There is a superficial resemblance between the teaching of Epicurus and the message of Rousseau to the French people of the eighteenth century. Both sought an ideal of enduring pleasure. Both would discard the artificialities of society. But Rousseau was a political reformer and attempted to find his ideal in a newly constructed society. Epicurus, on the other hand, was no political reformer, but would find his ideal in society as it existed. Rousseau appealed to the primitive feelings. He felt “the call of the wild.” Epicurus appealed to the refined and derivative feelings. He had no aggressive propaganda. He aimed at no external reform. His ideal was peace, and not the sword. =The Epicurean Ideal.= _The central principle of Epicurus is that pleasure is a good and pain an evil._ In this he was in agreement with Aristippus, and from this position he never receded. He offered no proof of this, but rested his central principle upon the conviction that men pursue pleasure and avoid pain. He was convinced of the biological fact. But he was not unobservant from the beginning that the subject was complex. He saw that the individual has to make a selection of pleasure and often has to choose pain for the sake of a greater pleasure. Pleasure is the only good, but Epicurus asks further, What is pleasure? He finds that he must give a content to pleasure and evaluate the pleasures in the interests of pleasure itself. This was to Epicurus no moral appraisal, but with reference to the pleasantest possible life. Of the two qualities of pleasure _Epicurus valued its duration_ and showed his advance over the Cyrenaics, who had valued its intensity. It was on this account that the Epicureans disclaimed all relationship with the Cyrenaics, the earlier school. The difference is certainly a radical one between them: to Epicurus true pleasure is that which endures; to Aristippus it is that which is most intense, however fleeting. There is this to be said of the Cyrenaic theory: it could be easily understood. Aristippus could tell exactly what he meant by pleasure. It is this or that gratification of sense. It includes every positive pleasure, and that which is intensest is best. One always knows when he is enjoying, and in flitting from pleasure to pleasure he knows when he is intensely enjoying. But the Cyrenaic presented no ideal. While the Epicurean theory is more difficult to understand, it is more mature and more profound because it presents a well-conceived ideal. Indeed, the farther we follow Epicurus along this line of his pursuit of the ideal of lasting pleasure, the more are we impressed with his contribution to our knowledge of the nature of pleasure.