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PART 1 OF 2
THE FRAGMENTS OF ARCHYTAS
ARCHYTAS OF TARENTUM (first half of the fourth century B.C.E.) was a student of Philolaus and a personal friend of Plato, who came to visit him in 388 B.C.E. He made a major contribution to harmonic theory, was engaged in mathematical studies, and was the first to solve the geometrical problem of doubling the volume of the cube.
Like Pythagoras himself, Archytas was also involved in political affairs; he was quite well liked in this capacity, being elected chief magistrate of Tarentum for seven terms though the law, which was waived in his favor, allowed for a maximum of one term. Archytas also seems to have had a knack for practical inventions: he is said to have created a mechanical pigeon, made of wood, which flew, and Aristotle refers to another well-known invention, Archytas' rattle, "which they give to children so that by using it they may refrain from breaking things about the house; for young things cannot keep still."
With the exception of the mathematical fragments and a few others, the fragments of Archytas are not considered genuine. For example, "The Ten Categories of Archytas" are obviously indebted to Aristotelian thought rather than vice versa. Nonetheless, even though not written by Archytas himself, some of the other fragments are quite valuable, especially the ethical ones. The correspondence between Plato and Archytas, reproduced below in the biography from Diogenes Laertius, is thought to be spurious.
For more on Archytas see Freeman's Companion to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, section 47, and Guthrie's History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, 333 ff.
THE LIFE OF ARCHYTAS
FROM DIOGENES LAERTIUS
ARCHYTAS OF TARENTUM, son of Mnesagoras, or of Hestius, according to Aristoxenus, also was a Pythagorean. It was he who, by a letter, saved Plato from the death threatened by Dionysius. He possessed all the virtues, so that, being the admiration of the crowd, he was seven times named general, in spite of the law which prohibited reelection after one year. Plato wrote him two letters, in response to this one of Archytas:
"Greetings. It is fortunate for you that you have recovered from your illness, for I have heard of it not only from you, but also from Lamiscus. I have busied myself about those notes, and took a trip into Lucania, where I met descendants of Ocellus. I have in my possession the treatises On Law and On Kingship, On Sanctity, and On the Origin of All Things, and I am sending them to you. The others could not be discovered. Should they be found, they will be sent to you."
Plato answered:
"Greetings. I am delighted to have received the works which you have sent me, and I acknowledge a great admiration for him who wrote them. He seems to be worthy of his ancient and glorious ancestors, who are said to be from Myra, and among the number of those Trojans who emigrated under the leadership of Laomedon, all worthy people, as the legend proves. Those works of mine about which you wrote me are not in a sufficient state of perfection, but I send them such as they are. Both of us are in perfect agreement on the subject of protecting them. No use to renew the request. May your health improve!"
Such are these two letters.
There were four Archytases: the first, of whom we have just spoken; the second, from Mytilene, was a musician; the third wrote On Agriculture; the fourth is an author of epigrams. Some mention a fifth, an architect, who left a treatise On Mechanics, beginning as follows: "This book contains what I have been taught by Teucer of Carthage. " The musician is said to have made this joke: on being reproached for not advertising himself more, he said "It is my instrument which speaks for me."
Aristoxenus claims that the philosopher Archytas was never defeated during his command. Once, overcome by envy, he had been obliged to resign his command, and his fellow-citizens were immediately conquered. He was the first who methodically applied the principles of mathematics to mechanics; who imparted an organic motion to a geometric figure, by the section of the semi-cylinder seeking two means that would be proportional, in order to double the cube. [1] He also first, by geometry, discovered the properties of the cube, as Plato records in the Republic (528 B).
THE FRAGMENTS OF ARCHYTAS
1. Metaphysical Fragments
1. There are necessarily two principles of beings: the one contains the series of beings organized, and finished; the other, contains unordered and unfinished beings. That one which is susceptible of being expressed, by speech, and which can be explained, embraces both beings, and determines and organizes the nonbeing.
For every time that it approaches the things of becoming, it orders them, and measures them, and makes them participate in the essence and form of the universal. On the contrary, the series of beings which escapes speech and reason, injures ordered things, and destroys those which aspire to essence and being; whenever it approaches them, it assimilates them to its own nature.
But since there are two principles of things of an opposite character, the one the principle of good, and the other the principle of evil, there are therefore also two reasons, the one of beneficent nature, the other of maleficent nature.
That is why the things that owe their existence to art, and also those which owe it to nature, must above all participate in these two principles: form and substance.
