Epicurus
341-270 B.C.E. - Wrote in Greek
Letter to Menoeceus
Written (Date Pending)
Translated by Robert Drew Hicks
Letter to Menoeceus
By Epicurus
Greeting.
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in
the search thereof when he is 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 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 toward attaining it.
Those things which without ceasing I have declared to you, those
do, and exercise yourself in those, holding them to be the elements of
right life. First believe that God is a living being immortal and happy,
according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of humankind;
and so of him anything that is at agrees not with about him whatever may
uphold both his happyness and his immortality. For truly there are gods,
and knowledge of them is evident; but they are not such as the multitude
believe, seeing that people do not steadfastly maintain the notions they
form respecting them. Not the person 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 people like
to themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their
kind.
Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good
and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness;
therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality
of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking
away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those
who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing
to live. Foolish, therefore, is the person 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 people shun death as the greatest of all evils,
and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. The
wise person 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 people 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 with all speed through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes
this, why does he not depart from life? It were easy for him to do so,
if once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words
are foolishness, for those who hear believe him not.
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 happy 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 anything else by which
the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained
pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. For this
reason we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a happy 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
whatever, but 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 worthy of choice, 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, teat 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 one the pain of want has been removed, while bread an water
confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips.
To habituate one's se therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies
al that is needful for health, and enables a person 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 merrymaking,
not sexual love, 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 disturbances take possession of
the soul. Of all this the d is prudence. For this reason prudence is a
more precious thing even than the other virtues, for ad a life of pleasure
which is not also a life of prudence, honor, and justice; nor lead a life
of prudence, honor, and justice, which is not also a life of pleasure.
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 person? 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. Destiny which
some introduce as sovereign over all things, he laughs to scorn, 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 or fortune is inconstant; whereas our own actions are free,
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 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 people so as to make life happy, 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 kindred precepts day and night,
both by yourself and with him who is like to you; then never, either in
waking or in dream, will you be disturbed, but will live as a god among
people. For people lose all appearance of mortality by living in the midst
of immortal blessings.
THE END
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