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Letter to Menoeceus ............................................................................................................................................1

Epicurus...................................................................................................................................................1

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old.

For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying

philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet

or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as

age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in

order that, 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 we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have

everything, and, if that be absent, 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 be the elements of right life. First believe that God is a living being immortal and happy, according to

the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of humankind; and so of him anything that is at agrees not

with about him whatever may uphold both his happyness and his immortality. For truly there are gods, and

knowledge of them is evident; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that people do not

steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the person who denies the gods worshipped

by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. For

the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is

that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the

gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in people like to

Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the

privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of

life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For

life has no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live.

Foolish, therefore, is the person who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but

because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless

pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing 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 is not and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at one time people shun death as the

greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. The wise person does not

deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the

cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as people choose of food not merely and simply the larger

portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that

which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks

foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live

well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born

to pass with all speed through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from

life? It were easy for him to do so, if once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words

We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count

upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.

We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are

necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we

are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. He who has a clear

and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of

body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a happy life. For the end of all our

actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is

laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look

anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained pleasure,

then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. For this reason we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a

happy life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the startingpoint of every choice and of every

aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good

thing. And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure

whatever, but often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we

consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence

a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is

worthy of choice, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned. It is, however, by measuring

one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, teat all these matters must be

judged. Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good. Again, we regard.

independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented

with little if we have not much, being honestly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury

who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured and only the vain and worthless

hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when one the pain of want has been removed,

while bread an water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate

one's se therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies al that is needful for health, and enables a person to

meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking and it places us in a better condition when we

When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the

pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful

misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an

unbroken succession of drinkingbouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish

and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out

the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest

disturbances take possession of the soul. Of all this the d is prudence. For this reason prudence is a more

precious thing even than the other virtues, for ad a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honor,

and justice; nor lead a life of prudence, honor, and justice, which is not also a life of pleasure. For the virtues

have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them.

Who, then, is superior in your judgment to such a person? He holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is

altogether free from the fear of death. He has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and understands

how easily the limit of good things can be reached and attained, and how either the duration or the intensity

of evils is but slight. Destiny which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he laughs to scorn, affirming

rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees

that necessity destroys responsibility and that chance or fortune is inconstant; whereas our own actions are

free, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach. It were better, indeed, to accept the legends of

the gods than to bow beneath destiny which the natural philosophers have imposed. The one holds out some

faint hope that we may escape if we honor the gods, while the necessity of the naturalists is deaf to all

entreaties. Nor does he hold chance to be a god, as the world in general does, for in the acts of a god there is

no disorder; nor to be a cause, though an uncertain one, for he believes that no good or evil is dispensed by

chance to people so as to make life happy, though it supplies the startingpoint of great good and great evil.

He believes that the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that

what is well judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of chance.

Exercise yourself in these and kindred precepts day and night, both by yourself and with him who is like to

you; then never, either in waking or in dream, will you be disturbed, but will live as a god among people. For

people lose all appearance of mortality by living in the midst of immortal blessings.