Good is easily attainable, evil easily endurable.’ The first three of these maxims are fully represented by the poem's moral commentary, but the fourth is curiously absent.
Maybe that would alleviate the problem, although from the perspective of the purest it would make the magickal workings that relied on them doubtful, whether the errors were fixed or not. However, that being said, errors and omissions can’t seem to completely negate the efficacy of the grimoire. It comes down to the fact that nothing is perfect, not even the old grimoires had that distinction. Yet Joseph seems to believe that if a page is missing, a letter transposed or a name misspelled, then somehow the whole operation will produce nothing.
By Birdsall Viault Modern European History (1st Edition) - Jan 16, 1990
The Epicurean fourfold cure ( tetrapharmakos ) read: ‘God holds no fears, death no worries. Good is easily attainable, evil easily endurable.’ The first three of these maxims are fully represented by the poem's moral commentary, but the fourth is curiously absent. How was evil to be endured? Epicurus' recipe for accepting pain with equanimity lay in such strategies as concentrating the mind on past pleasures, and, where the pain was terminally severe, on its imminent eclipse by the painless state of death. Although this recipe has not always impressed Epicurus' modern interpreters, it was widely and admiringly quoted by his ancient followers and sympathizers. It is hard to believe that Lucretius, with his deep understanding of Epicurean ethics, did not plan to rectify its glaring omission from his poem. If he did so plan, the obvious place to incorporate the final maxim of the canon would have been in connection with the frightful sufferings in the great Athenian plague, horrifyingly described in the poem's closing verses.
