pleasure was a tranquil activity of the being, like
the gently heaving sea, midway between violent motion which was pain,
and absolute calm which was insensibility. As a state of activity it
was something positive, not a mere release from [209] pain, not a
simple filling up of a vacuum. Nothing was in its essential nature
either just or noble or base; custom and convention pronounced them one
or other. The wise man made the best he could of his conditions;
valuing mental activity and friendship and wealth and bodily exercise,
and avoiding envy and excessive indulgence of passion and superstition,
not because the first were in themselves good or the second evil, but
because they were respectively helpers or hinderers of pleasure. He is
the master and possessor of pleasure not who abstains from it, but who
uses it and keeps his self-command in the using. Moderate
indulgence--this is wisdom.

{127}

[210]

The one criterion, whether of good or of truth, is the feeling of the
moment for the man who feels it; all question of causes of feelings is
delusive. We can say with truth and certainty, I have the sensation of
white or the sensation of sweet. But that there is a white or a sweet
thing which is the cause of the sensation, that we cannot say for
certain. A man may very well have the sensation white or sweet from
something which has no such quality, as men in delusion or madness have
impressions that are true and real inasmuch as they have them, although
other people do not admit their reality. There is, therefore, no
criterion of truth as between man and man; we may employ the same
words, but each has his own impressions and his own individual
experiences.

One can easily understand this as the doctrine of such a man as
Aristippus, the easy-going man of the world, the courtier and the wit,
the favourite of the tyrant Dionysius; it fits in well enough with a
life of genial self-indulgence; it always reappears whenever a man has
reconciled himself 'to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.' But life
is not always, nor for most persons at any time, a thing of ease and
soft enchantments, and the Cyrenaic philosophy must remain for the
general work-a-day world a stale exotic. 'Every man for himself and
the devil take the hindmost,' is a maxim which comes as a rule {128}
only to the lips of the worldly successful, while they think themselves
strong enough to stand alone. But this solitude of selfishness neither