The form is the cause of essence; substance is the substrate which receives the form. Neither can substance alone participate in form, by itself; nor can form by itself apply itself to substance; there must therefore exist another cause which moves the substance of things, and forms them. This cause is primary, as regards substance, and the most excellent of all. Its most suitable name is God.
There are therefore three principles: God, the substance of things, and form. God is the artist, the mover; the substance is the matter, the moved; the essence is what you might call the art, and that to which the substance is brought by the mover. But since the mover contains forces which are self- contrary, those of simple bodies, and as the contraries are in need of a principle harmonizing and unifying them, it must necessarily receive its efficacious virtues and proportions from numbers, and all that is manifested in numbers and geometric forms, virtues and proportions capable of binding and uniting into form the contraries that exist in the substance of things. For, by itself, substance is formless; only after having been moved towards form does it become formed and receive the rational relations of order. Likewise, if movement exists, besides the thing moved, there must exist a prime mover; there must therefore be three principles: the substance of things, the form, and the principle that moves itself, and which by its power is the first; not only must this principle be an intelligence, it must be above intelligence, and we call it God.
Evidently the relation of equality applies to the being which can be defined by language and reason. The relation of inequality applies to the irrational being, and cannot be fixed by language; it is substance, and that is why all begetting and destruction take place in substance and do not occur without it.
2. In short, the philosophers began only by so to speak contrary principles; but above these elements they knew another superior one, as is testified to by Philolaus, who says that God has produced, and realized the Limited and Unlimited, and shown that at the Limit is attached the whole series which has a greater affinity with the One, and to the Unlimited, the series that is below. Thus, above these two principles they have posited a unifying cause, superior to everything; which, according to Archenetus, is the cause before the cause, and, according to Philolaus, the universal principle.
3. A. Which One are you referring to? The supreme One, or the infinitely small One that you can find in the parts? The Pythagoreans distinguish between the One and the Monad, as says Archytas: the One and the Monad have a natural affinity, yet they differ.
B. Archytas and Philolaus indiscriminately call the One a Monad, and Monad a One. The majority, however, add to the name Monad, the distinction of first Monad, for there is a Monad which is not the first, and which is posterior to the Monad in itself, and to the One.
C. Pythagoras said that the human soul was a tetragon with right angles. Archytas, on the contrary, instead of defining the soul by the tetragon, did so by a circle, because the soul is a self-mover, and consequently, the prime mover, and this is a circle or a sphere.
D. Plato and Archytas and the other Pythagoreans claim that there are three parts in the soul: reason, courage and desire.
4. The beginning of knowledge of beings is in the things that produce themselves. Of these some are intelligible, and others sensible; the former are immovable, the latter are moved. The criterion of intelligible things is the world; that of sensible things is sensation.
Of the things that do not manifest in things themselves, some are science, the others, opinion; science is immovable, opinion is movable.
We must, besides, admit these three things: the subject that judges, the object that is judged, and the rule by which that object is judged. What judges is the mind, or sensation; what is judged is the logos, or rational essence; the rule of judgement is the act itself which occurs in the being, whether intelligible or sensible. The mind is the judge of essence, whether it tends towards an intelligible being or a sensible one. When reason seeks intelligible things, it tends towards an intelligible element; when it seeks things of sense, it tends towards their element. Hence come those false graphic representations in figures and numbers seen in geometry, those researches in causes and probable ends, whose object are beings subject to becoming, and moral acts, in physiology or politics. It is while tending toward the intelligible element that reason recognizes that harmony is in the double relation [the octave] but sensation alone attests that this double relation is concordant. In mechanics, the object of science is figures, numbers, proportions -- namely, rational proportions; the effects are perceived by sensation, for you can neither study nor know them outside of the matter or movement. In short, it is impossible to know the reason of an individual thing, unless you have preliminarily by the mind grasped the essence of the individual thing; the knowledge of the existence, and of quality, belongs to reason and sensation: to reason, whenever we effect a thing's demonstration by a syllogism whose conclusion is inevitable; to sensation, when the latter is the criterion of a thing's essence.
5. Sensation occurs in the body, reason in the soul. The former is the principle of sensible things, the latter, of intelligible ones. Popular measures are number, length, the foot, weight, equilibrium, and the scales, while the rule and the measure of straightness in both vertical and longitudinal directions is the right angle.
