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   Copyright 1996, James Fieser (jfieser@utm.edu). See end note for
   details on copyright and editing conventions. Epicurus's "Letter to
   Menoeceus" is preserved in Diogenes Laertius's Lives of Eminent
   Philosophers. The following is from Robert Drew Hicks's 1925
   translation. This is a working draft; please report errors.[1 ]

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           Greeting.

           Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary
           in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too
           early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that
           the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that
           it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for
           happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore,
           both old and young ought to seek wisdom, the former in order
           that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things
           because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order
           that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old,
           because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we
           must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness,
           since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be
           absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.

           Those things which without ceasing I have declared to you,
           those do, and exercise yourself in those, holding them to be
           the elements of right life. First believe that God is a living
           being immortal and happy, according to the notion of a god
           indicated by the common sense of humankind; and so of him
           anything that is at agrees not with about him whatever may
           uphold both his happyness and his immortality. For truly there
           are gods, and knowledge of them is evident; but they are not
           such as the multitude believe, seeing that people do not
           steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them.
           Not the person who denies the gods worshipped by the
           multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude
           believes about them is truly impious. For the utterances of
           the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but
           false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen
           to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good
           from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always
           favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in
           people like to themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not
           of their kind.

           Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for
           good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of
           all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is
           nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by
           adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the
           yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those
           who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in
           ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the person who says
           that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes,
           but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no
           annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in
           the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is
           nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come,
           and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then,
           either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is
           not and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at one
           time people shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at
           another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life.
           The wise person does not deprecate life nor does he fear the
           cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him,
           nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as
           people choose of food not merely and simply the larger
           portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the
           time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is
           longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the
           old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of
           the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at
           once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he
           who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one
           is born to pass with all speed through the gates of Hades. For
           if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life?
           It were easy for him to do so, if once he were firmly
           convinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words are
           foolishness, for those who hear believe him not.

           We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor
           wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as
           quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not
           to come.

           We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others
           are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as
           well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary
           desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the
           body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live.
           He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things
           will direct every preference and aversion toward securing
           health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is
           the sum and end of a happy life. For the end of all our
           actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we