"Letter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

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