while there is a net profit in sacrificing pleasure for the sake of
avoiding pain. In either case it is a matter of indifference whether
the pain follows the pleasure or precedes it. While it is a complete
inversion of the natural order to try and turn this scene of misery
into a garden of pleasure, to aim at joy and pleasure rather than
at the greatest possible freedom from pain--and yet how many do
it!--there is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the
world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one's efforts to securing
a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire. The fool rushes
after the pleasures of life and finds himself their dupe; the wise man
avoids its evils; and even if, notwithstanding his precautions, he
falls into misfortunes, that is the fault of fate, not of his own
folly. As far as he is successful in his endeavors, he cannot be said
to have lived a life of illusion; for the evils which he shuns are
very real. Even if he goes too far out of his way to avoid evils, and
makes an unnecessary sacrifice of pleasure, he is, in reality, not the
worse off for that; for all pleasures are chimerical, and to mourn
for having lost any of them is a frivolous, and even ridiculous
proceeding.

The failure to recognize this truth--a failure promoted by optimistic
ideas--is the source of much unhappiness. In moments free from pain,
our restless wishes present, as it were in a mirror, the image of a
happiness that has no counterpart in reality, seducing us to follow
it; in doing so we bring pain upon ourselves, and that is something
undeniably real. Afterwards, we come to look with regret upon that
lost state of painlessness; it is a paradise which we have gambled
away; it is no longer with us, and we long in vain to undo what has
been done.