one of these, i.e., god, while effort perfects the
goodness of the other, i.e., man. The others, which lack reason, are
perfect in their own natures, but not really perfect. For in the final analysis
the only thing which is perfect is that which is perfect in accordance with
universal nature; and universal nature is rational. The other things can
[only] be perfect in their own kind. 15. And in this there cannot exist a
happy life, nor that which produces a happy life. But a happy life is
produced by good things. In a dumb animal the happy life does not exist, is produced: the good does not
exist in a dumb animal.
- A dumb animal grasps what is present by its senses; it remembers
past events when it meets with something which reminds its senses, as
a horse is reminded of the road when it is placed at its starting point.
But when in the stable he has no recollection of the road, no matter how
