But the goods of the body are more like this instance which I have just mentioned. For they admit of additions worthy of having pains taken about them; so that on this point the Stoics appear to me sometimes to be joking, when they say that, if a bottle or a comb were given as an addition to a life which is being passed with virtue, a wise man would rather choose that life, because these additions were given to it, but yet that he would not be happier on that account. Now, is not this simile to be upset by ridicule rather than by serious discourse? For who would not be deservedly ridiculed, if he were anxious whether he had another bottle or not? But if any one relieves a person from any affection of the limbs, or from the pain of any disease, he will receive great gratitude. And if that wise man of yours is put on the rack of torture by a tyrant, he will not display the same countenance as if he had lost his bottle; but, as entering upon a serious and difficult contest, seeing that he will have to fight with a capital enemy, namely, pain, he will summon up all his principles of fortitude and patience, by whose assistance he will proceed to face that difficult and important battle, as I have called it. We will not inquire, then, what is obscured, or what is destroyed, because it is something very small; but what is of such a character as to complete the whole sum of happiness. One pleasure out of many may be obscured in that life of pleasure; but still, however small an one it may be, it is a part of that life which consists wholly of pleasure. One coin is lost of the riches of Crœsus, still it is a part of his riches. Wherefore those things, too, which we say are according to nature, may be obscured in a happy life, still they must be parts of the happy life. XIII. But if, as we ought to agree, there is a certain natural desire which longs for those things which are according to nature, then, when taken altogether, they must be considerable in amount. And if this point is established, then we may be allowed to inquire about those things at our leisure, and to investigate the greatness of them, and their excellence, and to examine what influence each has on living happily, and also to consider the very obscurations themselves, which, on account of their smallness, are scarcely ever, or I may say never, visible.