They therefore assign not only a treacherous and unsure ground of their pleasurable living, but also one in all
respects despicable and little, if the escaping of evils be
the matter of their complacence and last good. But now
they tell us, nothing else can be so much as imagined, and
nature hath no other place to bestow her good in but only
that out of which her evil hath been driven; as Metrodorus
speaks in his book against the Sophists. So that this single
thing, to escape evil, he says, is the supreme good; for
there is no room to lodge this good in where nothing of
what is painful and afflicting goes out. Like unto this is
that of Epicurus, where he saith: The very essence of
good arises from the escaping of bad, and a man's recollecting, considering, and rejoicing within himself that this hath
befallen him. For what occasions transcending joy (he
saith) is some great impending evil escaped; and in this
lies the very nature and essence of good, if a man attain
unto it aright, and contain himself when he hath done, and
not ramble and prate idly about it. Oh the rare satisfaction
and felicity these men enjoy, that can thus rejoice for having undergone no evil and endured neither sorrow nor pain!
Have they not reason, think you, to value themselves for
such things as these, and to talk as they are wont when
they style themselves immortals and equals to Gods?—and
[p. 168]
when, through the excessiveness and transcendency of the
blessed things they enjoy, they rave even to the degree of
whooping and hollowing for very satisfaction that, to the
shame of all mortals, they have been the only men that could
find out this celestial and divine good that lies in an exemption from all evil So that their beatitude differs little
from that of swine and sheep, while they place it in a mere
tolerable and contented state, either of the body, or of the
mind upon the body's account. For even the wiser and
more ingenious sort of brutes do not esteem escaping of
evil their last end; but when they have taken their repast,
they are disposed next by fulness to singing, and they divert themselves with swimming and flying; and their gayety
and sprightliness prompt them to entertain themselves with
attempting to counterfeit all sorts of voices and notes; and
then they make their caresses to one another, by skipping
and dancing one towards another; nature inciting them,
after they have escaped evil, to look after some good, or
rather to shake off what they find uneasy and disagreeing,
as an impediment to their pursuit of something better and
more congenial.
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