Miscellanies 2.21.130

We must not stop, then, content with these, but must be eager, as far as possible, to set out also what the natural philosophers have taught on the subject. They say that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae said the goal of life is contemplation and the freedom that comes from it; and Heraclitus of Ephesus, contentment. Heraclides of Pontus relates that Pythagoras taught that the knowledge of the perfection of the numbers of the soul is happiness. The Abderites too teach that there is a goal: Democritus, in his On the Goal, cheerfulness, which he also called well-being (and he often adds: “For delight and lack of delight are the boundary … of those past their prime”); Hecataeus, self-sufficiency; Apollodotus of Cyzicus, the delighting of the soul; as Nausiphanes, imperturbability, for he said this was called by Democritus “fearlessness.” Besides these, Diotimus declared the goal to be the complete possession of goods, which he says is called well-being. Again, Antisthenes set it as freedom from vanity; the so-called Annicereans, of the Cyrenaic succession, set no fixed goal for the whole of life, but said that each action has its own goal, the pleasure that results from the action. These Cyrenaics reject Epicurus's definition of pleasure, that is, the removal of pain, calling it the condition of a corpse; for we rejoice, they say, not only in pleasures but also in company and in honors. Epicurus thinks that every joy of the soul arises from a prior experience of the flesh.