Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/289

 sake of avoiding pain, though you may not be able to compass that; or else of getting some one of those things which are according to nature. And thus it comes about that there is as much difference between the chief good and the chief evil as there is in their natural principles. Others again, starting from the same beginning, refer everything either to pleasure or to freedom from pain, or else to the attainment of those primary goods which are according to nature.

Now then that we have detailed six opinions about the chief good, these are the chief advocates of the three last-mentioned opinions,—Aristippus, the advocate of pleasure; Hieronymus, of freedom from pain; and Carneades, of the enjoyment of those things which we have called the principal things in accordance with nature (though he, indeed, was not the author of this theory, but only its advocate, for the sake of maintaining a debate). Now, the three former were such as might possibly be true, though only one of them was defended, and that was vehemently maintained. For no one says, that to do everything for the sake of pleasure, or that, even though we obtain nothing, still the very design of acting so is of itself desirable, and honourable, and the only good; no one ever even placed the avoidance of pain (not even if it could be avoided) among things intrinsically desirable; but to do everything with a view to obtain the things which are according to nature, even though we do not succeed in obtaining them, the Stoics do affirm to be honourable, and the only thing to be desired for its own sake, and the only good.

VIII. These, then, are six plain opinions about the chief good and the chief evil,—two having no advocate, but four being defended. But of united and twofold explanations of the chief good there were in all three; nor could there be more if you examine the nature of things thoroughly. For either pleasure can be added to honourableness, as Callipho and Dinomachus thought; or freedom from pain, as Diodorus asserted; or the first gifts of nature, as the ancients said, whom we call at the same time Academics and Peripatetics. But, since everything cannot be said at once, at present these things ought to be known, that pleasure ought to be excluded; since, as it will presently appear, we have been born for higher purposes; and nearly the same may be said of freedom from