time, was not of this kind, but placid and serene,
for so we are told. He, indeed, might well have had the same look at
all times who never changed his mind, from which the countenance
derives its expression. So that I am ready to borrow of the Cyrenaics
those arms against the accidents and events of life by means of which,
by long premeditation, they break the force of all approaching evils;
and at the same time I think that those very evils themselves arise
more from opinion than nature, for if they were real, no forecast could
make them lighter. But I shall speak more particularly on these matters
after I have first considered Epicurus's opinion, who thinks that all
people must necessarily be uneasy who believe themselves to be in any
evils, let them be either foreseen and expected, or habitual to them;
for with him evils are not the less by reason of their continuance, nor
the lighter for having been foreseen; and it is folly to ruminate on
evils to come, or such as, perhaps, never may come: every evil is
disagreeable enough when it does come; but he who is constantly
considering that some evil may befall him is loading himself with a
perpetual evil; and even should such evil never light on him, he
voluntarily takes upon himself unnecessary misery, so that he is under
constant uneasiness, whether he actually suffers any evil, or only
thinks of it. But he makes the alleviation of grief depend on two
things--a ceasing to think on evil, and a turning to the contemplation
of pleasure. For he thinks that the mind may possibly be under the
power of reason, and follow her directions: he forbids us, therefore,
to mind trouble, and calls us off from sorrowful reflections; he throws
a mist over our eyes to hinder us from the contemplation of misery.
Having sounded a retreat from this statement, he drives our thoughts on
again, and encourages them to view and engage the whole mind in the
various pleasures with which he thinks the life of a wise man abounds,
either from reflecting on the past, or from the hope of what is to
come. I have said these things in my own way; the Epicureans have
theirs. However, let us examine what they say; how they say it is of
little consequence.

XVI. In the first place, they are wrong in forbidding men to
premeditate on futurity and blaming their wish to do so; for there is
nothing that breaks the edge of grief and lightens it more than
considering, during one's whole life, that there is nothing