The Complete Works, vol 3: Essays and Miscellanies | Page 8

more of what is painful and afflicting
goes out. Like unto this is that of Epicurus, where he saith: The very
essence of good arises from the escaping of bad, and a man's
recollecting, considering, and rejoicing within himself that this hath
befallen him. For what occasions transcending joy (he saith) is some
great impending evil escaped; and in this lies the very nature and
essence of good, if a man consider it aright, and contain himself when
he hath done, and not ramble and prate idly about it. Oh, the rare

satisfaction and felicity these men enjoy, that can thus rejoice for
having undergone no evil and endured neither sorrow nor pain! Have
they not reason, think you, to value themselves for such things as these,
and to speak as they are wont when they style themselves immortals
and equals to gods?--and when, through the excessiveness and
transcendency of the blessed things they enjoy, they rave even to the
degree of whooping and hollowing for very satisfaction that, to the
shame of all mortals, they have been the only men that could find out
this celestial and divine good that lies in an exemption from all evil? So
that their beatitude differs little from that of swine and sheep, while
they place it in a mere tolerable and contented state, either of the body,
or of the mind upon the body's account. For even the more prudent and
more ingenious sort of brutes do not esteem escaping of evil their last
end; but when they have taken their repast, they are disposed next by
fullness to singing, and they divert themselves with swimming and
flying; and their gayety and sprightliness prompt them to entertain
themselves with attempting to counterfeit all sorts of voices and notes;
and then they make their caresses to one another, by skipping and
dancing one towards another; nature inciting them, after they have
escaped evil, to look after some good, or rather to shake off what they
find uneasy and disagreeing, as an impediment to their pursuit of
something better and more congenial.
For what we cannot be without deserves not the name of good; but that
which claims our desire and preference must be something beyond a
bare escape from evil. And so, by Jove, must that be too that is either
agreeing or congenial to us, according to Plato, who will not allow us
to give the name of pleasures to the bare departures of sorrows and
pains, but would have us look upon them rather as obscure draughts
and mixtures of agreeing and disagreeing, as of black and white, while
the extremes would advance themselves to a middle temperament. But
oftentimes unskilfulness and ignorance of the true nature of extreme
occasions some to mistake the middle temperament for the extreme and
outmost part. Thus do Epicurus and Metrodorus, while they make
avoiding of evil to be the very essence and consummation of good, and
so receive but as it were the satisfaction of slaves or of rogues newly
discharged the jail, who are well enough contented if they may but
wash and supple their sores and the stripes they received by whipping,

but never in their lives had one taste or sight of a generous, clean,
unmixed and unulcerated joy. For it follows not that, if it be vexatious
to have one's body itch or one's eyes to run, it must be therefore a
blessing to scratch one's self, and to wipe one's eye with a rag; nor that,
if it be bad to be dejected or dismayed at divine matters or to be
discomposed with the relations of hell, therefore the bare avoiding of
all this must be some happy and amiable thing. The truth is, these men's
opinion, though it pretends so far to outgo that of the vulgar, allows
their joy but a straight and narrow compass to toss and tumble in, while
it extends it but to an exemption from the fear of hell, and so makes
that the top of acquired wisdom which is doubtless natural to the brutes.
For if freedom from bodily pain be still the same, whether it come by
endeavor or by nature, neither then is an undisturbed state of mind the
greater for being attained to by industry than if it came by nature.
Though a man may with good reason maintain that to be the more
confirmed habit of the mind which naturally admits of no disorder, than
that which by application and judgment eschews it.
But let us suppose them both equal; they will yet appear not one jot
superior to the beasts for being unconcerned at the stories of hell and
the legends of the gods, and for not expecting endless sorrows and
everlasting torments hereafter. For it is Epicurus himself