aried, and may be of different
kinds, but cannot be increased or amplified.

And even at Athens, as I have heard my father say, when he was jesting in
a good-humoured and facetious way upon the Stoics, there is a statue in
the Ceramicus of Chrysippus, sitting down with his hand stretched out; and
this attitude of the hand intimates that he is amusing himself with this
brief question, "Does your hand, while in that condition in which it is at
present, want anything?"--Nothing at all. But if pleasure were a good,
would it want it? I suppose so. Pleasure, then, is not a good. And my
father used to say that even a statue would not say this if it could
speak. For the conclusion was drawn as against the Stoics with sufficient
acuteness, but it did not concern Epicurus. For if that were the only
pleasure which tickled the senses, as it were, if I may say so, and which
overflowed and penetrated them with a certain agreeable feeling, then even
a hand could not be content with freedom from pain without some pleasing
motion of pleasure. But if the highest pleasure is, as Epicurus asserts,
to be free from pain, then, O Chrysippus, the first admission was
correctly made to you, that the hand, when it was in that condition, was
in want of nothing; but the second admission was not equally correct, that
if pleasure were a good it would wish for it. For it would not wish for it
for this reason, inasmuch as whatever is free from pain is in pleasure.

XII. But that pleasure is the boundary of all good things may be easily
seen from this consideration. Let us imagine a person enjoying pleasures
great, numerous, and perpetual, both of mind and body, with no pain either
interrupting him at present or impending over him; what condition can we
call superior to or more desirable than this? For it is inevitable that
there must be in a man who is in this condition a firmness of mind which
fears neither death nor pain, because death is void of all sensation; and
pain, if it is of long duration, is a trifle, while if severe it is
usually of brief duration; so that its brevity is a consolation if it is
violent, and its trifling nature if it is enduring. And when there is
added to these circumstances that such a man has no fear of the deity of
the gods, and does not suffer past pleasures to be entirely lost, but
delights himself with the continued recollection of them, what can be
added to this which will be any improvement to it?

Imagine, on the o