This book seems to be intelligently written from the point of view of a Christian, and in the section on DEFECTS it looks to contain a series of points it would be good to answer --

A List of Objections To Epicurus From A Modern Christian - Hyde's "From Epicurus To Christ"
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Cassius
January 23, 2021 at 8:34 AM Moved the thread from forum Responses to Common Criticisms of Epicureanism to forum Pleasure As The "Highest Good". -
I wanted to include this striking quote from William DeWitt Hyde (From Epicurus To Christ, pgs. 22-24):
"Perhaps we are inclined to look down on Epicurus's ideal as a low one. Well, if it is a low ideal, it is all the more disgraceful to fall below it. And of us do fall below it every day of our tense and restless lives. Let us test ourselves by this ideal, and answer honestly the questions it puts to us.
How many of us are slaving all day and late into the night to add artificial superfluities to the simple necessities? How many of us know how to stop working when it begins to encroach upon our health; and to cut off anxiety and worry altogether? How many of us measure the amount and intensity of our toil by our physical strength; doing what we can do healthfully, cheerfully, joyously, and leaving the rest undone, instead of straining up to the highest notch of nervous tension during early manhood and womanhood, only to break down when the life forces begin to turn against us?
Every man in any position of responsibility and influence has opportunity to do the work of twenty men. How many of us in such circumstances choose the one thing we can do best, and leave the other nineteen for other people to do, or else to remain undone?
How many of us have ever seriously stopped to think where the limit of healthful effort and endurance lies, unless insomnia or dyspepsia or nervous prostration have laid their heavy hands upon us and compelled us to pause? Every breakdown from avoidable causes, every stroke of work we do after the border-land of exhaustion and nervous strain is crossed, is a crime against the teaching of Epicurus."
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I better immediately interject that this book is not by Norman DeWitt but by William DeWitt Hyde -- who so far as I know are not connected at all.
- Now I'll read the rest of the post. Seems like something I should have gotten back to in the five years since I first started the thread.
Update:
YES! Great quote!
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Yes, thank you Cassius. Referring to William DeWitt Hyde as DeWitt is far too confusing. I've corrected my post.
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