So that you may understand where this whole error comes from, and why pleasure is condemned and pain praised, I will reveal and explain to you everything that the founder of truth and, as it were, the architect of a happy life himself has said about it. No one, he says, despises, hates or flees pleasure as such, but because great pain follows it if one does not know how to pursue it with reason. Likewise, pain as such is not loved, sought or desired by anyone, but because there are times when one must seek to obtain great pleasure through work and pain. To stick with the simplest example, none of us would engage in strenuous physical exercise if we did not expect to benefit from it. But who could blame someone who desires a pleasure that is not followed by discomfort, or who avoids pain that does not result in pleasure?
On the other hand, one rightly reproaches and hates those who allow themselves to be softened and seduced by the temptations of present pleasure, without seeing in their blind desire what pains and inconveniences await them as a result. The same blame falls on those who, out of spiritual weakness, i.e. in order to avoid work and pain, neglect their duties. It is easy and quick to make the right distinction here; in a quiet time, when the choice of decision is completely free and nothing prevents one from doing what most people like, one has every desire to grasp and every pain to ward off; but at times, as a result of guilty duties or objective necessity, it happens that one must reject pleasure and not turn away discomfort. Therefore, the wise man makes a choice so that by rejecting one pleasure he may obtain a greater one, or by accepting certain pains he may spare himself greater ones.
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