# The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations/De Finibus, a Treatise on the Chief Good and Evil/Book 2

Second Book Of The Treatise On The Chief Good And Evil.
On this, when both of them fixed their eyes on me, and showed that they were ready to listen to me:—In the first place, said I, I intreat you not to fancy that I, like a professed philosopher, am going to explain to you the doctrines of some particular school; a course which I have never much approved of when adopted by philosophers themselves. For when did Socrates, who may fairly be called the parent of philosophy, ever do anything of the sort? That custom was patronized by those who at that time were called Sophists, of which number Georgias of Leontium was the first who ventured in an assembly to demand a question,—that is to say, to desire any one in the company to say what he wished to hear discussed. It was a bold proceeding; I should call it an impudent one, if this fashion had not subsequently been borrowed by our own philosophers. But we see that he whom I have just mentioned, and all the other Sophists, (as may be gathered from Plato,) were all turned into ridicule by Socrates; for he, by questioning and interrogating them, was in the habit of eliciting the opinions of those with whom he was arguing, and then, if he thought it necessary, of replying to the answers which they had given him. And as that custom had not been preserved by those who came after him, Arcesilaus re-introduced it, and established the custom, that those who wished to become his pupils were not to ask him questions, but themselves to state their opinions; and then, when they had stated them, he replied to what they had advanced; but those who came to him for instruction defended their own opinions as well as they could.
But with all the rest of the philosophers the man who asks the question says no more; and this practice prevails in the Academy to this day. For when he who wishes to receive instruction has spoken thus, “Pleasure appears to me to be the ​chief good,” they argue against this proposition in an uninterrupted discourse; so that it may be easily understood that they who say that they entertain such and such an opinion, do not of necessity really entertain it, but wish to hear the arguments which may be brought against it. We follow a more convenient method, for not only has Torquatus explained what his opinions are, but also why he entertains them: but I myself think, although I was exceedingly delighted with his uninterrupted discourse, that still, when you stop at each point that arises, and come to an understanding what each party grants, and what he denies, you draw the conclusion you desire from what is admitted with more convenience, and come to an end of the discussion more readily. For when a discourse is borne on uninterruptedly, like a torrent, although it hurries along in its course many things of every kind, you still can take hold of nothing, and put your hand on nothing, and can find no means of restraining that rapid discourse.
II. But every discourse which is concerned in the investigation of any matter, and which proceeds on any system and principle, ought first to establish the rule (as is done in lawsuits, where one proceeds according to set formulas), in order that it may be agreed between the parties to the discussion, what the subject of the discussion really is. This rule was approved by Epicurus, as it was laid down by Plato in his “Phædrus,” and he considered that it ought to be adopted in every controversy. But he did not perceive what was the necessary consequence of it, for he asserts that the subject ought not to be defined; but if this be not done, it is sometimes impossible that the disputants should agree what the matter is that is the subject of discussion, as in this very case which we are discussing now, for we are inquiring into the End of Good. How can we know what the character of this is, if, when we have used the expression the End of Good, we do not compare with one another our ideas of what is meant by the End, and of what the Good itself is?
And this laying open of things covered up, as it were, when it is once explained what each thing is, is the definition of it; which you sometimes used without being aware of it; for you defined this very thing, whether it is to be called the End, or the extremity, or the limit, to be that to which everything which was done rightly was referred, and which was itself ​never referred to anything. So far was very well said; and, perhaps, if it had been necessary, you would also have defined the Good itself, and told us what that was; making it to be that which is desirable by nature, or that which is profitable, or that which is useful, or that which is pleasant: and now, since you have no general objections to giving definitions, and do it when you please, if it is not too much trouble, I should be glad if you would define what is pleasure, for that is what all this discussion relates to.
As if, said he, there were any one who is ignorant what pleasure is, or who is in need of any definition to enable him to understand it better.
I should say, I replied, that I myself am such a man, if I did not seem to myself to have a thorough acquaintance with, and an accurate idea and notion of, pleasure firmly implanted in my mind. But, at present, I say that Epicurus himself does not know, and that he is greatly in error on this subject; and that he who mentions the subject so often ought to explain carefully what the meaning of the words he uses is, but that he sometimes does not understand what the meaning of this word pleasure is, that is to say, what the idea is which is contained under this word.
III. Then he laughed, and said,—This is a capital idea, indeed, that he who says that pleasure is the end of all things which are to be desired, the very extreme point and limit of Good, should be ignorant of what it is, and of what is its character. But, I replied, either Epicurus is ignorant of what pleasure is, or else all the rest of the world are. How so? said he.
Because all men feel that this is pleasure which moves the senses when they receive it, and which has a certain agreeableness pervading it throughout. What then, said he, is Epicurus ignorant of that kind of pleasure? Not always, I replied; for sometimes he is even too well acquainted with it, inasmuch as he declares that he is unable even to understand where it is, or what any good is, except that which is enjoyed by the instrumentality of meat or drink, or the pleasure of the ears, or sensual enjoyment: is not this what he says? As if, said he, I were ashamed of these things, or as if I were unable to explain in what sense these things are said. I do not doubt, I replied, that you can do so easily; nor is there any reason why you need be ashamed of arguing with a wise ​man, who is the only man, as far as I know, who has ever ventured to profess himself a wise man. For they do not think that Metrodorus himself professed this, but only that, when he was called wise by Epicurus, he was unwilling to reject such an expression of his goodwill. But the Seven had this name given to them, not by themselves, but by the universal suffrage of all nations. However, in this place, I will assume that Epicurus, by these expressions, certainly meant to intimate the same kind of pleasure that the rest do; for all men call that pleasing motion by which the senses are rendered cheerful, ἡδονὴ in Greek, and voluptas in Latin.
What is it, then, that you ask? I will tell you, said I, and that for the sake of learning rather than of finding fault with either you or Epicurus. I too, said he, should be more desirous to learn of you, if you can impart anything worth learning, than to find fault with you.
Well, then, said I, you are aware of what Hieronymus of Rhodes says is the chief good, to which he thinks that everything ought to be referred? I know, said he, that he thinks that the great end is freedom from pain. Well, what are his sentiments respecting pleasure? He affirms, he replied, that it is not to be sought for its own sake; for he thinks that rejoicing is one thing, and being free from pain another. And indeed, continued he, he is in this point greatly mistaken, for, as I proved a little while ago, the end of increasing pleasure is the removal of all pain. I will examine, said I, presently, what the meaning of the expression, freedom from pain, is; but unless you are very obstinate, you must admit that pleasure is a perfectly distinct thing from mere freedom from pain. You will, however, said he, find that I am obstinate in this; for nothing can be more real than the identity between the two. Is there, now, said I, any pleasure felt by a thirsty man in drinking? Who can deny it? said he. Is it, asked I, the same pleasure that he feels after his thirst is extinguished? It is, replied he, another kind of pleasure; for the state of extinguished thirst has in it a certain stability of pleasure, but the pleasure of extinguishing it is pleasure in motion. Why, then, said I, do you call things so unlike one another by the same name? Do not ​recollect, he rejoined, what I said just now,—that when all pain is banished, pleasure is varied, not extinguished? I recollect, said I; but you spoke in admirable Latin, indeed, but yet not very intelligibly; for varietas is a Latin word, and properly applicable to a difference of colour, but it is applied metaphorically to many differences: we apply the adjective, varias, to poems, orations, manners, and changes of fortune; it is occasionally predicated also of pleasure, when it is derived from many things unlike one another, which cause pleasures which are similarly unlike. Now, if that is the variety you mean, I should understand you, as, in fact, I do understand you, without your saying so: but still, I do not see clearly what that variety is, because you say, that when we are free from pain we are then in the enjoyment of the greatest pleasure; but when we are eating those things which cause a pleasing motion to the senses, then there is a pleasure in the emotion which causes a variety in the pleasure; but still, that that pleasure which arises from the freedom from pain is not increased;—and why you call that pleasure I do not know.
IV. Is it possible, said he, for anything to be more delightful than freedom from pain? Well, said I, but grant that nothing is preferable to that, (for that is not the point which I am inquiring about at present,) does it follow on that account, that pleasure is identical with what I may call painlessness? Undoubtedly it is identical with it, said he; and that painlessness is the greatest of pleasures which no other can possibly exceed. Why, then, said I, do you hesitate, after you have defined the chief good in this manner, to uphold, and defend, and maintain the proposition, that the whole of pleasure consists in freedom from pain? For what necessity for your introducing pleasure among the council of the virtues, any more than for bringing in a courtezan to an assembly of matrons? The very name of pleasure is odious, infamous, and a just object of suspicion: therefore, you are all in the constant habit of saying that we do not understand what Epicurus means when he speaks of pleasure. And whenever such an assertion is made to me,—and I hear it advanced pretty often,—although I am usually a very peaceful arguer, still I do on such occasions get a little angry. Am I to be told that I do not know what that is which the Greeks ​call ἡδονὴ, and the Latins voluptas? Which language is it, then, that I do not understand? Then, too, how comes it about that I do not understand, though every one else does, who chooses to call himself an Epicurean? when the disciples of your school argue most excellently, that there is no need whatever for a man, who wishes to become a philosopher, to be acquainted with literature. Therefore, just as our ancestors tore Cincinnatus away from his plough to make him Dictator, in like manner you collect from among the Greeks all those men, who may in truth be respectable men enough, but who are certainly not over-learned.
Do they then understand what Epicurus means, and do I not understand it? However, that you may know that I do understand, first of all I tell you that voluptas is the same thing that he calls ἡδονὴ. And, indeed, we often have to seek for a Latin word equivalent to, and exactly equipollent to a Greek one; but here we had nothing to seek for: for no word can be found which will more exactly express in Latin what ἡδονὴ does in Greek, than voluptas. Now every man in the world who understands Latin, comprehends under this word two things,—joy in the mind, and an agreeable emotion of pleasantness in the body. For when the man in Trabea calls an excessive pleasure of the mind joy, (lætitia,) he says much the same as the other character in Cæcilius's play, who says that he is joyful with every sort of joy.
However, there is this difference, that pleasure is also spoken of as affecting the mind; which is wrong, as the Stoics think, who define it thus: “An elation of the mind without reason, when the mind has an idea that it is enjoying some great good.” But the words lætitia (gladness), and gaudium (joy), do not properly apply to the body. But the word voluptas (pleasure) is applied to the body by the usage of all people who speak Latin, whenever that pleasantness is felt which moves any one of the senses. Now transfer this pleasantness, if you please, to the mind; for the verb juvo (to please) is applied both to body and mind, and the word jucundus is derived from it; provided you understand that between the man who says,
I am transported with gladness now That I am scarce myself . . . .
Now then at length my mind's on fire, . . .
one of whom is beside himself with joy, and the other is being tormented with anguish, there is this intermediate person, whose language is,
Although this our acquaintance is so new,
who feels neither gladness nor anguish. And, in the same manner, between the man who is in the enjoyment of the pleasures of the body, which he has been wishing for, and him who is being tormented with extreme anguish, there is a third man, who is free alike from pleasure and from pain.
V. Do I not, then, seem to you sufficiently to understand the meaning of words, or must I at this time of life be taught how to speak Greek, and even Latin? And yet I would have you consider, whether if I, who, as I think, understand Greek very fairly, do still not understand what Epicurus means, it it may not be owing to some fault of his for speaking so as not to be intelligible. And this sometimes happens in two ways, without any blame; either if you do so on purpose, as Heraclitus did, who got the surname of σκοτεινὸς, because he spoke with too much obscurity about natural philosophy; or when the obscurity of the subject itself, not of the language, prevents what is said from being clearly understood, as is the case in the Timæus of Plato. But Epicurus, as I imagine, is both willing, if it is in his power, to speak intelligibly, and is also speaking, not of an obscure subject like the natural philosophers, nor of one depending on precise rules, as the mathematicians are, but he is discussing a plain and simple matter, which is a subject of common conversation among the common people. Although you do not deny that we understand the usual meaning of the word voluptas, but only what he means by it: from which it follows, not that we do not understand what is the meaning of that word, but that he follows his own fashion, and neglects our usual one; for if he means the same thing that Hieronymus does, who thinks that the chief good is to live without any annoyance, why does he prefer using the term “pleasure” rather than freedom from pain, as Hieronymus does, who is quite aware of the force of the words which he employs? But, if he thinks that he ought to add, that pleasure which consists in ​motion, (for this is the distinction he draws, that this agreeable pleasure is pleasure in motion, but the pleasure of him who is free from pain is a state of pleasure,) then why does he appear to aim at what is impossible, namely, to make any one who knows himself—that is to say, who has any proper comprehension of his own nature and sensations—think freedom from pain, and pleasure, the same thing?
