That it is Not Possible to Live Pleasurably According to the Doctrine of Epicurus (17)

In brief, these men draw out the dimensions of their pleasures like a circle, about the stomach as a centre. And the truth is, it is impossible for those men ever to participate of generous and princely joy, such as enkindles a height of spirit in us and sends forth to all mankind an unmade hilarity and calm serenity, that have taken up a sort of life that is confined, unsocial, inhuman, and uninspired

towards the esteem of the world and the love of mankind. For the soul of man is not an abject, little, and ungenerous thing, nor doth it extend its desires (as polyps do their claws) unto eatables only,—yea, these are in an instant of time taken off by the least plenitude,— but when its efforts towards what is brave and generous and the honors and caresses that accrue therefrom are now in their consummate vigor, this life’s duration cannot limit them, but the desire of glory and the love of mankind grasp at whole eternity, and wrestle with such actions and charms as bring with then an ineffable pleasure, and such as good men, though never so fain, cannot decline, they meeting and accosting them on all sides and surrounding them about, while their being beneficial to many occasions joy to themselves.

As he passes through the throngs in the city,

All gaze upon him as some Deity.

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For he that can so affect and move other men as to fill them with joy and rapture, and to make them long to touch him and salute him, cannot but appear even to a blind man to possess and enjoy very extraordinary satisfactions in himself. And hence it comes that such men are both indefatigable and undaunted in serving the public, and we still hear some such words from them:

Thy father got thee for the common good;

and

Let’s not give off to benefit mankind.

But what need I instance in those that are consummately good? For if to one of the middling rank of bad men, when he is just a dying, he that hath the power over him (whether his God or prince) should but allow one hour more, upon condition that, after he hath spent that either in some generous action or in sensual enjoyment, he should then presently die, who would in this time choose rather to accompany with Lais or drink Ariusian wine, than to despatch Archias and restore the Thebans to their liberties? For my part I believe none would. For I see that even common sword-players, if they are not utter brutes and savages, but Greek born, when they are to enter the list, though there be many and very costly dishes set before them, yet take more content in employing their time in commending their poor wives to some of their friends, yea, and in conferring freedom on their slaves, than in gratifying their stomachs. But should the pleasures of the body be allowed to have some extraordinary matter in them, this would yet be common to men of action and business.

For they can eat good meat, and red wine drink,[*]

aye, and entertain themselves with their friends, and perhaps with a greater relish too, after their engagements and hard services,—as did Alexander and Agesilaus, and (by Jove) Phocion and Epaminondas too,—than these gentlemen who anoint themselves by the fireside, and are gingerly rocked about the streets in sedans. Yea, those make but small account of such pleasures as these, as being comprised in those greater ones. For why should a man mention Epaminondas’s denying to sup with one, when he saw the preparations made were above the man’s estate, but frankly telling his friend, I thought you had intended a sacrifice and not a debauch, when Alexander himself refused Queen Ada’s cooks, telling her he had better ones of his own, to wit, travelling by night for his dinner, and a light dinner for his supper, and when Philoxenus writing to him about some handsome boys, and desiring to know of him whether he would have him buy them for him, was within a small matter of being discharged his office for it? And yet who might better have them than he? But as Hippocrates saith that of two pains the lesser is obscured by the greater, so the pleasures that accrue from action and the love of glory, while they cheer and refresh the mind, do by their transcendency and grandeur obliterate and extinguish the inferior satisfactions of the body.