Note 175 — Chapter III · * OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES. (continued 2)

Xenoph. Memor. iv. 5.

Sokrates exhorts those with whom he converses to be sparing in indulgences, and to cultivate self-command and fortitude as well as bodily energy and activity. The reason upon which these exhortations are founded is eudæmonistic: that a person will thereby escape or be able to confront serious dangers — and will obtain for himself ultimately greater pleasures than those which he foregoes (Memor. i. 6, 8; ii. 1, 31-33; iii. 12, 2-5). Τοῦ δὲ μὴ δουλεύειν γαστρὶ μηδὲ ὕπνῳ καὶ λαγνείᾳ οἴει τι ἄλλο αἰτιώτερον εἶναι, ἢ τὸ ἕτερα ἔχειν τούτων ἡδίω, ἃ οὐ μόνον ἐν χρείᾳ ὄντα εὐφραίνει, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔλπιδας παρέχοντα ὠφελήσειν ἀεί; See also Memor. ii. 4, ii. 10, 4, about the importance of acquiring and cultivating friends, because a good friend is the most useful and valuable of all possessions. Sokrates, like Aristippus, adopts the prudential view of life, and not the transcendental; recommending sobriety and virtue on the ground of pleasures secured and pains averted. We find Plutarch, in his very bitter attacks on Epikurus, reasoning on the Hedonistic basis, and professing to prove that Epikurus discarded pleasures more and greater for the sake of obtaining pleasures fewer and less. See Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, pp. 1096-1099.