On Happiness and Truth - Excerpts from Augustine

Only a few people will probably appreciate or relate to the following excerpts. These citations struck a chord in me and anyone who has lived has experienced life's feeling of vanity and pointlessness at sometime in their life...especially if they ever have just stopped to contemplate it.  To think this man died 1700 years ago yet his experiences are so commonly felt.  Life never really changes.  His thoughts are on the pursuit of both truth and happiness in life.  Always pursuing but never attaining.

Augustine's " Confessions"
Book 6  - Seeking Truth 
CHAPTER XI - Frustrated and Aimless
18. And I especially puzzled and wondered when I remembered how long a time had passed since my nineteenth year, in which I had first fallen in love with wisdom and had determined as soon as I could find her to abandon the empty hopes and mad delusions of vain desires. Behold, I was now getting close to thirty, still stuck fast in the same mire, still greedy of enjoying present goods which fly away and distract me; and I was still saying, “Tomorrow I shall discover it; behold, it will become plain, and I shall see it; behold, Faustus will come and explain everything.” Or I would say Here begins a long soliloquy which sums up his turmoil over the past decade and his present plight of confusion and indecision.”O you mighty Academics, is there no certainty that man can grasp for the guidance of his life? No, let us search the more diligently, and let us not despair. See, the things in the Church’s books that appeared so absurd to us before do not appear so now, and may be otherwise and honestly interpreted. I will set my feet upon that step where, as a child, my parents placed me, until the clear truth is discovered. But where and when shall it be sought? Ambrose has no leisure--we have no leisure to read. Where are we to find the books? How or where could I get hold of them? From whom could I borrow them? Let me set a schedule for my days and set apart certain hours for the health of the soul. A great hope has risen up in us, because the Catholic faith does not teach what we thought it did, and vainly accused it of. Its teachers hold it as an abomination to believe that God is limited by the form of a human body. And do I doubt that I should ‘knock’ in order for the rest also to be ‘opened’ unto me? My pupils take up the morning hours; what am I doing with the rest of the day? Why not do this? But, then, when am I to visit my influential friends, whose favors I need? When am I to prepare the orations that I sell to the class? When would I get some recreation and relax my mind from the strain of work?

19. “Perish everything and let us dismiss these idle triflings. Let me devote myself solely to the search for truth. This life is unhappy, death uncertain. If it comes upon me suddenly, in what state shall I go hence and where shall I learn what here I have neglected? Should I not indeed suffer the punishment of my negligence here? But suppose death cuts off and finishes all care and feeling. This too is a question that calls for inquiry. God forbid that it should be so. It is not without reason, it is not in vain, that the stately authority of the Christian faith has spread over the entire world, and God would never have done such great things for us if the life of the soul perished with the death of the body. Why, therefore, do I delay in abandoning my hopes of this world and giving myself wholly to seek after God and the blessed life?
“But wait a moment. This life also is pleasant, and it has a sweetness of its own, not at all negligible. We must not abandon it lightly, for it would be shameful to lapse back into it again. See now, it is important to gain some post of honor. And what more should I desire? I have crowds of influential friends, if nothing else; and, if I push my claims, a governorship may be offered me, and a wife with some money, so that she would not be an added expense. This would be the height of my desire. Many men, who are great and worthy of imitation, have combined the pursuit of wisdom with a marriage life.”
20. While I talked about these things, and the winds of opinions veered about and tossed my heart hither and thither, time was slipping away. I delayed my conversion to the Lord; I postponed from day to day the life in thee, but I could not postpone the daily death in myself. I was enamored of a happy life, but I still feared to seek it in its own abode, and so I fled from it while I sought it. I thought I should be miserable if I were deprived of the embraces of a woman, and I never gave a thought to the medicine that thy mercy has provided for the healing of that infirmity, for I had never tried it. As for continence, I imagined that it depended on one’s own strength, though I found no such strength in myself, for in my folly I knew not what is written, “None can be continent unless thou dost grant it.”168168   Cf. Wis. 8:21 (LXX). Certainly thou wouldst have given it, if I had beseeched thy ears with heartfelt groaning, and if I had cast my care upon thee with firm faith.