This, O Torquatus, is doing violence to one's senses; it is wresting out of our minds the understanding of words with which we are imbued; for who can avoid seeing that these three states exist in the nature of things: first, the state of being in pleasure; secondly, that of being in pain; thirdly, that of being in such a condition as we are at this moment, and you too, I imagine, that is 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, which even cattle, if they could speak, would call pleasure; or else, if he chose rather to speak in his own style, than like
All the Greeks from high Mycenæ, All Minerva's Attic youth,
and the rest of the Greeks who are spoken of in these anapæsts, then he would call this freedom from pain alone by the name of pleasure, and would despise the definition of Aristippus; or, if he thought both definitions good, as in fact he does, he would combine freedom from pain with pleasure, and would employ the two extremes in his own definition: for many, and they, too, great philosophers, have combined these extremities of goods, as, for instance, Aristotle, who united in his idea the practice of virtue with the prosperity of an entire life. Callipho added pleasure to what is honourable. Diodorus, in his definition, added to the same honourableness, freedom from pain. Epicurus would have done so too, if he had combined the opinion which was held by Hieronymus, with the ancient theory of Aristippus. For those two men disagree with one another, and on this account they employ separate definitions; and, while they both write the most beautiful Greek, still, neither does Aristippus, who calls pleasure the chief good, ever speak of freedom from pain as pleasure; nor does Hieronymus, who lays it down that freedom from pain is the chief good, ever use the word “pleasure” ​for that painlessness, inasmuch as he never even reckons pleasure at all among the things which are desirable.
VII. They are also two distinct things, that you may not think that the difference consists only in words and names. One is to be without pain, the other to be with pleasure. But your school not only attempt to make one name for these two things which are so exceedingly unlike, (for I would not mind that so much,) but you endeavour also to make one thing out of the two, which is utterly impossible. But Epicurus, who admits both things, ought to use both expressions, and in fact he does divide them in reality, but still he does not distinguish between them in words. For though he in many places praises that very pleasure which we all call by the same name, he ventures to say that he does not even suspect that there is any good whatever unconnected with that kind of pleasure which Aristippus means; and he makes this statement in the very place where his whole discourse is about the chief good. But in another book, in which he utters opinions of the greatest weight in a concise form of words, and in which he is said to have delivered oracles of wisdom, he writes in those words which you are well acquainted with, O Torquatus. For who is there of you who has not learnt the κύριαι δόξαι of Epicurus, that is to say, his fundamental maxims? because they are sentiments of the greatest gravity intended to guide men to a happy life, and enunciated with suitable brevity. Consider, therefore, whether I am not translating this maxim of his correctly. “If those things which are the efficient causes of pleasures to luxurious men were to release them from all fear of the gods, and of death, and of pain, and to show them what are the proper limits to their desires, we should have nothing to find fault with; as men would then be filled with pleasures from all quarters, and have on no side anything painful or melancholy, for all such things are evil.”
On this Triarius could restrain himself no longer. I beg of you, Torquatus, said he, to tell me, is this what Epicurus says?—because he appeared to me, although he knew it himself, still to wish to hear Torquatus admit it. But he was not at all put out, and said with great confidence, Indeed, he does, and in these identical words; but you do not perceive what he means. If, said I, he says one thing and means another, then I never shall understand what he means, but ​he speaks plainly enough for me to see what he says. And if what he says is that luxurious men are not to be blamed if they are wise men, he talks absurdly; just as if he were to say that parricides are not to be found fault with if they are not covetous, and if they fear neither gods, nor death, nor pain. And yet, what is the object of making any exception as to the luxurious, or of supposing any people, who, while living luxuriously, would not be reproved by that consummate philosopher, provided only they guard against all other vices. Still, would not you, Epicurus, blame luxurious men for the mere fact of their living in such a manner as to pursue every sort of pleasure; especially when, as you say, the chief pleasure of all is to be free from pain? But yet we find some debauched men so far from having any religious scruples, that they will eat even out of the sacred vessels; and so far from fearing death that they are constantly repeating that passage out of the Hymnis,—
Six months of life for me are quite sufficient, The seventh may be for the shades below,—
and bringing up that Epicurean remedy for pain, as if they were taking it out of a medicine chest: “If it is bitter, it is of short duration; if it lasts a long time, it must be slight in degree.” There is one thing which I do not understand, namely, how a man who is devoted to luxury can possibly have his appetites under restraint.
VIII. What then is the use of saying, I should have nothing to reproach them with if they only set bounds to their appetites? This is the same as saying, I should not blame debauched men if they were not debauched men. In the same way one might say, I should not blame even wicked men if they were virtuous. This man of strict morality does not think luxury of itself a thing to be blamed. And, indeed, O Torquatus, to speak the truth, if pleasure is the chief good, he is quite right not to think so. For I should be sorry to picture to myself, (as you are in the habit of doing,) men so debauched as to vomit over the table and be carried away from banquets, and then the next day, while still suffering from indigestion, gorge themselves again; men who, as they say, have never in their lives seen the sun set or rise, and who, having devoured their patrimony, are reduced to indi​gence. None of us imagine that debauched men of that sort live pleasantly. You, however, rather mean to speak of refined and elegant bons vivans, men who, by the employment of the most skilful cooks and bakers, and by carefully culling the choicest products of fishermen, fowlers, and hunters, avoid all indigestion—
Men who draw richer wines from foaming casks.
As Lucilius says, men who
So strain, so cool the rosy wine with snow, That all the flavour still remains uninjured—
and so on—men in the enjoyment of luxuries such that, if they are taken away, Epicurus says that he does not know what there is that can be called good. Let them also have beautiful boys to attend upon them; let their clothes, their plate, their articles of Corinthian vertu, the banqueting-room itself, all correspond, still I should never be induced to say that these men so devoted to luxury were living either well or happily. From which it follows, not indeed that pleasure is not pleasure, but that pleasure is not the chief good. Nor was Lælius, who, when a young man, was a pupil of Diogenes the Stoic, and afterwards of Panætius, called a wise man because he did not understand what was most pleasant to the taste, (for it does not follow that the man who has a discerning heart must necessarily have a palate destitute of discernment,) but because he thought it of but small importance.
O sorrel, how that man may boast himself, By whom you're known and valued! Proud of you, That wise man Lælius would loudly shout, Addressing all our epicures in order.
And it was well said by Lælius, and he may be truly called a wise man,—
You Publius, Gallonius, you whirlpool, You are a miserable man; you never In all your life have really feasted well, Though spending all your substance on those prawns, And overgrown huge sturgeons.
The man who says this is one who, as he attributes no importance to pleasure himself, denies that the man feasts well who refers everything to pleasure. And yet he does not deny that Gallonius has at times feasted as he wished; for that would ​be speaking untruly: he only denies that he has ever feasted well. With such dignity and severe principle does he distinguish between pleasure and good. And the natural inference is, that all who feast well feast as they wish, but that it does not follow that all who feast as they wish do therefore feast well. Lælius always feasted well. How so? Lucilius shall tell you—
He feasted on well season'd, well arranged—
what? What was the chief part of his supper?
Converse of prudent men,—
Well, and what else?
with cheerful mind.
For he came to a banquet with a tranquil mind, desirous only of appeasing the wants of nature. Lælius then is quite right to deny that Gallonius had ever feasted well; he is quite right to call him miserable; especially as he devoted the whole of his attention to that point. And yet no one affirms that he did not sup as he wished. Why then did he not feast well? Because feasting well is feasting with propriety, frugality, and good order; but this man was in the habit of feasting badly, that is, in a dissolute, profligate, gluttonous, unseemly manner. Lælius, then, was not preferring the flavour of sorrel to Gallonius's sturgeon, but merely treating the taste of the sturgeon with indifference; which he would not have done if he had placed the chief good in pleasure.
IX. We must then discard pleasure, not only in order to follow what is right, but even to be able to talk becomingly. Can we then call that the chief good in life, which we see cannot possibly be so even in a banquet?
But how is it that this philosopher speaks of three kinds of appetites,—some natural and necessary, some natural but not necessary, and others neither natural nor necessary? In the first place, he has not made a neat division; for out of two kinds he has made three. Now this is not dividing, but breaking in pieces. If he had said that there are two kinds of appetites, natural and superfluous ones, and that the natural appetites might be also subdivided into two kinds, necessary and not necessary, he would have been all right. And those who have learnt what he despises do usually say so. For it is a vicious division to reckon a part as a genus. However, let us pass over this, for he despises elegance in arguing; he ​speaks confusedly. We must submit to this as long as his sentiments are right. I do not, however, approve, and it is as much as I can do to endure, a philosopher speaking of the necessity of setting bounds to the desires. Is it possible to set bounds to the desires? I say that they must be banished, eradicated by the roots. For what man is there in whom appetites dwell, who can deny that he may with propriety be called appetitive? If so, he will be avaricious, though to a limited extent; and an adulterer, but only in moderation; and he will be luxurious in the same manner. Now what sort of a philosophy is that which does not bring with it the destruction of depravity, but is content with a moderate degree of vice? Although in this division I am altogether on his side as to the facts, only I wish he would express himself better. Let him call these feelings the wishes of nature; and let him keep the name of desire for other objects, so as, when speaking of avarice, of intemperance, and of the greatest vices, to be able to indict it as it were on a capital charge. However, all this is said by him with a good deal of freedom, and is often repeated; and I do not blame him, for it is becoming in so great a philosopher, and one of such a great reputation, to defend his own degrees fearlessly.
But still, from the fact of his often appearing to embrace that pleasure, (I mean that which all nations call by this name,) with a good deal of eagerness, he is at times in great difficulties, so that, if he could only pass undetected, there is nothing so shameful that it does not seem likely that he would do it for the sake of pleasure. And then, when he has been put to the blush, (for the power of nature is very great,) he takes refuge in denying that any addition can possibly be made to the pleasure of the man who is free from pain. But that state of freedom from pain is not called pleasure. I do not care, says he, about the name. But what do you say about the thing being utterly different?—I will find you many men, or I may say an innumerable host, not so curious nor so embarrassing as you are, whom I can easily convince of whatever I choose. Why then do we hesitate to say that, ​if to be free from pain is the highest degree of pleasure, to be destitute of pleasure is the highest degree of pain? Because it is not pleasure which is the contrary to pain, but the absence of pain.
X. But this he does not see, that it is a great proof that at the very moment when he says that if pleasure be once taken away he has no idea at all what remaining thing can be called good, (and he follows up this assertion with the statement that he means such pleasure as is perceptible by the palate and by the ears, and adds other things which decency ought to forbid him to mention,) he is, like a strict and worthy philosopher, aware that this which he calls the chief good is not even a thing which is worth desiring for its own sake, that he himself informs us that we have no reason to wish for pleasure at all, if we are free from pain. How inconsistent are these statements! If he had learnt to make correct divisions or definitions of his subject, if he had a proper regard to the usages of speaking and the common meaning of words, he would never have fallen into such difficulties. But as it is, you see what it is he is doing. That which no one has ever called pleasure at all, and that also which is real active pleasure, which are two distinct things, he makes but one. For he calls them agreeable and, as I may say, sweet-tasted pleasures. At times he speaks so lightly of them that you might fancy you were listening to Marcus Curius. At times he extols them so highly that he says he cannot form even the slightest idea of what else is good—a sentiment which deserves not the reproof of a philosopher, but the brand of the censor. For vice does not confine itself to language, but penetrates also into the manners. He does not find fault with luxury provided it to be free from boundless desires and from fear. While speaking in this way he appears to be fishing for disciples, that men who wish to become debauchees may become philosophers first.
