ARKCODEX
The Consolation of Philosophy
1The song was finished. Its sweetness had nailed me to the spot, ears lifted, hungry for more, struck dumb with wonder. After a moment I spoke. "O highest comfort of exhausted souls! You have restored me — with the weight of your thoughts, and with the pure pleasure of your singing. I no longer believe I am any match for fortune's blows." The remedies you called somewhat harsh — I do not dread them. I am burning to hear them. I demand them." Then she said: "I knew it. I watched you drinking in my words in silent, fixed attention. I waited for that state of mind in you — or rather, to tell the truth, I produced it myself. What remains is like this: it bites on first taste. But once it goes deeper, it turns sweet." "You say you are eager to hear. But how fierce would your longing be if you knew where I am taking you?" "Where?" I asked. "To true happiness," she said. "Your own soul dreams of it. But your sight is captured by images. It cannot see the thing itself." Then I said: "Show me, I beg you. Show me without delay what that happiness is." "I will," she said, "gladly, for your sake. But I will begin with what you already know. I will mark it out in words. I will set it before you clearly. Then, when you turn your eyes the other way, you will be able to recognize true happiness for what it is."
2A farmer who wants to work good land Clears the fields of scrub first. He cuts back the brambles and bracken with his blade So that Ceres walks heavy with a new harvest. The work of bees tastes sweeter When the mouth has first known bitterness. The stars shine more graciously When the South Wind stops its drumming rain. When the Morning Star has driven back the dark Beautiful Day rides out on her rose-red horses. You too must first look clearly at your false goods. Begin to pull your neck back from the yoke. Then the true goods will enter your soul.
3She paused for a moment. Her gaze dropped inward. She gathered herself into the high seat of her own mind and began to speak. Every mortal concern. Every effort of every kind of striving. Each takes a different road. Yet all of them press toward the single destination of happiness. Happiness is the good beyond which nothing further can be desired. It is the highest of all goods. It contains all other goods within itself. If anything were missing from it, it could not be the highest. Something outside it could still be wished for. Happiness, then, is clearly a state made perfect by the gathering of all good things together. All mortals strive toward this state. They take different paths. A desire for the true good is planted naturally in the human mind. But error leads most of them astray toward what is false. Some believe the highest good is to need nothing. They exhaust themselves accumulating wealth. Others believe the highest good is what most deserves reverence. They pursue honors so their fellow citizens will look up to them. Some locate the highest good in power. They either want to rule themselves or attach themselves to those who do. Others are drawn to fame above everything. They race to make their names glorious through the arts of war or peace. Most people measure the fruit of the good in pleasure and joy. They consider the happiest life to be one overflowing with delight. Some mix these ends together and trade one for another. Some want wealth for the sake of power and pleasure. Some want power for the sake of money or a celebrated name. This is where human ambition turns. These are what human desires orbit. Noble birth and popular approval seem to offer a kind of glory. A wife and children are sought for the joy they bring. True friendship is the most sacred of these goods. It belongs not to fortune but to virtue. Everything else among them is pursued either for power or for pleasure. The goods of the body follow the same pattern clearly enough. Strength and size seem to promise vigor. Beauty and speed bring fame. Good health brings pleasure. In every case the only thing actually being sought is happiness. Whatever a person pursues above all else they judge to be the highest good. But we have defined the highest good as happiness. So whatever state a person desires above all others is the state they judge to be blessed. There before your eyes is the shape of human happiness as people imagine it. Wealth. Honor. Power. Glory. Pleasure. Looking at these alone, Epicurus concluded logically enough that pleasure was the highest good. All the others seem to bring delight to the mind in the end. But I return to the strivings of men. Even through the fog of a clouded memory the human mind reaches back toward its own good. It is like a drunk man who cannot remember the way home. Are those who strive to need nothing really mistaken? Nothing else can complete happiness so well as a state rich in all goods. A state that depends on nothing outside itself. A state that is fully sufficient in itself. Are those mistaken who believe the highest good is also most worthy of reverence? Not at all. What nearly every mortal labors to obtain is not something cheap or contemptible. Should power not be counted among the good things? Consider. Can something that stands above all other things really be thought weak and feeble? Should glory be counted as nothing? It cannot be separated from excellence. Whatever is most excellent will always appear most glorious. There is no need to argue that happiness is free from anxiety and grief and pain. Even in the smallest things people seek only what gives pleasure to have and to enjoy. These are exactly the things people want. This is why they desire wealth and rank and kingdoms and fame and pleasure. They believe these things will bring them sufficiency. Reverence. Power. Renown. Joy. The good, then, is what all these different human strivings are actually reaching for. How great the force of nature is becomes clear in this. However much people disagree. However different their opinions. In the love of the good as their final aim they are all agreed.
4It pleases me to sing, with slow strings and sharp melody, of how mighty Nature holds and guides the reins of things. How she governs the vast universe with foresight and by law. How she binds each part of creation in a knot that cannot be undone. Though Carthaginian lions wear fine chains. Though they eat from human hands and fear the rough trainer who beats them. Let a drop of blood touch those savage mouths. The old spirit returns at once. They remember what they are with a deep roar. The collars slip from loosened necks. The tamer is the first to fall — torn apart, soaked in blood — as the fury he awakened swallows him whole. The chattering bird that sings among high branches is shut inside a cage. Let men tend her with delight. Let them soak her cup in honey and set out generous food. Yet if she springs against the woven bars and catches a glimpse of beloved forest shade. She tramples her scattered food beneath her feet. She wants nothing but the woods. She murmurs for the woods in her sweet voice. A branch bent down by great force bows its tip toward the ground. Let the hand that curved it go. It springs back and looks straight up at the sky. The sun sinks into the western waves. But by a hidden road he turns his chariot back to where he always rises. Everything returns to its own course. Each thing rejoices in its own return. Nothing holds to any order given to it from outside. Unless that order joins the end back to the beginning. Unless it makes of itself a circle that holds.
