X. But, however, to come, O Cato, more closely to what you have been saying, let us treat this question more narrowly, and compare what you have just said with those assertions which I prefer to yours. Now, those arguments which you employ in common with the ancients, we may make use of as admitted. But let us, if you please, confine our discussion to those which are disputed. I do please, said he: I am very glad to have the question argued with more subtlety, and, as you call it, more closely; for what you have hitherto advanced are mere popular assertions, but from you I expect something more elegant. From me? said I. However, I will try; and, if I cannot find arguments enough, I will not be above having recourse to those which you call popular.
But let me first lay down this position, that we are so recommended to ourselves by nature, and that we have this principal desire implanted in us by nature, that our first wish is to preserve ourselves. This is agreed. It follows, that we must take notice what we are, that so we may preserve ourselves in that character of which we ought to be. We are, therefore, men: we consist of mind and body,--which are things of a particular description,--and we ought, as our first natural desire requires, to love these parts of ourselves, and from them to establish this summit of the chief and highest good, which, if our first principles are true, must be established in such a way as to acquire as many as possible of those things which are in accordance with nature, and especially all the most important of them. This, then, is the chief good which they aimed at. I have expressed it more diffusely,--they call it briefly, living according to nature. This is what appears to them to be the chief good.
XI. Come, now let them teach us, or rather do so yourself, (for who is better able?) in what way you proceed from these principles, and prove that to live honourably (for that is the meaning of living according to virtue, or in a manner suitable to nature) is the chief good; and in what manner, or in what place, you on a sudden get rid of the body, and leave all those things which, as they are according to nature, are out of our own power; and, lastly, how you get rid of duty itself.