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CHAPTER VI - Lessons From a Drunken Beggar
9. I was still eagerly aspiring to honors, money, and matrimony; but You mocked me. In pursuit of these ambitions I endured the most bitter hardships, in which you were being all the more gracious the less you would allow anything that was not you to grow sweet to me. Look into my heart, O Lord, whose prompting it is that I should recall all this, and confess it to you. Now let my soul cleave to you, now that you have freed me from that fast-sticking glue of death.
How wretched I was! And you did irritate my sore wound so that I might forsake all else and turn to you--who are above all and without whom all things would be nothing at all--so that I should be converted and healed. How wretched I was at that time, and how you did deal with me so as to make me aware of my wretchedness, I recall from the incident of the day on which I was preparing to recite a panegyric on the emperor. In it I was to deliver many a lie, and the lying was to be applauded by those who knew I was lying. My heart was agitated with this sense of guilt and it seethed with the fever of my uneasiness. For, while walking along one of the streets of Milan, I saw a poor beggar--with what I believe was a full belly--joking and hilarious. And I sighed and spoke to the friends around me of the many sorrows that flowed from our madness, because in spite of all our exertions--such as those I was then laboring in, dragging the burden of my unhappiness under the spur of ambition, and, by dragging it, increasing it at the same time--still and all we aimed only to attain that very happiness which this beggar had reached before us; and there was a grim chance that we should never attain it! For what he had obtained through a few coins, got by his begging, I was still scheming for by many a wretched and tortuous turning--namely, the joy of a passing felicity. He had not, indeed, gained true joy, but, at the same time, with all my ambitions, I was seeking one still more untrue. Anyhow, he was now joyous and I was anxious. He was free from care, and I was full of alarms.

Seeking True Happiness

Now, if anyone should inquire of me whether I should prefer to be merry or anxious, I would reply, “Merry.” Again, if I had been asked whether I should prefer to be as he was or as I myself then was, I would have chosen to be myself; though I was beset with cares and alarms. But would not this have been a false choice? Was the contrast valid? Actually, I ought not to prefer myself to him because I happened to be more learned than he was; for I got no great pleasure from my learning, but sought, rather, to please men by its exhibition--and this not to instruct, but only to please. Thus you did break my bones with the rod of your correction.
10. Let my soul take its leave of those who say: “It makes a difference as to the object from which a man derives his joy. The beggar rejoiced in drunkenness; you longed to rejoice in glory.” What glory, O Lord? The kind that is not in thee, for, just as his was no true joy, so was mine no true glory; but it turned my head all the more. He would get over his drunkenness that same night, but I had slept with mine many a night and risen again with it, and was to sleep again and rise again with it, I know not how many times. It does indeed make a difference as to the object from which a man’s joy is gained. I know this is so, and I know that the joy of a faithful hope is incomparably beyond such vanity. Yet, at the same time, this beggar was beyond me, for he truly was the happier man--not only because he was thoroughly steeped in his mirth while I was torn to pieces with my cares, but because he had gotten his wine by giving good wishes to the passers-by while I was following after the ambition of my pride by lying. Much to this effect I said to my good companions, and I saw how readily they reacted pretty much as I did. Thus I found that it went ill with me; and I fretted, and doubled that very ill. And if any prosperity smiled upon me, I loathed to seize it, for almost before I could grasp it, it would fly away.

