Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.4

“Wondrous,” I cried. “What vast things do you promise! And I doubt not that you can fulfill them. I only beg that you will not hold me back with delays, now that you have excited me thus far.”

“First, then, you must learn that power is never lacking to the good, while the wicked are devoid of all strength.

“The proofs of these two statements hang upon each other. For good and bad are opposites, and therefore, if it is allowed that good is powerful, the weakness of evil is manifest: if the weakness and uncertainty of evil is made plain, the strength and sureness of good is proved. To gain more full credit for my opinion, I will go on to make my argument sure by first the one, then the other of the two paths, side by side.

“It is allowed that there are two things upon which depend the entire operation of human actions: they are will and power. For if the will be wanting, a man does not even attempt that which he has no desire to perform; if the power be wanting, the will is exercised in vain.

“Wherefore, if you see a man wish for that which he will in no way gain, you cannot doubt that he lacks the power to attain that which he wishes.”

“That is plain beyond doubt.”

And if you see a man gain that which he wishes, can you doubt that he has the power?”

“No.”

“But wherein a man has power, he is strong; wherein he has not power, he must be counted weak?”

“Yes.” . . .

—from Book 4, Prose 2

Once again, I am encouraged precisely because I am discouraged, pointed in the right direction because I find myself just a bit more frustrated and confused. It takes being knocked out of the rut of my assumptions to put myself in a better place. Boethius has a wonderful way of doing that, of finding the truth in what at first glance appears to be so ridiculous.

Wait, good people are actually strong, and evil people are actually weak? That may seem to be quite the opposite of everything I have seen for my entire life. I can grant you that good people love what is actually of benefit, and evil people love what is actually of harm, but still I see the latter usually getting exactly what they want, and the former usually clutching the short straw.

Yes, I might insist, a decent man may win in the purity of his intentions, even as a wicked man still wins in the efficiency of his power. It is, after all, precisely because he is not bound by a conscience that a scoundrel manages to get things done.

The Consolation circles back to an earlier concern, just as that very same concern will pop up, again and again, in daily life. A man may be pure of heart, and that also means he appears most likely to finish last.

I suppose I could accept this begrudgingly, and find some deeper comfort in it, by considering the relative worth if what is gained and what is lost. Nevertheless, it continues to rub me the wrong way; the shifty folks are still getting what they want.

Hard experience has taught me that there are all sorts of vicious people to be found in all walks of life. They work by different forms of fraud, flattery, or force, but what they all share in common is an uncanny knack for manipulating their circumstances. Without a moral framework, anything goes.

I have seen politicians and playground bullies, lawyers and used car salesmen, priests and drug pushers all working from the same model. I think they are somehow winning because they are succeeding in their schemes.

Am I really so sure? What are they truly achieving? Is anything at all that they “win” of any real benefit to them, even one bit of it? If they are not gaining something good through their efforts, they are hardly successful, and then they are not as powerful as they would like us to think. A failure to reach a worthy goal is surely a weakness, not power.

Whatever is good is powerful, for the good is that which fulfills and completes, that which leaves nothing to be desired. Hence evil, the opposite of good, is weak, for evil is that which grasps and fails, that which still leaves everything to be desired.

Yes, define your good rightly. And Lady Philosophy has already done that. There is actually no benefit in vice, and so it is weak. There is, however, great benefit in virtue, and so it is strong.

Two things are necessary to achieve anything of value: first, the desire to want it, and second, the means to achieve it. Remove either condition, and the effort will end in failure. If I don’t even have a useful purpose in mind, I will certainly not get it. If I don’t have the power to attain that purpose, I will not get it either.

So now it remains for me to ask myself:

Does the vicious man want something that is good for him? Does he have the power to possess it?

Does the virtuous man want something that is good for him? Does he have the power to possess it? 

Written in 10/2015