will not allow us to give the name of pleasures to the bare
departures of sorrows and pains, but would have us look upon them
rather as obscure draughts and mixtures of agreeing and
disagreeing, as of black and white, while the extremes would
advance themselves to a middle temperament. But oftentimes
unskilfulness and ignorance of the true nature of extreme occasions
some to mistake the middle temperament for the extreme and outmost
part. Thus do Epicurus and Metrodorus, while they make avoiding of
evil to be the very essence and consummation of good, and so
receive but as it were the satisfaction of slaves or of rogues
newly discharged the jail, who are well enough contented if they
may but wash and supple their sores and the stripes they received
by whipping, but never in their lives had one taste or sight of a
generous, clean, unmixed and unulcerated joy. For it follows not
that, if it be vexatious to have one's body itch or one's eyes to
run, it must be therefore a blessing to scratch one's self, and to
wipe one's eye with a rag; nor that, if it be bad to be dejected or
dismayed at divine matters or to be discomposed with the relations
of hell, therefore the bare avoiding of all this must be some happy
and amiable thing. The truth is, these men's opinion, though it
pretends so far to outgo that of the vulgar, allows their joy but a
straight and narrow compass to toss and tumble in, while it extends
it but to an exemption from the fear of hell, and so makes that the
top of acquired wisdom which is doubtless natural to the brutes.
For if freedom from bodily pain be still the same, whether it come
by endeavor or by nature, neither then is an undisturbed state of
mind the greater for being attained to by industry than if it came
by nature. Though a man may with good reason maintain that to be
the more confirmed habit of the mind which naturally admits of no
disorder, than that which by application and judgment eschews it.