accuracy, as well as from your frequent conversation, that you are
clearly of this opinion, that virtue is of itself sufficient for a
happy life: and though it may be difficult to prove this, on account of
the many various strokes of fortune, yet it is a truth of such a nature
that we should endeavor to facilitate the proof of it. For among all
the topics of philosophy, there is not one of more dignity or
importance. For as the first philosophers must have had some inducement
to neglect everything for the search of the best state of life: surely,
the inducement must have been the hope of living happily, which
impelled them to devote so much care and pains to that study. Now, if
virtue was discovered and carried to perfection by them, and if virtue
is a sufficient security for a happy life, who can avoid thinking the
work of philosophizing excellently recommended by them, and undertaken
by me? But if virtue, as being subject to such various and uncertain
accidents, were but the slave of fortune, and were not of sufficient
ability to support herself, I am afraid that it would seem desirable
rather to offer up prayers, than to rely on our own confidence in
virtue as the foundation for our hope of a happy life. And, indeed,
when I reflect on those troubles with which I have been so severely
exercised by fortune, I begin to distrust this opinion; and sometimes
even to dread the weakness and frailty of human nature, for I am afraid
lest, when nature had given us infirm bodies, and had joined to them
incurable diseases and intolerable pains, she perhaps also gave us
minds participating in these bodily pains, and harassed also with
troubles and uneasinesses, peculiarly their own. But here I correct
myself for forming my judgment of the power of virtue more from the
weakness of others, or of myself perhaps, than from virtue itself: for
she herself (provided there is such a thing as virtue; and your uncle
Brutus has removed all doubt of it) has everything that can befall
mankind in subjection to her; and by disregarding such things, she is