202 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



Freedom 

 from pain 

 proved to be 

 pleasure. 



Every 

 pleasure 

 not to be 

 chosen. 



Why 



contentment 

 is good. 



Sensual 

 pleasure 

 not meant. 



Limit of 

 bodily 

 pleasure. 

 The desires. 



Is pleasure 

 ever an evil ? 



That this negative state is actually pleasure, he makes out by a sort 

 of verbal juggle not uncommon in ancient dialectics. 



" For we are in want of pleasure, when, from pleasure not being 

 present, we are in pain; but when we are not in pain, then we are 

 not in want of pleasure. And for this reason we call pleasure the 

 beginning and end of the art of living. Not that every pleasure is to 

 be chosen ; on the contrary, we avoid many pleasures when a pre- 

 ponderance of inconvenience would attend them, and many pains we 

 count better than pleasures, when a greater pleasure will follow the 

 suffering. 



" Every pleasure is in itself good, but every pleasure is not to be 

 chosen ; just as every pain is an evil, and yet every pain is not, because 

 it is so, to be avoided. For in every case this must be determined by 

 comparison, and by a regard to what is upon the whole suitable and 

 unsuitable. 



" We call contentment a great good ; not as if it were a thing in 

 itself desirable to have little of the means of life ; but that, if much be 

 not our lot, we may be able to enjoy little : convinced that those men 

 enjoy luxury most, who can most readily do without it. 



" When we say that pleasure is the end of life, we do not mean the 

 pleasures of the debauchee or sensualist, as some from ignorance or 

 from malignity represent, but freedom of the body from pain and of 

 the soul from anxiety. For it is not continuous drinkings and re veil ings, 

 nor the society of women, nor rare viands and other luxuries of the 

 table, that constitute a pleasant life; but sober contemplation that 

 searches out the grounds of choice and avoidance, and banishes those 

 chimeras that harass the mind. 



" When once the pain arising from a want is removed, bodily 

 pleasure admits of no further increase ; anything more only varies it. 



" Of the desires some are natural and necessary, such as drink when 

 one is thirsty ; some are natural but not necessary, such as a desire 

 for luxuries that only vary pleasure and do not remove pain ; others 

 are neither natural nor necessary, but owe their origin to vain opinions, 

 such as a passion for civic distinctions and honours. 



" Those desires that do not end in pain .when left unsatisfied, are 

 not necessary ; and their craving is easily silenced, when their gratifica- 

 tion is difficult, or they seem likely to produce mischief." 



As the natural and necessary desires are easily satisfied, the means 

 of a happy life are thus within the reach of all, without struggle or 

 difficulty. 



" No pleasure is in itself an evil, but the means of procuring some 

 pleasures are attended with consequences that are destructive of the 

 pleasures. 



" If the means to which sensualists owe their pleasures dispelled 

 the anxieties ,of the mind as well those connected with supernatural 

 objects as with death and pain, and if they enabled them to set limits 

 to their desires, we should have no grounds to blame them for taking 