Now, in my opinion, the origin of the chief good is to be sought in the first origin of living animals. As soon as an animal is born it rejoices in pleasure, and seeks it as a good; it shuns pain as an evil. And Epicurus says that excellent decisions on the subject of the good and the evil are come to by those animals which are not yet depraved. You, too, have laid down the same position, and these are your own ​words. How many errors are there in them! For by reference to which kind of pleasure will a puling infant judge of the chief good; pleasure in stability or pleasure in motion?—since, if the gods so will, we are learning how to speak from Epicurus. If it is from pleasure as a state, then certainly nature desires to be exempt from evil herself; which we grant; if it is from pleasure in motion, which, however, is what you say, then there will be no pleasure so discreditable as to deserve to be passed over. And at the same time that just-born animal you are speaking of does not begin with the highest pleasure; which has been defined by you to consist in not being in pain.
However, Epicurus did not seek to derive this argument from infants, or even from beasts, which he looks upon as mirrors of nature as it were; so as to say that they, under the guidance of nature, seek only this pleasure of being free from pain. For this sort of pleasure cannot excite the desires of the mind; nor has this state of freedom from pain any impulse by which it can act upon the mind. Therefore Hieronymus blunders in this same thing. For that pleasure only acts upon the mind which has the power of alluring the senses. Therefore Epicurus always has recourse to this pleasure when wishing to prove that pleasure is sought for naturally; because that pleasure which consists in motion both allures infants to itself, and beasts; and this is not done by that pleasure which is a state in which there is no other ingredient but freedom from pain. How then can it be proper to say that nature begins with one kind of pleasure, and yet to put the chief good in another?
XI. But as for beasts, I do not consider that they can pronounce any judgment at all. For although they are not depraved, it is still possible for them to be wrong. Just as one stick may be bent and crooked by having been made so on purpose, and another may be so naturally; so the nature of beasts is not indeed depraved by evil education, but is wrong naturally. Nor is it correct to say that nature excites the infant to desire pleasure, but only to love itself and to desire to preserve itself safe and unhurt. For every animal the moment that it is born loves itself, and every part of itself, and above all does it love its two principal parts, namely its mind and body, and afterwards it proceeds to love the sepa​rate parts of each. For there are in the mind and also in the body some parts of especial consequence; and as soon as it has got a slight perception of this fact, it then begins to make distinctions, so as to desire those things which are by nature given to it as its principal goods, and to reject the contrary. Now it is a great question whether among these primary natural goods, pleasure has any place or not. But to think that there is nothing beyond pleasure, no limbs, no sensations, no emotions of the mind, no integrity of the body, no health, appears to me to be a token of the greatest ignorance. And on this the whole question of good and evil turns. Now Polemo and also Aristotle thought those things which I mentioned just now the greatest of goods. And from this originated that opinion of the Old Academy and of the Peripatetic School, which led them to say that the greatest good was to live in accordance with nature—that is to say, to enjoy the chief good things which are given by nature, with the accompaniment of virtue. Callipho added nothing to virtue except pleasure; Diodorus nothing except freedom from pain. And all these men attach the idea of the greatest good to some one of these things which I have mentioned. Aristippus thought it was simple pleasure. The Stoics defined it to be agreeing with nature, which they say can only be living virtuously, living honourably. And they interpret it further thus—to live with an understanding of those things which happen naturally, selecting those which are in accordance with nature, and rejecting the contrary. So there are three definitions, all of which exclude honesty:—one, that of Aristippus or Epicurus; the second, that of Hieronymus; the third, that of Carneades: three in which honesty is admitted with some qualifying additions; those, namely, of Polemo, Callipho, and Diodorus: one single one, of which Zeno is the author, which is wholly referred to what is becoming; that is to say, to honesty. For Pyrrho, Aristo, and Herillus, have long since sunk into oblivion. The rest have been consistent with themselves, so as to make their ends agree with their beginnings; so that Aristippus has defined it to be pleasure; Hieronymus, freedom from pain; and Carneades, the enjoyment of what are pointed out by nature as the principal goods.
XII. But when Epicurus had given pleasure the highest ​rank, if he meant the same pleasure that Aristippus did he ought to have adopted the same thing as the chief good that he did; if he meant the same that Hieronymus did, he would then have been assigning the first rank to Hieronymus's pleasure, and not to that of Aristippus.
For, as to what he says, that it is decided by the senses themselves that pleasure is a good and that pain is an evil, he has attributed more weight to the senses than the laws allow them. We are the judges of private actions, but we cannot decide anything which does not legally come under the cognisance of our tribunal; and, in such a case, it is to no purpose that judges are in the habit, when they pronounce sentence, of adding, “if the question belongs to my jurisdiction;” for, if the matter did not come under their jurisdiction, this additional form of words would not any the more give validity to their decision. Now, what is it that the senses are judges of? Whether a thing is sweet or bitter, soft or hard, near or far off; whether it is standing still or moving; whether it is square or round. What sentence, then, will reason pronounce, having first of all called in the aid of the knowledge of divine and human affairs, which is properly called wisdom; and having, after that, associated to itself the virtues which reason points out as the mistresses of all things, but which you make out to be only the satellites and handmaidens of pleasures? The sentence, however, of all these qualities, will pronounce first of all, respecting pleasure, that there is no room for it; not only no room for its being placed by itself in the rank of the chief good, which is what we are looking for, but no room even for its being placed in connexion even with what is honourable.
The same sentence will be passed upon freedom from pain; Carneades also will be disregarded; nor will any definition of the chief good be approved of, which has any close connexion with pleasure, or freedom from pain, or which is devoid of what is honourable. And so it will leave two, which it will consider over and over again; for it will either lay down the maxim, that nothing is good except what is honourable, nothing evil except what is disgraceful; that everything else is either of no consequence at all, or, at all events, of only so much, that it is neither to be sought after nor avoided, but only selected or rejected; or else, it will prefer that which it ​shall perceive to be the most richly endowed with what is honourable, and enriched, at the same time, with the primary good things of nature, and with the perfection of the whole life; and it will do so all the more clearly, if it comes to a right understanding whether the controversy between them is one of facts, or only of words.
XIII. I now, following the authority of this man, will do the same as he has done; for, as far as I can, I will diminish the disputes, and will regard all their simple opinions in which there is no association of virtue, as judgments which ought to be utterly removed to a distance from philosophy. First of all, I will discard the principles of Aristippus, and of all the Cyrenaics,—men who were not afraid to place the chief good in that pleasure which especially excited the senses with its sweetness, disregarding that freedom from pain. These men did not perceive that, as a horse is born for galloping, and an ox for ploughing, and a dog for hunting, so man, also, is born for two objects, as Aristotle says, namely, for understanding and for acting as if he were a kind of mortal god. But, on the other hand, as a slow moving and languid sheep is born to feed, and to take pleasure in propagating his species, they fancied also that this divine animal was born for the same purposes; than which nothing can appear to me more absurd; and all this is in opposition to Aristippus, who considers that pleasure not only the highest, but also the only one, which all the rest of us consider as only one of the pleasures.
You, however, think differently; but he, as I have already said, is egregiously wrong,—for neither does the figure of the human body, nor the admirable reasoning powers of the human mind, intimate that man was born for no other end than the mere enjoyment of pleasure; nor must we listen to Hieronymus, whose chief good is the same which you sometimes, or, I might say, too often call so, namely, freedom from pain; for it does not follow, because pain is an evil, that to be free from that evil is sufficient for living well. Ennius speaks more correctly, when he says,—
The man who feels no evil, does Enjoy too great a good.
Let us define a happy life as consisting, not in the repelling of evil, but in the acquisition of good; and let us seek to procure it, not by doing nothing, whether one is feeling plea​sure, as Aristippus says, or feeling no pain, as Hieronymus insists, but by doing something, and giving our mind to thought. And all these same things may be said against that chief good which Carneades calls such; which he, however, brought forward, not so much for the purpose of proving his position, as of contradicting the Stoics, with whom he was at variance: and this good of his is such, that, when added to virtue, it appears likely to have some authority, and to be able to perfect a happy life in a most complete manner, and it is this that the whole of this present discussion is about; for they who add to virtue pleasure, which is the thing which above all others virtue thinks of small importance, or freedom from pain, which, even if it be a freedom from evil, is nevertheless not the chief good, make use of an addition which is not very easily recommended to men in general, and yet I do not understand why they do it in such a niggardly and restricted manner: for, as if they had to bring something to add to virtue, first of all they add things of the least possible value; afterwards they add things one by one, instead of uniting everything which nature had approved of as the highest goods, to pleasure. And as all these things appeared to Aristo and to Pyrrho absolutely of no consequence at all, so that they said that there was literally no difference whatever between being in a most perfect state of health, and in a most terrible condition of disease, people rightly enough have long ago given up arguing against them; for, while they insisted upon it that everything was comprised in virtue alone, to such a degree as to deprive it of all power of making any selection of external circumstances, and while they gave it nothing from which it could originate, or on which it could rely, they in reality destroyed virtue itself, which they were professing to embrace. But Herillus, who sought to refer everything to knowledge, saw, indeed, that there was one good, but what he saw was not the greatest possible good, nor such an one that life could be regulated by it; therefore, he also has been discarded a long time ago, for, indeed, there has been no one who has argued against him since Chrysippus.
XIV. Your school, then, is now the only one remaining to be combated; for the contest with the Academicians is an uncertain one, for they affirm nothing, and, as if they despaired of arriving at any certain knowledge, wish to follow ​whatever is probable. But we have more trouble with Epicurus, because he combines two kinds of pleasure, and because he and his friends, and many others since, have been advocates of that opinion; and somehow or other, the people, who, though they have the least authority, have nevertheless the greatest power, are on his side; and, unless we refute them, all virtue, and all reputation, and all true glory, must be abandoned. And so, having put aside the opinions of all the rest, there remains a contest, not between Torquatus and me, but between virtue and pleasure; and this contest Chrysippus, a man of great acuteness and great industry, is far from despising; and he thinks that the whole question as to the chief good is at stake in this controversy: but I think, if I show the reality of what is honourable, and that it is a thing to be sought for by reason of its own intrinsic excellence, and for its own sake, that all your arguments are at once overthrown; therefore, when I have once established what its character is, speaking briefly, as the time requires, I shall approach all your arguments, O Torquatus, unless my memory fails me.
We understand, then, that to be honourable which is such that, leaving all advantage out of the question, it can be deservedly praised by itself, without thinking of any reward or profit derived from it. And what its character is may be understood, not so much by the definition which I have employed, (although that may help in some degree,) as by the common sentiments of all men, and by the zeal and conduct of every virtuous man; for such do many things for this sole reason, because they are becoming, because they are right, because they are honourable, even though they do not perceive any advantage likely to result from them: for men differ from beasts in many other things indeed, but especially in this one particular, that they have reason and intellect given to them by nature, and a mind, active, vigorous, revolving many things at the same time with the greatest rapidity, and, if I may so say, sagacious to perceive the causes of things, and their consequences and connexions, and to use metaphors, and to combine things which are unconnected, and to connect the future with the present, and to embrace in its view the whole course of a consistent life. The same reason has also made man desirous of the society of men, and inclined to agree with ​them by nature, and conversation, and custom; so that, setting out with affection for his friends and relations, he proceeds further, and unites himself in a society, first of all of his fellow-countrymen, and subsequently of all mortals; and as Plato wrote to Archytas, recollects that he has been born, not for himself alone, but for his country and his family; so that there is but a small portion of himself left for himself. And since the same nature has implanted in man a desire of ascertaining the truth, which is most easily visible when, being free from all cares, we wish to know what is taking place, even in the heavens; led on from these beginnings we love everything that is true, that is to say, that is faithful, simple, consistent, and we hate what is vain, false and deceitful, such as fraud, perjury, cunning and injustice.