Taken From Book 6 - Seeking Truth , chapters 11 and 6, "The Confessions of St. Augustine" - by Augustine

He concludes extensively in  book 10 that the happy life is one lived in the truth.  Therefore God Himself is the source of true happiness. Heres an excerpt:

Book 10 - Probing the Depths of Self
Chapter23 - The Quest for Happiness Leads to Truth
33. Is it, then, uncertain that all men wish to be happy, since those who do not wish to find their joy in thee--which is alone the happy life--do not actually desire the happy life? Or, is it rather that all desire this, but because “the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh,” so that they “prevent you from doing what you would,”342342   Gal. 5:17. you fall to doing what you are able to do and are content with that. For you do not want to do what you cannot do urgently enough to make you able to do it.
Now I ask all men whether they would rather rejoice in truth or in falsehood. They will no more hesitate to answer, “In truth,” than to say that they wish to be happy. For a happy life is joy in the truth. Yet this is joy in thee, who art the Truth, O God my Light, “the health of my countenance and my God. All wish for this happy life; all wish for this life which is the only happy one: joy in the truth is what all men wish.
I have had experience with many who wished to deceive, but not one who wished to be deceived. Where, then, did they ever know about this happy life, except where they knew also what the truth is? For they love it, too, since they are not willing to be deceived. And when they love the happy life, which is nothing else but joy in the truth, then certainly they also love the truth. And yet they would not love it if there were not some knowledge of it in the memory.

Men Hate the Truth

Why, then, do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are so fully preoccupied with other things which do more to make them miserable than those which would make them happy, which they remember so little about. Yet there is a little light in men. Let them walk--let them walk in it, lest the darkness overtake them.
34. Why, then, does truth generate hatred, and why does thy servant who preaches the truth come to be an enemy to them who also love the happy life, which is nothing else than joy in the truth--unless it be that truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else besides her wish that to be the truth which they do love. Since they are unwilling to be deceived, they are unwilling to be convinced that they have been deceived. Therefore, they hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is that they love in place of the truth. They love truth when she shines on them; and hate her when she rebukes them. And since they are not willing to be deceived, but do wish to deceive, they love truth when she reveals herself and hate her when she reveals them. On this account, she will so repay them that those who are unwilling to be exposed by her she will indeed expose against their will, and yet will not disclose herself to them.
Thus, thus, truly thus: the human mind so blind and sick, so base and ill-mannered, desires to lie hidden, but does not wish that anything should be hidden from it. And yet the opposite is what happens--the mind itself is not hidden from the truth, but the truth is hidden from it. Yet even so, for all its wretchedness, it still prefers to rejoice in truth rather than in known falsehoods. It will, then, be happy only when without other distractions it comes to rejoice in that single Truth through which all things else are true.

I found this convicting. I see myself in the subject of his writing.  In fact I find his book convicting. Hard hitting words. The inner journey of a mans pursuit of happiness...something we all seek yet few attain, and if they do its fleeting. He found a constant source of it....joy in truth, joy in God.  Yet as he states, men hate truth and to pursue God , to pursue actual solid happiness in God inevitably leads to a marginalized life in a minority going against the grain causing friction...which is a major source of misery in itself. Catch 22 I guess.

Live Life

Desire much, fear little. Take calculated risks. Let the threat of pain amplify the thrill and subsequent enjoyment of success rather than succumbing to the crippling paralysis of inaction. Fear choking your existence as you wilt away in apathy or trepidation accomplishing nothing. Embrace pain, run toward it, fear will diminish. If you fail, adapt, adjust, evolve - repeat. Tenacity. With enough patience you can attain or achieve anything. Resolutely fearless, take life by the horns and ride it into the ground. Engage. If not fear will keep you small. Shatter expectations, spurn the status quo, forge your own path. Surround yourself with ambitious and optimistic people.

"It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear." – Fracis Bacon

Musings on Life

In the spectrum of human emotion, excepting love, anger is the most powerful of human emotions. It drowns all fear, focuses power and gives motivation matched only by love. It has over thrown tyrants, defended the weak and punished those that abuse others.

Love (for victims) necessitates justice, ie jail, fines, physical pain and even Hell at the universal divine level.

Justice is nothing but communal vengeance in an orderly way. Yet revenge is deemed wrong, but justice is good.  Revenge is a knee jerk reaction, charged with emotion and self interest; Justice an objective disinterested judgment and punishment of vicious, reckless or selfish behaviour.  The goal being to reform the person (fines, physical pain, jail time)...failing that, to make an public example of them to discourage the maladaptive antisocial behaviour (eg.public execution, and even more soberly: hell).

