s to say, neither in pleasure nor in pain; in
such pleasure, I mean, as a man who is at a banquet, or in such pain as a
man who is being tortured. What! do you not see a vast multitude of men
who are neither rejoicing nor suffering, but in an intermediate state
between these two conditions? No, indeed, said he; I say that all men who
are free from pain are in pleasure, and in the greatest pleasure too. Do
you, then, say that the man who, not being thirsty himself, mingles some
wine for another, and the thirsty man who drinks it when mixed, are both
enjoying the same pleasure?

VI. Then, said he, a truce, if you please, to all your questions; and,
indeed, I said at the beginning that I would rather have none of them, for
I had a provident dread of these captious dialectics. Would you rather,
then, said I, that we should argue rhetorically than dialectically? As if,
said he, a continuous discourse belonged solely to orators, and not to
philosophers also! I will tell you, said I, what Zeno the Stoic said; he
said, as Aristotle had said before him, that all speaking was divided into
two kinds, and that rhetoric resembled the open palm, dialectics the
closed fist, because orators usually spoke in a rather diffuse, and
dialecticians in a somewhat compressed style. I will comply, then, with
your desires, and will speak, if I can, in an oratorical style, but still
with the oratory of the philosophers, and not that which we use in the
forum; which is forced at times, when it is speaking so as to suit the
multitude, to submit to a very ordinary style. But while Epicurus, O
Torquatus, is expressing his contempt for dialectics, an art which by
itself contains the whole science both of perceiving what the real subject
is in every question, and also of judging what the character of each thing
is, by its system and method of conducting the argument, he goes on too
fast, as it seems to me, and does not distinguish with any skill at all
the different points which he is intent upon proving, as in this very
instance which we were just now speaking of.

Pleasure is pronounced to be the chief good. We must then open the
question, What is pleasure? for otherwise, the thing which we are seeking
for cannot be explained. But, if he had explained it, he would not
hesitate; for either he would maintain that same definition of pleasure
which Aristippus did, namely, that it is that feeling by which the senses
are agreeably and pleasantly moved, whi