on its own account, and that pain
also is to be avoided for the same reason.

Therefore, they say that this notion is implanted in our minds naturally
and instinctively, as it were; so that we _feel_ that the one is to be
sought for, and the other to be avoided. Others, however, (and this is my
own opinion too,) assert that, as many reasons are alleged by many
philosophers why pleasure ought not to be reckoned among goods, nor pain
among evils, we ought not to rely too much on the goodness of our cause,
but that we should use arguments, and discuss the point with precision,
and argue, by the help of carefully collected reasons, about pleasure and
about pain.

X. But that you may come to an accurate perception of the source whence
all this error originated of those people who attack pleasure and extol
pain, I will unfold the whole matter; and I will lay before you the very
statements which have been made by that discoverer of the truth, and
architect, as it were, of a happy life. For no one either despises, or
hates, or avoids pleasure itself merely because it is pleasure, but
because great pains overtake those men who do not understand how to pursue
pleasure in a reasonable manner. Nor is there any one who loves, or
pursues, or wishes to acquire pain because it is pain, but because
sometimes such occasions arise that a man attains to some great pleasure
through labour and pain. For, to descend to trifles, who of us ever
undertakes any laborious exertion of body except in order to gain some
advantage by so doing? and who is there who could fairly blame a man who
should wish to be in that state of pleasure which no annoyance can
interrupt, or one who shuns that pain by which no subsequent pleasure is
procured? But we do accuse those men, and think them entirely worthy of
the greatest hatred, who, being made effeminate and corrupted by the
allurements of present pleasure, are so blinded by passion that they do
not foresee what pains and annoyances they will hereafter be subject to;
and who are equally guilty with those who, through weakness of mind, that
is to say, from eagerness to avoid labour and pain, desert their duty.

And the distinction between these things is quick and easy. For at a time
when we are free, when the option of choice is in our own power, and when
there is nothing to prevent our being able to do whatever we choose, then
every pleasure may be enjoyed, and every pain repelled. But on particular
occa