If one will scrutinize his life, he will find, according to Epicurus, that his experiences form a stream of mental disturbances. These may be divided into two classes,――desires and positive pleasures. Desires are wants and want is pain. Pain is therefore exciting. Positive pleasure presupposes desire and want, and such pleasure is also an excitement,――the excitement that accompanies the removal of want. The positive pleasures are not, therefore, the goal of independence of the outer world. There is another kind of pleasure――the pleasure of repose. Epicurus recognizes therefore both the pleasure of motion and the pleasure of repose, but they do not have the same importance in his system. Repose is the goal of all our experiences. It is a neutral state, a state of freedom from bodily pain and mental excitement. There is nothing higher than such a neutral state. We cannot advance beyond it. If we seek new pleasures by gratifying new desires, we are only returning to the old round of want, desire, and the pleasurable excitement of removing the want. The pleasure of repose is the only escape from this round of experiences. Emotionlessness is the maximum pleasure――it is the repose in independence of the world. Any deviation from it may vary but it will not increase our pleasure. This ideal of Epicurus looks very much like the Cynic doctrine of absence of wants as constituting virtue and happiness. But Epicurus is far from renouncing pleasure. He is no ascetic. On the contrary, the repose of the Epicurean will be the greater in proportion to the compass of his needs that are satisfied. But he needs insight into any given situation to tell him what positive pleasures should be encouraged. Epicurus thus distinguishes three kinds of wants and their attendant positive pleasures: (1) wants natural and indispensable――without the satisfaction of which we cannot exist; (2) wants artificial and dispensable, which ought always to be disregarded; (3) wants natural and dispensable――the great mass of wants which lie between the two other classes. Insight is necessary to decide about this third class. In case of necessity they can be renounced, but since they give happiness, the Wise Man will seek to satisfy them as far as possible. There are three steps leading to Epicurean happiness: (1) the desire or the pain of unsatisfied craving; (2) the positive pleasure that removes the pain of unsatisfied desire; (3) ataraxia, the repose of the soul or true happiness.