Aristippus,
they founded morality upon pleasure, but they differ because they
developed a purer and nobler conception of pleasure than the Cyrenaics
had known. Pleasure alone is an end in itself. It is the only good.
Pain is the only evil. Morality, therefore, is an activity which
yields pleasure. Virtue has no value on its own account, but derives
its value from the pleasure which accompanies it.

This is the only foundation which Epicurus could find, or desired to
find, for moral activity. This is his only ethical principle. The rest
of the Epicurean ethics consists in the interpretation of the idea of
pleasure. And, firstly, by pleasure Epicurus did not mean, as the
Cyrenaics did, merely the pleasure of the moment, whether physical or
mental. He meant the pleasure that endures throughout a lifetime, a
happy life. Hence we are not to allow ourselves to be enslaved by any
particular pleasure or desire. We must master our appetites. We must
often forego a pleasure if it leads in the end to greater pain. We
must be ready to undergo pain for the sake of a greater pleasure to
come.

And it was just for this reason, secondly, that the {359} Epicureans
regarded spiritual and mental pleasures as far more important than
those of the body. For the body feels pleasure and pain only while
they last. The body has in itself neither memory nor fore-knowledge.
It is the mind which remembers and foresees. And by far the most
potent pleasures and pains are those of remembrance and anticipation.
A physical pleasure is a pleasure to the body only now. But the
anticipation of a future pain is mental anxiety, the remembrance of a
past joy is a present delight. Hence what is to be aimed at above all
is a calm untroubled mind, for the pleasures of the body are
ephemeral, those of the spirit enduring. The Epicureans, like the
Stoics, preached the necessity of superiority to bodily pains and
external circumstances. So a man must not depend for his happiness
upon externals; he must have his blessedness in his own self. The wise
man can be happy even in bodily torment, for in the inner tranquillity
of his soul he possesses a happiness which far outweighs any bodily
pain. Yet innocent pleasures of sense are neither forbidden, nor to be
despised. The wise man will enjoy whatever he can without harm. Of all
mental pleasures the Epicureans laid, perhaps, most stress upon
friendship. The school was not merely a collection of
fellow-philosophers,