Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/172

 expressing his contempt for dialectics, an art which by itself contains the whole science both of perceiving what the real subject is in every question, and also of judging what the character of each thing is, by its system and method of conducting the argument, he goes on too fast, as it seems to me, and does not distinguish with any skill at all the different points which he is intent upon proving, as in this very instance which we were just now speaking of.

Pleasure is pronounced to be the chief good. We must then open the question, What is pleasure? for otherwise, the thing which we are seeking for cannot be explained. But, if he had explained it, he would not hesitate; for either he would maintain that same definition of pleasure which Aristippus did, namely, that it is that feeling by which the senses are agreeably and pleasantly moved, which even cattle, if they could speak, would call pleasure; or else, if he chose rather to speak in his own style, than like

and the rest of the Greeks who are spoken of in these anapæsts, then he would call this freedom from pain alone by the name of pleasure, and would despise the definition of Aristippus; or, if he thought both definitions good, as in fact he does, he would combine freedom from pain with pleasure, and would employ the two extremes in his own definition: for many, and they, too, great philosophers, have combined these extremities of goods, as, for instance, Aristotle, who united in his idea the practice of virtue with the prosperity of an entire life. Callipho added pleasure to what is honourable. Diodorus, in his definition, added to the same honourableness, freedom from pain. Epicurus would have done so too, if he had combined the opinion which was held by Hieronymus, with the ancient theory of Aristippus. For those two men disagree with one another, and on this account they employ separate definitions; and, while they both write the most beautiful Greek, still, neither does Aristippus, who calls pleasure the chief good, ever speak of freedom from pain as pleasure; nor does Hieronymus, who lays it down that freedom from pain is the chief good, ever use the word “pleasure”