EPICURUS:

LETTER TO MENOECEUS

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Weltgeist Presents Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus

LETTER TO MENOECEUS.

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

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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

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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

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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.

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Bibliographical Information:

From: Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus, trans. Robert Drew Hicks, 1994.