Epicurus specifies *two kinds of pleasure*, that of rest and that of motion. He prefers the former. Action has its reaction; excitement is followed by depression; effort, by weariness; thought for others involves the disturbance of one’s own peace. The gods, according to Epicurus, lead an easy, untroubled life, leave the outward universe to take care of itself, are wholly indifferent to human affairs, and are made ineffably happy by the entire absence of labor, want, and care; and man becomes most godlike and most happy, therefore most virtuous, when he floats through life, unharming and unharmed, idle and useless, self-contained and self-sufficing, simple in his tastes, moderate in his requirements, frugal in his habits. It may be doubted *whether Epicurus denoted by pleasure,*(*18*)* mere physical pleasure alone*. It is certain that his later followers regarded the pleasures of the body as the only good; and Cicero says that Epicurus himself referred all the pleasures of the intellect to the memory of past and the hope of future sensual gratification. Yet there is preserved an extract of a letter from Epicurus, in which he says that his own bodily pains in his years of decrepitude are outweighed by the pleasure derived from the memory of his philosophical labors and discoveries. *Epicureanism numbered among its disciples*, not only *men of approved virtue*, but not a few, like Pliny the Younger, of a more active type of virtue than Epicurus would have deemed consistent with pleasure. But in lapse of time it became the pretext and cover for the grossest sensuality; and the associations which the unlearned reader has with the name are only strengthened by conversance with the literature to which it gave birth. Horace is its poet-laureate; and he was evidently as sincere in his philosophy as he was licentious in his life. There is a certain charm in good faith and honesty, even when on the side of wrong and vice; and it is his perfect frankness, self-complacency, nay, self-praise, in a sensuality which in plain prose would seem by turns vapid and disgusting, that makes Horace even perilously fascinating, so that the guardians of the public morals may well be thankful that for the young the approach to him is warded off by the formidable barriers of grammar and dictionary.