5You earthly creatures also dream of your origin, even if only in the faintest outline. You catch some glimpse of true happiness as your final destination, even if your sight barely reaches it. Natural instinct draws you toward the true good. Yet every kind of error pulls you away from it. Consider whether the things people believe will bring them happiness can actually get them there. If wealth or status or anything like them could deliver what they seem to promise — if nothing seemed missing from the life they offered — then we would have to admit that some people do find happiness by gaining these things. But if they cannot deliver what they promise. If they fall short in many important ways. Then surely the happiness they appear to offer is exposed as a lie. So let me begin with you. Not long ago you were swimming in wealth. I ask you this: among all that abundance, did you never feel your mind thrown into turmoil by some injury or anxiety? I cannot remember a time, he said, when my mind was at ease and free from some new worry. Was that because something was missing that you did not want to be missing. Or because something was present that you did not want to be there? Both, he said. So you were longing for one thing to arrive and another to go away? Yes, he said. And a person who longs for something lacks it? They do, he said. And whoever lacks something is not fully self-sufficient? No, he said. So you, surrounded by riches, were still living with that lack? What else could I say but yes? Wealth, then, cannot make a person free from need or sufficient in themselves. And yet that is exactly what it appeared to promise. There is something else I think we must look at carefully. Money by its very nature has no power to prevent itself from being taken by force from those who hold it. I cannot deny it, he said. How could you deny it? Every day someone stronger seizes it from an unwilling owner. What else fills the courts with complaints? People cry out because their money has been torn from them by violence or by fraud. True, he said. So a person needs outside help just to protect what they own? Who would argue otherwise? And yet they would need no such help if they owned nothing they could lose. That cannot be disputed. So things have turned out the opposite of what was expected. Wealth, which was supposed to make people self-sufficient, makes them dependent on others instead. And what exactly is the way that wealth removes need? Can the rich not go hungry? Can they not go thirsty? Do the cold months spare the bodies of the wealthy? You will say that the rich have the means to satisfy hunger and drive away thirst and cold. That is true. But this means poverty can be eased by riches. It cannot be removed entirely. For if this gap is always open and always crying out to be filled, there will always be a need waiting to be satisfied. I say nothing of the fact that nature asks for very little. Greed is never satisfied by anything. So if wealth cannot drive away need and in fact creates its own kind of need — why would you ever believe that wealth can give you sufficiency?
6Though a greedy man grows rich as gold pours in like a flood. Though he drives himself to pile up wealth that will never satisfy him. Though he hangs pearls from the shores of the Red Sea around his neck. Though he breaks open his fat fields with a hundred oxen. Gnawing anxiety will not leave him while he lives. And when he dies, his weightless riches will not follow him.
7Titles and offices may make a person seem honorable and respected. But do they actually have the power to plant virtues in the minds of those who hold them? Do they drive out vice? In fact, they tend not to hide wickedness but to shine a light on it. This is why we feel outrage when the worst people receive high honors. This is why Catullus, though Nonius sat in the curule chair, still called him a tumor. Do you see how much disgrace high office can heap upon the wicked? Their unworthiness would be less visible if no honors brought them into the light. Could you yourself really be persuaded, after all the dangers you faced, to think it worthwhile to hold office alongside Decoratus — when you could see clearly that his mind was that of a vile jester and an informer? We cannot judge men worthy of respect because of their honors when we have already judged them unworthy of those very honors. But if you saw a man endowed with wisdom, could you think him undeserving of respect — or undeserving of the wisdom he actually possesses? Of course not. Virtue carries its own dignity within itself. It pours that dignity immediately into those it touches. Because public offices cannot do this, it is clear they hold no true beauty of dignity in themselves. There is something further worth noting here. If a man is made more contemptible the more people look down on him, then honors — by putting the wicked on display before more people — make them more despised, not more revered. But the wicked do not escape without cost. They repay dignity in kind by staining it with their corruption. And here is proof that true reverence cannot be manufactured through these shadowy honors: if a man who has held the consulship many times were to find himself among foreign peoples, would that honor make him worthy of reverence in their eyes? If dignity were a natural property of office, it would never fail in its effect wherever men are found. Fire never stops giving heat anywhere on earth. But because the power of honors comes not from themselves but from the shifting opinions of men, it vanishes the moment they reach those who place no value on it. But this is among foreign peoples. Among those where these honors were born — do they even last there? The praetorship was once a great power. Now it is an empty name. The office of senatorial tax assessment is now only a heavy burden. Once, whoever oversaw the grain supply for the people was considered great. Now that prefecture is among the most contemptible of posts. As we said a moment ago, what has no dignity of its own borrows its luster from opinion — and loses it by the same means. If honors cannot make men worthy of reverence. If they are freely soiled by contact with the wicked. If they cease to shine with the passage of time. If they lose all worth in the eyes of different peoples. Then what beauty worth desiring do they hold within themselves — let alone offer to others?
