Note 29 — Chapter XIX · THE MORAL SCIENCE OF THE EPICUREANS. GENERAL PRINCIPLES.

(3) Virtue. In no other way can the necessity of virtue be established in the Epicurean system. Agreeing with the strictest moralists, so far as to hold that virtue can be as little separated from happiness as happiness from virtue,29 having even the testimony of opponents as to the purity and integrity of his moral teaching, which in its results differed in no wise from that of the Stoics;30 Epicurus, nevertheless, holds a position of strong contrast to the Stoics in respect of the grounds on which his moral theory is based. To demand virtue for its own sake seemed to him a mere phantom of the imagination. Those only who make pleasure their aim have a real object in life.31 Virtue has only a conditional value32 as a means to happiness; or, as it is otherwise expressed,33 Virtue taken by itself does not render a man happy, but the pleasure arising from the exercise of virtue. This pleasure the Epicurean system does not seek in the consciousness of duty fulfilled, or of virtuous action, but in the freedom from disquiet, fear, and dangers, which follows as a consequence from virtue. Wisdom and intelligence contribute to happiness by liberating us from the fear of the Gods and of death, by making us independent of immoderate passions and vain desires, by teaching us to bear pain as something subordinate and passing, and by pointing the way to a more cheerful and natural life.34 Self-control aids, in that it points out the attitude to be assumed towards pleasure and pain, so as to receive the maximum of enjoyment and the minimum of suffering;35 valour, in that it enables us to overcome fear and pain;36 justice, in that it makes life possible without that fear of Gods and men, which ever haunts the transgressor.37 To the Epicurean virtue is never an end in itself, but only a means to an end lying beyond—a happy life—but withal a means so certain and necessary, that virtue can neither be conceived without happiness, nor happiness without virtue. However unnecessary it may seem, still Epicurus would ever insist that an action to be right must be done not according to the letter, but according to the spirit of the law, not simply from regard to others, or by compulsion, but from delight in what is good.38