Epicurus stood in the midst of his expectant scholars. “My sons,” he
said, “why do you enter the Garden? Is it to seek happiness, or to seek
virtue and knowledge?—Attend, and I will show you that in finding one,
you shall find the three. To be happy, we must be virtuous; and when we
are virtuous, we are wise. Let us then begin: and first, let us for
awhile hush our passions into slumber, forget our prejudices, and cast
away our vanity and our pride. Thus patient and modest, let us come to
the feet of Philosophy; let us say to her, ‘Behold us, scholars and
children, gifted by nature with faculties, affections, and
passions.—Teach us their use, and their guidance. Show us how to turn
them to account—how best to make them conduce to our ease, and minister
to our enjoyment.’
“‘Sons of earth,’ says the Deity, ‘you have spoken wisely; you feel that
you are gifted by nature with faculties, affections, and passions; and
you perceive that on the right exertion and direction of these depends
your well-being. It does so. Your affections both of soul and body may
be shortly reduced to two, pleasure and pain; the one troublesome, and
the other agreeable. It is natural and befitting, therefore, that you
shun pain, and desire and follow after pleasure. Set forth then on the
pursuit; but ere you start, be sure that it is in the right road, and
that you have your eye on the true object. Perfect pleasure, which is
happiness, you will have attained when you have brought your bodies and
souls into a state of satisfied tranquillity. To arrive at this, much
previous exertion is requisite; yet exertion, not violent, only constant
and even. And first, the body, with its passions and appetites, demands
gratification and indulgence. But beware! for here are the hidden rocks
which may shipwreck your bark on its passage, and shut you out forever
from the haven of repose. Provide yourselves then with a skilled pilot,
who may steer you through the Scylla and Charybdis of your carnal
affections, and point the steady helm through the deep waters of your
passions. Behold her! It is Prudence, the mother of the virtues, and the
handmaid of wisdom. Ask, and she will tell you, that gratification will
give new edge to the hunger of your appetites, and that the storm of the
passions shall kindle with indulgence. Ask, and she will tell you, that
sensual pleasure is pain covered with the mask of happiness. Behold, she
strips it from her face, and reveals the features of disease,
disquietude, and remorse. Ask, and she will tell you, that happiness is
not found in tumult, but tranquillity; and that, not the tranquillity of
indolence and inaction, but of a healthy contentment of soul and body.
Ask, and she will tell you, that a _happy life is like neither to a
roaring torrent, nor a stagnant pool, but to a placid and crystal
stream, that flows gently and silently along_. And now, Prudence shall
bring to you the lovely train of the virtues. Temperance, throwing a
bridle on your desires, shall gradually subdue and annihilate those
whose present indulgence would only bring future evil; and others more
necessary and more innocent, she shall yet bring down to such becoming
moderation, as shall prevent all disquiet to the soul, and injury to the
body. Fortitude shall strengthen you to bear those diseases which even
temperance may not be efficient to prevent; those afflictions which fate
may level at you; those persecutions which the folly or malice of man
may invent. It shall fit you to bear all things, to conquer fear, and to
meet death. Justice shall give you security among your fellows, and
satisfaction in your own breasts. Generosity shall endear you to others,
and sweeten your own nature to yourselves. Gentleness shall take the
sting from the malice of your enemies, and make you extract double sweet
from the kindness of friends. Gratitude shall lighten the burden of
obligation, or render it even pleasant to bear. Friendship shall put the
crown on your security and your joy. With these, and yet more virtues,
shall prudence surround you. And, thus attended, hold on your course in
confidence, and moor your barks in the haven of repose.’
“Thus says Philosophy, my sons, and says she not wisely? Tell us, ye who
have tried the slippery paths of licentiousness, who have given the rein
to your passions, and sought pleasure in the lap of voluptuousness; tell
us, did ye find her there? No, ye did not, or ye would not now inquire
of her from Epicurus. Come, then, Philosophy hath shown ye the way.
Throw off your old habits, wash impurity from your hearts; take up the
bridle of your passions; govern your minds, and be happy. And ye, my
sons, to whom all things are yet new; whose passions, yet in the bud,
have never led you to pain and regret; ye who have yet to begin your
career, come ye, also! Philosophy hath shown ye the way. Keep your
hearts innocent, hold the bridle of your passions, govern your minds,
and be happy. But, my sons, methinks I hear you say, ‘You have shown us
the virtues rather as modifiers and correctors of evil, than as the
givers of actual and perfect good. Happiness, you tell us, consists in
ease of body and mind; yet temperance cannot secure the former from
disease, nor can all the virtues united ward affliction from the
latter.’ True, my children, Philosophy cannot change the laws of nature;
but she may teach us to accommodate to them. She cannot annul pain; but
she can arm us to bear it. And though the evils of fate be many, are not
the evils of man’s coming more? Nature afflicts us with disease; but for
once that it is the infliction of nature, ninety-nine times it is the
consequence of our own folly. Nature levels us with death; but how mild
is the death of nature, with Philosophy to spread the pillow, and
friendship to take the last sigh, to the protracted agonies of
debauchery, subduing the body by inches, while Philosophy is not there
to give strength, nor friendship consolation, but while the flames of
fever are heated by impatience, and the stings of pain envenomed by
remorse! And tell me, my sons, when the body of the sage is stretched on
the couch of pain, hath he not his mind to minister delight to him? Hath
he not conscience whispering that his present evil is not chargeable to
his own past folly, but to the laws of nature, which no effort or
foresight of his could have prevented? Hath he not memory to bring to
him past pleasures, the pleasures of a well-spent life, on which he may
feed even while pain racks his members, and fever consumes his vitals?