8Though Nero adorned himself with Tyrian purple and gleaming white jewels, he was hated by everyone, even as he thrived in his savage excess. Yet that shameless man once handed out the honored chairs of state to unworthy senators. Who then could call those men blessed, when their honors came from a wretch?
9Can royal power and the friendship of kings truly make a man powerful? Why not — as long as their happiness lasts forever. But history is full of examples. Our own age is full of them too. Kings who traded happiness for ruin. What glorious power this is — power that cannot even preserve itself. If royal power is the source of happiness, then wherever that power falls short, it must diminish happiness and bring misery in. Yet however wide human empires stretch, there will always be peoples that any given king does not rule. Wherever power stops making men blessed, helplessness moves in and makes them wretched. Kings, therefore, must carry a greater share of misery than anyone. One tyrant, who knew the dangers of his own fate, captured the terror of that condition in an image — a sword hanging over a man's head. What kind of power is this, that cannot drive out the bite of anxiety or escape the sting of fear? These men would have chosen to live in safety. They cannot. And yet they boast of their power. Do you call a man powerful when you can see him wanting what he cannot achieve? Do you call him powerful when he surrounds himself with bodyguards, when he fears the very people he terrifies, when his appearance of power rests entirely in the hands of those who serve him? Why should I even speak of the companions of kings, when I can show that kingdoms themselves are filled with such weakness? Royal power often destroys its own servants — sometimes while still standing, sometimes in its fall. Nero drove his close friend and teacher Seneca to choose his own manner of death. Antoninus threw Papinian, long powerful at court, before the swords of soldiers. Both men had wanted to renounce their power. Seneca even tried to hand over his wealth to Nero and withdraw into quiet retirement. But the weight of what was falling dragged them both down. Neither achieved what he wanted. What kind of power is this — feared by those who hold it, unsafe to possess even when you want it, impossible to escape even when you long to lay it down? Do friends offer protection when it is fortune, not virtue, that brought them together? The friend that prosperity made, adversity will make an enemy. And what plague is more deadly than an enemy who knows you from the inside.
10You may want to be powerful. Then tame your fierce desires. Do not let lust defeat you. Do not bow your neck to its degrading reins. Let distant India tremble at your laws. Let farthest Thule serve you. Still, if you cannot drive away dark anxieties. If you cannot banish wretched grief. That is not power.
11How false glory often is. How shameful. A tragic poet cries out against it with good reason: *O glory, glory — you have swelled countless mortals into lives of great importance, when in truth they are nothing.* Many people have seized great reputations through nothing but the false opinions of the crowd. What could be more shameful than that? Those who are praised for things they never did must blush when they hear the applause. And even if glory is earned honestly, what does it really add to the inner life of a wise person? A wise person measures their good not by popular opinion but by the honest judgment of their own conscience. If spreading one's name seems admirable, then failing to spread it must seem disgraceful. But as I argued a moment ago, there are many peoples and nations that a single person's fame can never reach. The man you consider glorious is completely unknown across most of the earth. As for popular favor, I do not think it even deserves a mention. It arises without judgment. It never lasts. And as for the name of noble birth — who cannot see how empty and hollow it is? When nobility is traced back to distinction, that distinction belongs to someone else. Nobility appears to be a kind of praise that flows from the merits of one's ancestors. But if distinction comes from being praised, then it is the ancestors who must be considered distinguished — not you. Another person's fame cannot make you brilliant when you have none of your own. If there is any good in noble birth at all, I believe it is only this: those born into it feel bound not to fall short of the virtue of those who came before them.
12All of humanity rises from the same origin on this earth. There is one Father of all things. He provides everything. He gave the sun its rays. He gave the moon its horns. He placed human beings on the earth just as he placed the stars in the sky. He enclosed souls drawn down from their high dwelling place inside bodies of flesh. A noble seed therefore gave birth to every mortal alive. So why do you make all this noise about bloodlines and ancestors? If you look to your source and to God as your maker, not one person is base. It is only by nurturing vice and embracing what is worse that a man abandons what he truly is.
13What should I say about the pleasures of the body? The craving for them is full of anxiety. The satisfaction of them is full of regret. They repay those who indulge them with sickness. They repay them with unbearable pain. That is the fruit of self-indulgence. As for the pleasure of the act itself — I confess I do not know what joy it holds. Anyone who is willing to look back honestly on his own desires will understand this: the endings of pleasures are bitter. And if bodily pleasures could make a person truly happy, there would be no reason to deny that animals are happy too. Their entire existence is driven toward filling one physical need after another. The love of a good wife and children — yes, that is a beautiful thing. But someone once said, with more truth than comfort, that to have children is to have found a new source of torment. How sharp that torment can be in every possible circumstance — I need not remind you, for you have known it before, and you are living it now. On this point I stand with my beloved Euripides. He said that the person without children is fortunate in their misfortune.
14Every pleasure carries this within it. It drives those who enjoy it with its stings. Like a swarm of flying bees that pours out its sweet honey, it flees. And it strikes the heart that held on too tight, leaving a wound that bites deep.
