On account of such and other like frail and perishing advantages, the thought of every human mind is troubled with anxiety and with care.  It then imagines that it has obtained some exalted good when it has won the flattery of the people; and to me it seems that it has bought a very false greatness.  Some with much anxiety seek wives, that thereby they may above all things have children, and also live happily.  True friends, then, I say, are the most precious things of all these worldly felicities.  They are not indeed to be reckoned as worldly goods, but as divine; for deceitful fortune does not produce them, but God, who naturally formed them as relations.  For of every other thing in this world, man is desirous, either that he may through it obtain power, or else some worldly lust; except of the true friend, whom he loves sometimes for affection and for fidelity, though he expect to himself no other rewards.  Nature joins and cements friends together with inseparable love.  But with these worldly goods, and with this present wealth, men make oftener enemies than friends.  From these, and from many such proofs, it may be evident to all men that all the bodily goods are inferior to the faculties of the soul.  We indeed think that a man is the stronger, because he is great in his body.  The fairness, moreover, and the strength of the body, rejoices and invigorates the man, and health makes him cheerful.  In all these bodily felicities men seek one single happiness, as it seems to them.  For whatsoever every man chiefly loves above all other things, that, he persuades himself, is best for him, and that is his highest good.  When therefore he has acquired that, he imagines that he may be very happy.  I do not deny that these goods and this happiness are the highest good of this present life.  For every man considers that thing best which he chiefly loves above other things, and therefore he deems himself very happy if he can obtain what he then most desires.  Is not now clearly enough shown to thee the form of the false goods; namely, riches, and dignity, and power, and glory, and pleasure?  Concerning pleasure, Epicurus the philosopher said, when he inquired concerning all those other goods which we before mentioned:  then said he, that pleasure was the highest good, because all the other goods which we before mentioned gratify the mind and delight it, but pleasure chiefly gratifies the body.

But we will still speak concerning the nature of men, and concerning their pursuits.  Though, then, their mind and their nature be now obscured, and they are by that descent fallen to evil and inclined thither, yet they are desirous, so far as they can and may, of the highest good.  As the drunken man knows that he should go to his house and to his rest, and yet is not able to find the way thither, so is it also with the mind, when it is weighed down by the anxieties of this world.  It is sometimes intoxicated and misled by them, so far that it cannot rightly find out good.  Nor yet does it appear to those men that they aught mistake who are desirous to obtain this, namely, that they need labor after nothing more.  But they think that they are able to collect together all these goods, so that none may be excluded from the number....