tation of a happy life according to
Epicurus, in the words of Zeno, so that there is no room for
contradiction in any point. What, then? Can the proposing and thinking
of such a life make Thyestes's grief the less, or AEetes's, of whom I
spoke above, or Telamon's, who was driven from his country to penury
and banishment? in wonder at whom men exclaimed thus:

Is this the man surpassing glory raised?
Is this that Telamon so highly praised
By wondering Greece, at whose sight, like the sun,
All others with diminish'd lustre shone?

Now, should any one, as the same author says, find his spirits sink
with the loss of his fortune, he must apply to those grave philosophers
of antiquity for relief, and not to these voluptuaries: for what great
abundance of good do they promise? Suppose that we allow that to be
without pain is the chief good? Yet that is not called pleasure. But it
is not necessary at present to go through the whole: the question is,
to what point are we to advance in order to abate our grief? Grant that
to be in pain is the greatest evil: whosoever, then, has proceeded so
far as not to be in pain, is he, therefore, in immediate possession of
the greatest good? Why, Epicurus, do we use any evasions, and not allow
in our own words the same feeling to be pleasure which you are used to
boast of with such assurance? Are these your words or not? This is what
you say in that book which contains all the doctrine of your school;
for I will perform on this occasion the office of a translator, lest
any one should imagine that I am inventing anything. Thus you speak:
"Nor can I form any notion of the chief good, abstracted from those
pleasures which are perceived by taste, or from what depends on hearing
music, or abstracted from ideas raised by external objects visible to
the eye, or by agreeable motions, or from those other pleasures which
are perceived by the whole man by means of any of his senses; nor can
it possibly be said that the pleasures of the mind are excited only by
what is good, for I have perceived men's minds to be pleased with the
hopes of enjoying those things which I mentioned above, and with the
idea that it should enjoy them without any interruption from pain." And
these are his exact words, so that any one may understand what were the
pleasures with which Epicurus was acquainted. Then he speaks thus, a
little lower down: "I have often inquired of those who have been called
wise men