In all ethical theories that make happiness the supreme object of pursuit, the position of virtue depends entirely upon the theory of what constitutes happiness.  Now, Epicurus (herein differing from the Stoics, as well as Aristotle), did not recognize Happiness as anything but freedom from pain and enjoyment of pleasure.  It is essential, however, to understand, how Epicurus conceived pleasure and pain, and what is the Epicurean scale of pleasures and pains, graduated as objects of reasonable desire or aversion?  It is a great error to suppose that, in making pleasure the standard of virtue, Epicurus had in view that elaborate and studied gratification of the sensual appetites that we associate with the word Epicurean.  Epicurus declares—­’When we say that pleasure is the end of life, we do not mean the pleasures of the debauchee or the sensualist, as some from ignorance or from malignity represent, but freedom of the body from pain, and of the soul from anxiety.  For it is not continuous drinkings and revellings, nor the society of women, nor rare viands, and other luxuries of the table, that constitute a pleasant life, but sober contemplation, such as searches out the grounds of choice and avoidance, and banishes those chimeras that harass the mind.

Freedom from pain is thus made the primary element of happiness; a one-sided view, respected in the doctrine of Locke, that it is not the idea of future good, but the present greatest uneasiness that most strongly affects the will.  A neutral state of feeling is necessarily imperilled by a greedy pursuit of pleasures; hence the dictum, to be content with little is a great good; because little is most easily obtained.  The regulation of the desires is therefore of high moment.  According to Epicurus, desires fall into three grades.  Some are natural and necessary, such as desire of drink, food, or life, and are easily gratified.  But when the uneasiness of a want is removed, the bodily pleasures admit of no farther increase; anything additional only varies the pleasure.  Hence the luxuries which go beyond the relief of our wants are thoroughly superfluous; and the desires arising from them (forming the second grade) though natural, are not necessary.  A third class of desires is neither natural nor necessary, but begotten of vain opinion; such as the thirst for civic honours, or for power over others; those desires are the most difficult to gratify, and even if gratified, entail upon us trouble, anxiety, and peril. [This account of the desires, following up the advice—­If you wish to be rich, study not to increase your goods, but to diminish your desires—­is to a certain extent wise and even indispensable; yet not adapted to all temperaments.  To those that enjoy pleasure very highly, and are not sensitive in an equal degree to pain, such a negative conception of happiness would be imperfect.] Epicurus did not, however, deprecate positive pleasure.  If it could