Book 2
23
Then being so great a faculty and set over all the rest, let it (the will) come forward and tell us that the most excellent of all things is the flesh. Not even if the flesh itself declared that it is the most excellent, would any person bear that it should say this. But what is it, Epicurus, which pronounces this, which wrote about the End (purpose) of our Being,This appears to be the book which Cicero (Tuscul. iii. 18) entitles on the supreme good (de summo bono), which, as Cicero, says, contains all the doctrine of Epicurus. The book on the Canon or Rule is mentioned by Velleius in Cicero de Nat. Deorum i. c. 16. as that celestial volume of Epicurus on the Rule and Judgment. See also De Fin. i. 19. which wrote on the Nature of Things, which wrote about the Canoa (rule of truth), which led you to wear a beard, which wrote when it was dying that it was spending the last and a happy day?This is said in a letter written by Epicurus, when he was dying in great pain (Diog. Laert. x. 22); Cicen) (De Fin. ii. c. 30) quotes this letter. Was this the flesh or the will? Then do you admit that you possess any thing superior to this (the will)? and are you not mad? are you in fact so blind and deaf?
