Epicurus, on the contrary, considers intellectual pleasure to be the higher one; for sensual enjoyment, which he believes free to every one, can be experienced only in the present, while intellectual delight extends to both the past and the future.

To the Epicureans the goal of life, as has already been mentioned, is to attain the chief blessings, peace of mind, and freedom from pain.

He is to practise virtue only because it brings him pleasure; for who could remain virtuous without being wise, noble, and just ?--and whoever is all these cannot have his peace of mind disturbed, and must be really happy in the exact meaning of the master.

I perceived long since the peril lurking in this system of instruction, which takes no account of moral excellence; but at that time it seemed to me also the chief good.
"How all this charmed the mind of the thoughtful child, still untouched by passion! It was difficult to supply her wonderfully vigorous intellect with sufficient sustenance, and she really felt that to enrich it was the highest pleasure.

And to her, who could scarcely endure to have a rude hand touch her, though a small grief or trivial disappointment could not be averted, the freedom from pain which the master had named as the first condition for the existence of every pleasure, and termed the chief good, seemed indeed the first condition of a happy life.
"Yet this child, whom my father once compared to a thinking flower, bore without complaint her sad destiny--her father's banishment, her mother's death, her sister Berenike's profligacy.