eding book. In truth, she would be destitute of
shame if she were to resist Virtue any longer, or persist in preferring
what is pleasant to what is honourable, or were to contend that a tickling
pleasure, as it were, of the body, and the joy arising out of it, is of
more importance than dignity of mind and consistency. So that we may
dismiss Pleasure, and desire her to confine herself within her own
boundaries, so that the strictness of our discussions may not be hindered
by her allurements and blandishments. For we have now to inquire what that
chief good is which we are anxious to discover; since pleasure is quite
unconnected with it, and since nearly the same arguments can be urged
against those who have considered freedom from pain as the greatest of
goods.

Nor, indeed, can anything be admitted to be the chief good which is
destitute of virtue, to which nothing can be superior. Therefore, although
in that discourse which was held with Torquatus we were not remiss, still
we have now a much sharper contest before us with the Stoics. For the
statements which are made about pleasure are not expressed with any great
acuteness or refinement. For they who defend it are not skilful in
arguing, nor have those who take the opposite side a very difficult cause
to oppose. Even Epicurus himself says, that one ought not even to argue
about pleasure, because the decision respecting it depends on the
sensations, so that it is sufficient for us to be warned respecting it,
and quite unnecessary for us to be instructed. And on this account, that
previous discussion of ours was a simple one on both sides; for there was
nothing involved or intricate in the discourse of Torquatus, and my own
language, as it seems to me, was very clear. But you are not ignorant what
a subtle, or I might rather say, thorny kind of arguing it is which is
employed by the Stoics. And if it is so among the Greeks, much more so is
it among us, who are forced even to invent words, and to give new names to
new things. And this is what no one who is even moderately learned will
wonder at, when he considers that in every art which is not in common and
ordinary use, there is a great variety of new names, as appellations are
forced to be given to everything about which each art is conversant.
Therefore, both dialecticians and natural philosophers use those words
which are not common in the ordinary conversation of the Greeks; and
geometricians, musicians, and grammar