THE GARDENS OF EPICURUS ij 



and exercise of reason, to be the state of the greatest 

 felicity : to live without desires or fears, or those 

 perturbations of mind and thought, which passions 

 raise : to place true riches in wanting little, rather than 

 in possessing much ; and true pleasure in temperance, 

 rather than in satisfying the senses : to live with 

 indifference to the common enjoyments and accidents 

 of life, and with constancy upon the greatest blows of 

 fate or of chance ; not to disturb our minds with sad 

 reflections upon what is past, nor with anxious cares or 

 raving hopes about what is to come ; neither to dispute 

 life with the fears of death, nor death with the desires of 

 life ; but in both, and in all things else, to follow nature, 

 seem to be the precepts most agreed among them. 



Thus reason seems only to have been called in, to 

 allay those disorders which itself had raised, to cure 

 its own wounds, and pretends to make us wise no other 

 way, than by rendering us insensible. This at least 

 was the profession of many rigid Stoics, who would 

 have had a wise man, not only without any sort of 

 passion, but without any sense of pain, as well as 

 pleasure ; and to enjoy himself in the midst of diseases 

 and torments, as well as of health and ease : a principle, 

 in my mind, against common nature and common 

 sense ; and which might have told us in fewer words, 



