I think, Brutus, that Pleasure, if she were to speak for herself, and had not such pertinacious advocates, would yield to Virtue, as having been vanquished in the preceding book. In truth, she would be destitute of shame if she were to resist Virtue any longer, or persist in preferring what is pleasant to what is honourable, or were to contend that a tickling pleasure, as it were, of the body, and the joy arising out of it, is of more importance than dignity of mind and consistency. So that we may dismiss Pleasure, and desire her to confine herself within her own boundaries, so that the strictness of our discussions may not be hindered by her allurements and blandishments. For we have now to inquire what that chief good is which we are anxious to discover; since pleasure is quite unconnected with it, and since nearly the same arguments can be urged against those who have considered freedom from pain as the greatest of goods.
Nor, indeed, can anything be admitted to be the chief good which is destitute of virtue, to which nothing can be superior. Therefore, although in that discourse which was held with Torquatus we were not remiss, still we have now a much sharper contest before us with the Stoics. For the statements which are made about pleasure are not expressed with any great acuteness or refinement. For they who defend it are not skilful in arguing, nor have those who take the opposite side a very difficult cause to oppose. EvenEpicurus himself says, that one ought not even to argue about pleasure, because the decision respecting it depends on the sensations, so that it is sufficient for us to be warned respecting it, and quite unnecessary for us to be instructed. And on this account, that previous discussion of ours was a simple one on both sides; for there was nothing involved or intricate in the discourse of Torquatus, and my own language, as it seems to me, was very clear. But you are not ignorant what a subtle, or I might rather say, thorny kind of arguing it is which is employed by the Stoics. And if it is so among the Greeks, much more so is it among us, who are forced even to invent words, and to give new names to new things. And this is what no one who is even moderately learned will wonder at, when he considers that in every art which is not in common and ordinary use, there is a great variety of new names, as appellations are forced to be given to everything about which each art is conversant. Therefore, both dialecticians and natural philosophers use those words which are not common in the ordinary conversation of the Greeks; and geometricians, musicians, and grammarians, all speak after a peculiar fashion of their own. And even the rhetoricians, whose art is a forensic one, and wholly directed to the people, still in giving their lessons use words which are, as it were, their peculiar private property.