Love for the perpetrator results in grace - undeserved pardon at Christs expense for those who trust in Him.  As it is  undeserved there was no obligation on Gods part to provide a way of reconciliation to Himself. He could have justly wiped his hands of the human race and let us be punished for our rebellion and imperfection.

Want implies lack.

Value of anything is both objective and subjective. The subjective part depends on the subjects desire or need of the object. The more they need or want it, the more valuable it becomes to them...they are then willing to pay a higher price than others. This is conversely true also. Simple supply and demand. Deconstructed, it applies to all of life, to all things.

Axiology - the formal study of value. Simply put its the study of life mechanics. A division of philosophy but I think it belongs just as much to sociology - the study of human behavior. There is an objective yardstick that drives all people. A common denominator that all are driven by to some extent: the pursuit of pleasure and the aversion of pain.  The pursuit of enjoyment and happiness and the aversion of stagnation and misery. This is inclusive of higher pleasures and pains that go beyond simple senses. Eg... emotions, pride, shame, love and hate,self respect etc.  Love is the other driving factor, 'doing unto others as you would have them do to you'. That is the promotion of the universal good and minimization of suffering.

Value = utility + Aesthetics.
anything of any value to anyone can be broken down into these two categories:

Utility:that which is useful - eg. power, control, ability, knowledge, assets, wealth (for either aversion of pain or promotion of pleasure - of self and/or others)

Aesthetics: that which is intrinsically pleasurable (eg music, beauty, flavour, order, virtue, humour, fun etc)

Again, if anyone values anything its because they judge the object, activity or even person as 'valuable'.  Respect, money, time or attention given is proportionate to perceived value.  I say perceived because the judgment is made off of the limited knowledge or experience a person has of the object, activity or person.  It will always be limited knowledge.  This bypasses the natural innate value of all people given by God...as man was made in the image of God, there is a benchmark of universal respect, care and attention demanded by all people regardless of the aforementioned factors: utility + aesthetics.  For what profit is it to help a homeless man on the street who is neither useful to you, nor enjoyable? The value of this man is that he is made in the image of God, far above all animals...comparable to yourself.  Empathy and love demands you help him where possible but as to who does this is dictated by a persons outlook on life.

This is utilitarian thought but essentially it is just sociology, explaining why people do what they do, why they value certain things over other things...but different personal tastes adjust how pleasure is attained. What's amazing to me, may be average to you.  Still it will almost be universally observed that when given the option between a rotten apple or a good apple, people will choose the good apple.  There is a criteria we all use to judge things, it differs in some details for some things but at the macro level its the same.

All of life is just continual value judgments. To some extent behavior is predictable...even looking at your past decisions and reflecting as to why you did what you did or said what you said.  Its because at that moment in time you chose what you thought was most profitable (for yourself and/or mankind), or what you perceived to be most 'valuable' (not necessary what was actually most valuable).  This judgment criteria varies depending on how you live of course. Some live without regard to their fellow man, some live completely self-sacrificial lives for their fellow man, some for both God and their fellow man.  Most don't fall at the extremes but somewhere on the spectrum, contention between self-interest and the best interest of others continually exists, and always will.

All vice or 'sin' results from unbridled self interest disregarding the interests of the universal whole, this whole includes God and mankind - (murder, hatred, lies, slander, theft, idolatry, blasphemy, fornication, adultery, contention, pride, offense etc.).  All virtue takes into account the whole, the interests of all not just the self.  This explains why Christ called men to die to themselves daily: 'deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me in living and if need be dying' - no one perfectly fulfills this, but that's the aim.

God created life like this, he built the machine, created both pain and pleasure and determined their sources.  Its an explanation of life, not a method of directing life like hedonism - which says you should live by the pursuit of pleasure and aversion of pain -  such a bestial way to live.  The greater good at times demands self-denial of pleasure and endurance of pain which may be reversed if you were entirely selfish.  Undoubtedly the selfish life is the most profitable life in those terms, but devoid of love and the 'profit' comes at the expense of others.  Nothing in life is free.  Every action, every object  has its price.

