also, pains which are the means of pleasures greater than themselves. The
wise man, therefore, will measure and govern his conduct, not by the
pleasure of the moment, but with reference to the future and ultimate
effects of acts, habits, and courses of conduct, upon his happiness. What
are called the virtues, as justice, temperance, chastity, are in
themselves no better than their opposites; but experience has shown that
they increase the aggregate of pleasure, and diminish the aggregate of
pain. Therefore, and therefore alone, they are duties. The great worth of
philosophy consists in its enabling men to estimate the relative duration,
and the permanent consequences, as well as the immediate intensity, of
every form of pleasure.

Epicurus specifies *two kinds of pleasure*, that of rest and that of
motion. He prefers the former. Action has its reaction; excitement is
followed by depression; effort, by weariness; thought for others involves
the disturbance of one's own peace. The gods, according to Epicurus, lead
an easy, untroubled life, leave the outward universe to take care of
itself, are wholly indifferent to human affairs, and are made ineffably
happy by the entire absence of labor, want, and care; and man becomes most
godlike and most happy, therefore most virtuous, when he floats through
life, unharming and unharmed, idle and useless, self-contained and
self-sufficing, simple in his tastes, moderate in his requirements, frugal
in his habits.

It may be doubted *whether Epicurus denoted by pleasure,*(*18*)* mere
physical pleasure alone*. It is certain that his later followers regarded
the pleasures of the body as the only good; and Cicero says that Epicurus
himself referred all the pleasures of the intellect to the memory of past
and the hope of future sensual gratification. Yet there is preserved an
extract of a letter from Epicurus, in which he says that his own bodily
pains in his years of decrepitude are outweighed by the pleasure derived
from the memory of his philosophical labors and discoveries.

*Epicureanism numbered among its disciples*, not only *men of approved
virtue*, but not a few, like Pliny the Younger, of a more active type of
virtue than Epicurus would have deemed consistent with pleasure. But in
lapse of time it became the pretext and cover for the grossest sensuality;
and the associations which the unlearned reader has with the name are only
strengthened by conversance with the literature t