The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

Epicurus, in Lucian’s The Double Indictment, is asked, Κακὸν ἡγῇ τὸν πόνον: “Whether he thought labor an evil?” he answers, Ναί: “Yea.” And Mindyrides (Σμενδυρίδης, according to Herodotus in his Histories, ὃς ἐπὶ πλεῖστον δὴ χλιδῆς εἷς ἀνὴρ ἀπίκετο: “Smyndirides⁠ ⁠… a man who carried luxury to the highest degree”) proceeded so far in his aversion to labor, that ejus latus alieno labore condoluit⁠ ⁠… qui cum vidisset fodientem, et altiùs rastrum allevantem, lassum se fieri (ῥῆγμα λαβεῖν in Athenæus) questus vetuit illum opus in conspectu suo facere: “it gave him a pain in his side to see another man labor⁠ ⁠… : when he saw anyone digging or lifting a heavy rake, he complained that it made him weary (‘demolished him,’ it is in Athenæus) and forbade the person doing any more work in his sight.” (Seneca, De Ira.) ↩

Ad hæc [voluptatem, et dolorem] et quæ sequamur, et quæ fugiamus, refert omnia [Aristippus]: “[Aristippus] referred everything [to pleasure and pain] which we pursue or avoid.” (Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum.) ↩

Velim definias, quid sit voluptas: de quo omnis hæc quæstio est: “I would have you define what pleasure is, for this whole question is about that.” (Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum.) The disputes about pleasure between the Cyrenaics, Epicurus, Hieronymus, etc. are well known: whether the end was pleasure of body or mind; whether it was voluptas in motu, or in statu (stabilitate); quae suavitate aliqua naturam ipsam movet, or quae percipitur, omni dolore detracto; ἠ ἐν κινήσει, or ἠ καταστηματικὴ etc. (Cicero, Diogenes Laërtius, et al.) ↩

Negat Epicurus jucundè vivi posse, nisi cum virtute vivatur: “Epicurus denies that anyone can live pleasantly that does not live virtuously.” (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations.) But for all that, their pleasures have not continued to be always like those in the little gardens of Gargettus. Nor indeed do they seem to be very virtuous even there. For Epicurus not only had his Leontium (or, as he amorously called her, Λεοντάριον, “his pretty poppet”), a famous harlot; but she πᾶσί τε τοῖς Επικουρείοις συνήν ἐν τοῖς κήποις: “laid with all the Epicureans in the gardens.” (Athenæus, Deipnosophistae.) And in his book περὶ τέλους (“Of Perfection”) he is said to have written thus, Οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγε ἔχω τί νοήσω τἀγαθόν, ἀφαιρῶν μὲν τὰς διὰ χυλῶν (χειλῶν Athenæus) ἡδονάς, ἀφαιρῶν δὲ καὶ τὰς δι᾿ ἀφροδισίων, κ.τ.λ.: “There is nothing that I esteem good, if you take away the pleasure which arises from eating and drinking and women.” (See this and more in Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Epicurus.) ↩

St. Jerome uses the plural number, as if this was the prevailing notion in his time. Philosophorum sententia est, μεσότητας ἀρετὰς, ὑπερβολὰς κακίας εἶναι: “It is the opinion of the philosophers that virtues consist in the middle, and vices in the extremes.” (Letter to Demetrias.) ↩

Ἡ μὲν ὑπερβολὴ ἁμαρτάνεται, ἁμαρτάνεταικαὶ ἡ ἔλλειψις ψέγεται, τὸ δὲ μέσον ἐπαινεῖται⁠ ⁠… Ἔστιν ἄρα ἡ ἀρετὴ ἕξις προαιρετική ἐν μεσότητι οὖσα, κ.τ.λ.⁠ ⁠… Μεσότης δὲ δύο κακιῶν, τῆς μὲν καθ᾿ ὑπερβολὴν τῆς δὲ κατ᾿ ἔλλειψιν: “Every excess is a crime, and every defect is blameworthy, but the medium is commendable.⁠ ⁠… Virtue then is a habit of our own procuring, and consists in the middle.⁠ ⁠… Which middle is between the two extremes; the one of excess, and the other of defect.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.) Perhaps Pythagoras (and after him Plato, and others), when he said (in Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Pythagoras) τήν ἀρετὴν ἁρμονίαν εἷναι, “that virtue was a kind of harmony,” might have some such thought as this. ↩

When he says it must be taken ὁύτως ὡς ἂν ὁ ὀρθὸς λόγος προστάξῃ, “according to the direction of right reason” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics), it is not by that acertained. See note 82. ↩

Οὐ γὰρ ῥᾴδιον διορίσαι τὸ πῶς καὶ τίσι, κ.τ.λ.: “It is not easy to determine the particular manner and the particular persons.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.) Therefore Rabbi Albo might have spared that censure, where he blames himself for expressing himself too generally, when he says, כמו שראוי יבעת הראוי ובמקוס הראוי, “after a due manner, in a convenient time, and in proper place,” without telling him what that manner, time, place is. (Sefer ha-Ikkarim I, 8.) ↩

That man, says he, cannot be neglected, who endeavors δίκαιος γίγνεσθαι, καὶ ἐπιτηδεύων ἀρετὴν, ἐις ὅσον δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ ὁμοιοῦσθαι θεῷ: “to make himself a righteous man, by laboring after virtue, that he may be as like God as it is possible for a man to be.” (Republic.) And in another place, our φυγὴ ἐνθένδε is ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν: “fleeing from thence is being like unto God so far as we can be.” (Theaetetus.) St. Augustine seems to agree with him, in that sentence of his, Religionis summa est imitari quem colis: “The highest pitch of religion is to imitate the being you worship.” (The City of God.) ↩

Πυθαγόρας ἐρωτηθεὶς τὶ ποιοῦσιν ἄνθρωποι θεῷ ὅμοιοv, ἔφη, Ἐὰν άληθεύωσι: “Pythagoras, being asked what it was that any man could do like what God does, answered: Speak the truth.” (Joannes Stobaeus, On Truth.) ↩

There is certainly not that difficulty or perplexity in morality, which Cicero seems to suppose, when he says, Consuetudo exercitatioque capienda, ut boni ratiocinatores officiorum