LETTER TO MENOECEUS

BY: EPICURUS

CATEGORY: PHILOSOPHY

Letter to Menoeceus
by

Epicurus
Translated by Robert Drew Hicks

Greeting.

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 themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not
of their kind.

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 are foolishness, for those who hear believe him not.

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 starting-point 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 approach at intervals a costly fare and
renders us fearless of fortune.

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 drinking-
bouts 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 starting-point 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.

THE END