Thus sensation is the principle and measure of the bodies; reason is the principle and measure of intelligible things. The latter is the principle of beings that are intelligible and naturally primary; the former is the principle of sense-objects, and is naturally secondary. Reason is the principle of our soul; sensation is the principle of our body. The mind is the judge of the noblest things; sensation is the judge of the most useful. Sensation was created in view of our bodies, and to serve them; reason was created in view of the soul, and to initiate wisdom therein. Reason is the principle of science; sensation is that of opinion. The latter derives its activity from sensible things; the former, from intelligible forms. Sensible objects participate in movement and change; intelligible objects participate in immutability and eternity. There is analogy between sensation and reason; for sensation's object is the sensible, which moves, changes, and never remains self-identical; therefore, as you can see, it improves or deteriorates. Reason's object is the intelligible, whose essence is immobility; wherefore in the intelligible we cannot conceive of either more or less, better or worse; and just as reason sees the primary being, and the [cosmic] model, so sensation sees the image, and the copied. Reason sees man in himself; sensation sees in them the circle of the sun, and the forms of artificial objects. Reason is perfectly simple and indivisible, as unity, and the point; it is the same with intelligible beings.
The idea is neither the limit nor the frontier of the body; it is only the figure of being, that by which the being exists, while sensation has parts, and is divisible.
Some beings are perceived by sensation, others by opinion, others by science, and others by reason.
The bodies that offer resistance are sensible; opinion knows those that participate in the ideas, and are its images, so to speak. Thus some particular man participates in the idea of man, and this triangle, in the triangle-idea. The objects of science are the necessary accidents of ideas; thus the object of geometry is the properties of the figures; reason knows the ideas themselves, and the principles of the sciences and of their objects, for example, the circle, the triangle, and the pure sphere in itself. Likewise, in us, in our souls, there are four kinds of knowledge: pure thought, science, opinion and sensation; two are principles of knowledge [thought and sensation], two are its purpose, science and opinion.
It is always the similar which is capable of knowing the similar: reason knows intelligible things; science understands knowable things; opinion knows conjecturable things; sensation knows sensible things.
That is why thought must rise from things that are sensible, to the conjecturable, and from these to the knowable, and on to the intelligible; and he who wishes to know the truth about these objects, must in a harmonious grouping combine all these means and objects of knowledge. This being established, you might represent them under the image of a line divided into two equal parts, each of which would be similarly divided; if we separate the sensible, dividing it into two parts, in the same proportion, the one will be clearer, the other obscurer. One of the sections of the sensible contains images of things, such as you see reflected in water, or mirrors; the second represents the plants and animals of which the former are images. Similarly dividing the intelligible, the different kinds of sciences will represent the images; for the students of geometry begin by establishing by hypothesis the odd and the even, figures, three kinds of angles, and from these hypotheses deduce their science. As to the things themselves, they leave them aside, as if they knew them, though they cannot account for them to themselves or to others; they employ sensible things as images, but these things are neither the object nor the end proposed in their researches and reasonings, which pursue only things in themselves, such as the diameter, or square. The second section is that of the intelligible, the object of dialectics. It really makes no hypotheses, positing principles whence it rises to arrive at the unconditioned, universal principle; then, by an inverse movement, grasping that principle, it descends to the end of the reasoning, without employing any sensible object, exclusively using pure ideas. By these four divisions, you can also analyze the soul-states, and give the highest the name of thought, reasoning to the second, faith to the third, and imagination to the fourth.
6. Archytas, at the beginning of his book On Wisdom gives this advice: in all human things, wisdom is as superior as sight is to all the other senses of the body, as mind is superior to soul, as the sun is superior to the stars. Of all the senses, sight is the one that extends furthest in its sphere of action, and gives us the most ideas. Mind, being supreme, accomplishes its legitimate operation by reason and reasoning; it is like sight, and is the power of the noblest objects. The sun is the eye and soul of natural things, for it is through it that they are all seen, begotten, and thought; through it the plants produced by root or seed are fed, developed, and endowed with sensation.
Of all beings, man is the wisest by far. For he is able to contemplate beings, and to acquire knowledge and understanding of all. That is why divinity has engraved in him, and has revealed to him the system of speech, which extends to everything, a system in which are classified all the beings, kinds of beings, and the meanings of nouns and verbs. For the specialized seats of the voice are the pharynx, the mouth and the nose. As man is naturally organized to produced sounds, through which nouns and verbs are expressed and formed, likewise he is naturally destined to contemplate the notions contained in visible objects. Such, in my view, is the purpose for which man has been created, and was born, and for which he received from God his organs and faculties.
Man is born and was created to know the essence of universal nature; and precisely the function of wisdom is to possess and contemplate the intelligence manifested in [all] beings.