The same reason has in itself something large and magnificent, suited for command rather than for obedience; thinking all events which can befal a man not only endurable, but insignificant; something lofty and sublime, fearing nothing, yielding to no one, always invincible. And, when these three kinds of the honourable have been noticed, a fourth follows, of the same beauty and suited to the other three, in which order and moderation exist; and when the likeness of it to the others is perceived in the beauty and dignity of all their separate forms, we are transported across to what is honourable in words and actions; for, in consequence of these three virtues which I have already mentioned, a man avoids rashness, and does not venture to injure any one by any wanton word or action, and is afraid either to do or to say anything which may appear at all unsuited to the dignity of a man.
XV. Here, now, O Torquatus, you have a picture of what is honourable completely filled in and finished; and it is contained wholly in these four virtues which you also mentioned. But your master Epicurus says that he knows nothing whatever of it, and does not understand what, or what sort of quality those people assert it to be, who profess to measure the chief good by the standard of what is honourable. For if everything is referred to that, and if they say that pleasure has no part in it, then he says that they are talking idly, (these are his very words,) and do not understand or see what real meaning ought to be conveyed under this word honourable; for, as custom has it, he says that that alone is honour​able which is accounted glorious by common report; and that, says he, although it is often more pleasant than some pleasures, still is sought for the sake of pleasure. Do you not see how greatly these two parties differ? A noble philosopher, by whom not only Greece and Italy, but all the countries of the barbarians are influenced, says that he does not understand what honourableness is, if it be not in pleasure, unless, perchance, it is that thing which is praised by the common conversation of the populace. But my opinion is, that this is often even dishonourable, and that real honourableness is not called so from the circumstance of its being praised by the many, but because it is such a thing that even if men were unacquainted with it, or if they said nothing about it, it would still be praiseworthy by reason of its own intrinsic beauty and excellence.
And so he again, being forced to yield to the power of nature, which is always irresistible, says in another place what you also said a little while ago,—that a man cannot live pleasantly unless he also lives honourably. Now then, what is the meaning of honourably? does it mean the same as pleasantly? If so, this statement will come to this, that a man cannot live honourably unless he lives honourably. Is it honourably according to public report? Therefore he affirms that a man cannot live pleasantly without he has public report in his favour. What can be more shameful than for the life of a wise man to depend on the conversation of fools? What is it, then, that in this place he understands by the word honourable? Certainly nothing except what can be deservedly praised for its own sake; for if it be praised for the sake of pleasure, then what sort of praise, I should like to know, is that which can be sought for in the shambles? He is not a man, while he places honourableness in such a rank that he affirms it to be impossible to live pleasantly without it, to think that honourable which is popular, and to affirm that one cannot live pleasantly without popularity; or to understand by the word honourable anything except what is right, and deservedly to be praised by itself and for itself, from a regard to its own power and influence and intrinsic nature.
XVI. Therefore, Torquatus, when you said that Epicurus asserted loudly that a man could not live pleasantly if he did not also live honourably, and wisely, and justly, you ​appeared to me to be boasting yourself. There was such energy in your words, on account of the dignity of those things which were indicated by those words, that you became taller, that you rose up, and fixed your eyes upon us as if you were giving a solemn testimony that honourableness and justice are sometimes praised by Epicurus. How becoming was it to you to use that language, which is so necessary for philosophers, that if they did not use it we should have no great need of philosophy at all! For it is out of love for those words, which are very seldom employed by Epicurus—I mean wisdom, fortitude, justice, and temperance—that men of the most admirable powers of mind have betaken themselves to the study of philosophy.
“The sense of our eyes,” says Plato, “is most acute in us; but yet we do not see wisdom with them. What a vehement passion for itself would it excite if it could be beheld by the eyes!” Why so? Because it is so ingenious as to be able to devise pleasures in the most skilful manner. Why is justice extolled? or what is it that has given rise to that old and much-worn proverb, “He is a man with whom you may play in the dark.” This, though applied to only one thing, has a very extensive application; so that in every case we are influenced by the facts, and not by the witness.
For those things which you were saying were very weak and powerless arguments,—when you urged that the wicked were tormented by their own consciences, and also by fear of punishment, which is either inflicted on them, or keeps them in constant fear that it will be inflicted. One ought not to imagine a man timid, or weak in his mind, nor a good man, who, whatever he has done, keeps tormenting himself, and dreads everything; but rather let us fancy one, who with great shrewdness refers everything to usefulness—an acute, crafty, wary man, able with ease to devise plans for deceiving any one secretly, without any witness, or any one being privy to it. Do you think that I am speaking of Lucius Tubulus?—who, when as prætor he had been sitting as judge upon the ​trial of some assassins, took money to influence his decision so undisguisedly, that the next year Publius Scævola, being tribune of the people, made a motion before the people, that an inquiry should be made into the case. In accordance with which decree of the people, Cnæus Cæpio, the consul, was ordered by the senate to investigate the affair. Tubulus immediately went into banishment, and did not dare to make any reply to the charge, for the matter was notorious.
XVII. We are not, therefore, inquiring about a man who is merely wicked, but about one who mingles cunning with his wickedness, (as Quintus Pompeius did when he repudiated the treaty of Numantia,) and yet who is not afraid of everything, but who has rather no regard for the stings of conscience, which it costs him no trouble at all to stifle; for a man who is called close and secret is so far from informing against himself, that he will even pretend to grieve at what is done wrong by another; for what else is the meaning of the word crafty (versutus)? I recollect on one occasion being present at a consultation held by Publius Sextilius Rufus, when he reported the case on which he asked advice to his friends in this manner: That he had been left heir to Quintus Fadius Gallus; in whose will it had been written that he had entreated Sextilius to take care that what he left behind him should come to his daughter. Sextilius denied that he had done so. He could deny it with impunity, for who was there to convict him? None of us believed him; and it was more likely that he should tell a lie whose interest it was to do so, than he who had set down in his will that he had made the request which he ought to have made. He added, moreover, that having sworn to comply with the Voconian law, he did ​not dare to violate it, unless his friends were of a contrary opinion. I myself was very young when I was present on this occasion, but there were present also many men of the highest character, not one of whom thought that more ought to be given to Fadia than could come to her under the provisions of the Voconian law. Sextilius retained a very large inheritance; of which, if he had followed the opinion of those men who preferred what was right and honourable to all profit and advantage, he would never have touched a single penny. Do you think that he was afterwards anxious and uneasy in his mind on that account? Not a bit of it: on the contrary, he was a rich man, owing to that inheritance, and he rejoiced in his riches, for he set a great value on money which was acquired not only without violating the laws, but even by the law. And money is what you also think worth seeking for, even with great risk, for it is the efficient cause of many and great pleasures. As, therefore, every danger appears fit to be encountered for the sake of what is becoming and honourable, by those who decide that what is right and honourable is to be sought for its own sake; so the men of your school, who measure everything by pleasure, must encounter every danger in order to acquire great pleasures, if any great property or any important inheritance is at stake, since numerous pleasures are procured by money. And your master Epicurus must, if he wishes to pursue what he himself considers the chief of all good things, do the same that Scipio did, who had a prospect of great glory before him if he could compel Annibal to return into Africa. And with this view, what great dangers did he encounter! for he measured the whole of his enterprise by the standard of honour, not of pleasure. And in like manner, your wise man, being excited by the prospect of some advantage, will fight courageously, if it should be necessary. If his exploits ​are undiscovered, he will rejoice; if he is taken, he will despise every kind of punishment, for he will be thoroughly armed for a contempt of death, banishment, and even of pain, which you indeed represent as intolerable when you hold it out to wicked men as a punishment, but as endurable when you argue that a wise man has always more good than evil in his fortune.
XVIII. But picture to yourself a man not only cunning, so as to be prepared to act dishonestly in any circumstances that may arise, but also exceedingly powerful; as, for instance, Marcus Crassus was, who, however, always exercised his own natural good disposition; or as at this day our friend Pompeius is, to whom we ought to feel grateful for his virtuous conduct; for, although he is inclined to act justly, he could be unjust with perfect impunity. But how many unjust actions can be committed which nevertheless no one could find any ground for attacking! Suppose your friend, when dying, has entreated you to restore his inheritance to his daughter, and yet has never set it down in his will, as Fadius did, and has never mentioned to any one that he has done so, what will you do? You indeed will restore it. Perhaps Epicurus himself would have restored it; just as Sextus Peducæus the son of Sextus did; he who has left behind him a son, our intimate friend, a living image of his own virtue and honesty, a learned person, and the most virtuous and upright of all men; for he, though no one was aware that he had been entreated by Caius Plotius, a Roman knight of high character and great fortune, of the district of Nursia, to do so, came of his own accord to his widow, and, though she had no notion of the fact, detailed to her the commission which he had received from her husband, and made over the inheritance to her. But I ask you (since you would certainly have acted in the same manner yourself), do you not understand that the power of nature is all the greater, inasmuch as you yourselves, who refer everything to your own advantage, and, as you yourselves say, to pleasure, still perform actions from which it is evident that you are guided not by pleasure, but by principles of duty, and that your own upright nature has more influence over you than any vicious reasoning?
If you knew, says Carneades, that a snake was lying hid in any place, and that some one was going ignorantly to sit ​down upon it whose death would bring you some advantage, you would be acting wickedly if you did not warn him not to sit down there; and yet you could not be punished, for who could possibly convict you? However, I am dwelling too long on this point; for it is evident, unless equity, good faith and justice proceed from nature, and if all these things are referred to advantage, that a good man cannot possibly be found. But on this subject we have put a sufficient number of arguments into the mouth of Lælius, in our books on a Republic.
XIX. Now apply the same arguments to modesty, or temperance, which is a moderation of the appetites, in subordination to reason. Can we say that a man pays sufficient regard to the dictates of modesty, who indulges his lusts in such a manner as to have no witnesses of his conduct? or is there anything which is intrinsically flagitious, even if no loss of reputation ensues? What do brave men do? Do they enter into an exact calculation of pleasure, and so enter the battle, and shed their blood for their country? or are they excited rather by a certain ardour and impetuosity of courage? Do you think, O Torquatus, that that imperious ancestor of yours, if he could hear what we are now saying, would rather listen to your sentiments concerning him, or to mine, when I said that he had done nothing for his own sake, but everything for that of the republic; and you, on the contrary, affirm that he did nothing except with a view to his own advantage? But if you were to wish to explain yourself further, and were to say openly that he did nothing except for the sake of pleasure, how do you think that he would bear such an assertion?
Be it so. Let Torquatus, if you will, have acted solely with a view to his own advantage, for I would rather employ that expression than pleasure, especially when speaking of so eminent a man,—did his colleague too, Publius Decius, the first man who ever was consul in that family, did he, I say, when he was devoting himself, and rushing at the full speed of his horse into the middle of the army of the Latins, think at all of his own pleasures? For where or when was he to find any, when he knew that he should perish immediately, and when he was seeking that death with more eager zeal than Epicurus thinks even pleasure deserving to be sought ​with? And unless this exploit of his had been deservedly extolled, his son would not have imitated it in his fourth consulship; nor, again, would his son, when fighting against Pyrrhus, have fallen in battle when he was consul, and so offered himself up for the sake of the republic as a third victim in an uninterrupted succession from the same family. I will forbear giving any more examples. I might get a few from the Greeks, such as Leonidas, Epaminondas, and three or four more perhaps. And if I were to begin hunting up our own annals for such instances, I should soon establish my point, and compel Pleasure to give herself up, bound hand and foot, to virtue. But the day would be too short for me. And as Aulus Varius, who was considered a rather severe judge, was in the habit of saying to his colleague, when, after some witnesses had been produced, others were still being summoned, “Either we have had witnesses enough, or I do not know what is enough;” so I think that I have now brought forward witnesses enough.
