Book 1
1
While there are many different things as to which it is not easy to make a right judgement, this is especially the case with one about which everybody thinks that it is very easy to judge and that anybody can decide—the question which of the things contained in being alive is preferable, and which when attained would fully satisfy a man’s desire. For many of life’s events are such that they cause men to throw life away,for instance, diseases, excessive pains, storms; so that it is clear that on account of these things any way it would actually be preferable, if someone offered us the choice, not to be born at all.Cf. Soph. O.C. 1225μὴ φῦναι τὸν ἅπαντα νικᾷ λόγον.
2
And in addition, the kind of life that people live while still children is not desirable—in fact no sensible person could endure to go back to it again.
3
And further, many of the experiences that contain no pleasure nor pain, and also of those that do contain pleasure but pleasure of an ignoble kind, are such that non-existence would be better than being alive.
4
And generally, if one collected together the whole of the things that the whole of mankind do and experience yet do and experience unwillingly, because not for the sake of the things themselves, and if one added an infinite extent of time, these things would not cause a man to choose to be alive rather than not alive.