The object of wisdom is no particular being, but all the beings, absolutely; and it should not begin to seek the principles of an individual being, but the principles common to all. The object of wisdom is all the beings, as the object of sight is all visible things. The function of wisdom is to see all the beings in their totality, and to know their universal attributes, and that is how wisdom discovers the principles of all beings.
He who is capable of analyzing all the species, and tracing and grouping them, by an inverse operation, into one single principle, seems to me the wisest, and the closest to the truth; he seems to have found that sublime observatory from the peak of which he may observe God, and all the things that belong to the series and order of divine things. Being master of this royal road, his mind will be able to rush forwards, and arrive at the end of the career, uniting principles to the purposes of things, and knowing that God is the principle, the middle and the end of all things made according to the rules of justice and right reason.
2. Physical and Mathematical Fragments
7. As Eudemus reports, Archytas used to ask this question: "If I was situated at the extreme and immovable limit of the world, could I, or could I not, extend a wand outside of it?" To say I could not, is absurd; but if I can, there must be something outside of the world, be it body or space; and in whatever manner we reason, by the same reasoning we will ever return to this limit. I will still place myself there, and ask, "Is there anything else on which I may place my wand?" Therefore, the Unlimited exists; if it is a body, our proposition is demonstrated; if it is space, place is that in which a body could be; and if it exists potentially, we will have to place it and classify it among the eternal things, and the Unlimited will then be a body and a place.
8. The essence of place is that all other things are in it, while itself is not in anything. For if it was in a place, there would be a place in a place, and that would continue to infinity. All other beings must therefore be in place, and place in nothing. Its relation to things is the same as Limit to limited things; for the place of the entire world is the Limit of all things.
9 A. Some say that time is the sphere of the world; such was the sentiment of the Pythagoreans, according to those who had heard Archytas give this general definition of time: "Time is the interval of the nature of all."
B. The divine Iamblichus, in the first book of his Commentaries on the Categories, said that Archytas thus defined time: "It is the number of movement, or in general the interval of the nature of all."
C. We must combine these two definitions, and recognize time as both continuous and discrete, though it is properly continuous. Iamblichus claims that Archytas taught the distinction of physical time, and psychic time. So at least Iamblichus interpreted Archytas, but we must recognize that there, and often elsewhere, he adds his own commentaries to explain matters.
10. The general proper essence of "when-ness" and time is to be indivisible and unsubstantial. For, being indivisible, the present time has passed, while expressing it and thinking of it; nothing remains of it, and so becoming continuously the same it never subsists numerically, but only specifically. In fact. the actually present time and the future are not identical with former time. For the one has past, and is no more; the other one passes while being produced and thought. Thus the present is never but a bond; it perpetually becomes, changes, and perishes, but nevertheless it remains identical in its own kind.
In fact, every present is without parts, and indivisible; it is the term of past time, the beginning of time to come; just as in a broken line, the point where the break occurs becomes the beginning of a line, and the end of the other. Time is continuous, and not discrete as are number, speech and harmony.
In speech, the syllables are parts, and distinct parts; in harmony, they are the sounds; in number, the unities. The line, place and space are continuous; if they are divided, their parts form common sections. For the line divides into points, the surface into lines, the solid into surfaces. Therefore time is continuous. In fact there was no time when time was not; and there was no moment when the present was not. But the present has always been, it will always be, and will never fail; it changes perpetually, and becomes another according to the number, but remains the same according to kind. The line differs from the other continua, in that if you divide the line, place, and space, its parts will subsist; but in time, the past has perished, and the future will. That is why either time does absolutely not exist, or it hardly exists, and has but an insensible existence. For of its parts one, the past, is no more, and the future is not yet; how then could the present, without parts and indivisible, possess true reality?
11. Plato says that the movement is the great and small, the non-being, the unusual, and all that reduces to these; like Archytas, we had better say that it is a cause.
12. Why do all natural bodies take the spherical form? Is it, as said Archytas, because in the natural movement is the proportion of equality? For everything moves in proportion; and this proportion of equality is the only one which, when it occurs, produces circles and spheres, because it returns on itself.
13. He who knows must have learned from another, or have found his knowledge by himself. The science that you learn from another, is as you might say, exterior; what you find by yourself, belongs to ourselves individually. To find without seeking is something difficult and rare; to find what one is seeking is commodious and easy; to ignore, and seek what you ignore, is impossible (DK 3).
