riches, power, honor, and virtue, contribute to our happiness, but
that the enjoyment of pleasure, let us say, voluptuousness, to include
everything in a word, is the veritable aim and end whither tend all
human acts. This is very clear to me, in fact, self-evident, and I am
fully persuaded of its truth.

However, I do not know very well in what the pleasure, or
voluptuousness of Epicurus consisted, for I never saw so many
different opinions of any one as those of the morals of this
philosopher. Philosophers, and even his own disciples, have condemned
him as sensual and indolent; magistrates have regarded his doctrines
as pernicious to the public; Cicero, so just and so wise in his
opinions, Plutarch, so much esteemed for his fair judgments, were not
favorable to him, and so far as Christianity is concerned, the Fathers
have represented him to be the greatest and the most dangerous of all
impious men. So much for his enemies; now for his partisans:

Metrodorus, Hermachus, Meneceus, and numerous others, who
philosophize according to his school, have as much veneration as
friendship for him personally. Diogenes Laertes could not have written
his life to better advantage for his reputation. Lucretius adored him.
Seneca, as much of an enemy of the sect as he was, spoke of him in the
highest terms. If some cities held him in horror, others erected
statues in his honor, and if, among the Christians, the Fathers have
condemned him, Gassendi and Bernier approve his principles.

In view of all these contrary authorities, how can the question be
decided? Shall I say that Epicurus was a corruptor of good morals, on
the faith of a jealous philosopher, of a disgruntled disciple, who
would have been delighted, in his resentment, to go to the length of