15There is no doubt at all that these paths to happiness are dead ends. They cannot lead anyone to what they promise. I will show very briefly what a tangle of miseries they involve. Consider wealth. You will spend your life trying to gather it. But that means taking it from someone who has it. Say you want the glow of high office. You will have to go begging to whoever grants it. And you — who want to stand above everyone else in honor — will make yourself cheap through the humiliation of asking. Do you want power? You will be exposed to the plots of those beneath you. You will live under constant threat. Reach for fame? You are pulled in every direction through hardship after hardship. You forfeit all peace. Live for pleasure? Anyone with sense despises and dismisses a slave to something as worthless and breakable as the body. And those who parade their physical gifts — how slight. How fragile. The ground they stand on. Can you outmatch the elephant in size? The bull in strength? Can you outrun the tiger? Look up at the sky. Its vast reach. Its steadiness. Its speed. Then stop marveling at cheap things. The sky is worth marveling at — not for those qualities, but for the reason that governs it. As for physical beauty — how fast it goes. How quickly it passes. More fleeting than spring flowers in bloom. What if — as Aristotle says — people had the eyes of Lynceus, able to see straight through solid objects? They would look inside the body of Alcibiades, beautiful on the surface beyond all others. They would find it hideous. It is not your nature that makes you appear beautiful. It is the weakness of the eyes that look at you. Go ahead — prize your physical gifts as highly as you like. Just know this: whatever it is you are so busy admiring can be undone by three days of fever. From all of this, one conclusion stands. These so-called goods cannot deliver what they advertise. They are not made complete by gathering all of them together. They are not roads that carry us toward happiness. They do not make anyone happy.
16How far astray does ignorance lead wretched souls. You do not search for gold in the green tree. You do not pluck jewels from the vine. You do not hide snares on high mountains hoping to stock your table with fish. If you want to hunt the wild goat, you do not drag your nets through the Tyrrhenian sea. Men know the hidden depths beneath the waves. They know which waters yield the richest snow-white pearls. They know which shores are thick with scarlet shellfish. They know which coasts teem with tender fish or bristling sea-urchins. But the good they hunger for — where it lies hidden — this they are blind enough to bear not knowing. They sink themselves in the earth and dig for what has passed beyond the star-bearing sky. What curse is fitting for such dull minds? Let them chase wealth. Let them chase honor. And when they have heaped up all their false goods under their crushing weight — then let them discover what is truly good.
17That was enough to have shown you the shape of false happiness. Now, if you look at it clearly, the next step is to show you what true happiness is. 'I can see it,' I said. 'Wealth cannot bring sufficiency. Kingdoms cannot bring power. High office cannot bring respect. Fame cannot bring renown. And pleasure cannot bring joy.' 'But have you also grasped why this is so?' 'I seem to glimpse it,' I said, 'as if through a narrow crack. But I would rather hear it more fully from you.' 'The reasoning is straightforward. What is simple and undivided by nature, human error pulls apart. It drags us from the true and perfect toward the false and incomplete. Do you really think that something in need of nothing could lack power?' 'Not at all,' I said. 'You are right. For if something is weak in any respect, it must in that respect depend on outside help.' 'That is so,' I said. 'Then sufficiency and power share one and the same nature.' 'So it appears.' 'And something of this kind — do you think it deserves contempt, or is it rather the most worthy of all things of reverence?' 'That,' I said, 'cannot even be doubted.' 'Then let us add reverence to sufficiency and power, and judge these three to be one.' 'Let us add it — if we want to be honest about what we have found.' 'Well then,' she said, 'do you think this thing is obscure and unknown, or is it the most brilliant of all things in fame? Consider: what we have granted to be in need of nothing, supremely powerful, and most worthy of honor — could it possibly lack a glory it cannot provide for itself, and on that account seem in some way lesser?' 'I cannot help but admit,' I said, 'that it is also, just as it is, the most celebrated of things.' 'It follows, then, that we must acknowledge fame to be no different from the three things above.' 'It follows,' I said. 'What has no need of anything outside itself. What can do all things by its own strength. What is glorious and revered. Must this not also be the most joyful of things?' 'I cannot even begin to imagine,' I said, 'how any sorrow could creep into such a thing. And so, if everything said before holds firm, I must admit that it is full of joy.' 'Then by the same necessity, sufficiency, power, glory, reverence, and joy — though different in name — are in no way different in substance.' 'That is necessary,' I said. 'This thing, then, is one and simple by nature. Human perversity divides it. In straining to grasp a part of what has no parts, a person gains neither the portion that does not exist nor the whole they truly need.' 'How so?' I asked. 'Someone who pursues wealth to escape poverty,' she said, 'gives no thought to power. They choose to be lowly and unknown. They even strip themselves of many natural pleasures, so as not to lose the money they have gathered. But even sufficiency does not come to someone abandoned by strength, stung by anxiety, cast down by worthlessness, buried in obscurity. Someone who craves power alone squanders wealth, scorns pleasures, and counts honor and fame as nothing without dominion. But you can see how much this person too is lacking. There are times when they want for necessities. Anxieties gnaw at them. And when they cannot drive these away, they lose the very thing they sought most — their power. The same reasoning applies to honor, glory, and pleasure. Each of these is the same as all the rest. Whoever pursues one without the others does not even grasp the one they desire.' 'What then?' I asked. 'If someone desired all of them at once, they would be reaching for the fullness of happiness. But would they find it in these things — which we have shown cannot deliver what they promise?' 'No,' I said. 'Then happiness is nowhere to be sought in these things that seem to offer the separate goods one by one.' 'I agree,' I said. 'And nothing truer could be said.' 'There you have it,' she said — 'the shape of false happiness, and its causes. Now turn the gaze of your mind in the opposite direction. There you will see at once the true happiness I promised.' 'That much,' I said, 'is clear even to a blind man. You yourself showed it a moment ago, while trying to lay bare the causes of the false. For unless I am mistaken, true and perfect happiness is what makes a person sufficient, powerful, revered, celebrated, and joyful. And so that you know I have looked more deeply still — I recognize without any doubt that whatever can genuinely provide even one of these, since all of them are the same, is full happiness itself.' 'How blessed you are in this understanding, my student — if only you add one thing.' 'What thing?' I asked. 'Do you believe there is anything among mortal and perishable things that can bring about a state of this kind?' 'Nothing at all,' I said. 'And you have shown it so thoroughly that nothing more needs to be asked.' 'These earthly things, then, appear to offer mortals either images of the true good, or certain imperfect goods. But they cannot give the true and perfect good itself.' 'I agree,' I said. 'Since you have now recognized what true happiness is, and what things merely counterfeit it, one thing remains — to learn where you can go to find it.' 'That,' I said, 'is what I have been waiting urgently to hear.' 'But since, as our Plato says in the Timaeus, we ought to call upon divine help even in the smallest matters — what must we do now, so that we may deserve to find the dwelling place of that highest good?' 'We must invoke,' I said, 'the Father of all things. Without him, no beginning is rightly made.' 'You are right,' she said. And at once she sang.
