A Philosophical Mother

Atque ego rursus exordiens: Beatos esse nos volumus, inquam? Vix hoc effuderam, occurrerunt una voce consentientes. Videturne vobis, inquam, beatus esse qui quod vult non habet? Negaverunt. Quid? omnis qui quod vult habet, beatus est? Tum mater: Si bona, inquit, velit et habeat, beatus est; si autem mala velit, quamvis habeat, miser est. Cui ego arridens atque gestiens: Ipsam, inquam, prorsus, mater, arcem philosophiae tenuisti. Nam tibi procul dubio verba defuerunt, ut non sicut Tullius te modo panderes, cuius de hac sententia verba ista sunt. Nam in Hortensio, quem de laude ac defensione philosophiae librum fecit: Ecce autem, ait, non philosophi quidem, sed prompti tamen ad disputandum, omnes aiunt esse beatos qui vivant ut ipsi velint. Falsum id quidem: Velle enim quod non deceat, id est ipsum miserrimum. Nec tam miserum est non adipisci quod velis, quam adipisci velle quod non oporteat. Plus enim mali pravitas voluntatis affert, quam fortuna cuiquam boni. In quibus verbis illa sic exclamabat, ut obliti penitus sexus eius, magnum aliquem virum considere nobiscum crederemus, me interim, quantum poteram, intellegente ex quo illa, et quam divino fonte manarent. Sanctus Augustinus Hipponensi, De Beata Vita

And again I began: 'Shall I say that we all wish to be happy?' Scarcely had I spoken, than they all agreed with one voice. 'And does it seem to you,' I said, 'that he is happy who does not have what he wishes?' They denied it. 'Why, then,' I said, 'is everyone who has what he wishes happy?' My mother said, 'If he wants good things and he has them, he is happy, if however he wants bad things, although he has them, he is wretched.' And I smiling and gesturing at her said, 'Swiftly you have taken up the bow of philosophy, mother. For far from you was want of words for doubt, and so not in the manner of Cicero did you reveal what you did, but far more concisely than him. In the Hortensius, which is a book he composed in praise and defense of philosophy, he said, 'It is not the philosophical man but the one too hasty in discussion who says that all are happy who live as they wish. It is false, for a man may wish for what is indecent, that is, most wretched. For not so wretched is that one who does not obtain what he wants, than he who acquires what he wishes to have but should not have. The depravity of the will brings more evils to a man than fortune goods.' 1 And so because of the words she spoke, we utterly forgot her sex, and we believed that we were in the presence of a great man, and I meanwhile, as much as I was able, contemplated what she said as that which pours forth from a Divine spring.   Saint Augustine of Hippo, from On The Blessed Life 1 Cicero Hortensius, fragment 39