particularly for having the assurance to contradict Theophrastus.


The Letter.

You wish to know whether I have fully considered the doctrines of
Epicurus which are attributed to me?

I can claim the honor of having done so, but I do not care to claim a
merit I do not possess, and which you will say, ingenuously, does not
belong to me. I labor under a great disadvantage on account of the
numerous spurious treatises which are printed in my name, as though I
were the author of them. Some, though well written, I do not claim,
because they are not of my writing, moreover, among the things I have
written, there are many stupidities. I do not care to take the trouble
of repudiating such things, for the reason that at my age, one hour of
well regulated life, is of more interest and benefit to me than a
mediocre reputation. How difficult it is, you see, to rid one's self
of amour propre! I quit it as an author, and reassume it as a
philosopher, feeling a secret pleasure in manipulating what others are
anxious about.

The word "pleasure" recalls to mind the name of Epicurus, and I
confess, that of all the opinions of the philosophers concerning the
supreme good, there are none which appear to me to be so reasonable as
his.

It would be useless to urge reasons, a hundred times repeated by the
Epicureans, that the love of pleasure and the extinction of pain, are
the first and most natural inclinations remarked in all men; that