For, what will you say? Was it pleasure that worked upon you, a man thoroughly worthy of your ancestors, while still a young man, to rob Publius Sylla of the consulship? And when you had succeeded in procuring it for your father, a most gallant man, what a consul did he prove, and what a citizen at all times, and most especially after his consulship! And, indeed, it was by his advice that we ourselves behaved in such a manner as to consult the advantage of the whole body of the citizens rather than our own.
But how admirably did you seem to speak, when on the one side you drew a picture of a man loaded with the most numerous and excessive pleasures, with no pain, either present or future; and on the other, of a man surrounded with the greatest torments affecting his whole body, with no pleasure, either present or hoped for; and asked who could be more miserable than the one, or more happy than the other? and then concluded, that pain was the greatest evil, and pleasure the greatest good.
XX. There was a man of Lanuvium, called Lucius Thorius Balbus, whom you cannot remember; he lived in such a way that no pleasure could be imagined so exquisite, that he had not a superfluity of it. He was greedy of pleasure, a critical judge of every species of it, and very rich. So far removed ​from all superstition, as to despise the numerous sacrifices which take place, and temples which exist in his country; so far from fearing death, that he was slain in battle fighting for the republic. He bounded his appetites, not according to the division of Epicurus, but by his own feelings of satiety. He took sufficient exercise always to come to supper both thirsty and hungry. He ate such food as was at the same time nicest in taste and most easy of digestion; and selected such wine as gave him pleasure, and was, at the same time, free from hurtful qualities. He had all those other means and appliances which Epicurus thinks so necessary, that he says that if they are denied, he cannot understand what is good. He was free from every sort of pain; and if he had felt any, he would not have borne it impatiently, though he would have been more inclined to consult a physician than a philosopher. He was a man of a beautiful complexion, of perfect health, of the greatest influence, in short, his whole life was one uninterrupted scene of every possible variety of pleasures. Now, you call this man happy. Your principles compel you to do so. But as for me, I will not, indeed, venture to name the man whom I prefer to him—Virtue herself shall speak for me, and she will not hesitate to rank Marcus Regulus before this happy man of yours. For Virtue asserts loudly that this man, when, of his own accord, under no compulsion, except that of the pledge which he had given to the enemy, he had returned to Carthage, was, at the very moment when he was being tortured with sleeplessness and hunger, more happy than Thorius while drinking on a bed of roses.
Regulus had had the conduct of great wars; he had been twice consul; he had had a triumph; and yet he did not think those previous exploits of his so great or so glorious as that last misfortune which he incurred, because of his own good faith and constancy; a misfortune which appears pitiable to us who hear of it, but was actually pleasant to him who endured it. For men are happy, not because of hilarity, or lasciviousness, or laughter, or jesting, the companion of levity, but often even through sorrow endured with firmness and constancy. Lucretia, having been ravished by force by the king's son, called her fellow-citizens to witness, and slew herself. This grief of hers, Brutus being the leader and mover of the Roman people, was the cause of liberty to the ​whole state. And out of regard for the memory of that woman, her husband and her father were made consuls the first year of the republic. Lucius Virginius, a man of small property and one of the people, sixty years after the reestablishment of liberty, slew his virgin daughter with his own hand, rather than allow her to be surrendered to the lust of Appius Claudius, who was at that time invested with the supreme power.
XXI. Now you, O Torquatus, must either blame all these actions, or else you must abandon the defence of pleasure. And what a cause is that, and what a task does the man undertake who comes forward as the advocate of pleasure, who is unable to call any one illustrious man as evidence in her favour or as a witness to her character? For as we have awakened those men from the records of our annals as witnesses, whose whole life has been consumed in glorious labours; men who cannot bear to hear the very name of pleasure: so on your side of the argument history is dumb. I have never heard of Lycurgus, or Solon, Miltiades, or Themistocles, or Epaminondas being mentioned in the school of Epicurus; men whose names are constantly in the mouth of all the other philosophers. But now, since we have begun to deal with this part of the question, our friend Atticus, out of his treasures, will supply us with the names of as many great men as may be sufficient for us to bring forward as witnesses. Is it not better to say a little of these men, than so many volumes about Themista? Let these things be confined to the Greeks: although we have derived philosophy and all the liberal sciences from them, still there are things which may be allowable for them to do, but not for us. The Stoics are at variance with the Peripatetics. One sect denies that anything is good which is not also honourable: the other asserts that it allows great weight, indeed, by far the most weight, to what is honourable, but still affirms that there are in the body also, and around the body, certain positive goods. It is an honourable contest and a splendid ​discussion. For the whole question is about the dignity of virtue.
But when one is arguing with philosophers of your school, one is forced to hear a great deal about even the obscure pleasures which Epicurus himself continually mentions. You cannot then, Torquatus, believe me, you cannot uphold those principles, if you examine into yourself, and your own thoughts and studies. You will, I say, be ashamed of that picture which Cleanthes was in the habit of drawing with such accuracy in his description. He used to desire those who came to him as his pupils, to think of Pleasure painted in a picture, clad in beautiful robes, with royal ornaments, and sitting on a throne. He represented all the Virtues around her, as her handmaidens, doing nothing else, and thinking nothing else their duty, but to minister to Pleasure, and only just to whisper in her ear (if, indeed, that could be made intelligible in a picture) a warning to be on her guard to do nothing imprudent, nothing to offend the minds of men, nothing from which any pain could ensue. We, indeed, they would say, we Virtues are only born to act as your slaves; we have no other business.
XXII. But Epicurus (for this is your great point) denies that any man who does not live honourably can live agreeably; as if I cared what he denies or what he affirms. What I inquire is, what it is consistent for that man to say who places the chief good in pleasure. What reason do you allege why Thorius, why Chius, why Postumius, why the master of all these men, Orata, did not live most agreeably? He himself, as I have already said, asserts that the life of men devoted to luxury is not deserving of blame, unless they are absolute fools, that is to say, unless they abandon themselves to become slaves to their desires or to their fears. And when he promises them a remedy for both these things, he, in so doing, offers them a licence for luxury. For if you take away these things, then he says that he cannot find anything in the life of debauched men which deserves blame. You then, who regulate everything by the standard of pleasure, cannot either defend or maintain virtue. For he does not deserve to be accounted a virtuous or a just man who abstains from injustice in order to avoid suffering evil. You know the line, I suppose—
He's not a pious man whom fear constrains To acts of piety . . . . a man—
And nothing can be more true. For a man is not just while he is in a state of alarm. And certainly when he ceases to be in fear, he will not be just. But he will not be afraid if he is able to conceal his actions, or if he is able, by means of his great riches and power, to support what he has done. And he will certainly prefer being regarded as a good man, though he is not one, to being a good man and not being thought one. And so, beyond all question, instead of genuine and active justice, you give us only an effigy of justice, and you teach us, as it were, to disregard our own unvarying conscience, and to go hunting after the fleeting vagabond opinions of others.
And the same may be said of the other virtues also; the foundation of all which you place in pleasure, which is like building on water. For what are we to say? Can we call that same Torquatus a brave man? For I am delighted, though I cannot, as you say, bribe you; I am delighted with your family and with your name. And, in truth, I have before my eyes Aulus Torquatus, a most excellent man, and one greatly attached to me; and both of you must certainly be aware how great and how eminent his zeal in my behalf was in those times which are well known to every one. And that conduct of his would not have been delightful to me, who wish both to be, and to be considered, grateful, if I did not see clearly that he was friendly to me for my own sake, not for his own; unless, indeed, you say, it was for his own sake, because it is for the interest of every one to act rightly. If you say that, we have gained our point. For what we are aiming at, what we are contending for, is, that duty itself is the reward of duty. But that master of yours will not admit this, and requires pleasure to result from every action as a sort of wages.
However, I return to him. If it was for the sake of pleasure that Torquatus, when challenged, fought with the Gaul on the Anio, and out of his spoils took his chain and earned his surname, or if it was for any other reason but that he thought such exploits worthy of a man, then I do not ​account him brave. And, indeed, if modesty, and decency, and chastity, and, in one word, temperance, is only upheld by the fear of punishment or infamy, and not out of regard to their own sanctity, then what lengths will adultery and debauchery and lust shrink from proceeding to, if there is a hope either of escaping detection, or of obtaining impunity or licence?
What shall I say more? What is your idea, O Torquatus, of this?—that you, a man of your name, of your abilities, of your high reputation, should not dare to allege in a public assembly what you do, what you think, what you contend for, the standard to which you refer everything, the object for the sake of which you wish to accomplish what you attempt, and what you think best in life. For what can you claim to deserve, when you have entered upon your magistracy, and come forward to the assembly, (for then you will have to announce what principles you intend to observe in administering the law, and perhaps, too, if you think fit, you will, as is the ancient custom, say something about your ancestors and yourself,)—what, I say, can you claim as your just desert, if you say that in that magistracy you will do everything for the sake of pleasure? and that you have never done anything all your life except with a view to pleasure? Do you think, say you, that I am so mad as to speak in that way before ignorant people? Well, say it then in the court of justice, or if you are afraid of the surrounding audience, say it in the senate: you will never do so. Why not, except that such language is disgraceful? Do you then think Triarius and me fit people for you to speak before in a disgraceful manner?
XXIII. However, be it so. The name of pleasure certainly has no dignity in it, and perhaps we do not exactly understand what is meant by it; for you are constantly saying that we do not understand what you mean by the word pleasure: no doubt it is a very difficult and obscure matter. When you speak of atoms, and spaces between worlds, things which do not exist, and which cannot possibly exist, then we understand you; and cannot we understand what pleasure is, a thing which is known to every sparrow? What will you say if I compel you to confess that I not only do know what pleasure is (for it is a pleasant emotion affecting the senses), but also what you mean by the word? For at one time you ​mean by the word the very same thing which I have just said, and you give it the description of consisting in motion, and of causing some variety: at another time you speak of some other highest pleasure, which is susceptible of no addition whatever, but that it is present when every sort of pain is absent, and you call it then a state, not a motion: let that, then, be pleasure. Say, in any assembly you please, that you do everything with a view to avoid suffering pain: if you do not think that even this language is sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently honourable, say that you will do everything during your year of office, and during your whole life, for the sake of your own advantage; that you will do nothing except what is profitable to yourself, nothing which is not prompted by a view to your own interest. What an uproar do you not suppose such a declaration would excite in the assembly, and what hope do you think you would have of the consulship which is ready for you? And can you follow these principles, which, when by yourself, or in conversation with your dearest friends, you do not dare to profess and avow openly? But you have those maxims constantly in your mouth which the Peripatetics and Stoics profess. In the courts of justice and in the senate you speak of duty, equity, dignity, good faith, uprightness, honourable actions, conduct worthy of power, worthy of the Roman people; you talk of encountering every imaginable danger in the cause of the republic—of dying for one's country. When you speak in this manner we are all amazed, like a pack of blockheads, and you are laughing in your sleeve: for, among all those high-sounding and admirable expressions, pleasure has no place, not only that pleasure which you say consists in motion, and which all men, whether living in cities or in the country, all men, in short, who speak Latin, call pleasure, but even that stationary pleasure, which no one but your sect calls pleasure at all.
XXIV. Take care lest you find yourselves obliged to use our language, though adhering to your own opinions. But if you were to put on a feigned countenance or gait, with the object of appearing more dignified, you would not then be like yourself; and yet are you to use fictitious language, and to say things which you do not think, or, as you have one dress to wear at home, and another in which you appear in court, ​are you to disguise your opinions in a similar manner, so as to make a parade with your countenance, while you are keeping the truth hidden within? Consider, I intreat you, whether this is proper. My opinion is that those are genuine sentiments which are honourable, which are praiseworthy, which are creditable; which a man is not ashamed to avow in the senate, before the people, in every company and every assembly, so that he will be ashamed to think what he is ashamed to say.
