o the Stoic that which was not right was wrong. A calculator
who says that seven sevens make forty-eight is just as wrong as one who
says they make a thousand, and a sailor one inch below the surface of
the water drowns just as surely as one who is a furlong deep. Just so in
human life, wrong is wrong, falsehood is falsehood, and to talk of
degrees is childish. Epicureanism had an easy and natural answer to
these arguments, since pleasure and pain obviously admit of
degrees.[110:1]

The school is blamed also for pursuing pleasure, on the ground that the
direct pursuit of pleasure is self-defeating. But Epicurus never makes
that mistake. He says that pleasure, or 'sweetness of life', is the
good; but he never counsels the direct pursuit of it. Quite the reverse.
He says that if you conquer your desires and fears, and live simply and
love those about you, the natural sweetness of life will reveal itself.

A truer criticism is one which appears dimly in Plutarch and
Cicero.[110:2] There is a strange shadow of sadness hanging over this
wise and kindly faith, which proceeds from the essential distrust of
life that lies at its heart. The best that Epicurus has really to say of
the world is that if you are very wise and do not attract its
notice--+Lathe biosas+--it will not hurt you. It is a philosophy not of
conquest but of escape. This was a weakness from which few of the
fourth-century thinkers completely escaped. To aim at what we should
call positive happiness was, to the Epicureans, only to court
disappointment; better make it your aim to live without strong passion
or desire, without high hopes or ambitions. Their professed
ideals--+pantos tou algountos hypexairesis+, +ataraxia+, +heuroia+, 'the
removal of all active suffering', 'undisturbedness', 'a smooth
flow'--seem to result in rather a low tension, in a life that is only
half alive. We know that, as a matter of fact, this was not so. The
Epicureans felt their doctrine to bring not mere comfort but inspiration
and blessedness. The young Colotes, on first hearing the master speak,
fell on his knees with tears and hailed him as a god.[111:1] We may
compare the rapturous phrases of Lucretius. What can be the explanation
of this?

Perhaps it is that a deep distrust of the world produces its own inward
reaction, as starving men dream of rich banquets, and persecuted sects
have apocalyptic visions of paradise. The hopes and desires that are
starved of their natural sus