People generally respond to pain in two ways: fear or anger.
Its self evident which response is the most useful. The other alternatives are no response or apathy - the stoic way. or responding positively with love and blessing - the christian way. The Christian way is not a natural response...only in Christ is this response even possible.

On the Happy Life

A quick preface:
While i think he is incorrect in saying virtue is the sum of happiness, his degredation of the popular and almost humanly intuative notion that enjoyment (hedonism) doggedly pursued in all its forms (power, money, fame, sex, fun) will produce happiness is refreshing. Virtue and a clear conscience is a major player in happiness, but ultimatly Seneca's stoicism leads a person to become an arrogant moralist concerned only with rules - not caring for others...only virute, only their own behaviour. It still begs the question of divine justice, which can only be reconciled through Christ, payment must be made for a person to be released from the inevitable justice his wrongdoings deserve. That reconciliation to God via trusting in Jesus (his death on the cross for our sin) and the relationship that ensues is the highest good a man may enjoy. For as Jesus said "what would it profit a man to gain the whole world yet lose his soul?". Stoicism (seneca was a stoic philosopher) like most of the world assume that good deeds some how cancel out bad ones, yet even in our courts you would never hear a murderer defend his case by bringing forth the good he has done..."but I gave 1 million to feed the homeless in africa"....yeah man, u still killed a guy. How much less will a perfect God do this? i honestly cant post this with a clear conscience without that preface - whats a post on happiness without any mention of Gods grace.

What Seneca says has some value. Virtue is good, but not the ultimate good to be lived for. Vice is bad and will lead to misery. Virtue as a means of living for God, in relationship with Him...that is the highest good and the happiest life. The fact of judgment and accountability to god doesnt enable blind hedonism...not with a clear conscience, which is a miserable state. Christ did say that for every idle word a man speaks, he will give account for it on the day of judgment. But hypothetically, even if there were no laws or no repercussion for completley disregarding God, seneca's arguments are excellent in deriding pleasure as the path to happiness. We all at some point have attained what we sought only to find the grass is always greener on the otherside. "Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation" - Charlotte Bronte. Senaca's weakness is that he fails in providing an adaquate alternative - and he didnt know of Christ so he couldnt. Christ is that alternative. A relationship with God at His bloody expense, is far greater than a proud self-sufficient moral existance. A sinner saved by a gracious God. Hope and joy in Him, combined with a (fallible) pursuit of virtue through Him, out of gratitude for what He has done, not as an attempt to buy a stairway to heaven, or curry favour - to attempt at this will result in eternal dissapointment.  All that said, here are my favourite quotes by the philosopher:



On the Happy Life by Seneca

Let virtue go first, let her bear the standard. We shall none the less have pleasure, but we shall be the master and control her; at times we shall yield to her entreaty, never to her constraint. But those who surrender the leadership to pleasure, lack both; for they lose virtue, and yet do not possess pleasure, but are possessed by it, and they are either tortured by the lack of it or strangled by its excess - wretched if it deserts them, more wretched if it overwhelms them - they are like sailors who have been caught in the waters around the Syrtes, and now are left on the dry shore, and again are tossed by the seething waves. But this results from a complete lack of self- control and blind love for an object; for, if one seeks evils instead of goods, success becomes dangerous. As the hunt for wild beasts is fraught with hardship and danger, and even those that are captured are an anxious possession - for many a time they rend their masters - so it is as regards great pleasures; for they turn out to be a great misfortune, and captured pleasures become now the captors. And the more and the greater the pleasures are, the more inferior will that man be whom the crowd calls happy, and the more masters will he have to serve.

I wish to dwell still further upon this comparison. Just as the man who tracks wild animals to their lairs, and counts it a great delight. With noose the savage beasts to snare, and Around the spreading woods to fling a line of hounds, in order that he may follow upon their tracks, leaves things that are more worth while and forsakes many duties, so he who pursues pleasures makes everything else secondary, and first of all gives up liberty, and he pays this price at the command of his belly; nor does he buy pleasures for himself, but he sells himself to pleasures.

