man consider it aright, and contain himself when he hath done, and
not ramble and prate idly about it. Oh, the rare satisfaction and
felicity these men enjoy, that can thus rejoice for having
undergone no evil and endured neither sorrow nor pain! Have they
not reason, think you, to value themselves for such things as
these, and to speak as they are wont when they style themselves
immortals and equals to gods?--and when, through the excessiveness
and transcendency of the blessed things they enjoy, they rave even
to the degree of whooping and hollowing for very satisfaction that,
to the shame of all mortals, they have been the only men that could
find out this celestial and divine good that lies in an exemption
from all evil? So that their beatitude differs little from that of
swine and sheep, while they place it in a mere tolerable and
contented state, either of the body, or of the mind upon the body's
account. For even the more prudent and more ingenious sort of
brutes do not esteem escaping of evil their last end; but when they
have taken their repast, they are disposed next by fullness to
singing, and they divert themselves with swimming and flying;
and their gayety and sprightliness prompt them to entertain
themselves with attempting to counterfeit all sorts of voices and
notes; and then they make their caresses to one another, by
skipping and dancing one towards another; nature inciting them,
after they have escaped evil, to look after some good, or rather to
shake off what they find uneasy and disagreeing, as an impediment
to their pursuit of something better and more congenial.

For what we cannot be without deserves not the name of good;
but that which claims our desire and preference must be something
beyond a bare escape from evil. And so, by Jove, must that be too
that is either agreeing or congenial to us, according to Plato, who