18You who govern the universe with eternal reason. You who are the maker of earth and sky. You who command time to flow out of eternity. You who remain unmoved while setting all things in motion. No outside force compelled you to shape creation from the chaos of shifting matter. Instead, the form of the highest good planted within you. That form knows no envy. From it you draw all things down from your heavenly pattern. You yourself are beauty. You carry the beautiful world within your mind. You shape it in your own image. You command its perfect parts to fulfill a perfect whole. You bind the elements together in balance. Cold meets fire. Dry meets wet. The pure flame does not fly apart. The heavy earth does not sink and drag all things under. You weave the world-soul through all its moving parts. That soul holds the three natures together at its center. Divided, it gathers its movement into two great orbits. It turns back into itself. It circles the deep mind. It rolls the heavens in that same image. You draw up lesser souls and smaller lives from the same source. You place the highest among them in swift chariots. You scatter them across the sky and earth. By your merciful law you turn them back toward you. You call them home through purifying fire. Grant, Father, that my mind may rise to that high throne. Grant that I may look upon the fountain of the good. Grant that once that light is found I may fix the eyes of my soul on you. Scatter the clouds and the dead weight of this earthly mass. Blaze out in your splendor. You are the calm. You are the still rest of the faithful. To see you is the end. You are the beginning. The carrier. The guide. The road. The destination.
19You have now seen what incomplete happiness looks like and what perfect happiness looks like. So I think we must show where this perfect happiness actually lives. The first question I want to raise is this. Can the kind of good we just defined actually exist in the real world? We must not let an empty mental picture fool us into chasing something that has no substance beneath it. But that such a good exists — that it stands as the very fountain of all good things — cannot be denied. Everything we call imperfect is called imperfect because it falls short of something perfect. So wherever we find something imperfect in any category, something perfect must also exist in that same category. Take away the perfect, and you cannot even imagine where the imperfect could have come from. Nature does not begin from what is diminished and incomplete. It moves outward from what is whole and finished, and only then dissolves into these exhausted extremes. So if there exists, as we showed a moment ago, a fragile and imperfect form of happiness, then a solid and perfect happiness must exist as well. "That conclusion is absolutely firm and true," I said. "Now consider where it lives," she said. "Every human mind naturally grasps that God is the source of all things and that God is good. Since nothing better than God can be conceived, who would doubt that what has nothing better than it is good? Reason shows not only that God is good but that God is perfectly good. Without that, God could not be the source of all things. Something else possessing perfect goodness would then surpass God and would appear to be prior and more original. For it is clear that perfect things come before imperfect ones. So to keep the argument from running back forever, we must acknowledge that the highest God is filled completely with the highest and most perfect good. We have established that perfect good is true happiness. Therefore true happiness must be located in the highest God." "I accept that," I said, "and there is no way to contradict it." "But now," she said, "consider carefully how you prove what we have said — that the highest God is filled completely with the highest good." "How do you mean?" I asked. "Do not assume that the Father of all things received this highest good from outside himself. And do not assume that he holds it naturally yet separately, as though God who possesses it and the happiness he possesses were two different substances. If you think it came from outside, then whatever gave it would be greater than the one who received it. But we rightly declare him to be the most excellent of all things. And if instead it is naturally his yet rationally distinct from him — since we are speaking of God the source of all things — then let anyone who can explain who would have joined these two separate things together. Besides, whatever is different from a thing is simply not that thing. So whatever is different by its very nature from the highest good is not the highest good. And it would be impious to think that of the one who is established to have nothing greater than him. For nothing in all of nature can be better than its own source. Therefore whatever is the source of all things must by the truest reasoning be the highest good in its very substance." "Perfectly right," I said. "And we agreed that the highest good is happiness." "Yes," I said. "Then," she said, "we must confess that God is happiness itself." "I cannot resist what was established