Fragments of the Early Stoics, Volume 3: Chrysippus (Ethics)

63 Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Mantissa to the Book On the Soul, p. 161, 26 Bruns. And as for the senses themselves, if they have a place as necessary for the existence of the human being, but no longer cooperate toward the activities of virtue, they would have the definition of "things without which it is not possible." But if, besides being necessary for the human being, they also 5 cooperate toward actions, and virtue makes use of them for its own activities (for imagination is the foundation of actions according to virtue), they do not have the definition of "things without which it is not possible" for the activities according to virtue, as do the heavens, the earth, place, and time. For if we are to act according to virtue while the senses are in any state whatsoever, we will either assent to false 10 imaginations derived from such senses and perform actions in accordance with them (and how is this the act of a virtuous person?) or, if we refrain and do not assent, we will not perform any of the actions dependent upon them, so we will perform no activity at all.

64 Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Mantissa to the Book On the Soul, p. 160, 3 Bruns. Virtue, therefore, is not sufficient for happiness. For it is either concerned with the choice 15 of pleasant things, according to Epicurus, or with the choice of things according to nature, as seems to those from the Stoa. — For the activity according to virtue is not the productive cause of things according to nature. But if its activity is concerned with certain underlying things, of which it is not itself the productive cause, virtue is not sufficient for its own activities, since it requires from outside itself those things concerning which the activity is directed. For it does not have these, as they say, as "things without which it is not possible," but they are incentives to virtue and causes for it to act and be active. For it aims at them, just as craftsmen aim at their own material. They say, therefore, that actions will be destroyed if these things do not pull and move the virtues by the differences within them.

25 65 Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Mantissa to the Book On the Soul, p. 162, 32 Bruns. Furthermore, if the common concepts of happiness posit it as self-sufficient for life (for they have assumed the happy person to be in need of nothing) and they suppose happiness to be the final object of desire (but they also call living according to nature and the life according to nature happiness, and in addition to these they say that living well and 30 living rightly and a good life is happiness), if happiness is assumed to be of such a nature, but virtue is not sufficient for any of these, then virtue would not be sufficient for happiness.

66 Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Mantissa to the Book On the Soul, p. 159, 33 Bruns. Furthermore, if every craft produces something other than itself and not itself, and virtue is, according to them, a craft productive of happiness, then happiness would be something other than virtue.

67 Alexander in Aristotle, Topics p. 93 Ald. p. 173, 11. Thus, since it follows for the person saying that virtue is sufficient for happiness that it is not reasonable for there to be a departure from life suicide, nor for health or anything else besides virtue to be choiceworthy, if any of these are removed, the claim that virtue is sufficient for happiness would be removed.