But what room can there be for friendship, or who can be a friend to any one whom he does not love for his own sake? And what is loving, from which verb (amo) the very name of friendship (amicitia) is derived, but wishing a certain person to enjoy the greatest possible good fortune, even if none of it accrues to oneself? Still, you say, it is a good thing for me to be of such a disposition. Perhaps it may be so; but you cannot be so if it is not really your disposition; and how can you be so unless love itself has seized hold of you? which is not usually generated by any accurate computation of advantage, but is self-produced, and born spontaneously from itself. But, you will say, I am guided by prospects of advantage. Friendship, then, will remain just as long as any advantage ensues from it; and if it be a principle of advantage which is the foundation of friendship, the same will be its destruction. But what will you do, if, as is often the case, advantage takes the opposite side to friendship? Will you abandon it? what sort of friendship is that? Will you preserve it? how will that be expedient for you? For you see what the rules are which you lay down respecting friendship which is desirable only for the sake of one's own advantage:—I must take care that I do not incur odium if I cease to uphold my friend. Now, in the first place, why should such conduct incur odium, except because it is disgraceful? But, if you will not desert your friend lest you should incur any disadvantage from so doing, still you will wish that he was dead, to release you from being bound to a man from whom you get no advantage. But suppose he not only brings you no advantage, but you even incur loss of property for his sake, and have to undertake labours, and to encounter danger of your life; will you not, even then, show some regard for yourself, and recollect that every one is born for himself and for his own pleasures? Will you go bail to a ​tyrant for your friend in a case which may affect your life, as that Pythagorean did when he became surety to the Tyrant of Sicily? or, when you are Pylades, will you affirm that you are Orestes, that you may die for your friend? or, if you were Orestes, would you contradict Pylades, and give yourself up? and, if you could not succeed then, would you intreat that you might be both put to death together?
XXV. You, indeed, O Torquatus, would do all these things. For I do not think that there is anything deserving of great praise, which you would be likely to shrink from out of fear of death or pain: nor is it the question what is consistent with your nature, but with the doctrines of your school—that philosophy which you defend, those precepts which you have learnt, and which you profess to approve of, utterly overthrow friendship—even though Epicurus should, as indeed he does, extol it to the skies. Oh, you will say, but he himself cultivated friendship. As if any one denied that he was a good, and courteous, and kind-hearted man; the question in these discussions turns on his genius, and not on his morals. Grant that there is such perversity in the levity of the Greeks, who attack those men with evil speaking with whom they disagree as to the truth of a proposition. But, although he may have been courteous in maintaining friendships, still, if all this is true, (for I do not affirm anything myself), he was not a very acute arguer. Oh, but he convinced many people. And perhaps it was quite right that he should; still, the testimony of the multitude is not of the greatest possible weight; for in every art, or study, or science, as in virtue itself, whatever is most excellent is also most rare. And to me, indeed, the very fact of he himself having been a good man, and of many Epicureans having also been such, and being to this day faithful in their friendships, and consistent throughout their whole lives, and men of dignified conduct, regulating their lives, not by pleasure, but by their duty, appears to show that the power of what is honourable is greater, and that of pleasure smaller. For some men live in such a manner that their language is refuted by their lives; and as others are considered ​to speak better than they act, so these men seem to me to act better than they speak.
XXVI. However, all this is nothing to the purpose. Let us just consider those things which have been said by you about friendship, and among them I fancied that I recognized one thing as having been said by Epicurus himself, namely, that friendship cannot be separated from pleasure, and that it ought on that account to be cultivated, because without it men could not live in safety, and without fear, nor even with any kind of pleasantness. Answer enough has been given to this argument. You also brought forward another more humane one, invented by these more modern philosophers, and never, as far as I know, advanced by the master himself, that at first, indeed, a friend is sought out with a view to one's own advantage, but that when intimacy has sprung up, then the man is loved for himself, all hope or idea of pleasure being put out of the question. Now, although this argument is open to attack on many accounts, still I will accept what they grant; for it is enough for me, though not enough for them: for they admit that it is possible for men to act rightly at times, without any expectation of, or desire to acquire pleasure.
You also affirmed that some people say that wise men make a kind of treaty among themselves, that they shall have the same feelings towards their friends that they entertain for themselves, and that that is possible, and is often the case, and that it has especial reference to the enjoyment of pleasures. If they could make this treaty, they at the same time make that other to love equity, moderation, and all the virtues for their own sake, without any consideration of advantage. But if we cultivate friendships for the sake of their profits, emoluments, and advantages which may be derived from them, if there is to be no affection which may make the friendship desirable for its own sake, on its own account, by its own influences, by itself and for itself, is there any doubt at all that in such a case we must prefer our farms and estates to our friends? And here you may again quote those panegyrics which have been uttered in most eloquent language by Epicurus himself, on the subject of friendship. I am not asking what he says, but what he can possibly say which shall be consistent with his own system and sentiments.
​Friendship has been sought for the sake of advantage; do you, then, think that my friend Triarius, here, will be more useful to you than your granaries at Puteol? Think of all the circumstances which you are in the habit of recollecting; the protection which friends are to a man. You have sufficient protection in yourself, sufficient in the laws, sufficient also in moderate friendships. As it is, you cannot be looked upon with contempt; but you will easily avoid odium and unpopularity, for precepts on that subject are given by Epicurus. And yet you, by employing such large revenues in purposes of liberality, even without any Pyladean friendship, will admirably defend and protect yourself by the goodwill of numbers. But with whom, then, is a man to share his jests, his serious thoughts, as people say, and all his secrets and hidden wishes? With you, above all men; but if that cannot be, why with some tolerably intimate friend. However, grant that all these circumstances are not unreasonable; what comparison can there be between them and the utility of such large sums of money? You see, then, if you measure friendship by the affection which it engenders, that nothing is more excellent; if by the advantage that is derived from it, then you see that the closest intimacies are surpassed by the value of a productive farm. You must therefore love me, myself, and not my circumstances, if we are to be real friends.
XXVII. But we are getting too prolix in the most self-evident matters; for, as it has been concluded and established that there is no room anywhere for either virtues or friendships if everything is referred to pleasure, there is nothing more which it is of any great importance should be said. And yet, that I may not appear to have passed over any topic without a reply, I will, even now, say a few words on the remainder of your argument.
Since, then, the whole sum of philosophy is directed to ensure living happily, and since men, from a desire of this one thing, have devoted themselves to this study; but different people make happiness of life to consist in different circumstances; you, for instance, place it in pleasure; and, in the same manner you, on the other hand, make all unhappiness to consist in pain: let us consider, in the first place, what sort of thing this happy life of yours is. But you will grant this, I think, that if there is really any such thing as happiness, ​it ought to be wholly in the power of a wise man to secure it; for, if a happy life can be lost, it cannot be happy. For who can feel confident that a thing will always remain firm and enduring in his case, which is in reality fleeting and perishable? But the man who distrusts the permanence of his good things, must necessarily fear that some day or other, when he has lost them, he will become miserable; and no man can be happy who is in fear about most important matters. No one, then, can be happy; for a happy life is usually called so, not in some part only, but in perpetuity of time; and, in fact, life is not said to be happy at all till it is completed and finished. Nor is it possible for any man to be sometimes happy and sometimes miserable; for he who thinks it possible that he may become miserable, is certainly not happy. For, when a happy life is once attained, it remains as long as the maker of the happy life herself, namely, wisdom; nor does it wait till the last period of a man's existence, as Herodotus says that Crœsus was warned by Solon.
But, as you yourself were saying, Epicurus denies that length of time has any influence on making life happy, and that no less pleasure can be felt in a short time than would be the case if the pleasure were everlasting. Now these statements are most inconsistent. For, when he places the chief good in pleasure, he denies that pleasure can be greater in infinite time, than it can in a finite and moderate period. The man who places all good in virtue, has it in his power to say that a happy life is made so by the perfection of virtue; for he consistently denies that time can bring any increase to his chief good. But he who thinks that life is made happy by pleasure, must surely be inconsistent with himself if he denies that pleasure is increased by length of time: if so, then pain is not either. Shall we, then, say that all pain is most miserable in proportion as it is most lasting, and yet that duration does not make pleasure more desirable? Why, then, is it that Epicurus always speaks of God as happy and eternal? For, if you only take away his eternity, Jupiter is in no respect more happy than Epicurus; for each of them is in the enjoyment of the chief good, namely, pleasure. Oh, but Epicurus is also liable to pain. That does not affect him at all; for he says that if he were being burnt, he would say, “How pleasant it is.” In what respect, then, is he surpassed ​by the God, if he is not surpassed by him because of his eternity? For what good has the God, except the highest degree of pleasure, and that, too, everlasting! What, then, is the good of speaking so pompously, if one does not speak consistently? Happiness of life is placed in pleasure of body, (I will add of mind also, if you please, as long as that pleasure of the mind is derived from the pleasure of the body.) What? who can secure this pleasure to a wise man in perpetuity? For the circumstances by which pleasures are generated are not in the power of a wise man; for happiness does not consist in wisdom itself, but in those things which wisdom provides for the production of pleasure. And all these circumstances are external; and what is external is liable to accident. And thus fortune is made the mistress of happiness in life,—Fortune, which, Epicurus says, has but little to do with a wise man.
XXVIII. But you will say, Come, these things are trifles. Nature by herself enriches the wise man; and, indeed, Epicurus has taught us that the riches of nature are such as can be acquired. This is well said, and I do not object to it; but still these same assertions are inconsistent with one another. For Epicurus denies there is less pleasure derived from the poorest food, from the most despised kinds of meat and drink, than from feasting on the most delicious dishes. Now if he were to assert that it makes no difference as to the happiness of life what food a man ate, I would grant it, I would even praise him for saying so; for he would be speaking the truth; and I know that Socrates, who ranked pleasure as nothing at all, said the same thing, namely, that hunger was the best seasoning for meat, and thirst for drink. But I do not comprehend how a man who refers everything to pleasure, lives like Gallonius, and yet talks like that great man Frugi Piso; nor, indeed, do I believe that what he says is his real opinion. He has said that natural riches can be acquired, because nature is contented with a little. Certainly, unless you estimate pleasure at a great value. No less pleasure, says he, is derived from the most ordinary things than from the most valuable. Now to say this, is not only not to have a heart, but not to have even a palate. For they who despise pleasure itself, may be allowed to say that they do not prefer a sturgeon to a herring. But the man who places his chief ​good in pleasure, must judge of everything by his sensations, not by his reason, and must pronounce those things best which are most pleasant.
However, be it so. Let him acquire the greatest possible pleasures, not only at a cheap rate, but, as far as I am concerned, for nothing at all, if he can manage it. Let there be no less pleasure in eating a nasturtium, which Xenophon tells us the Persians used to eat, than in those Syracusan banquets which are so severely blamed by Plato. Let, I say, the acquisition of pleasure be as easy as you say it is. What shall we say of pain? the torments of which are so great that, if at least pain is the greatest of evils, a happy life cannot possibly exist in company with it. For Metrodorus himself, who is almost a second Epicurus, describes a happy man in these words. When his body is in good order, and when he is quite certain that it it will be so for the future. Is it possible for any one to be certain in what condition his body will be, I do not say a year hence, but even this evening? Pain, therefore, which is the greatest of evils, will always be dreaded even if it is not present. For it will always be possible that it may be present. But how can any fear of the greatest possible evil exist in a happy life?