before," I said, "and I can see that this follows directly from it." "Look at this too," she said, "and see whether the same conclusion becomes even firmer. Two highest goods that are different from each other cannot both exist. Goods that differ from each other clearly are not the same good. So neither could be perfect, since each would be lacking what the other has. What is not perfect is plainly not the highest. Therefore things that are truly highest cannot differ from each other. Now, we have gathered that both happiness and God are the highest good. Therefore the highest happiness must itself be the highest divinity." "Nothing truer, nothing more firmly reasoned, nothing more worthy of God could be concluded," I said. "On top of all this," she said, "I will give you what geometers call a corollary — a bonus theorem that follows from what has been proved. Since people become happy by attaining happiness, and happiness is divinity itself, it is clear that people become happy by attaining divinity. Just as people become just by attaining justice and wise by attaining wisdom, so by the same logic those who attain divinity must become gods. Therefore every happy person is a god. By nature there is only one God. But nothing prevents there from being as many as you like by participation." "That is beautiful and precious," I said, "whether you prefer to call it a corollary or a bonus theorem." "And yet reason urges me to attach something even more beautiful to all of this." "What?" I asked. "Happiness appears to contain many things," she said. "Do all these things join together as one body of happiness through a variety of parts? Or is one of them the substance of happiness itself, and everything else refers back to it?" "I would like you to make that clear by naming the things themselves," I said. "We consider happiness to be good, do we not?" she said. "The highest good, in fact," I said. "Add this to all the rest," she said. "The same happiness is judged to be complete self-sufficiency. It is judged to be supreme power. It is judged to be reverence, fame, and joy. So here is the question. Are all these things — self-sufficiency, power, and the rest — parts of happiness, like limbs of a body? Or do they all point back to the good as their summit?" "I understand the question you are putting forward," I said, "but I want to hear your answer." "Take the distinction this way," she said. "If all these were parts of happiness, they would differ from each other. That is the nature of parts — distinct pieces composing one body. But we have shown that all these things are the same thing. So they are not parts at all. Otherwise happiness would appear to be composed of a single limb. Which is impossible." "That much is not in doubt," I said, "but I am waiting for the rest." "It is plain that everything else refers back to the good," she said. "Self-sufficiency is sought because it is judged to be good. Power is sought because it too is believed to be good. The same can be inferred about reverence, fame, and joy. The good is therefore the sum and the cause of everything worth desiring. What holds no real good within itself, and not even the appearance of one, cannot be desired in any way. On the other hand, even things that are not good by nature are still pursued if they seem to be, as though they truly were good. And so goodness is rightly believed to be the summit, the hinge, and the cause of everything people desire. Whatever is desired for the sake of something else — that further thing is what is most deeply wanted. A man who rides for the sake of his health does not truly want the motion of riding. He wants the effect, which is health. Since all things are sought for the sake of the good, it is the good itself that everyone desires, more than any particular thing. And we agreed that happiness is what everything else is ultimately sought for. Therefore happiness alone, in the same way, is what is truly sought. From this it appears plainly that the good and happiness are one and the same in substance." "I see no reason why anyone could disagree," I said. "And we have shown that God and true happiness are one and the same." "Yes," I said. "Then we may safely conclude that God's very substance is located in the good itself — and nowhere else."
20Come here, all of you, come together — you who are held captive. Deceitful desire binds you with its wicked chains. It dwells in the earth and makes its home in your minds. Here you will find rest from your labors. Here is a harbor, resting in calm and quiet. Here is the one open refuge for the wretched. Whatever the Tagus gives from its golden sands — whatever the Hermus offers from its glittering banks — whatever the Indus, neighbor to the burning sky, pours out, mixing bright gems with green — none of this brings light to the eyes. It buries the mind deeper into its own darkness. Whatever pleases and stirs the mind in this world — the earth has fed it from her lowest caves. But the splendor by which heaven is seen and lives — that light avoids the soul's dark ruin. Whoever can fix his gaze upon that light — will turn away from the bright rays of the sun itself.
