_A._ Clear enough; but should there be occasion for a more exact
inquiry, I shall take another opportunity of asking you. I expect you
now to hoist your sails, as you just now called them, and proceed on
your course.

XV. _M._ Since I have spoken before of virtue in other places, and
shall often have occasion to speak again (for a great many questions
that relate to life and manners arise from the spring of virtue); and
since, as I say, virtue consists in a settled and uniform affection of
mind, making those persons praiseworthy who are possessed of her, she
herself also, independent of anything else, without regard to any
advantage, must be praiseworthy; for from her proceed good
inclinations, opinions, actions, and the whole of right reason; though
virtue may be defined in a few words to be right reason itself. The
opposite to this is viciousness (for so I choose to translate what the
Greeks call [Greek: kakia], rather than by perverseness; for
perverseness is the name of a particular vice; but viciousness includes
all), from whence arise those perturbations which, as I just now said,
are turbid and violent motions of the mind, repugnant to reason, and
enemies in a high degree to the peace of the mind and a tranquil life,
for they introduce piercing and anxious cares, and afflict and
debilitate the mind through fear; they violently inflame our hearts
with exaggerated appetite, which is in reality an impotence of mind,
utterly irreconcilable with temperance and moderation, which we
sometimes call desire, and sometimes lust, and which, should it even
attain the object of its wishes, immediately becomes so elated that it
loses all its resolution, and knows not what to pursue; so that he was
in the right who said "that exaggerated pleasure was the very greatest
of mistakes." Virtue, then, alone can effect the cure of these evils.