14. The Pythagorean opinion about sciences to me seems correct, and they seem to show an exact judgment about each of them. Having known how to form a just idea of the nature of a ball, they should have likewise seen the essential nature of the parts. They have left us certain and evident theories about arithmetic, geometry and spherics, also about music, for all these sciences seem to be kindred. In fact, the first two kinds of being are indistinguishable.
15. A. First they have seen that it was not possible that noise should exist unless there was a shock of one body against another; they said there is a shock when moving bodies meet and strike each other. The bodies moved in the air in an opposite direction and those that are moved with an unequal swiftness-in the same direction-the first, when overtaken, makes a noise, because struck. Many of these noises are not susceptible of being perceived by our organs; some because of the slightness of the shock, the others because of their too great distance from us, some even because of the very excess of their intensity, for noises too great do not enter into our ears, as we cannot introduce anything into jars with too narrow an opening when one pours in too much at a time.
Of the sounds that fall within the range of our senses, some -- those that come quickly from the bodies struck -- seem shrill; those that arrive slowly and feebly, seem of low pitch. In fact, when one agitates some object slowly and feebly, the shock produces a low pitch; if the waving is done quickly, and with energy, the sound is shrill. This is not the only proof of the fact, which we can prove when we speak or sing; when we wish to speak loud and high, we use a great force of breath. So also with something thrown; if you throw them hard, they go far; if you throw them without energy, they fall near, for the air yields more to bodies moved with much force, than to those thrown with little. This phenomenon is also reproduced in the sound of the voice, for the sounds produced by an energetic breath are shrill, while those produced by a feeble breath are weak and low in pitch. This same observation can be seen in the force of a signal given from any place: if you pronounce it loud, it can be heard far; if you pronounce the same signal low, we do not hear it even when near. So also in flutes, the breath emitted by the mouth and which presents itself to the holes nearest the mouthpiece, produces a shriller sound, because the impulsive force is greater; farther [down], they are of lower pitch. It is therefore evident that the swiftness of the movement produces shrillness, and slowness, lower pitch. The same thing is seen in the bull roarers which are spun in the Mysteries; those that move slowly produce a low pitch, while those that move quickly with force make a shrill noise. Let us yet adduce the reed: if you close the lower opening, and blow into it, it will produce a certain sound; and if you stop it in the center, or in the front, the sound will be shrill. For the same breath traversing a long space weakens, while traversing a shorter, it remains of the same power. After having developed this opinion that the movement of the voice is measured by intervals, he resumes his discussion, saying, that the shrill sounds are the result of a swifter movement, the lower sounds, of a slower movement. This is a fact which numerous experiments demonstrate clearly.
B. Eudoxus and Archytas believed that the reasons of the agreement of the sounds was in the numbers; they agree in thinking that these reasons consist in the movements, the shrill movement being quick, because the agitation of the air is continuous, and the vibration more rapid; the low pitch movement being slow, because it is calmer.
16. Explaining himself about the means; Archytas writes: In music there are three means: the first is the arithmetical mean, the second is the geometrical, the third is the subcontrary mean, which is called harmonic. The mean is arithmetical, when the three terms are in a relation of analogical excess, that is to say, when the difference between the first and second is the same as between second and third; in this proportion, the relation of the greater terms is smaller, and the relation of the smaller is greater. The geometric mean exists when the first term is to the second as the second is to the third; here the relation of the greater is identical with the relation of the smaller terms. The subcontrary mean, which we call harmonic, exists when the first term exceeds the second by a fraction of itself, identically with the fraction [of the third] by which the second exceeds the third; in this proportion the relation of the greater terms is greater, and that of the smaller, smaller.
3. Ethical Fragments
17. A. We must first know that the good man is not thereby necessarily happy, but that the happy man is necessarily good; for the happy man is he who deserves praise and congratulations; the good man deserves only praise.
We praise a man because of his virtue, we congratulate him because of his success. The good man is such because of the goods that proceed from virtue; the happy man is such because of the goods that come from fortune. From the good man you cannot take his virtue; sometimes the happy man loses his good fortune. The power of virtue depends on nobody; that of happiness, on the contrary, is dependent. Long diseases, the loss of our senses, cause to fade the flower of our happiness.
B. God differs from the good man in that God not only possesses a perfect virtue, purified from all mortal affection, but enjoys a virtue whose power is faultless and independent, as suits the majesty and magnificence of his works.
Man, on the contrary, not only possesses an inferior virtue, because of the mortal constitution of his nature, but even sometimes by the very abundance of his goods, now by the force of habit, by the vice of nature, or from other causes, he is incapable of attaining the perfection of the good.