21"I agree," I said. "Everything holds together through the strongest reasoning." Then she said, "How much would you value it, if you came to know what the good itself actually is?" "Beyond measure," I said. "Especially since knowing the good would mean knowing God as well." "I will make this clear through the truest reasoning," she said. "As long as what we established a moment ago still stands." "It stands." "Did we not show," she said, "that the things people chase after are not true and complete goods precisely because they differ from one another. When one is missing, the other cannot deliver a full and perfect good. The true good only comes into being when they are gathered into a single form and power. So that whatever gives sufficiency is also the same thing that gives power, reverence, fame, and joy. Unless all of these are one and the same thing, none of them deserves a place among the things worth seeking." "That has been demonstrated," I said. "And it cannot be doubted in any way." "So when these things are divided they are not good at all. But when they begin to be one thing, they become good. And does it not follow that they become good precisely by achieving unity?" "So it appears," I said. "But do you agree that everything which is good is good through participation in the good?" "Yes." "Then by the same reasoning you must agree that the one and the good are the same thing. For things whose natural effects are no different share the same substance." "I cannot deny it," I said. "Do you understand, then," she said, "that everything which exists continues to stand and persist for exactly as long as it remains one. And that it perishes and dissolves the moment it ceases to be one?" "How so?" I asked. "Consider living creatures," she said. "When soul and body come together and hold as one, we call the result an animal. But when that unity is dissolved by the separation of the two, it clearly perishes and is no longer an animal. The body itself, so long as it keeps its single form through the joining of its limbs, displays a recognizable human shape. But if the parts are pulled apart and scattered and the unity is broken, it ceases to be what it was. Run through everything else the same way, and it will be plain beyond doubt. Each thing persists as long as it is one. When it ceases to be one, it perishes." "The more I consider it," I said, "the more clearly I see this is so." "Is there anything," she said, "that acts according to its nature, abandons its drive to persist, and actually desires its own ruin and destruction?" "If I think about animals," I said, "which have some capacity to will and to refuse, I find nothing that throws away its drive to survive without being forced by some outside cause and rushes willingly toward death. Every living creature works to preserve its own life. It avoids death and destruction. But what I should say about plants and trees, and about things with no life at all, I honestly cannot tell." "But you need have no doubt about those either," she said, "once you look at how plants and trees grow in the places that suit them. In those places, their nature can thrive and they cannot easily dry up and perish. Some grow on plains, others on mountains. Some rise from marshes, others cling to rock. Some flourish in barren sand that would be fruitless for others. If someone tried to transplant them, they would wither. Nature gives each one what is fitting. And nature labors so that they do not perish while they are still able to remain. What of the way they all drink up food through their roots buried in the earth, drawing nourishment upward through the grain and spreading it through bark and wood? What of the way the softest part, like the pith, is always kept safe in the innermost place. Around it is the strength of the wood. And at the outermost edge, the bark stands like a patient defender against the harshness of the sky. How great is nature's care that everything is multiplied and spread through seed. All of this is, as anyone must know, designed not merely for survival in the short term but for the perpetuation of each kind, almost as if forever. And even the things believed to be without life — do they not each desire what is their own, in the same way? Why else does lightness carry flame upward and weight press earth downward, if not because those places and those movements suit each of them? Whatever is fitting to each thing preserves it. Whatever is hostile to it destroys it. Consider hard things like stones. They cling most stubbornly to their own parts and resist being easily broken apart. Fluid things like air and water give way easily to what divides them, but they swiftly flow back together again from whatever has cut them. And fire refuses to be cut at all. We are not speaking here of the deliberate movements of a conscious soul. We are speaking of natural drive. The way we digest food without thinking. The way we breathe in sleep without knowing it. Even in animals, the love of survival does not come from the will of the soul. It comes from the principles of nature. Often the will embraces death, which nature dreads, when causes compel it. And against that same nature, the will sometimes suppresses the work of generation — the one thing through which mortal life endures across time — even though nature always seeks it. So this love of self does not flow from animal impulse. It flows from natural drive. Providence gave to the things it created this greatest of all reasons for persisting: that they should naturally desire to remain for as long as they can. There is therefore nothing that gives you any room to doubt that all things which exist naturally seek the steadiness of permanence and flee destruction." "I confess," I said, "that I now see without any doubt what had seemed uncertain before." "What seeks to persist and remain," she said, "desires to be one. For once unity is removed, nothing will be left with any existence at all." "That is true," I said. "All things therefore desire unity," she said. I agreed. "But we have shown that unity itself is the same as the good." "Indeed we have." "All things therefore seek the good. And you may describe it this way: the good is what is desired by everything." "Nothing truer can be conceived," I said. "Either all things point to nothing and, stripped of a single summit, drift without a guide. Or if there is something toward which all things race, that will be the highest good of all." And she said, "How greatly I rejoice in you, my student. For you have fixed the very mark of central truth in your mind. And in this you have seen what you said a moment ago you did not know." "What?" I asked. "What the end of all things is," she said. "It is surely that which is desired by everything. And since we have concluded that this is the good, we must acknowledge that the good is the end of all things."
22Whoever searches deeply for truth with a focused mind. Whoever refuses to be led astray by false paths. Let that person turn inward. Let them gather their long-wandering thoughts and bend them back into stillness. Let them teach the mind that whatever it strains toward in the outside world. It already holds hidden within its own treasury. What the dark cloud of error long concealed. Will shine out more clearly than the sun itself. For the body does not extinguish every light when it brings its burden of forgetfulness upon the soul. The seed of truth clings fast within. It is stirred to life when the breath of learning fans it into flame. Why else do you judge rightly when questioned. Unless a living spark burns deep within the heart? And if the Muse of Plato sings what is true. Then what each person learns is only what they have forgotten.
