Pleasure is right, and right is pleasure; and hence comes the system
of Epicurus. Epicurus fasted because it gave him an exquisite
taste and enjoyment of his meal; Epicurus slept not unduly because
with his waking he found his intellect balanced and his _physique_
refreshed. He awaked and remained awake, in order that his slumber
might bring him quiet and repose. Thus starting from his condition we
come very naturally to the luxury of the Sybarite, where the crimson
wine sparkles and obscenity riots, and where the forms of vice and
beastly debauchery flourish, in the saloons, the gambling-houses,
and drinking-shops of this city. In all the forms of impurity and
sensuality you have the practical life of this Epicurean philosophy:
virtue is pleasure; therefore, pleasure is virtue, and wherever there
is wrong done to our nature, by the gratification of our animal
passions; wherever God's law is degraded and man's nature reduced
to the level of the brute--you have the practical exposition of the
tenets of the system.
Upon the other hand, the system of Zeno seems to stand in direct
opposition, in antipodal relations to that of Epicurus. Virtue
sufficeth, says Zeno. Virtue is the law of the universe; the universe
is law, law and law only. Dead, mechanical force, iron necessity;
the sweep of fatalism in its terrific circle; this, and nothing
more. No pulse of pity; no heart of tenderness; no thought of God
in all the sweep of imagination or circle of reason. I, man, am a
microcosm, a synopsis of all the laws and facts of the universe; I am
not only part and parcel of it, but an image and reflection of it;
virtue is resident in the mind, and has nothing to do with pain or
pleasure. Pain and pleasure are of the senses and are wholly alien
to the understanding, says Zeno. I am to be master of all suffering.
What care I for infirmity? I stand here the noblest being in the
whole creation; may I not be master of that creation? The brutes
may writhe in their ecstasy of pain, they may shriek in the fearful
spasms of their suffering; but I, a man, that seem to be a mirror of
creation, may I not be master of these agonies, and stand, with folded
arms, disdainful of every sort of sorrow, of all pangs of pity, or
tenderness, or affection? of what is called friendship, love? These
things are the whimpering sentimentalities of women and children, and
I have nothing to do with them. The folded arms, the clenched fist,
the tightly drawn lips, be mine; and if pain become too strong for
suffering there is a portal which my own hand can open; it swings
apart obedient to my poignard, and suicide is my resort; therefore
apathy is the perfection of human character; a deadness of sentiment,
a hardihood of courage, a noble daring, a port of pride, a disdainful
mien--these are what become the intellect as the master of the earth.
Therefore, my brain is to be all crystal, my heart of adamant. Such is
the Stoical system. In both there was much of beauty and ingenuity, of
philosophical insight and depth, largeness of conception, fullness and
admirableness of treatment. But they both, in common with all other
systems, aside and apart from our holy faith, lacked one master-power;
the great power of the heart, which appeals to the heart of the whole
earth.
I might convince your understanding of the propriety of Epicureanism,
of the grandeur and nobleness of Stoicism; I might warm you in this
direction; I might chill you in that; but when I speak to that part
of your nature which is deeper and nobler than the intellect; when I
come to ask the suffrage of a simple human nature, I must be armed
with a sublimer word than the language of either. Take Christianity
in comparison with them; it teaches that there is consistency and
coherency between virtue and pleasure, but that I am to be loyal to
virtue. It unites the opposite systems of Epicurus and Zeno; it takes
their half-truths and solidifies and unites them in one complete
full-orbed and rounded whole.