[Footnote 766: ][ (return) ] Maurice's "Ancient Philosophy," p. 236.
[Footnote 767: ][ (return) ] "Ethics," bk. i. ch. vi.
The grand object of philosophy, according to Epicurus, is the attainment of a happy life. "Philosophy," says he, "is the power by which reason conducts men to happiness." Truth is a merely relative thing, a variable quantity; and therefore the pursuit of truth for its own sake is superfluous and useless. There is no such thing as absolute, unchangeable right: no action is intrinsically right or wrong. "We choose the virtues, not on their own account, but for the sake of pleasure, just as we seek the skill of the physician for the sake of health." [768] That which is nominally right in morals, that which is relatively good in human conduct, is, therefore, to be determined by the effects upon ourselves; that which is agreeable--pleasurable, is right; that which is disagreeable--painful, is wrong. "The virtues are connate with living pleasantly." [769] Pleasure (ἡδονή), then, is the great end to be sought in human action. "Pleasure is the chief good, the beginning and end of living happily." [770]
[Footnote 768: ][ (return) ] "Fundamental Maxims," preserved in Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. x. ch. xxx.
[Footnote 769: ][ (return) ] "Epicurus to Menæceus," in Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. x. ch. xxvii.
[Footnote 770: ][ (return) ] Id., ib.
The proof which Epicurus offers in support of his doctrine, "that pleasure is the chief good," is truly characteristic. "All animals from the moment of their birth are delighted with pleasure and offended with pain, by their natural instincts, and without the employment of reason. Therefore we, also, of our own inclination, flee from pain." [771] "All men like pleasure and dislike pain; they naturally shun the latter and pursue the former." "If happiness is present, we have every thing, and when it is absent, we do every thing with a view to possess it." [772] Virtue thus consists in man's doing deliberately what the animals do instinctively--that is, choose pleasure and avoid pain.
[Footnote 771: ][ (return) ] Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. x. ch. xxix.
[Footnote 772: ][ (return) ] Id., ib., bk. x. ch. xxvii.
"Every kind of pleasure" is, in the estimation of Epicurus, "alike good," and alike proper. "If those things which make the pleasures of debauched men put an end to the fears of the mind, and to those which arise about the heavenly bodies [supernatural powers], and death and pain,... we should have no pretense for blaming those who wholly devote themselves to pleasure, and who never feel any pain, or grief (which is the chief evil) from any quarter." [773] Whilst, however, all pleasures of the body, as well as the mind, are equal in dignity, and alike good, they differ in intensity, in duration, and, especially, in their consequences. He therefore divides pleasure into two classes; and in this, as Cousin remarks, is found the only element of originality in his philosophy. These two kinds of pleasure are: