The East: Confucianism Taoism Buddhism
The West: Stoicism Epicureanism Christianity
The East: Confucianism Taoism
Buddhism
The West: Stoicism
Epicureanism Christianity
Epicurus to Menoeceus, greetings:
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed towards attaining it.
Those things which without ceasing I have declared unto
you, do them, and exercise yourself in them, holding them to be the elements of
right life. First believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed,
according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind; and
so believing, you shall not affirm of him anything that is foreign to his
immortality or that is repugnant to his blessedness. Believe about him whatever
may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For there are gods, and the
knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe,
seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting
them. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who
affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. For
the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but
false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and
the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that
they are always favorable to their own good
qualities and take pleasure in men like themselves, but
reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.
Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to
us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the
privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is
nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a
limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has
no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for
him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears
death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the
prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a
groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils,
is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death
is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead,
for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at
one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose
it as a respite from the evils in life. The wise man does not deprecate life nor
does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him,
nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food
not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise
seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is
longest.
And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to
make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of
life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die
well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once
one is born to pass quickly through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes
this, why does he not depart from life? It would be easy for him to do so once
he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in jest, his words are foolishness
as those who hear him do not
believe.
We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.
We must also reflect that of desires some are natural,
others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as
natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary
if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we
are even to live. He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things
will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and
tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life. For
the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we
have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living
creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look
for anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be
fulfilled. When we are pained because of the absence of pleasure, then,
and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. Wherefore
we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life.
Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the
starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back,
inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing. And
since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose
every pleasure whatsoever, but will often pass over many pleasures when a
greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to
pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a
consequence a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is
naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is should be chosen, just as all
pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned. It is, however, by
measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and
inconveniences, that all these matters must be judged. Sometimes we treat the
good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good. Again, we regard
independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use
little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much, being
honestly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand
least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured and only
the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a
costly diet, when once the pain of want has been removed, while bread and water
confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To
habituate one's self, therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies all
that is needful for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements
of life without shrinking, and it places us in a better condition when we
approach at intervals a costly fare and renders us fearless of fortune.
When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we
do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we
are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful
misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of
trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of
revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of
a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning,
searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those
beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of
the soul. Of all this the beginning and the greatest good
is wisdom. Therefore wisdom is a more precious thing even than philosophy ; from
it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live pleasantly
without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and
justly without living pleasantly. For the virtues have grown into one with a
pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them.
Who, then, is superior in your judgment to such a man?
He holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is altogether free from the fear
of death. He has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and understands
how easily the limit of good things can be reached and attained, and how either
the duration or the intensity of evils is but slight. Fate, which some introduce
as sovereign over all things, he scorns, affirming rather that some things
happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. For he
sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that chance is inconstant;
whereas our own actions are autonomous, and it is to them that praise and blame
naturally attach. It were better, indeed, to accept the legends of the gods than
to bow beneath that yoke of destiny which the natural philosophers have imposed.
The one holds out some faint hope that we may escape
if we honor the gods, while the necessity of the
naturalists is deaf to all entreaties. Nor does he hold chance to be a god, as
the world in general does, for in the acts of a god there is no disorder; nor to
be a cause, though an uncertain one, for he believes that no good or evil is
dispensed by chance to men so as to make life blessed, though it supplies the
starting-point of great good and great evil. He believes that the misfortune of
the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that
what is well judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of
chance.
Exercise yourself in these and related precepts day and night, both by yourself and with one who is like-minded; then never, either in waking or in dream, will you be disturbed, but will live as a god among men. For man loses all semblance of mortality by living in the midst of immortal blessings.
a project of John Trapp
