pleasure to be the higher one; for sensual enjoyment, which he believes
free to every one, can be experienced only in the present, while
intellectual delight extends to both the past and the future. To the
Epicureans the goal of life, as has already been mentioned, is to attain
the chief blessings, peace of mind, and freedom from pain. He is to
practise virtue only because it brings him pleasure; for who could remain
virtuous without being wise, noble, and just?--and whoever is all these
cannot have his peace of mind disturbed, and must be really happy in the
exact meaning of the master. I perceived long since the peril lurking in
this system of instruction, which takes no account of moral excellence;
but at that time it seemed to me also the chief good.

"How all this charmed the mind of the thoughtful child, still untouched by
passion! It was difficult to supply her wonderfully vigorous intellect
with sufficient sustenance, and she really felt that to enrich it was the
highest pleasure. And to her, who could scarcely endure to have a rude
hand touch her, though a small grief or trivial disappointment could not
be averted, the freedom from pain which the master had named as the first
condition for the existence of every pleasure, and termed the chief good,
seemed indeed the first condition of a happy life.

"Yet this child, whom my father once compared to a thinking flower, bore
without complaint her sad destiny--her father's banishment, her mother's
death, her sister Berenike's profligacy. Even to me, in whom she found a
second brother and fully trusted, she spoke of these sorrowful things
only in guarded allusions. I know that she understood what was passing
fully and perfectly, and how deeply she felt it; but pain placed itself
between her and the 'chief good,' and she mastered it. And when she sat
at work, with what tenacious power the delicate creature struggled until
she had conquered the hardest task and outstripped Charmian and even me!