But we, if indeed all things depend on pleasure, are greatly surpassed by beasts, for which the earth, of her own accord, produces various sorts of food, in every kind of abundance, without their taking any trouble about it; while the same necessaries are scarcely (sometimes I may even use stronger language still) supplied to us, when we seek them with great labour. Nor is it possible that I should ever think that the chief good was the same in the case of a beast and a man. For what can be the use of having so many means and appliances for the carrying out of the most excellent arts,—what can be the use of such an assemblage of most honourable pursuits, of such a crowd of virtues, if they are all got together for no other end but pleasure? As if, when Xerxes, with such vast fleets, such countless troops of both cavalry and infantry, had bridged over the Hellespont and dug through Mount Athos, had walked across the sea, and sailed over the land, if, when he had invaded Greece with suchirresistible violence, any one had asked him for the cause of collecting so vast an army, and waging so formidable a war, and he had replied that he wished to get some honey from Hymettus, certainly he would have been thought to have undertaken such an enterprise for an insufficient cause. And in like manner, if we were to say that a wise man, furnished and provided with numerous and important virtues and accomplishments, not, indeed, travelling like him over sea on foot, and over mountains with his fleet, but embracing the whole heaven, all the earth, and the universal sea with his mind, had nothing in view but pleasure, we might say that he, too, was taking a great deal of trouble for a little honey.
Believe me, Torquatus, we were born for more lofty and noble ends; and you may see this, not only by considering the parts of the mind, in which there is the recollection of a countless number of things, (and from thence proceed infinite conjectures as to the consequences of them, not very far differing from divination; there is also in them shame, which is the regulator of desire, and the faithful guardianship of justice, so necessary to human society, and a firm enduring contempt for pain and death, shown in the enduring of labours and the encountering of dangers.) All these things, I say, are in the mind. But I would have you consider also the limbs and the senses, which, like the other parts of the body, will appear to you to be not only the companions of the virtues, but also their slaves. What will you say, if many things in the body itself appear to deserve to be preferred to pleasure? such as strength, health, activity, beauty? And if this is the case, how many qualities of the mind will likewise seem so? For in the mind, the old philosophers—those most learned men—thought that there was something heavenly and divine. But if the chief good consisted in pleasure, as you say, then it would be natural that we should wish to live day and night in the midst of pleasure, without any interval or interruption, while all our senses were, as it were, steeped in and influenced wholly by pleasure. But who is there, who is worthy of the name of a man, who would like to spend even the whole of one day in that kind of pleasure? The Cyrenaic philosophers, indeed, would not object. Your sect is more modest in this respect, though their's is perhaps the more sincere.
However, let us contemplate with our minds, not, indeed, these most important arts, which are so valuable, that those who were ignorant of them were accounted useless by our ancestors; but I ask you whether you think that (I will not say Homer, or Archilochus, or Pindar, but) Phidias, or Polycletus, or Zeuxis directed the whole of their skill to cause more pleasure. Shall, then, an artist propose to himself a higher aim, with reference to the beauty of figures, than a virtuous citizen with reference to the nobleness of action? But what other cause can there be for such a blunder being so widely and extensively diffused, except that he who determines that pleasure is the chief good, deliberates not with that part of his mind in which reason and wisdom dwell, but with his desires, that is to say, with the most trifling portion of his mind. For I put the question to you yourself, if there are gods, as you think that there are, how have they the power of being happy, when they are not able to feel any pleasure in their bodies? or if they are happy, though destitute of that kind of pleasure, why do you refuse to recognize the possibility of a similar exertion of intellect on the part of a wise man?