- What do they mean, those who preach that the quest for it is difficult, complicated, and painful and the resultant orgasmic joyousness (in French, jouissance) pleasant? Is it ever unpleasant? What would human beings not do to arrive at this pleasure? The most perfect have been happy to just aspire to this pleasure, to approach it without ever possessing it. Those that warn of the quest are therefore wrong, because even the pursuit of this bliss is pleasurable, because the attempt contains the essence of what it pursues.
Now, one of the greatest benefits that virtue confers upon us is a contempt of death. This contempt allows us a soft and easy tranquility in life, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct. All the rules centre around and agree with this contempt. And although they also teach us to despise pain, poverty, and other accidents to which human life is subject, we do not do so with the same level of concern. These accidents are, after all, not necessarily going to strike us. Many pass through life without knowing what poverty is, and the musician Xenophilius lived to a hundred and six without falling ill. But death is inevitable. And it can strike at any time, cutting short and putting an end to all other inconveniences.
Hor., in the Odyssey, said; ‘We are all bound one voyage; the lot of all, sooner or later, is to come out of the urn. All must to eternal exile sail away.’