The matter is urgent; in the words of an Epicurean saying: We are only born once - twice is not allowed - and it is necessary that we shall be no more, for all eternity; and yet you, who are not master of tomorrow, you keep on putting off your joy? Yet life is vainly consumed in these delays, and each of us dies without ever having known peace. 23
Once again, we find the echo of this idea in Horace: "While we are talking, jealous time has fled. So seize the day [carpe diem], and put no trust in tomorrow." H Horace's carpe diem is by no means, as is often believed, the advice of a sensualist playboy; on the contrary, it is an invitation to conversion. We are invited to become aware of the vanity of our immensely vain desires, at the same time as of the imminence of death, the uniqueness of life, and the uniqueness of the present instant. From this perspective, each instant appears as a marvclom1 gift which fillH itR recipient with grat itude:
"Only the Present is our Happiness "
225
Believe that each new day that dawns will be the last for you: Then each unexpected hour shall come to you as a delightful gift. 25
There is perhaps an echo here of the Epicurean Philodemus: "Receive each additional moment of time in a manner appropriate to its value; as if one were having an incredible stroke of luck." 26
We have already encountered the Epicureans' feelings of gratitude and astonishment, in the context of the miraculous coincidence between the needs of living beings and the facilities provided for them by nature. The secret of Epicurean joy and serenity is to live each instant as if it were the last, but also as if it were the first. We experience the same grateful astonishment when we accept the instant as though it were unexpected, or by greeting it as entirely new: "If the whole world were appear to mortals now, for the first time; if it was suddenly and unexpectedly exposed to their view; what could one think of more marvelous than these things, and which mankind would less have dared to believe?" 27 In the last analysis, the secret of Epicurean joy and serenity is the experience of infinite pleasure provided by the consciousness of existence, even if it be only for a moment. In the words of an Epicurean saying: "The cry of the flesh is: Not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold. Whoever has these things, and hopes to keep on having them, can rival in happiness with Zeus himself." 28 The lack of hunger and thirst is thus the condition for being able to continue to exist, being conscious of existing, and enjoying this consciousness of existing. God has nothing more than this.
It could be objected that God's pleasure consists in his knowledge that he has the happiness of existing forever. Not so, replies Epicurus; for the pleasure of one instant of existence is just as total and complete as a pleasure of infinite duration, and man is just as immortal as God, because death is not a part of life.2'1
In order to show that one single instant of happiness is enough to give such infinite pleasure, the Epicureans practiced telling themselves each day: "I have had all the pleasure I could have expected." In the words of Horace: "He will be master of himself and live joyfully who can say, every day: 'I have lived.' " ·10 Seneca also takes up this Epicurean theme: When we are about to go to sleep, let us say in joyous cheerfulness: "I have lived; I have travelled the route that fortune had assigned to me."
If God should grant us tomorrow as well, let us accept it joyfully. That person is most happy and in tranquil possession of himself who awaits tomorrow without worries.31 Whoever says: "I have lived", gets up every day to receive unexpected riches.32
We c11n Rhm sec here the role played in Epicureanism by the thought of deat h . T11 1111 y , cn•ry c\•cning: "I have lived," is to say "my life is over." It is
226
Themes
to practice the same exercise as that which consists in saying: "Today will be the last day of my life." Yet it is precisely this exercise of becoming aware of life's finitude which reveals the infinite value of the pleasure of existing within the present instant. From the point of view of death, the mere fact of existing
- even if only for a moment - seems to be of infinite value, and gives us pleasure of infinite intensity. Only once we have become aware of the fact that we have already - in one instant of existence - had everything there was to be had, can we say with equanimity: "my life is over."
It is here, moreover, that the cosmic perspective comes into play. The Epicureans had their own particular vision of the universe. As Lucretius put it: thanks to the doctrine of Epicurus, which explained the origin of the universe by the fall of atoms in a void, the walls of the world burst open for the Epicurean: he saw all things come into being within the immense void,33 and traversed the immensity of the all. Alternatively, he exclaims, in the words of Metrodorus: "Remember that, born a mortal, with a limited life-span, you have risen up in soul to eternity and the infinity of things, and that you have seen all that has been and all that shall be." 34 Here again, we encounter the contrast between finite and infinite time.
Within finite time, the sage grasps all that takes place within infinite time, or as Leon Robin puts it in his commentary on Lucretius: "The sage places himself within the immutability of eternal Nature, which is independent of time." 35
Thus, the sage perceives the totality of the cosmos within his consciousness of the fact of existing. Nature gives him everything within an instant, and since she has already given him everything, she has nothing left to give him, as she says in Lucretius' poem: "You must always expect the same things, even though the span of your life should triumph over all the ages; nay, even were you never to die." ·11•
The fundamental attitude that the Stoic must maintain at each instant of his life is one of attention, vigilance, and continuous tension, concentrated upon each and every moment, in order not to miss anything which is contrary to reason. We find an excellent description of this attitude in Marcus Aurelius:
Here is what is enough for you:
1 . the judgment you are bringing to bear at this moment upon reality, as long as it is objective;
2. the action you are carrying out at this moment, as long as it is accomplished in the service of the human community; and 3. the inner disposition in which you find yourself at this moment , as long as it is a disposition of joy in the face of the conjunction of events caused by cx1 rnncom1 cnus11lit y . 11
"Only the Present is our Happiness "
227
Thus, Marcus used to train himself to concentrate upon the present moment; that is, upon what he was thinking, doing, and feeling within the present instant. "This is enough for you," he tells himself, and the expression has a double meaning:
It is enough to keep you busy; you have no need to think about anything else; and
2 It is enough to make you happy; there is no need to seek for anything else.
This is the spiritual exercise Marcus himself calls "delimiting the present." 38