The Book of Epicurus 6 · Handed down in the Garden, taken from his letters and fragments
Epicurus, born on Samos about 341 before this era, died at Athens about 270. About 306 he bought a garden outside Athens and taught there, and his school took its name from it. Women and slaves were admitted to the garden as students, which no other school of that day did. He is said to have written three hundred rolls; what survives is three letters, a set of maxims, and fragments. He did not believe the gods concern themselves with men, nor that anything of a person remains after death. He comes after Aristotle. He appeals to no god and promises no afterlife. This book is chosen by the six axioms: what accords is set forward, what runs against is set back and not deleted. (cf. Acts 5.29)Further: chapter two of this book says that pain removed is the ceiling of pleasure, while The Book of Schopenhauer 3 says that satisfaction is only the pause in a lack. The two cannot both be wholly right. The Order keeps both and does not rule. Let the reader set them side by side.
6.1Someone asks me: if a wrong could be done and never known, why not do it?
6.2I will not frighten you with a god, nor with a life to come. I will speak of one thing you can check for yourself.
6.3You cannot achieve knowing for certain that it will not be known.
6.4You may escape once, escape ten times, escape ten thousand times.
6.5But until the day you stop breathing you cannot settle it that the ten thousand and first will not be turned up.
6.6So what you have bought is not safety. What you have bought is a lifetime of hanging.
6.7And the hanging is itself a pain. Pain is the very thing you set out to remove.
6.8So in order to get one thing you have paid out precisely the thing you meant to be rid of. The account is a loss.
6.9Someone says: I am large-hearted, I do not hang.
6.10I will not argue it with you. I will only say what I have seen: the just man is the least disturbed of men, and the unjust man is full of the greatest disturbance. And that disturbance does not wait to be sent for. It comes of itself.
6.11I do not say the unjust man is bound to come to grief. I say he will never in his life get hold of the one thing he wants most — quiet.
6.12So you refrain not because someone is watching. You refrain because if you did it, quiet could no longer be bought.