Let us now recapitulate briefly.
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And yet when it comes to these three cardinal1
virtues, those philosophers shift and turn as best
they can, and not without cleverness. They admit
wisdom into their system as the knowledge that
provides pleasures and banishes pain; they clear the
way for fortitude also in some way to fit in with
their doctrines, when they teach that it is a rational
means for looking with indifference upon death and
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for enduring pain. They bring even temperance in
—not very easily, to be sure, but still as best they can;
for they hold that the height of pleasure is found
in the absence of pain. Justice totters or rather, I
should say, lies already prostrate; so also with all
those virtues which are discernible in social life and
the fellowship of human society. For neither goodness nor generosity nor courtesy can exist, any more
than friendship can, if they are not sought of and
for themselves, but are cultivated only for the sake
of sensual pleasure or personal advantage.
1 Epicureanism and the Cardinal Virtues.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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