evils He
will change for the better; and as to the goods which are the opposite
of these evils, he will not doubt that they will be added to them, and
that they will be fortunate. Such should be men's hopes, and such should
be the exhortations with which they admonish one another, never losing
an opportunity, but on every occasion distinctly reminding themselves
and others of all these things, both in jest and earnest.

Enough has now been said of divine matters, both as touching the
practices which men ought to follow, and as to the sort of persons
who they ought severally to be. But of human things we have not as yet
spoken, and we must; for to men we are discoursing and not to Gods.
Pleasures and pains and desires are a part of human nature, and on them
every mortal being must of necessity hang and depend with the most eager
interest. And therefore we must praise the noblest life, not only as the
fairest in appearance, but as being one which, if a man will only taste,
and not, while still in his youth, desert for another, he will find to
surpass also in the very thing which we all of us desire,--I mean in
having a greater amount of pleasure and less of pain during the whole of
life. And this will be plain, if a man has a true taste of them, as will
be quickly and clearly seen. But what is a true taste? That we have to
learn from the argument--the point being what is according to nature,
and what is not according to nature. One life must be compared with
another, the more pleasurable with the more painful, after this
manner:--We desire to have pleasure, but we neither desire nor choose
pain; and the neutral state we are ready to take in exchange, not
for pleasure but for pain; and we also wish for less pain and greater
pleasure, but less pleasure and greater pain we do not wish for; and
an equal balance of either we cannot venture to assert that we should
desire. And all these differ or do not differ severally in number and
magnitude and intensity and equality, and in the opposites of these when
regarded as objects of choice, in relation to desire. And such being the
necessary order of things, we wish for that life in which there are
many great and intense elements of pleasure and pain, and in which the
pleasures are in excess, and do not wish for that in which the opposites
exceed; nor, again, do we wish for that in which the elements of either
are small and few and feeble, and the pains exceed. And when, as I said