Key ideas 

1. Virtue and pleasure are two different things. Virtue does not need pleasure to exist. 
2. The highest good is immortal. It never dies. But pleasure dies quickly. So it cannot be the highest good. 
3. All good things come from virtue and, therefore, even the things you value and seek come from its roots. 

Pleasure is not the highest good 

Even the very people who say that the highest good is in the stomach, see what a dishonourable position they have assigned to it. Therefore, they say that pleasure cannot be separated from virtue. But no one can live honourably without living cheerfully or live cheerfully without living honourably. I don’t see how these very different things are connected. 

All good things come from virtue 

Tell me, what is there to prevent virtue existing apart from pleasure? The reason is, of course, that all good things come from virtue and, therefore, even the things you value and seek come from its roots. Yet if pleasure and virtue cannot be separated from each other, we should not see some things to be pleasant but not honourable. Other things, most honourable as they are, can be obtained only through suffering. Consider this fact as well: pleasure can be found in the meanest of lives and yet some unhappy people are not without pleasure. No, they are unhappy because of pleasure. This cannot be the case if pleasure is connected to virtue. However, virtue is often without pleasure, and does not need it. 

Pursuit of pleasure and virtue are incompatible Why do you put two things that are unlike each other, and even incompatible, with each other? 

Virtue is a lofty quality, sublime, royal, unconquerable, untiring. Pleasure is low, slavish, weak and perishable; it visits and lives in brothels and bars. 

You will meet virtue in the temple, the marketplace, the senate house, minding the walls covered with dust, sunburnt and with a horn at hand. You will find pleasure creeping out of sight, seeking shady corners and public baths, hot chambers—places that dread the visits of officials—soft, weak, reeking of liquor and perfumes, pale and perhaps painted and made with cosmetics. 

Pleasure is fleeting 

The highest good is immortal. It knows no ending; it neither regrets nor is satiated. A right-thinking mind never wavers or hates itself. The best things do not change but pleasure dies the very moment it appeals to us the most. It has no range and therefore it soon sickens and tires us and fades away when its first impulse is over. We cannot depend on anything whose nature it is to change. 

Therefore, it is not even possible for something to be solid if it comes and goes so quickly and perishes soon after it has done its job. It ends at some point and even from the beginning it keeps the end in sight. 

Think about this 

All good things come from virtue and, therefore, even the things you value and seek come from its roots. 

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In the SEVENTH chapter of his discourse ON THE HAPPY LIFE, Seneca tells us that, to be happy, we should stop pursuing pleasure, but instead pursue virtue. This is an excerpt from Stoic Happiness, a plain English version of Seneca’s On the Happy Life, published by The Stoic Gym. https://amzn.to/2I0mbVW

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