its pleasures." Happiness for Epicurus lay in "phlegm," as Philinte would
put it; it lay in the calm of the mind that has rendered itself
inaccessible to every emotion of passion, which is never irritated, never
moved, never annoyed, never desires, and never fears. Why, for instance,
should we dread death? So long as we fear it, it is not here; when it
arrives, we shall no longer fear it; then, why is it an evil?--But, during
life itself, how about sufferings?--We greatly increase our sufferings by
complaints and by self-commiseration. If we acted in the reverse way, if
when we were tortured by them we recalled past pleasures and thought of
pleasures to come, they would be infinitely mitigated.--But, of what
pleasures can a man speak who makes happiness consist in the exclusion of
pleasures? The pleasures of the wise man are the satisfaction he feels in
assuring himself of his own happiness. He finds pleasure when he controls a
passion in order to revert to calmness; he feels pleasure when he converses
with his friends about the nature of true happiness; he feels pleasure when
he has diverted a youth from passionate follies or from despair, and
brought him back to peace of mind, etc.--But what about sufferings after
death? They do not exist. There is no hell because there is no immortality
of the soul. The soul is as material as the body, and dies with it.

You will say, perhaps, that this very severe and austere morality more
nearly approaches to Stoicism than to the teaching of Aristippus. This is
so true that when Horace confessed with a smile that he returned to the
morality of pleasure, he did not say, as we should, "I feel that I am
becoming an Epicurean," he said, "I fall back on the precepts of
Aristippus;" and Seneca, a professed Stoic, cites Epicurus almost as often
as Zeno in his lessons. It may not be quite accurate to state, but there
would not be much exaggeration in affirming, that Epicureanism is a smiling
Stoicism and Stoicism a gloomy Epicureanism. In the current use of the word
we have changed the meaning of Epicurean to make it mean "addicted to