Ruia’s pleasure may be harsh nature either hates or flees, but because great pains have come, Nuis blames them or rages pain in the voluptuous wants to flee. For to come to the smallest detail, no one should practice any kind of work unless he derives some benefit from it. Do not be angry with the pain in the reprimand in the pleasure he wants to be a hair from the pain in the hope that there is no breeding. Unless they are blinded by lust, they do not come forth; they are in fault who abandon their duties and soften their hearts, that is, their labors.
But in order that you may see whence all this born error of those who accuse pleasure and praise pain, I will open the whole matter, and explain the very things which were said by that discoverer of truth and, as it were, the architect of a happy life. For no one despises or hates or runs away from pleasure because it is pleasure, but because great pains result to those who do not know how to follow pleasure with reason. Nor, moreover, is there any one who, because he loves pain, pursues it, wants to gain it, but because such times never occur when he seeks some great pleasure through labor and pain. For to come to the smallest detail, which one of us undertakes any physical exercise that is laborious, except in order to derive some benefit from it? But who can justly blame him who wants to be in that pleasure which results in no discomfort, or he who avoids that pain in which no pleasure is produced?