Note 10 — Chapter XIX · THE MORAL SCIENCE OF THE EPICUREANS. GENERAL PRINCIPLES.

(1) Intelligence. and, therefore, the highest good, is intelligence.10 It is intelligence that leaves us free to acquire possession thereof, without being ever too early or too late.11 Our indispensable wants are simple, little being necessary to ensure freedom from pain; other things only afford change in enjoyment, by which the quantity is not increased, or else they rest on a mere sentiment.12 The little we need may be easily attained. Nature makes ample provision for our happiness, would we only receive her gifts thankfully, not forgetting what she gives in thinking what we desire.13 He who lives according to nature is never poor; the wise man living on bread and water has no reason to envy Zeus;14 chance has little hold on him; with him judgment is everything,15 and if that be right, he need trouble himself but little about external mishaps.16 Not even bodily pain appeared to Epicurus so irresistible as to be able to cloud the wise man’s happiness. Although he regards as unnatural the Stoic’s insensibility to pain,17 still he is of opinion that the wise man may be happy on the rack, and can smile at pains the most violent, exclaiming in the midst of torture, How sweet!18 A touch of forced sentiment may be discerned in the last expression, and a trace of self-satisfied exaggeration is manifest even in the beautiful language of the dying philosopher on the pains of disease.19 Nevertheless, the principle involved is based in the spirit of the Epicurean philosophy, and borne out by the testimony of the founder. The main thing, according to Epicurus, is not the state of the body, but the state of the mind; bodily pleasure being of short duration, and having much about it to unsettle; mental enjoyments only being pure and incorruptible. For the same reason mental sufferings are more severe than those of the body, since the body only suffers from present ills, whilst the soul feels those past and those to come.20 In a life of limited duration the pleasures of the flesh never attain their consummation. Mind only, by consoling us for the limited nature of our bodily existence, can produce a life complete in itself, and not standing in need of unlimited duration.21