"Nevertheless," someone asks, "what is there to prevent the blending of virtue and pleasure into one, and constituting the highest good in such a way that the honourable and the agreeable may be the same thing?" The answer is that the honourable can have no part that is not honourable, nor will the highest good preserve its integrity if it sees in itself something that is different from its better part. Even the joy that springs from virtue, although it is a good, is not nevertheless a part of the absolute good, any more than are cheerfulness and tranquillity, although they spring from the noblest origins; for goods they are, yet they only attend on the highest good but do not consummate it. But whoever forms an alliance between virtue and pleasure - and that too, not an equal one - by the frailty of one good dulls whatever power the other may have, and sends beneath the yoke that liberty which remains unconquered only so long as it finds nothing more precious than itself. For it begins to need the help of Fortune, and this is the depth of servitude; there follows a life of anxiety, suspicion, and alarm, a dread of mishap and worry over the changes time brings. You do not give to virtue a foundation solid and immovable, but bid her stand on unstable ground; yet what is so unstable as trust in the hazards of chance and the vicissitudes of the body and the things that affect the body? How is such a man able to obey God and to receive in cheerful spirit whatever happens, and, interpreting his mishaps indulgently, never to complain of Fate, if he is agitated by the petty prickings of pleasure and pain? But he is not even a good guardian or avenger of his country, nor a defender of his friends if he has a leaning toward pleasures.

Therefore let the highest good mount to a place from which no force can drag it down, where neither pain nor hope nor fear finds access, nor does any other thing that can lower the authority of the highest good; but Virtue alone is able to mount to that height. We must follow her footsteps to find that ascent easy; bravely will she stand, and she will endure whatever happens, not only patiently, but even gladly; she will know that every hardship that time brings comes by a law of Nature, and like a good soldier she will submit to wounds, she will count her scars, and, pierced by darts, as she dies she will love him for whose sake she falls - her commander; she will keep in mind that old injunction, "Follow God!" But whoever complains and weeps and moans, is compelled by force to obey commands, and, even though he is unwilling is rushed none the less to the bidden tasks. But what madness to prefer to be dragged rather than to follow! As much so, in all faith, as it is great folly and ignorance of one's lot to grieve because of some lack or some rather bitter happening, and in like manner to be surprised or indignant at those ills that befall the good no less than the had - I mean sickness and death and infirmities and all the other unexpected ills that invade human life. All that the very constitution of the universe obliges us to suffer, must be borne with high courage. This is the sacred obligation by which we are bound - to submit to the human lot, and not to be disquieted by those things which we have no power to avoid. We have been born under a monarchy; to obey God is freedom. Therefore true happiness is founded upon virtue. And what is the counsel this virtue will give to you? That you should not consider anything either a good or an evil that will not be the result of either virtue or vice; then, that you should stand unmoved both in the face of evil and by the enjoyment of good, to the end that - as far as is allowed - you may body forth God.

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For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?

A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys. Should not such joys as these be rightly matched against the paltry and trivial and fleeting sensations of the wretched body? The day a man becomes superior to pleasure, he will also be superior to pain; but you see in what wretched and baneful bondage he must linger whom pleasures and pains, those most capricious and tyrannical of masters, shall in turn enslave. Therefore we must nake our escape to freedom. But the only means of procuring this is through indifference to Fortune. Then will be born the one inestimable blessing, the peace and exaltation of a mind now safely anchored, and, when all error is banished, the great and stable joy that comes from the discovery of truth, along with kindliness and cheerfulness of mind; and the source of a man's pleasure in all of these will not be that they are good, but that they spring from a good that is his own.

