The Consolation of Philosophy

by Boethius

It is evident, therefore, how miserable the happiness of human life is; it does not remain long with those who are patient, and doesn’t satisfy those who are troubled.

‘Why then do you mortal men seek after happiness outside yourselves, when it lies within you? You are led astray by error and ignorance.

If happiness is the highest good of rational nature and anything that can be taken away is not the highest good – since it is surpassed by what can’t be taken away – Fortune by her very mutability can’t hope to lead to happiness.

‘Again, the man who is borne along by happiness which can at any time fail, either knows or does not know its unreliability. If he does not know it, what kind of happiness can there be in the blindness of ignorance? And if he does know it, he can’t avoid being afraid of losing that which he knows can be lost.

And so a continuous fear prevents him...

since you are a man I know to have been fully convinced by innumerable proofs that the human mind cannot die, and since it is clear that happiness which depends on chance comes to an end with the death of the body, it seems beyond doubt that if this happiness dependent on chance can bring pleasure, then the whole human race falls at death into misery.

Yet we know that many men have sought the enjoyment of happiness through death and even through suffering and torment.

It seems that the happiness which cannot make men unhappy by its cessation, cannot either make...

the time has come, I think, for something rather stronger.

if the gifts that Fortune offers are not transitory and short-lived, tell me, which is there among them that can ever belong to you or whose worthlessness is not revealed by a moment’s thoughtful consideration?

What makes riches precious, the fact that they belong to you or some ...

which is preferable, the gold itself or the power conferred...

How poor and barren riches really are, then, is clear from the way that it is impossible for many to share them undiminished, or for one man to possess them without reducing all the others to poverty.

Surely there is nothing devoid of life to give it movement, and devoid of structure, which living rational nature can justifiably consider beautiful?

You are, in fact, enraptured with empty joys, embracing blessings that are alien to you as if they were your own.

Fortune can never make yours what Nature has made alien to you.

Nature is content with few and little: if you try to press superfluous additions upon what is sufficient for Nature, your bounty will become sickening if not harmful.

is obvious that not one of those things which you count among your blessings is in fact any blessing of your own at all.

It isn’t because they are part of your wealth that they are precious, but because you thought them precious that you wanted to add them to the sum of your riches.

The more varied your precious possessions, the more help you need to protect them, and the old saying is proved correct, he who hath much, wants much.

And the contrary is true as well, he needs least who measures wealth according to the needs of nature, and not the excesses of ostentation.

Other creatures are content with what is their own, but you, whose mind is made in the image of God, seek to adorn your superior nature with inferior objects, oblivious of the great wrong you do your Creator.

man towers above the rest of creation so long as he recognizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts.

For other living things to be ignorant of themselves, is natural; but for man it is a defect.

‘My contention is that no good thing harms its owner, a thing which you won’t gainsay. But wealth very often does harm its owners, for all the most criminal elements of the population who are thereby all the more covetous of other people’s property are convinced that they alone are worthy to possess all the gold and precious stones there are.

Alas for the man, whoever he was, Who first dug heaps of buried gold And diamonds content to hide, And gave us perils of such price!’

You would laugh if you saw a community of mice and one mouse arrogating to himself power and jurisdiction over the others.

The only way one man can exercise power over another is over his body and what is inferior to it, his possessions.

You cannot impose anything on a free mind, and you cannot move from its state of inner tranquillity a mind at peace with itself and firmly founded on reason.

There is no doubt, then, that for the most part it is evil men who hold the offices, and it is therefore clear that these are not intrinsically good, since they admit of being associated with evil men.

the same may be properly concluded in the case of all fortune’s gifts, since they fall in greater abundance on all the most wicked people.

power does not make a man master of himself if he is imprisoned by the indissoluble chains of wicked lusts; and when high office is bestowed on unworthy men, so far from making them worthy, it only betrays them and reveals their unworthiness.

lastly we may reach the same conclusion about Fortune as a whole. She has nothing worth pursuing, and no trace of intrinsic good; she never associates with good men and does not turn into good men those with whom she does associate.

ten thousand years, or any multiple of it however great, cannot be compared with unending eternity.

If the whole of man dies, body and soul –a belief which our reason forbids us –fame is nothing at all, since the man who is said to have won it doesn’t exist.

But if the mind stays conscious when it is freed from the earthly prison and seeks out heaven in freedom, surely it will despise every earthly affair.

if you think that fame can lengthen life By mortal famousness immortalized, The day will come that takes your fame as well, And there a second death awaits for you.’

For bad fortune, I think, is more use to a man than good fortune.

Good fortune always seems to bring happiness, but deceives you with her smiles, whereas bad fortune is always truthful because by change she shows her true fickleness.

Good fortune deceives, but bad fortun...

good fortune enslaves the minds of those who enjoy her, while bad fortune gives men release through the recognition of...

good fortune lures men away from the path of true good, but adverse fortune frequently draws men back to their true good like a shepherdess with her crook.

the destination I am trying to bring you to.’

I asked what it was and she told me that it was true happiness.

I begged her to lead on and show me the nature of true happiness without delay.

first I will try to describe and sketch an idea of the cause of happiness.

We have already defined the supreme good as happiness; so that the state which each man desires above all others is judged by him to be one of happiness.

you have before you the general pattern of human happiness

In fact there is no other thing which could so successfully create happiness as a condition provided with all that is good, a condition of self-sufficiency and with no wants.

‘So first I will ask you a few questions, since you yourself were a wealthy man not long ago. In the midst of all that great store of wealth, was your mind never troubled by worry arising from a feeling that something was wrong?’