before, there is a balance of pleasure and pain in life, this is to be
regarded by us as the balanced life; while other lives are preferred by
us because they exceed in what we like, or are rejected by us because
they exceed in what we dislike. All the lives of men may be regarded by
us as bound up in these, and we must also consider what sort of lives
we by nature desire. And if we wish for any others, I say that we desire
them only through some ignorance and inexperience of the lives which
actually exist.

Now, what lives are they, and how many in which, having searched out and
beheld the objects of will and desire and their opposites, and making of
them a law, choosing, I say, the dear and the pleasant and the best and
noblest, a man may live in the happiest way possible? Let us say that
the temperate life is one kind of life, and the rational another, and
the courageous another, and the healthful another; and to these four let
us oppose four other lives--the foolish, the cowardly, the intemperate,
the diseased. He who knows the temperate life will describe it as in
all things gentle, having gentle pains and gentle pleasures, and placid
desires and loves not insane; whereas the intemperate life is impetuous
in all things, and has violent pains and pleasures, and vehement and
stinging desires, and loves utterly insane; and in the temperate life
the pleasures exceed the pains, but in the intemperate life the pains
exceed the pleasures in greatness and number and frequency. Hence one of
the two lives is naturally and necessarily more pleasant and the other
more painful, and he who would live pleasantly cannot possibly choose to
live intemperately. And if this is true, the inference clearly is that
no man is voluntarily intemperate; but that the whole multitude of men
lack temperance in their lives, either from ignorance, or from want of
self-control, or both. And the same holds of the diseased and healthy
life; they both have pleasures and pains, but in health the pleasure
exceeds the pain, and in sickness the pain exceeds the pleasure. Now our
intention in choosing the lives is not that the painful should exceed,
but the life in which pain is exceeded by pleasure we have determined to
be the more pleasant life. And we should say that the temperate life
has the elements both of pleasure and pain fewer and smaller and less
frequent than the intemperate, and the wise life than the foolish life,
and the life of courage than