DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.50017#0093
THE GARDENS OF EPICURUS
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and exercise of reason, to be the state of the greatest
felicity: to live without desires or fears, or those
perturbations of mind and thought, which passions
raise : to place true riches in wanting little, rather than
in possessing much; and true pleasure in temperance,
rather than in satisfying the senses : to live with
indifference to the common enjoyments and accidents
of life, and with constancy upon the greatest blows of
fate or of chance ; not to disturb our minds with sad
reflections upon what is past, nor with anxious cares or
raving hopes about what is to come ; neither to dispute
life with the fears of death, nor death with the desires of
life ; but in both, and in all things else, to follow nature,
seem to be the precepts most agreed among them.
Thus reason seems only to have been called in, to
allay those disorders which itself had raised, to cure
its own wounds, and pretends to make us wise no other
way, than by rendering us insensible. This at least
was the profession of many rigid Stoics, who would
have had a wise man, not only without any sort of
passion, but without any sense of pain, as well as
pleasure ; and to enjoy himself in the midst of diseases
and torments, as well as of health and ease : a principle,
in my mind, against common nature and common
sense ; and which might have told us in fewer words,.
i3
and exercise of reason, to be the state of the greatest
felicity: to live without desires or fears, or those
perturbations of mind and thought, which passions
raise : to place true riches in wanting little, rather than
in possessing much; and true pleasure in temperance,
rather than in satisfying the senses : to live with
indifference to the common enjoyments and accidents
of life, and with constancy upon the greatest blows of
fate or of chance ; not to disturb our minds with sad
reflections upon what is past, nor with anxious cares or
raving hopes about what is to come ; neither to dispute
life with the fears of death, nor death with the desires of
life ; but in both, and in all things else, to follow nature,
seem to be the precepts most agreed among them.
Thus reason seems only to have been called in, to
allay those disorders which itself had raised, to cure
its own wounds, and pretends to make us wise no other
way, than by rendering us insensible. This at least
was the profession of many rigid Stoics, who would
have had a wise man, not only without any sort of
passion, but without any sense of pain, as well as
pleasure ; and to enjoy himself in the midst of diseases
and torments, as well as of health and ease : a principle,
in my mind, against common nature and common
sense ; and which might have told us in fewer words,.