Or, what if agony overpower his frame, and cripple his faculties, is
there not death at hand to reach him deliverance? Here, then, is death,
that giant of terror, acting as a friend. But does he interrupt our
enjoyments as well as our sufferings? And is it for this we fear him?
Ought we not rather to rejoice, seeing that the day of life has its
bright and its clouded hours, that we are laid to sleep while the sun of
joy yet shines, before the storm of fate has broken our tranquillity, or
the evening of age bedimmed our prospect? Death, then, is never our foe.
When not a friend, he cannot be worse than indifferent. _For while we
are, death is not; and while death is, we are not._ To the wise, then,
death is nothing. Examine the ills of life, are they not of our own
creation, or take they not their darkest hues from our passions or our
ignorance? What is poverty, if we have temperance, and can be satisfied
with a crust, and a draught from the spring?—if we have modesty, and can
wear a woollen garment as gladly as a Tyrian robe? What is slander, if
we have no vanity that it can wound, and no anger that it can kindle?
What is neglect, if we have no ambition that it can disappoint, and no
pride that it can mortify? What is persecution, if we have our own
bosoms in which to retire, and a spot of earth to sit down and rest
upon? What is death, when without superstition to clothe him with
terrors, we can cover our heads, and go to sleep in his arms? What a
list of human calamities are here expunged—Poverty, slander, neglect,
disappointment, persecution, death! What yet remains? Disease? That,
too, we have shown temperance can often shun, and Philosophy can always
alleviate. But there is yet a pain, which the wisest and the best of men
cannot escape; that all of us, my sons, have felt, or have to feel. Do
not your hearts whisper it? Do you not tell me, that in death there is
yet a sting? That ere he aim at us, he may level the beloved of our
soul? The father, whose tender care hath reared our infant minds—the
brother, whom the same breast hath nourished, and the same roof
sheltered, with whom, side by side, we have grown like two plants by a
river, sucking life from the same fountain and strength from the same
sun—the child whose gay prattle delights our ears, or whose opening
understanding fixes our hopes; the friend of our choice, with whom we
have exchanged hearts, and shared all our pains and pleasures, whose eye
hath reflected the tear of sympathy, whose hand hath smoothed the couch
of sickness. Ah! my sons, here is indeed a pain, a pain that cuts into
the soul. There are masters who will tell you otherwise, who will tell
you that it is unworthy of a man to mourn even here. But such, my sons,
speak not the truth of experience, or Philosophy, but the subtleties of
sophistry and pride. He who feels not the loss, hath never felt the
possession. He who knows not the grief, hath never known the joy. See
the price of a friend in the duties we render him, and the sacrifices we
make to him, and which, in making, we count not sacrifices, but
pleasures! We sorrow for his sorrow; we supply his wants, or if we
cannot, we share them. We follow him to exile. We close ourselves in his
prison; we soothe him in sickness; we strengthen him in death: nay, if
it be possible, we throw down our life for his. Oh! what a treasure is
that for which we do so much! And is it forbidden us to mourn its loss?
If it be, the power is not with us to obey. Should we, then, to avoid
the evil, forego the good? Shall we shut love from our hearts, that we
may not feel the pain of his departure? No; happiness forbids it.
Experience forbids it. Let him who hath laid on the pyre the dearest of
his soul, who hath washed the urn with the bitterest tears of grief—let
him say if his heart hath ever formed the wish that it had never shrined
within it whom he now deplores. Let him say if the pleasures of the
sweet communion of his former days doth not still live in his
remembrance. If he love not to recall the image of the departed, the
tones of his voice, the words of his discourse, the deeds of his
kindness, the amiable virtues of his life! If, while he weeps the loss
of his friend, he smiles not to think that he once possessed him. He who
knows not friendship, knows not the purest pleasure of earth. Yet if
fate deprive us of it, though we grieve, we do not sink; Philosophy is
still at hand, and she upholds us with fortitude. And think, my sons,
perhaps in the very evil we dread, there is a good; perhaps the very
uncertainty of the tenure gives it value in our eyes; perhaps all our
pleasures take their zest from the known possibility of their
interruption. What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom
of darkness? What the refreshing breezes of morning and evening, if we
felt not the fervors of noon? Should we value the lovely flower, if it
bloomed eternally; or the luscious fruit, if it hung always on the
bough? Are not the smiles of the heavens more beautiful in contrast with
their frowns, and the delights of the seasons more grateful from their
vicissitudes? Let us then be slow to blame nature, for perhaps in her
apparent errors there is a hidden wisdom. Let us not quarrel with fate,
for perhaps in our evils lie the seeds of our good. Were our body never
subject to sickness, we might be insensible to the joy of health. Were
our life eternal, our tranquillity might sink into inaction. Were our
friendship not threatened with interruption, it might want much of its
tenderness. This, then, my sons, is our duty, for this is our interest
and our happiness: to seek our pleasures from the hands of the virtues,
and for the pain which may befall us, to submit to it with patience, or
bear up against it with fortitude. _To walk, in short, through life
innocently and tranquilly: and to look on death as its gentle
termination, which it becomes us to meet with ready minds, neither
regretting the past, nor anxious for the future._”
The Sage had scarcely ceased, when a scholar advanced from the crowd,
and bowing his head with reverence, stooped and touched the knees of his
Master. “Refuse not my homage,” he said, “nor call the expression of it
presumptuous.” Epicurus raised him in his arms, “Colotes, I am more
proud of the homage of thy young mind, than I should be of that of the
assembled crowd of Olympia. May thy master, my son, never lose his power
over it, as I feel that he will never abuse it.”