“It will be ill with them,” you say, “because many things will intrude that perturb [12] the soul, and opinions, conflicting with one another, will disquiet the mind.” That this is so I grant; but nonetheless these very men, foolish as they are and inconsistent and subject to the pangs of remorse, will have experience of very great pleasures, so that you must admit that, while in that state they lack all pain, they no less lack a sound mind, and, as is the case with very many others, that they make merry in madness and laugh while they rave. But, on the other hand, the pleasures of the wise man are calm, moderate, almost listless and subdued, and scarcely noticeable inasmuch as they come unsummoned, and, although they approach of their own accord, are not held in high esteem and are received without joy on the part of those who experience them; for they only let them mingle now and then with life as we do amusements and jests with serious affairs.
Let them cease, therefore, to join irreconcilable things and to link pleasure with virtue — a vicious procedure which flatters the worst class of men. The man who has plunged into pleasures, in the midst of his constant belching and drunkenness, because he knows that he is living with pleasure, believes that he is living with virtue as well; for he hears first that pleasure cannot be separated from virtue, then dubs his vices wisdom, and parades what ought to be concealed. And so it is not Epicurus who has driven them to debauchery, but they, having surrendered themselves to vice, hide their debauchery in the lap of philosophy and flock to the place where they may hear the praise of pleasure, and they do not consider how sober and abstemious [13] the “pleasure” of Epicurus really is — for so, in all truth, I think it — but they fly to a mere name seeking some justification and screen for their lusts. And thus they lose the sole good that remained to them in their wickedness — shame for wrongdoing. For they now praise the things that used to make them blush, and they glory in vice; and therefore they cannot even recover their youth, [14] when once an honorable name has given warrant to their shameful laxity. The reason why your praise of pleasure is pernicious is that what is honorable in your teaching lies hid within, what corrupts is plainly visible.