23Then I said: "I strongly agree with Plato. You have now reminded me of two things I had lost. First, I lost my memory through the contamination of the body. Then I lost it again under the crushing weight of grief." She replied: "If you look back at what you have already granted, you will not be far from remembering what you admitted a moment ago that you did not know." "What was that?" I asked. "By what governance the world is ruled," she said. "I remember confessing my ignorance on that point," I said. "And I can already begin to see where you are heading. But I still want to hear it more plainly from you." "Not long ago," she said, "you were quite certain that this world is ruled by God." "I am still certain," I said. "I will never doubt it. And I will set out briefly the reasons that bring me to it. This world could never have been drawn from so many different and opposing parts into a single unified form, unless there were one who joined such different things together. And once joined, the very diversity of those conflicting natures would tear itself apart and pull everything to pieces, unless there were one who held together what he had bound. Nor would the fixed order of nature move forward as it does. Nor would the motions of things unfold so precisely in their places, their times, their causes, their distances, and their qualities, unless there were one who, himself remaining still, arranged all these varieties of change. Whatever this power is, by which created things hold together and are moved, I call it by the name that all people use. I call it God." Then she said: "Since this is how you think, I believe only a little work remains before you recover your happiness and return safely home. But let us look at what we have established. Did we not count self-sufficiency among the goods of blessedness? And did we not agree that God is blessedness itself?" "We did," I said. "Then," she said, "he will need nothing from outside himself to govern the world. If he lacked anything at all, he would not possess full self-sufficiency." "That follows necessarily," I said. "Then he governs all things through himself alone." "That cannot be denied," I said. "And God has been shown to be the Good itself." "I remember," I said. "Then he governs all things through the Good. For we agreed that he who rules everything is good. And this is the rudder and the helm by which the great mechanism of the world is kept stable and uncorrupted." "I agree entirely," I said. "And I glimpsed, even if dimly, that this was where you were going." "I believe it," she said. "You are bringing sharper eyes now to the seeing of truth. But what I am about to say is no less open to view." "What is that?" I asked. "God is rightly believed to steer all things with the helm of goodness," she said. "And all things, as I have shown, move by their own nature toward the good. Can it then be doubted that they are governed willingly? That they turn of their own accord toward the one who orders them, fitted to their ruler and in harmony with him?" "So it must be," I said. "A reign could hardly be called blessed if it were a yoke that the unwilling endured, rather than the salvation of those who freely obeyed." "Then nothing that keeps its true nature strains against God." "Nothing," I said. "And if anything were to strain against him," she said, "could it succeed against the one whom we have rightly granted to be supremely powerful through blessedness?" "It could accomplish nothing whatsoever," I said. "Then there is nothing that either wishes or is able to resist this highest Good." "I think not," I said. "Then," she said, "the highest Good is that which governs all things. It rules with strength. It orders with gentleness." Then I said: "What delight you give me. Not only in the conclusion your reasoning has reached, but far more in the very words you use. At last I feel ashamed of the folly that has torn me apart so long." "You have heard the old stories," she said, "of the Giants who made war on heaven. But that kind of boldness too was put in its proper place by a power both strong and kind. Would you like us now to strike these arguments against each other? Perhaps from that collision a beautiful spark of truth will fly out." "As you think best," I said. "No one of sound mind has ever doubted that God is all-powerful," she said. "No one who thinks clearly could doubt it for a moment," I said. "And one who is all-powerful," she said, "can do anything whatsoever." "Anything," I said. "Can God then do evil?" "No," I said. "Then evil is nothing," she said. "For the one who can do all things cannot do it." "Are you playing with me?" I asked. "Are you weaving an inescapable labyrinth of arguments, where the way in becomes the way out and the way out becomes the way in? Or are you folding together some wondrous circle of divine simplicity? A moment ago you began with blessedness. You said it was the highest Good. You placed it in God himself. You argued that God is the highest Good and blessedness in its fullness. From that you offered, almost as a small gift, that no one could be blessed unless he were God as well. Then you said that the very form of the Good is the substance of God and of blessedness. And you taught that the one Good is the single thing sought by all of nature. Then you argued that God governs the whole of things with the helm of goodness. That all things obey willingly. That evil has no nature at all. And you unfolded all of this without borrowing from anything outside. Each proof drew its force from the one before it. Everything came from within." Then she said: "I am not playing. We have accomplished, by the gift of God himself, the greatest thing of all. For this is the form of the divine substance: it does not flow outward into external things. It does not receive anything external into itself. But as Parmenides said of it: like the mass of a well-rounded sphere on every side, it rolls the moving orb of all things around itself while it remains motionless at the center. And if our arguments too were drawn not from outside but from within the very subject we were examining, there is no cause for wonder. You have learned, on the authority of Plato, that the words we speak must be kindred to the things we speak of.
24Happy is the one who could see The clear and shining source of good. Happy is the one who could break The heavy chains of earthly life. The Thracian poet once stood weeping Over the death of his wife. With his music of grief he had made The wandering forests stand still. He had made the rivers stop flowing. He had made the fearless deer Walk alongside the savage lion. The hare no longer feared the hound Made gentle by his song. But when a fiercer burning Was consuming him from within. When the very songs that had mastered all things Could no longer comfort their master. He cried out against the unmoved gods above And descended into the house of the dead. There he shaped his music Into tender, ringing melodies. He poured out everything he had drawn From the deep springs of his divine mother. He poured out what grief without measure gives. He poured out what love gives when it doubles grief. He shook the gates of the underworld with his mourning. He asked the lords of shadow For mercy with his sweet prayer. The three-headed gatekeeper stood frozen. He was taken captive by the strange new song. The goddesses of vengeance who drive the guilty Through terror and torment Now sat in sorrow. Their faces were wet with tears. Ixion's head was not hurled down By the flying wheel. Tantalus was destroyed by his long thirst Yet for a moment he let the waters pass. While the music filled him the vulture Left off tearing the liver of Tityus. At last the judge of shadows spoke with pity. "We are defeated," he said. "We give the man his companion back. His wife is bought by his song. But one law binds this gift. While he is leaving Tartarus He must not turn his eyes. Who can give law to lovers. Love is its own greater law." Then at the very edge of night Orpheus looked back at his Eurydice. He saw her. He lost her. He killed her. This story is meant for you. For all of you who seek To lead your minds into the light of the world above. The one who is overcome And turns his eyes toward the pit of Tartarus. Loses whatever is most precious The moment he looks back into the dark.