C. The good man, in my opinion, is he who knows how to act properly in serious circumstances and occasions. He will therefore know how to support good and bad fortune; in a brilliant and glorious condition, he will show himself worthy of it, and if fortune happens to change, he will know how to accept properly his actual fate. In short, the good man is he who, in every occasion, and according to the circumstances, well plays his part, and knows how to fit to it not only himself, but also those who have confidence in him, and are associated with his fortunes.
D. Since amidst the goods, some are desirable for themselves, and not for anything else, and others are desirable for something else, and not for themselves, there must necessarily exist a third kind of goods, which are desirable both for themselves and for other things. Which are the goods naturally desirable for themselves, and not for anything else? Evidently they include happiness, for it is the end on account of which we seek everything else, while we seek it only for itself, and not in view of anything else. Secondly, which are the goods chosen for something else, and not for themselves? Evidently those that are useful, and which are the means of procuring the real goods, which thus become the causes of the goods desirable for themselves; for instance: the bodily fatigues, the exercises, the tests which procure health; reading, meditation, the studies which procure virtues, and the quality of honesty. Finally, which are those goods which are both desirable for themselves, and for something else? The virtues, and the habitual possession of virtues, the resolutions of the soul, the actions, and in short anything pertaining to the possession of the beautiful. That which is to be considered for itself, and not for anything else, that is the only good.
Now what we seek for itself and for something else is divided into three classes: the one whose object is the soul, the body, and external goods. The first contains the virtues of the soul; the second contains the advantages of the body; the third consists in friends, glory, honor and wealth. Likewise with the goods that are desirable only for something else: one part of them procures goods for the soul, the other which regards the body, procures goods for it; the external goods furnish wealth, glory, honor and friendship.
We can prove that it is the characteristic of virtue to be desirable for itself, as follows: in fact, if the naturally inferior goods, I mean those of the body, are by us sought for themselves, and if the soul is better than the body, it is evident that we like the goods of the soul for themselves, and not for the result that they might produce.
E. In human life there are three circumstances: prosperity, adversity, and intermediary comfort. Since the good man who possesses virtue and practices it, practices it in these three circumstances -- either in adversity, or prosperity, or comfort, since besides in adversity he is unhappy, in prosperity he is happy, and in comfort he is not happy -- it is evident that happiness is nothing else than the use of virtue in prosperity. I speak here of human happiness. Man is not only a soul, he is also a body. The living being is a composite of both, and man also; for if the body is an instrument of the soul, it is as much a part of the man as the soul. That is why, among the goods, some belong to the man, and others belong to his component parts. The good of man is happiness amidst its integral parts. The soul's goods are prudence, courage, justice, and temperance; the body's are beauty, health, good disposition of its members, and the perfect condition of its senses. The external goods -- wealth, glory, honor, nobility -- are naturally superfluous advantages of man, and are naturally subordinate to the superior goods.
The inferior goods serve as satellites to the superior goods. Friendship, glory, and wealth are the satellites of the body and soul. Health, strength and sense-perfection are satellites of the body. Prudence, courage, justice and temperance are the satellites of the reason of the soul. Reason is the satellite of God; he is omnipotent, the supreme master. It is for these goods that the others must exist; for the army obeys the general, the sailors heed the pilot, the world obeys God, the soul heeds reason, the happy life is contingent on prudence. For prudence is nothing more than the science of the happy life, or the science of the goods which belong to human nature.
F. To God belongs happiness and the happy life; man cannot possess but a grouping of science, virtue and prosperity forming a single body. I call wisdom the science of the Gods and geniuses, and term prudence the science of human things, the science of life. For science should be the name of virtues which rest upon reasons and demonstrations, and moral virtue, the excellent habit of the irrational part of the soul, which makes you give the name of certain qualities corresponding to our habits, namely the names of liberal, just and temperate people. And I call prosperity this affluence of goods which we receive without reason being their cause. Then since virtue and science depend on us, and prosperity does not depend thereon, since happiness consists in the contemplation and practice of good things, and since contemplation and action when they meet obstacles, lend us a necessary support, when they go by an easy road, they bring us distraction and happiness. Since after all it is prosperity that gives us these benefits, it is evident that happiness is nothing else than the use of virtue in prosperity.
G. Man's relations with prosperity resemble a healthy and vigorous human body; he also can stand heat and cold, can raise a great burden, and can easily bear many other miseries.
