Capítulo 31. Chapter XXXI.—Does The Art Of Living Benefit Its Possessor?
[3.31.273] Thus, for instance—to take a few arguments out of many by way of example—the art of living might be thought to benefit the wise man by furnishing him with temperance[573] in his impulses towards good and repulsions from evil.
[3.31.274] He, then, who is termed by them a temperate sage is called temperate either in virtue of his never feeling the impulse towards good or repulsion from evil,[574] or in virtue of his possessing slight impulses in either direction and overcoming them by reason.
[3.31.275] But in respect of his freedom from bad resolutions he will not be self-controlled; for he will not control what he does not possess. And just as one would not call a eunuch temperate in sex- indulgence, or a man with a poor stomach temperate in respect of the pleasures of the table (for they feel no attraction at all towards such things, so that they might rise superior to the attraction through temperance), —in the same way we ought not to term the sage temperate, because he possesses no natural feeling over which he may exercise control.
[3.31.276] And if they shall claim that he is temperate in virtue of his forming bad resolutions but overcoming them by reason, then, firstly, they will be admitting that prudence was of no benefit to him just when he was in a state of perturbation and needed assistance, and, secondly, he is found to be even more unfortunate than those they term bad.[575] For if he feels an impulse towards anything, he is certainly perturbed; while if he overcomes it by reason, he retains the evil, and because of this he is more perturbed than the bad man who no longer experiences this feeling; for the latter,
[3.31.277] though he is perturbed if he is feeling an impulse, yet ceases from his perturbation if he gains his desires.
So, then, the sage does not become temperate in virtue of his prudence; or if he does become so, he is of all men the most miserable, so that the art of living has brought him no benefit but the uttermost perturbation. And we have shown above[576] that the man who believes that he possesses the art of living, and that by means of it he discerns what things are naturally good and what bad, is extremely perturbed both when good things are his and when evil things.
[3.31.278] We must, then, declare that, if there is no agreement as to the existence of things good and bad and indifferent, and the art of living is possibly non- existent, or—if its existence is provisionally admitted —brings no benefit to its possessors but, on the contrary, causes them extreme perturbations, then the Dogmatists would seem to be vainly puffed up in respect of the so-called Ethical division of what they term ‟philosophy.”
[3.31.279] Having now treated of the subject of Ethics also at sufficient length for an account in outline, we conclude at this point our third book, and with it the complete treatise on ‟Pyrrhonean Outlines,” adding only this final section: