epictetus - letter-748, książki, Philosphy
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[TABLE NOT SHOWN][TABLE NOT SHOWN]Copyright 1996, James Fieser (jfieser@utm.edu). See end note fordetails on copyright and editing conventions. Epicurus's "Letter toMenoeceus" is preserved in Diogenes Laertius's Lives of EminentPhilosophers. The following is from Robert Drew Hicks's 1925translation. This is a working draft; please report errors.[1 ]---------------------------------------------------------------------Greeting.Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor wearyin the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is tooearly or too late for the health of the soul. And to say thatthe season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or thatit is past and gone, is like saying that the season forhappiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore,both old and young ought to seek wisdom, the former in orderthat, as age comes over him, he may be young in good thingsbecause of the grace of what has been, and the latter in orderthat, while he is young, he may at the same time be old,because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So wemust exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness,since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that beabsent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.Those things which without ceasing I have declared to you,those do, and exercise yourself in those, holding them to bethe elements of right life. First believe that God is a livingbeing immortal and happy, according to the notion of a godindicated by the common sense of humankind; and so of himanything that is at agrees not with about him whatever mayuphold both his happyness and his immortality. For truly thereare gods, and knowledge of them is evident; but they are notsuch as the multitude believe, seeing that people do notsteadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them.Not the person who denies the gods worshipped by themultitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitudebelieves about them is truly impious. For the utterances ofthe multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions butfalse assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happento the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the goodfrom the hand of the gods, seeing that they are alwaysfavorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure inpeople like to themselves, but reject as alien whatever is notof their kind.Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, forgood and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation ofall awareness; therefore a right understanding that death isnothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not byadding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away theyearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for thosewho thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them inceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the person who saysthat he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes,but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes noannoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain inthe expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, isnothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come,and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then,either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it isnot and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at onetime people shun death as the greatest of all evils, and atanother time choose it as a respite from the evils in life.The wise person does not deprecate life nor does he fear thecessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him,nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even aspeople choose of food not merely and simply the largerportion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy thetime which is most pleasant and not merely that which islongest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and theold to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because ofthe desirability of life, but because the same exercise atonce teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is hewho says that it were good not to be born, but when once oneis born to pass with all speed through the gates of Hades. Forif he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life?It were easy for him to do so, if once he were firmlyconvinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words arefoolishness, for those who hear believe him not.We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours norwholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it asquite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain notto come.We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, othersare groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary aswell as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessarydesires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if thebody is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live.He who has a clear and certain understanding of these thingswill direct every preference and aversion toward securinghealth of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this isthe sum and end of a happy life. For the end of all ouractions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once wehave attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid;seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search ofsomething that is lacking, nor to look anything else by whichthe good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. Whenwe are pained pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel theneed of pleasure. For this reason we call pleasure the alphaand omega of a happy life. Pleasure is our first and kindredgood. It is the starting-point of every choice and of everyaversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feelingthe rule by which to judge of every good thing. And sincepleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we donot choose every pleasure whatever, but often pass over manypleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And oftenwe consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to thepains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greaterpleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturallyakin to us is good, not all pleasure is worthy of choice, justas all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned.It is, however, by measuring one against another, and bylooking at the conveniences and inconveniences, teat all thesematters must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good as anevil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good. Again, weregard. independence of outward things as a great good, not soas in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented withlittle if we have not much, being honestly persuaded that theyhave the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in needof it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured andonly the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives asmuch pleasure as a costly diet, when one the pain of want hasbeen removed, while bread an water confer the highest possiblepleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituateone's se therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies althat is needful for health, and enables a person to meet thenecessary requirements of life without shrinking and it placesus in a better condition when we approach at intervals acostly fare and renders us fearless of fortune.When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do notmean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures ofsensuality, as we are understood to do by some throughignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. Bypleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and oftrouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession ofdrinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not theenjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurioustable, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning,searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, andbanishing those beliefs through which the greatestdisturbances take possession of the soul. Of all this the d isprudence. For this reason prudence is a more precious thingeven than the other virtues, for ad a life of pleasure whichis not also a life of prudence, honor, and justice; nor lead a...
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