Seeing that I am employing some freedom in treating my subject, I may say that the happy man is one who is freed from both fear and desire because of the gift of reason; since even rocks are free from fear and sorrow, and no less are the beasts of the field, yet for all that no one could say that these things are "blissful," when they have no comprehension of bliss. Put in the same class those people whose dullness of nature and ignorance of themselves have reduced them to the level of beasts of the field and of inanimate things. There is no difference between the one and the other, since in one case they are things without reason, and in the other their reason is warped, and works their own hurt, being active in the wrong direction; for no man can be said to be happy if he has been thrust outside the pale of truth.

Therefore the life that is happy has been founded on correct and trustworthy judgement, and is unalterable. Then, truly, is the mind unclouded and freed from every ill, since it knows how to escape not only deep wounds, but even scratches, and, resolved to hold to the end whatever stand it has taken, it will defend its position even against the assaults of an angry Fortune. For so far as sensual pleasure is concerned, though it flows about us on every side, steals in through every opening, softens the mind with its blandishments, and employs one resource after another in order to seduce us in whole or in part, yet who of mortals, if he has left in him one trace of a human being, would choose to have his senses tickled night and day, and, forsaking the mind, devote his attention wholly to the body? "But the mind also," it will be said, "has its own pleasures." Let it have them, in sooth, and let it pose as a judge of luxury and pleasures; let it gorge itself with the things that are wont to delight the senses, then let it look back upon the past, and, recalling faded pleasures, let it intoxicate itself with former experiences and be eager now for those to come, and let it lay its plans, and, while the body lies helpless from present cramming, let it direct its thoughts to that to come - yet from all this, it seems to me, the mind will be more wretched than ever, since it is madness to choose evils instead of goods.
But no man can be happy unless he is sane, and no man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best. The happy man, therefore, is one who has right judgement; the happy man is content with his present lot, no matter what it is, and is reconciled to his circumstances; the happy man is he who allows reason to fix the value of every condition of existence. Even those who declare that the highest good is in the belly see in what a dishonourable position they have placed it. And so they say that it is not possible to separate pleasure from virtue, and they aver that no one can live virtuously without also living pleasantly, nor pleasantly without also living virtuously. But I do not see how things so different can be cast in the same mould. What reason is there, I beg of you, why pleasure cannot be separated from virtue? Do you mean, since all goods have their origin in virtue, even the things that you love and desire must spring from its roots? But if the two were inseparable, we should not see certain things pleasant, but not honourable, and certain things truly most honourable, but painful and capable of being accomplished only through suffering.

Then, too, we see that pleasure enters into even the basest life, but, on the other hand, virtue does not permit life to be evil, and there are people who are unhappy not without pleasure - nay, are so on account of pleasure itself - and this could not happen if pleasure were indisolubly joined to virtue; virtue often lacks pleasure, and never needs it. Why do you couple things that are unlike, nay, even opposites? Virtue is something lofty, exalted and regal, unconquerable, and unwearied; pleasure is something lowly, servile, weak, and perishable, whose haunt and abode are the brothel and the tavern. Virtue you will find in the temple, in the forum, in the senate-house - you will find her standing in front of the city walls, dusty and stained, and with calloused hands; pleasure you will more often find lurking out of sight, and in search of darkness, around the public baths and the sweating-rooms and the places that fear the police - soft, enervated, reeking with wine and perfume, and pallid, or else painted and made up with cosmetics like a corpse. The highest good is immortal, it knows no ending, it permits neither surfeit nor regret; for the right-thinking mind never alters, it neither is filled with self-loathing nor suffers any change in its life, that is ever the best. But pleasure is extinguished just when it is most enjoyed; it has but small space, and thus quickly fills it - it grows weary and is soon spent after its first assault. Nor is anything certain whose nature consists in movement. So it is not even possible that there should be any substance in that which comes and goes most swiftly and will perish in the very exercise of its power; for it struggles to reach a point at which it may cease, and it looks to the end while it is beginning.

What, further, is to be said of the fact that pleasure belongs alike to the good and the evil, and that the base delight no less in their disgrace than do the honourable in fair repute? And therefore the ancients have enjoined us to follow, not the most pleasant, but the best life, in order that pleasure should be, not the, leader, but the companion of a right and proper desire.