Oh, says he, Epicurus has handed down maxims according to which we may disregard pain. Surely, it is an absurdity to suppose that the greatest possible evil can be disregarded. However, what is the maxim? The greatest pain, says he, is short-lived. Now, first of all, what do you call short-lived? And, secondly, what do you call the greatest pain? For what do you mean? Cannot extreme pain last for many days? Aye, and for many months? Unless, indeed, you intend to assert that you mean such pain as kills a man the moment it seizes on him. Who is afraid of that pain? I would rather you would lessen that pain by which I have seen that most excellent and kind-hearted man, Cnæus Octavius, the son of Marcus Octavius, my own intimate friend, worn out, and that not once, or for a short time, but very often, and for a long period at once. What agonies, O ye immortal gods, did that man use to bear, when all his limbs seemed as if they were on fire. And yet he did not appear to be miserable, (because in truth pain was not the greatest of evils,) but only afflicted. But if he had been immersed in ​continued pleasure, passing at the same time a vicious and infamous life, then he would have been miserable.
XXIX. But when you say that great pains last but a short time, and that if they last long they are always light, I do not understand the meaning of your assertion. For I see that some pains are very great, and also very durable. And there is a better principle which may enable one to endure them, which however you cannot adopt, who do not love what is honourable for its own sake. There are some precepts for, and I may almost say laws of, fortitude, which forbid a man to behave effeminately in pain. Wherefore it should be accounted disgraceful, I do not say to grieve, (for that is at times unavoidable,) but to make those rocks of Lemnos melancholy with such outcries as those of Philoctetes—
Who utters many a tearful note aloud, With ceaseless groaning, howling, and complaint.
Now let Epicurus, if he can, put himself in the place of that man—
Whose veins and entrails thus are racked with pain And horrid agony, while the serpent's bite Spreads its black venom through his shuddering frame.
Let Epicurus become Philoctetes. If his pain is sharp it is short. But in fact he has been lying in his cave for ten years. If it lasts long it is light, for it grants him intervals of relaxation. In the first place it does not do so often; and in the second place what sort of relaxation is it when the memory of past agony is still fresh, and the fear of further agony coming and impending is constantly tormenting him. Let him die, says he. Perhaps that would be the best thing for him; but then what becomes of the argument, that the wise man has always more pleasure than pain? For if that be the case I would have you think whether you are not recommending him a crime, when you advise him to die. Say to him rather, that it is a disgraceful thing for a man to allow his spirit to be crushed and broken by pain, that it is shameful to yield to it. For as for your maxim, if it is violent it is short, if it lasts long it is slight, that is mere empty verbiage. The only real way to mitigate pain is by the application of virtue, of magnanimity, of patience, of courage.
XXX. Listen, that I may not make too wide a digression, to the words of Epicurus when dying; and take notice how ​inconsistent his conduct is with his language. “Epicurus to Hermarchus greeting. I write this letter,” says he, “while passing a happy day, which is also the last day of my life. And the pains of my bladder and bowels are so intense that nothing can be added to them which can make them greater.” Here is a man miserable, if pain is the greatest possible evil. It cannot possibly be denied. However, let us see how he proceeds. “But still I have to balance this a joy in my mind, which I derive from the recollection of my philosophical principles and discoveries. But do you, as becomes the goodwill which from your youth upwards you have constantly discovered for me and for philosophy, protect the children of Metrodorus.” After reading this, I do not consider the death of Epaminondas or Leonidas preferable to his. One of whom defeated the Lacedæmonians at Mantinea, and finding that he had been rendered insensible by a mortal wound, when he first came to himself, asked whether his shield was safe? When his weeping friends had answered him that it was, he then asked whether the enemy was defeated? And when he received to this question also the answer which he wished, he then ordered the spear which was sticking in him to be pulled out. And so, losing quantities of blood, he died in the hour of joy and victory.
But Leonidas, the king of the Lacedæmonians, put himself and those three hundred men, whom he had led from Sparta, in the way of the enemy of Thermopylæ, when the alternative was a base flight, or a glorious death. The deaths of generals are glorious, but philosophers usually die in their beds. But still Epicurus here mentions what, when dying, he considered great credit to himself. “I have,” says he, “a joy to counterbalance these pains.” I recognise in these words, O Epicurus, the sentiments of a philosopher, but still you forgot what you ought to have said. For, in the first place, if those things be true, in the recollection of which you say you rejoice, that is to say, if your writings and discoveries are true, then you cannot rejoice. For you have no pleasure here which you can refer to the body. But you have constantly asserted that no one ever feels joy or pain except with reference to his body. “I rejoice,” says he, “in the past.” In what that is past? If you mean such past things as refer to ​the body, then I see that you are counterbalancing your agonies with your reason, and not with your recollection of pleasures which you have felt in the body. But if you are referring to your mind, then your denial of there being any joy of the mind which cannot be referred to some pleasure of the body, must be false. Why, then, do you recommend the children of Metrodorus to Hermarchus? In that admirable exercise of duty, in that excellent display of your good faith, for that is how I look upon it, what is there that you refer to the body?
XXXI. You may twist yourself about in every direction as you please, Torquatus, but you will not find in this excellent letter anything written by Epicurus which is in harmony and consistent with the rules he laid down. And so he is convicted by himself, and his writings are upset by his own virtue and goodness. For that recommendation of those children, that recollection of them, and affectionate friendship for them, that attention to the most important duties at the last gasp, indicates that honesty without any thought of personal advantage was innate in the man; that it did not require the invitation of pleasure, or the allurements of mercenary rewards. For what greater evidence can we require that those things which are honourable and right are desirable of themselves for their own sake, than the sight of a dying man so anxious in the discharge of such important duties? But, as I think that letter deserving of all commendation of which I have just given you a literal translation, (although it was in no respect consistent with the general system of that philosopher,) so also I think that his will is inconsistent not only with the dignity of a philosopher, but even with his own sentiments. For he wrote often, and at great length, and sometimes with brevity and suitable language, in that book which I have just named, that death had nothing to do with us; for that whatever was dissolved was void of sensation, and whatever was void of sensation had nothing whatever to do with us. Even this might have been expressed better and more elegantly. For when he lays down the position that what has been dissolved is void of sensation, that is such an expression that it is not very plain what he means by the word dissolved. However, I understand what he really does mean. But still I ask why, when every sensation is extin​guished by dissolution, that is to say, by death, and when there is nothing else whatever that has any connexion with us, he should still take such minute and diligent care to enjoin Amynomachus and Timocrates, his heirs, to furnish every year what in the opinion of Hermarchus shall be enough to keep his birthday in the month Gamelion, with all proper solemnity. And also, shall every month, on the twentieth day of the month, supply money enough to furnish a banquet for those men who have studied philosophy with him, in order that his memory, and that of Metrodorus, may be duly honoured. Now I cannot deny that these injunctions are in keeping with the character of a thoroughly accomplished and amiable man; but still I utterly deny that it is inconsistent with the wisdom of a philosopher, especially of a natural philosopher, which is the character he claims for himself, to think that there is such a day as the birthday of any one. What? Can any day which has once passed recur over again frequently. Most indubitably not; or can any day like it recur? Even that is impossible, unless it may happen after an interval of many thousand years, that there may be a return of all the stars at the same moment to the point from which they set out. There is, therefore, no such thing as anybody's birthday. But still it is considered that there is. As if I did not know that. But even if there be, is it to be regarded after a man's death? And is a man to give injunctions in his will that it shall be so, after he has told you all, as if with the voice of an oracle, that there is nothing which concerns us at all after death? These things are very inconsistent in a man who, in his mind, had travelled over innumerable worlds and boundless regions, which were destitute of all limits and boundaries. Did Democritus ever say such a thing as this? I will pass over every one else, and call him only as a witness whom Epicurus himself followed to the exclusion of others.
But if a day did deserve to be kept, which was it more fitting to observe, the day on which a man was born, or that on which he became wise? A man, you will say, could not have become wise unless he had been born. And, on the same principle, he could not if his grandmother had never been born. The whole business, Torquatus, is quite out of character for a learned man to wish to have the recollection ​of his name celebrated with banquets after his death. I say nothing of the way in which you keep these days, and to how many jokes from witty men you expose yourselves. There is no need of quarrelling. I only say that it would have been more becoming in you to keep Epicurus's birthday, than in him to leave injunctions in his will that it should be kept.
XXXII. However, to return to our subject, (for while we were talking of pain we digressed to that letter of his,) we may now fairly come to this conclusion. The man who is in the greatest evil, while he is in it, is not happy. But the wise man is always happy, and is also occasionally in pain. Therefore, pain is not the greatest evil. What kind of doctrine, then, is this, that goods which are past are not lost to a wise man, but that he ought not to remember past evils. First of all, is it in our power to decide what we will remember. When Simonides, or some one else, offered to Themistocles to teach him the art of memory, “I would rather,” said he, “that you would teach me that of forgetfulness; for I even now recollect what I would rather not; but I cannot forget what I should like to.” This was a very sensible answer. But still the fact is that it is the act of a very arbitrary philosopher to forbid a man to recollect. It seems to me a command very much in the spirit of your ancestor, Manlius, or even worse, to command what it is impossible for me to do. What will you say if the recollection of past evils is even pleasant? For some proverbs are more true than your dogmas. Nor does Euripides speak all when he says, I will give it you in Latin, if I can, but you all know the Greek line—
Sweet is the memory of sorrows past.
​However, let us return to the consideration of past goods. And if you were to utter such maxims as might be capable of consoling Caius Marius, and enabling him when banished, indigent, and up to his neck in a marsh, to relieve his anguish by the recollection of his past trophies, I would listen to you, and approve of all you could say. Nor, indeed, can the happiness of a philosopher be complete or continue to the end, if all the admirable discoveries which he has made, and all his virtuous actions, are to be lost by his own forgetfulness. But, in your case, you assert that the recollection of pleasures which have been felt makes life happy, and of such pleasures too, as affect the body. For if there are any other pleasures, then it is incorrect to say that all the pleasures of the mind originate in its connexion with the body.
But if pleasures felt by the body, even when they are past, can give pleasure, then I do not understand why Aristotle should turn the inscription on the tomb of Sardanapalus into so much ridicule; in which the king of Assyria boasts that he has taken with him all his lascivious pleasures. For, says Aristotle, how could those things which even while he was alive he could not feel a moment longer than while he was actually enjoying them, possibly remain to him after he was dead? The pleasure, then, of the body is lost, and flies away at the first moment, and oftener leaves behind reasons for repenting of it than for recollecting it. Therefore, Africanus is happier when addressing his country in this manner—
Cease, Rome, to dread your foes . . . .
And in the rest of his admirable boast—
For you have trophies by my labour raised.
He is rejoicing here in his labours which are past. But you would bid him exult in past pleasures. He traces back his feelings to things which had never had any reference to his body. You cling to the body to the exclusion of everything else.
XXXIII. But how can that proposition possibly be maintained which you urge, namely, that all the pleasures and pains of the mind are connected inseparably with the pleasures and pains of the body? Is there, then, nothing which ever delights you, (I know whom I am addressing,) is there nothing, O Torquatus, which ever delights you for its own sake? I say nothing about dignity, honourableness, the beauty of virtue, which I have mentioned before. I will put ​all these things aside as of less consequence. But is there anything when you are writing, or reading a poem, or an oration, when you are investigating the history of exploits or countries, or anything in a statue, or picture, or pleasant place; in sports, in hunting, or in a villa of Lucullus, (for if I were to say of your own, you would have a loophole to escape through, saying that that had connexion with your body,) is there any of all these things, I say, which you can refer to your body, or do they not please you, if they please you at all, for their own sake?
You must either be the most obstinate of men, if you persist in referring these things, which I have just mentioned, to the body, or else you must abandon Epicurus's whole theory of pleasure, if you admit that they have no connexion with it.
But as for your argument, that the pleasures and pains of the mind are greater than those of the body, because the mind is a partaker of three times, but nothing but what is present is felt by the body; how can it possibly be allowed that a man who rejoices for my sake rejoices more than I do myself? The pleasure of the mind originates in the pleasure of the body, and the pleasure of the mind is greater than that of the body. The result, then, is, that the party who congratulates the other is more rejoiced than he whom he congratulates. But while you are trying to make out the wise man to be happy, because he is sensible of the greatest pleasures in his mind, and, indeed, of pleasures which are in all their parts greater than those which he is sensible of in his body, you do not see what really happens. For he will also feel the pains of the mind to be in every respect greater than those of the body. And so he must occasionally be miserable, whom you endeavour to represent as being always happy. Nor, indeed, will it be possible for you ever to fill up the idea of perfect and uninterrupted happiness while you refer everything to pleasure and pain.
