h to be rich, study
not to increase your goods, but to diminish your desires--is to a
certain extent wise and even indispensable; yet not adapted to all
temperaments. To those that enjoy pleasure very highly, and are not
sensitive in an equal degree to pain, such a negative conception of
happiness would be imperfect.] Epicurus did not, however, deprecate
positive pleasure. If it could be reached without pain, and did not
result in pain, it was a pure good; and, even if it could not be had
without pain, the question was still open, whether it might not be well
worth the price. But in estimating the worth of pleasure, the absence
of any accompanying pain should weigh heavily in the balance. At this
point, the Epicurean theory connects itself most intimately with the
conditions of virtue; for virtue is more concerned with averting
mischief and suffering, than with multiplying positive enjoyments.

Bodily feeling, in the Epicurean psychology, is prior in order of time
to the mental element; the former was primordial, while the latter was
derivative from it by repeated processes of memory and association. But
though such was the order of sequence and generation, yet when we
compare the two as constituents of happiness to the formed man, the
mental element much outweighed the bodily, both as pain and as
pleasure. Bodily pain or pleasure exists only in the present; when not
felt, it is nothing. But mental feelings involve memory and
hope--embrace the past as well as the future--endure for a long time,
and may be recalled or put out of sight, to a great degree, at our
discretion.

This last point is one of the most remarkable features of the Epicurean
mental discipline. Epicurus deprecated the general habit of mankind in
always hankering after some new satisfaction to come; always
discontented with the present, and oblivious of past comforts as if
they had never been. These past comforts ought to be treasured up by
memory and reflection, so that they might become as it were matter for
rumination, and might serve, in trying moments, even to counterbalance
extreme physical suffering. The health of Epicurus himself was very bad
during the closing years of his life. There remains a fragment of his
last letter, to an intimate friend and companion, Idomeneus--'I write
this to you on the last day of my life, which, in spite of the severest
internal bodily pains, is still a happy day, because I set against them
in the balance all the