Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/178

 if to be free from pain is the highest degree of pleasure, to be destitute of pleasure is the highest degree of pain? Because it is not pleasure which is the contrary to pain, but the absence of pain.

X. But this he does not see, that it is a great proof that at the very moment when he says that if pleasure be once taken away he has no idea at all what remaining thing can be called good, (and he follows up this assertion with the statement that he means such pleasure as is perceptible by the palate and by the ears, and adds other things which decency ought to forbid him to mention,) he is, like a strict and worthy philosopher, aware that this which he calls the chief good is not even a thing which is worth desiring for its own sake, that he himself informs us that we have no reason to wish for pleasure at all, if we are free from pain. How inconsistent are these statements! If he had learnt to make correct divisions or definitions of his subject, if he had a proper regard to the usages of speaking and the common meaning of words, he would never have fallen into such difficulties. But as it is, you see what it is he is doing. That which no one has ever called pleasure at all, and that also which is real active pleasure, which are two distinct things, he makes but one. For he calls them agreeable and, as I may say, sweet-tasted pleasures. At times he speaks so lightly of them that you might fancy you were listening to Marcus Curius. At times he extols them so highly that he says he cannot form even the slightest idea of what else is good—a sentiment which deserves not the reproof of a philosopher, but the brand of the censor. For vice does not confine itself to language, but penetrates also into the manners. He does not find fault with luxury provided it to be free from boundless desires and from fear. While speaking in this way he appears to be fishing for disciples, that men who wish to become debauchees may become philosophers first.

Now, in my opinion, the origin of the chief good is to be sought in the first origin of living animals. As soon as an animal is born it rejoices in pleasure, and seeks it as a good; it shuns pain as an evil. And Epicurus says that excellent decisions on the subject of the good and the evil are come to by those animals which are not yet depraved. You, too, have laid down the same position, and these are your own