On which account, O Torquatus, we must find out something else which is the chief good of man. Let us grant pleasure to the beasts, to whom you often appeal as witnesses on the subject of the chief good. What will you say, if even the beasts do many things under the guidance of their various ​natures, partly out of indulgence to other beasts, and at the cost of their own labour, as, for instance, it is very visible in bringing forth and rearing their young, that they have some other object in view besides their own pleasure? and partly, too, when they rejoice in running about and travelling; and some assemble in herds, in such a manner as to imitate in some degree a human state. In some species of birds we see certain indications of affection, knowledge, and memory; in many we see what even looks like a regular system of action. Shall there, then, be in beasts some images of human virtues, quite unconnected with pleasure, and shall there be no virtue in man except for the sake of pleasure? and though he is as superior as can be to all the other animals, shall we still affirm that he has no peculiar attributes given to him by nature?
XXXIV. But we, if indeed all things depend on pleasure, are greatly surpassed by beasts, for which the earth, of her own accord, produces various sorts of food, in every kind of abundance, without their taking any trouble about it; while the same necessaries are scarcely (sometimes I may even use stronger language still) supplied to us, when we seek them with great labour. Nor is it possible that I should ever think that the chief good was the same in the case of a beast and a man. For what can be the use of having so many means and appliances for the carrying out of the most excellent arts,—what can be the use of such an assemblage of most honourable pursuits, of such a crowd of virtues, if they are all got together for no other end but pleasure? As if, when Xerxes, with such vast fleets, such countless troops of both cavalry and infantry, had bridged over the Hellespont and dug through Mount Athos, had walked across the sea, and sailed over the land, if, when he had invaded Greece with such ​irresistible violence, any one had asked him for the cause of collecting so vast an army, and waging so formidable a war, and he had replied that he wished to get some honey from Hymettus, certainly he would have been thought to have undertaken such an enterprise for an insufficient cause. And in like manner, if we were to say that a wise man, furnished and provided with numerous and important virtues and accomplishments, not, indeed, travelling like him over sea on foot, and over mountains with his fleet, but embracing the whole heaven, all the earth, and the universal sea with his mind, had nothing in view but pleasure, we might say that he, too, was taking a great deal of trouble for a little honey.
Believe me, Torquatus, we were born for more lofty and noble ends; and you may see this, not only by considering the parts of the mind, in which there is the recollection of a countless number of things, (and from thence proceed infinite conjectures as to the consequences of them, not very far differing from divination; there is also in them shame, which is the regulator of desire, and the faithful guardianship of justice, so necessary to human society, and a firm enduring contempt for pain and death, shown in the enduring of labours and the encountering of dangers.) All these things, I say, are in the mind. But I would have you consider also the limbs and the senses, which, like the other parts of the body, will appear to you to be not only the companions of the virtues, but also their slaves. What will you say, if many things in the body itself appear to deserve to be preferred to pleasure? such as strength, health, activity, beauty? And if this is the case, how many qualities of the mind will likewise seem so? For in the mind, the old philosophers—those most learned men—thought that there was something heavenly and divine. But if the chief good consisted in pleasure, as you say, then it would be natural that we should wish to live day and night in the midst of pleasure, without any interval or interruption, while all our senses were, as it were, steeped in and influenced wholly by pleasure. But who is there, who is worthy of the name of a man, who would like to spend even the whole of one day in that kind of pleasure? The Cyrenaic philosophers, indeed, would not object. Your sect is more modest in this respect, though their's is perhaps the more sincere.
​However, let us contemplate with our minds, not, indeed, these most important arts, which are so valuable, that those who were ignorant of them were accounted useless by our ancestors; but I ask you whether you think that (I will not say Homer, or Archilochus, or Pindar, but) Phidias, or Polycletus, or Zeuxis directed the whole of their skill to cause more pleasure. Shall, then, an artist propose to himself a higher aim, with reference to the beauty of figures, than a virtuous citizen with reference to the nobleness of action? But what other cause can there be for such a blunder being so widely and extensively diffused, except that he who determines that pleasure is the chief good, deliberates not with that part of his mind in which reason and wisdom dwell, but with his desires, that is to say, with the most trifling portion of his mind. For I put the question to you yourself, if there are gods, as you think that there are, how have they the power of being happy, when they are not able to feel any pleasure in their bodies? or if they are happy, though destitute of that kind of pleasure, why do you refuse to recognize the possibility of a similar exertion of intellect on the part of a wise man?
XXXV. Read, O Torquatus, the panegyrics, not of those men who have been praised by Homer, not the encomiums passed on Cyrus, or Agesilaus, or Aristides, or Themistocles, or Philip, or Alexander; but read the praises of our own fellow-countrymen, of the heroes of your own family. You will not find any one praised on the ground of having been a cunning contriver, or procurer, of pleasure. The eulogies on their monuments signify no such thing; like this one which is at one of our gates, “In whose favour many nations unanimously agree that he was the noblest man of the nation.” Do we think that many nations judged of Calatinus, that he was the noblest man of the nation, because he was the most skilful in the devising of pleasures? Shall we, then, say that there is great hope and an excellent disposition in those young men whom we think likely to consult their own advantage, and to see what will be profitable to themselves? Do we not see what a great confusion of everything would ensue? what great disorder? Such a doctrine puts an end to all beneficence, to all gratitude, which are the great bonds of agreement. For if you do good to any one for your own sake, ​that is not to be considered a kindness, but only usury; nor does any gratitude appear due to the man who has benefited another for his own sake.
But if pleasure is the dominant power, it is inevitable that all the virtues must be trampled under foot. For there are many kinds of base conduct, which, unless honourableness is naturally to have the most influence, must, or at least it is not easy to explain why they should not, overcome a wise man; and, not to go hunting for too many instances, it is quite clear, that virtue deservedly praised, must cut off all the approaches of pleasure.
Do not, now, expect any more arguments from me. Look, Torquatus, yourself, into your own mind; turn the question over in all your thoughts; examine yourself, whether you would prefer to pass your life in the enjoyment of perpetual pleasure, in that tranquillity which you have often felt, free from all pain, with the addition also of that blessing which you often speak of as an addition, but which is, in fact, an impossible one, the absence of all fear; or, while deserving well of all nations, and bearing assistance and safety to all who are in need of it, to encounter even the distresses of Hercules. For so our ancestors, even in the case of a god, called labours which were unavoidable by the most melancholy name, distresses. I would require you, and compel you to answer me, if I were not afraid that you might say that Hercules himself performed those exploits, which he performed with the greatest labour for the safety of nations, for the sake of pleasure.
And when I had said this,—I know, said Torquatus, who it is that I have to thank for this; and although I might be able to do something myself, yet I am still more glad to find my friends better prepared than I am.
I suppose you mean Syro and Philodemus, excellent citizens and most learned men. You are right, said he. Come, then, said I. But it would be more fair for Triarius to give ​some opinion on this discussion of ours. Indeed, said he smiling, it would be very unfair, at least on this subject: for you manage the question more gently; but this man attacks us after the fashion of the Stoics. Then Triarius said, Hereafter I will speak more boldly still: for I shall have all these arguments which I have just heard ready to my hand; and I will not begin before I see you equipped by those philosophers whom you mention.
And when this had been said, we made an end both of our walk and of our discussion.
* ↑ Hieronymus was a disciple of Aristotle and a contemporary of Arcesilaus. He lived down to the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
* ↑ Trabea was a Roman comic poet, who flourished about 130 b.c.
* ↑ Dark, obscure.
* ↑ We know nothing more of Callipho than what we derive from this and one or two other notices of him by Cicero.
* ↑ The Hymnis was a comedy of Menander, translated by Cæcilius.
* ↑ It is hardly possible to translate this so as to give the force of the original. Cicero says, If cupiditas is in a man he must be cupidus, and we have no English word which will at all answer to this adjective in this sense.
* ↑ The Latin is “quicum in tenebris,”—the proverb at full length being, “Dignus quicum in tenebris mices.” Micare was a game played, (much the same as that now called La Mora in Italy,) by extending the fingers and making the antagonist guess how many fingers were extended by the two together.
* ↑ This was Quintus Pompeius, the first man who raised his family to importance at Rome. He was consul b.c. 141. Being commander in Spain, he laid siege to Numantia; and having lost great numbers of his troops through cold and disease, he proposed to the Numantines to come to terms. Publicly he required of them an unconditional surrender, but in private he only demanded the restoration of the prisoners and deserters, that they should give hostages and pay thirty talents. The Numantines agreed to this, and paid part of the money, but when Popilius Lænas arrived in Spain as his successor, he denied the treaty, though it had been witnessed by his own officers. The matter was referred to the senate, who on the evidence of Pompeius declared the treaty invalid, and the war was renewed.
* ↑ The Voconia lex was passed on the proposal of Quintus Voconius Saxa, one of the tribunes, b.c. 169. One of its provisions was, that a woman could not be left the heiress of any person who was rated in the census at 100,000 sesterces; though she could take the inheritance per fidei commissum. But as the law applied only to wills, a daughter could inherit from a father dying intestate, whatever the amount of his property might be. A person who was not census could make a woman his heir. There is, however, a good deal of obscurity and uncertainty as to some of the provisions of this law.
* ↑ There appears to be some corruption in the text here.
* ↑ Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, the father of Lucretia, was made consul as the colleague of Valerius Publicola, in the place of Brutus, who had been slain in battle by Aruns, one of the sons of Tarquin.
* ↑ Themista was a female philosopher, wife of a man named Leonteus, or Leon, and a friend and correspondent of Epicurus.
* ↑ He means when he was banished, and when Torquatus joined in promoting the measures for his recal.
* ↑ Cicero alludes here to the story of Damon, who, when his friend Pythias was condemned to death by Dionysius of Syracuse, pledged his life for his return in time to be put to death, if the tyrant would give him leave to go home for the purpose of arranging his affairs, and Pythias did return in time.—See Cic. de Off. iii. 10; Just. Div. v. 22.
* ↑ b.c. 363.
* ↑ b.c. 480.
* ↑ The Greek line occurs in the Orestes, 207. Ὡ πότνια λήθη τῶν κακῶν ὡς εἶ γλυκύ. Virgil has the same idea— Vos et Scyllæam rabiem, penitusque sonantes Accêtis scopulos, vos et Cyclopia saxa Experti; revocate animos, moestumque timorem Pellite: forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.—Æn. i. 200. Which Dryden translates— Th' inhuman Cyclops and his den defied: What greater ills hereafter can you bear? Resume your courage and dismiss your care; An hour will come with pleasure to relate Your sorrows past as benefits of fate.}}
* ↑ That is, of the past, the present, and the future.
* ↑ This seems to refer to the Greek epigram— Τὸν γαίης καὶ πόντου ἀμειφθείσαισι κελεύθοις, Ναύτην ἠπείρου, πεζόπορον πελάγους. Ἐν τρίσσαις δοράτων ἑκατοντάσιν ἔστεγεν Ἄρης Σπάρτης αἰσχυνεσθ᾽ οὔρεα καὶ πελάγη. Which may be translated— Him who the paths of land and sea disturb'd, Sail'd o'er the earth, walk'd o'er the humbled waves, Three hundred spears of dauntless Sparta curb'd. Shame on you, land and sea, ye willing slaves!
* ↑ The Latin is ærumnæ: perhaps it is in allusion to this passage that Juvenal says— Et potiores Herculis ærumnas credat, sævosque labores Et Venere et cœnis, et pluma Sardanapali. Sat. x. 361.