its greatest plenitude, life in which the good is present as something
essential not as something brought from without, a life needing no
foreign substance called in from a foreign realm, to establish it in
good.

    For what could be added to the fullest life to make it the best
life? If anyone should answer, "The nature of Good" [The Good, as a
Divine Hypostasis], the reply would certainly be near our thought, but
we are not seeking the Cause but the main constituent.

    It has been said more than once that the perfect life and the true
life, the essential life, is in the Intellectual Nature beyond this
sphere, and that all other forms of life are incomplete, are
phantoms of life, imperfect, not pure, not more truly life than they
are its contrary: here let it be said succinctly that since all living
things proceed from the one principle but possess life in different
degrees, this principle must be the first life and the most complete.

    4. If, then, the perfect life is within human reach, the man
attaining it attains happiness: if not, happiness must be made over to
the gods, for the perfect life is for them alone.

    But since we hold that happiness is for human beings too, we
must consider what this perfect life is. The matter may be stated
thus:

    It has been shown elsewhere that man, when he commands not
merely the life of sensation but also Reason and Authentic
Intellection, has realised the perfect life.

    But are we to picture this kind of life as something foreign
imported into his nature?

    No: there exists no single human being that does not either
potentially or effectively possess this thing which we hold to
constitute happiness.

    But are we to think of man as including this form of life, the
perfect, after the manner of a partial constituent of his entire
nature?

    We say, rather, that while in some men it is present as a mere
portion of their total being- in those, namely, that have it
potentially- there is, too, the man, already in possession of true
felicity, who is this perfection realized, who has passed over into
actual identification with it. All else is now mere clothing about the
man, not to be called part of him since it lies about him unsought,
not his because not appropriated to himself by any act of the will.

    To the man in this state, what is the Good?

    He himself by what he has and is.

    And the author and principle of what he is and holds is the
Supreme, which within Itself is the Good but manifests Itself within
the human being after this other mode.

    The sign that this state has been achieved is that the man seeks
nothing else.

    What indeed could he be seeking? Certainly none of the less worthy
things; and the Best he carries always within him.

    He that has such a life as this has all he needs in life.

    Once the man is a Sage, the means of happiness, the way to good,
are within, for nothing is good that lies outside him. Anything he
desires further than this he seeks as a necessity, and not for himself
but for a subordinate, for the body bound to him, to which since it
has life he must minister the needs of life, not needs, however, to
the true man of this degree. He knows himself to stand above all
such things, and what he gives to the lower he so gives as to leave
his true life undiminished.

    Adverse fortune does not shake his felicity: the life so founded
is stable ever. Suppose death strikes at his household or at his
friends; he knows what death is, as the victims, if they are among the
wise, know too. And if death taking from him his familiars and
intimates does bring grief, it is not to him, not to the true man, but
to that in him which stands apart from the Supreme, to that lower
man in whose distress he takes no part.

    5. But what of sorrows, illnesses and all else that inhibit the
native activity?

    What of the suspension of consciousness which drugs or disease may
bring about? Could either welfare or happiness be present under such
conditions? And this is to say nothing of misery and disgrace, which
will certainly be urged against us, with undoubtedly also those
never-failing "Miseries of Priam."

    "The Sage," we shall be told, "may bear such afflictions and
even take them lightly but they could never be his choice, and the
happy life must be one that would be chosen. The Sage, that is, cannot
be thought of as simply a sage soul, no count being taken of the
bodily-principle in the total of the being: he will, no doubt, take
all bravely... until the body's appeals come up before him, and
longings and loathings penetrate through the body to the inner man.
And since pleasure must be counted in towards the happy life, how
can one that, thus, knows the misery of ill-fortune or pain be