HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

On the same ground, Epicurus prized mental joys higher than
physical enjoyments which are connected with passionate agitation.
But he seeks the joys of the mind, not in pure knowledge, but in
the aesthetic refinement of life, in that intercourse with friends
which is pervaded by wit and sentiment and touched with delicacy,
in the comfortable arrangement of daily living. Thus the wise
man, in quiet, creates for himself the blessedness of self-enjoyment,
independence of the moment, of its demands and its results. He
knows what he can secure for himself, and of this he denies himself
nothing ; but he is not so foolish as to be angry at fate or to lament
that he cannot possess everything. This is his " ataraxy," or im-
passiveness : an enjoyment like that of the Hedonists, but more
refined, more intellectual, and more blase.
2. Pyrrhd s Hedonism took another direction, inasmuch as he
sought to draw the practical result from the sceptical teachings of
CHAP. 1, 14.] Ideal of the Sa</e : Pyrrho, Stoics. 167
the Sophists. According to the exposition of his disciple, Timon, he
held it to be the task of science to investigate the constitution
of things, in order to establish man s appropriate relations to them,
and to know what he may expect to gain from them. 1 But accord
ing to Pyrrho s theory it has become evident that we can never
know the true constitution of things but at the most can know
only states of feelings (iraQ-tj) into which these put us (Protagoras,
Aristippus). If, however, there is no knowledge of things, it
cannot be determined what the right relation to them is, and
what the success that will result from our action. This scepticism
is the negative reverse side to the Socratic-Platonic inference. As
there, from the premise that right action is not possible without
knowledge, the demand had been made that knowledge must be
I possible, so here the argument is, that because there is no knowl
edge, right action is also impossible.
Under these circumstances all that remains for the wise man is
to resist as far as possible the seducements to opinion and to action,
to which the mass of men are subject. All action proceeds, as
Socrates had taught, from our ideas of things and their value; all
foolish and injurious actions result from incorrect opinions. The
wise man, however, who knows that nothing can be affirmed as to
things themselves (<!<acria), and that no opinion may be assented to
(eUaTaArji/a a), 2 restrains himself, as far as possible, from judgment,
and thereby also from action. He withdraws into himself, and in