consciousness that we have promoted the happiness of others, to the
uttermost of our power, is certain not only to meet them at the
threshold, but to bring them along with us, and to render them
accurate and faithful prompters, when we bend perplexedly over the
problem of evil figured by the tragedians. If there were more of pain
than of pleasure in the exhibitions of the dramatist, no man in his
senses would attend them twice. All the imitative arts have delight
for the principal object: the first of these is poetry; the highest of
poetry is tragic.

_Leontion._ The epic has been called so.

_Epicurus._ Improperly; for the epic has much more in it of what is
prosaic. Its magnitude is no argument. An Egyptian pyramid contains
more materials than an Ionic temple, but requires less contrivance,
and exhibits less beauty of design. My simile is yet a defective one;
for a tragedy must be carried on with an unbroken interest, and,
undecorated by loose foliage or fantastic branches, it must rise,
like the palm-tree, with a lofty unity. On these matters I am unable
to argue at large, or perhaps correctly; on those, however, which I
have studied and treated, my terms are so explicit and clear, that
Theophrastus can never have misunderstood them. Let me recall to your
attention but two axioms.

Abstinence from low pleasures is the only means of meriting or of
obtaining the higher.

Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness
in another.

_Leontion._ Explain to me, then, O Epicurus, why we suffer so much
from ingratitude.

_Epicurus._ We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we
suffer from self-love. Passion weeps while she says, 'I did not
deserve this from him'; Reason, while she says it, smoothens her brow
at the clear fountain of the heart. Permit me also, like Theophrastus,
to borrow a few words from a poet.

_Ternissa._ Borrow as many such as any one will entrust to you, and
may Hermes prosper your commerce! Leontion may go to the theatre then;
for she loves it.

_Epicurus._ Girls! be the bosom friends of Antigone and Ismene; and
you shall enter the wood of the Eumenides without shuddering, and
leave it without the trace of a tear. Never did you appear so graceful
to me, O Ternissa--no, not even after this walk do you--as when I saw
you blow a fly from the forehead of Philoctetes in the propylea. The
wing, with which Sophocles and the statuary represent him, to drive
away