H. Since happiness is the use of virtue in prosperity, let us speak of virtue and prosperity, the former first. Some goods, such as virtue, are not subject to excess; for excess is impossible in virtue, for one can never be too decent a man. Indeed, virtue's measure is duty, and is the habit of duty in practical life. But prosperity is subject to excess and lack, which excesses produce certain evils, disturbing man from his usual mood, so as to oppose him to virtue; this is not only the case with prosperity, but other more numerous causes also produce this effect. You need not be surprised at seeing in the hall certain impudent artists, who neglect true art, misleading the ignorant by a false picture; but do you suppose that this race does not exist as regards virtue? On the contrary, the greater and more beautiful virtue is, the more do people feign to adorn themselves with it. There are indeed many things which dishonor the appearance of virtue: first are the deceivers who simulate it, others are the natural passions which accompany it, and sometimes twist the dispositions of the soul into a contrary direction. Others are the bad habits which the body has rooted in us, or which have been ingrained in us by youth, age, prosperity, adversity, or by a thousand other circumstances. Wherefore we must not at all be surprised at entirely wrong judgments, because the true nature of our soul has been falsified within us. Just as we see an artist who is excellent make errors in works we are examining -- or the general, the pilot or the painter and like may make errors without our detracting from their talent -- so we must not call unworthy him who has had a moment of weakness, nor among the worthy a man who has done no more than a single action; but in respect to the evil, we must consider chance, and for the good, error, and to make an equitable and just judgment, and not regard a single circumstance, or a single period of time, but the whole life.
Just as the body suffers from both excess and lack, but as nevertheless the excess and so-called superfluities naturally produce the greatest diseases, so the soul suffers from both prosperity and adversity when they arrive at wrong times, and yet the greatest evils come from so-called absolute prosperity -- which is absolute because like wine it intoxicates the reason of the worthy.
I. That is why it is not adversity but prosperity which is the hardest to stand properly. All men, when they are in adversity, at least the greater part of them, seem moderate and modest; but in good fortune, ambitious, vain and proud. For adversity is apt to moderate the soul, and concentrate it, while on the contrary prosperity excites it and puffs it up. That is why wretches are docile to advice, and prudent in conduct, while the happy are bold and venturesome.
J. Thus there is a measure and limit of prosperity that the worthy man should desire to have as auxiliary in the accomplishment of his actions, just as there is a measure in the size of the ship, and in the length of the tiller, which permits the experienced pilot to traverse an immense extent of sea, and to carry through a great voyage.
The result of excess of prosperity, even among worthy people, is that the soul loses leadership to prosperity; just as too bright a light dazzles the eyes so too great a prosperity dazzles the reason of the soul. Enough about prosperity.
18. I insist that virtue is sufficient to preclude unhappiness, that badness precludes happiness, if we know how properly to judge of the genuine condition of the soul in these two conditions. For the evil reason is necessarily always unhappy, whether in abundance -- which he does not know how properly to judge or use -- or in poverty, just as a blind man is always wondering whether he is in brilliant light, or in darkness. But the worthy man is not always happy, for happiness does not consist in the possession of virtue, but in its use, just as a man who sees does not see all the time will not see without light.
Life is as it were divided into two roads: the rougher one, followed by patient Ulysses, and the more agreeable one followed by Nestor. I mean that virtue desires the one, but can also follow the other. But nature cries aloud that happiness is life desirable in itself, whose state is assured, because one can realize one's purposes in it, so that if life is traversed by things one has not desired, one is not happy, without however being absolutely unhappy. Therefore be not so bold as to insist that the worthy man is exempt from sickness, and suffering; dare not to say that he does not know pain, for if the body is allow some causes of pain, the soul should also be allowed some. The griefs of the insane lack reason and measure, while those of the wise are contained within the measure which reason gives to everything. But this so advertised insensitivity to sorrow enervates the character of generosity of virtue, when it stands trials, great sorrows, when it is exposed to death, suffering, and poverty, for it is easy to support small sorrows. You must therefore practice metriopathy or sorrow -- standardization so as to avoid the insensitivity just as much as the over-sensibility of pain, and not in words to boast about our strength above the measure of our human nature.
19. We might define philosophy as the desire of knowing and understanding things in themselves, joined with practical virtue, inspired and realized by the love of science. The beginning of philosophy is the science of nature, the middle, practical life, and the end, science itself. It is fortunate to have been well born, to have received a good education, to have been accustomed to obey a just rule, and to have habits conformable to nature. One must also have been exercised in virtue, and have been educated by wise parents, governors and masters. It is fine to impose the rule of duty on oneself, to have no need of constraint, to be docile to those who give us good advice about life and science. For a fortunate disposition of nature, and a good education are often more powerful than lessons to bring us to the good; its only lack would be the efficacious light of reason, which science gives us. Two rival directions of life contend for mastery, these being practical and philosophical life. By far the most perfect life unites them both, and in each different path adapts itself to circumstances. We are born for rational activity, which we call practical. Practical reason leads us to politics; the theoretical reason, to the contemplation of the universality of things. Mind itself, which is universal, embraces these two powers necessary to happiness, which we define as the activity of virtue in prosperity; it is not exclusively either a practical life which would exclude science, nor a speculative life which would exclude the practical. Perfect reason inclines towards these two omnipotent principles for which man is born, the principles of society and science. For if these opposite principles seem mutually to interfere in their development, the political principles turning us away from speculation, and the speculative principles turning us from politics, to persuade us to live at rest, nevertheless nature, uniting the ends of these two movements, shows them fused; for virtues are not contradictory and mutually antipathetic. Indeed, no harmony is more constant than the harmony of virtues. If from his youth man has subjected himself to the principles of virtues, and to the divine law of the world harmony, he will lead an easy life; and if, by his own inclination, he inclines towards evil and has the luck of meeting better guides, he will, by rectifying his course, arrive at happiness, like passengers favored by chance, finishing a fortunate sea-passage -- thanks to the pilot -- and the fortunate passage of life is happiness. But if by himself he cannot know his real interests, and if he does not have the luck of meeting prudent directors, what benefit would it be if he did have immense treasures? For the fool, even if he had for himself all the other elements of luck, is eternally unhappy. And since, in everything, you must first consider the end -- for that is what is done by the pilots ever meditating over the harbor whither they are to land the ship, by the drivers who keep their eye on the goal of their trip, and by the archers and slingers who consider their objective, for it is the objective towards which all their efforts must tend-virtue must necessarily undertake an objective, which should become the art of living, and that is the name I give it in both directions it can take. For practical life this objective is improvement; for the philosophical life, the perfect good, which, in their human affairs the sages call happiness. Those who are in misery are not capable of judging of happiness according to exact ideas, and those who do not see it clearly would not know how to choose it. Those who consider that pleasure is the sovereign good are punished therefore by foolishness; those who above all seek the absence of pain, also receive their punishment. In summary: to define life-happiness as the enjoyment of the body, in an unreflective state of soul, is to expose oneself to all the whirlwinds of the tempest. Those who suppress moral beauty, by avoiding all discussion, all reflection about the matter, and seeking pleasure, absence of pain, simple and primitive physical enjoyments, and the irreflective inclinations of body and soul, are not more fortunate, for they commit a double fault by reducing the good of the soul and its superior functions to the level of that of the body, and in raising the good of the body to the high level due to the good of the soul. For an exact discernment of these goods, we should outline its proper part for the divine element, and for nature; yet some do not observe this relation of dignity from the better to the worse. But we do so when we say that if the body is the organ of the soul, then reason is the guide of the entire soul, the mistress of the body, this tent of the soul, and that all the other physical advantages should serve only as instruments to the intellectual activity, if you wish it to be perfect in power, duration and wealth.
20. These are the most important conditions to become a sage: first, you must have received from fate a mind endowed with facility to understand, memory, and industry. You must then from youth on exercise your intelligence by the practice of argumentation, by mathematical studies, and by the exact sciences. Then you must study healthful philosophy, after which you may undertake the knowledge of the Gods, of laws, and of human life. For there are two means of arriving at this state known as wisdom. The first is to acquire the habit of work that is intellectual, and the taste for knowledge; the other is to seek to see many things, to undertake business frequently, and to know them, either directly at first hand, or indirectly. For he who from youth on has exercised reason by dialectic reasonings, mathematical studies, and exact sciences, is not yet ready for wisdom, any more than he who has neglected these labors, and has only listened to others, and has immersed himself in business. The one has become blind, when the business is to judge particular facts; the other, when he is to judge of general deductions. Just as in calculations you obtain the total by combining the parts, so also, in business practice, reason can vaguely sketch the general formula, but experience alone can enable us to grasp the details and individual facts.
21. Age is in the same relation to youth. Youth makes men energetic, age makes them prudent. Never by imprudence does it let a thought escape. It reflects on what it has done, it considers maturely what it ought to do, in order that this comparison of the future with the present, and of the present with the future lead it to good conduct. To the past it applies memory, to the present, sensation, and to the future, foresight; for our memory has always as object the past, foresight the future, and sensation the present. He who therefore wishes to lead an honest and beautiful life must not only have senses and memory, but foresight.