Epicureanism

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W. WALLACE

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EPICUREANISM.

CHIEF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHIES.

EPICUREANISM.

BY

WILLIAM WALLACE, M.A.

FELLOW AND TUTOR OP MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD,
I.L.D. ST. ANDREW'S.

PfBI.ISHEI> I'NDER THE DIRECTION OI»

THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION

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CONTENTS,

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION ... Page ( i\

The four chief schools of ancient philosophy,^ ; tb<»
Idealistic sy.-Uems of Plato and Aristotle succeeded by
the Realistic systems of Stoicism and Epicureanism, 8 ;
relation of the Cynics and Cyrenaics to the latter sects,
1 1 ; distinctive characteristics of- the Stoics and
cureans, 15; other philosophic schools, 19; worth of
philosophy in "><» Greco-Roman world, 20.^

CHAPTKR II.

E?ICURUS AND HIS Ar.E

Parentage of Epicurus, 23 ; Samos occupied by
Athenians, 23 ; religious societies, 25 ; Epicurus as
ff<htbost 26; Athens at war with Antipater, 27 ; Epi
curus at Colophon, Mitylene, and I.ampsacus, 28 ;
his teacher Nausiphancs, 29; Pyrrho of Elis, 31;
settlement of Epicurus at Athens, 32 ; Athens under
the Macedonians, 33 ; disturlxxl condition of (Ireece,
34 ; career of Demetrius Polionffes, 36 ; garden of
Epicurus, 4&? fashionable philosophers of the time,
40; ireetTunkers at court, 41 ; siege of Athens by
Demetrius, 44 j health of Epicurus, 45 ; his death,

VI EPICUREANISM.

CHAPTER III.

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD.. ... Page 48

\/

Epicurean mode of life, 45 ; view of human
nature, 5<^j disc'pits of Epii-urr.j, 50; Leontion, 53 ;
position of women in Greece, 54 ; scandals, 56 ;
friendship and humanity of the Epicureans, 58 ; letter
of Epicurus to a little girl, 60 ; fast-days, 60 ; dogma
tic orthodoxy of the sect, 61 ; contributions for mutual
support, 62 ; letters of the brethren, 63 ; testament of
Epicurus, 65 ; his successors, 68 ; Epicurean holidays,
69 ; enthusiasm of his followers, 69.

CHAPTER IV.
DOCUMENTARY SOURCES... ... ... ... 72

Lucretius, 73 ; Diogenes Laertius, 73 ; i'lutarch,
76 ; Cicero, 77 ; style of Epicurus, 78 ; his works.
79 ; the manuscripts of Herculaneum, 80 ; Philodemus,
82.

CHAPTER V.
GENERAL ASPECT OF THE SYSTEM / 85

Popular estimates of Epicureanism, 85 ; its antago
nism to politics, letters, and religion, 86 ; practical
aim, 88/subdivision into canonic and physiology, 89;
principles of evidence, 93.

CHAPTER VI.

THE NATURAL WORLD ... ... ... ... 95

Mechanical explanation of the universe, 95 ; atoms,
97 ; their movements and aggregations, 98 ; pheno-

CONTENTS.

mena of sensibility, 101 ; the soul, 103 ; sense-percep
tion, 104 ; explanation of ghosts and mirages, 106 ;
our mental vision of the gods, 107 ; denial of divine
providence and of immortality, 108 ; rejection of the
supernatural, no; rise of life upon the earth, 114;
origin of language, 115; progress of civilization, 116;
free-will, fate, and chance, 118 ; death and the here
after, 121.

CHAPTER VII.
THK CHIEF GOOD ... ... ... ... 125

Letter of Epicurus to Mcnocceus, 126 ; objections to ™
the Epicurean doctrine, 132; Epicureanism attempts
to explain why we ought to do right, 134 ; Aristotle's
view of pleasure, 136 ; Utilitarianism, 138 ; "ambiguity
of the term pleasure, 140 ; pleasure and pain, 142;
subdivision of the desires, 145 ; negative aspect of
Epicurean pleasure, 145 {_ contrast with Cyrenaicism,
146 ; relation of virtue to pleasure, 155 7~Jusfice, 1 58";
the social compact, i59^~7mHviciua7ism, 160; the right
to ignore the State, 163 ; friendship, 164 ; Epicurean
ideals, 1 66 ; aphorisms, 167.

CHAPTER VIII.
THK ATOMIC THEORY ... ... ... ... 170

Democritus, 170 ; contrast with Aristotle, 171 ;
atoms and the void, 174; scientific postulates of Epi
curus and Democritus, 177 ; considerations in favour
of atomism, 179 ; ancient and modern atomic theories,
181 ; Leibnitz, 184 ; neglect by Epicurus of the con
ception of force, 187 ; question of attributes, 189 ;
extent of the- mechanical explanation of nature, 191.

Vlll

EPICUREANISM.

CHAPTER IX.

COSMOLOGY AND THKOI.OGY r 194

Difference between the astronomical conceptions of
Kpicurus and of Aristotle, 194; Greek astronomy, 196;
celestial phenomena treated as inaccessible to observa
tion, 197 ; denial of divine interference, 200 : God and
the universe, 201 ; the Epicurean theory of the gods,
202 ; criticism of the theory, 207 ; national and per
sonal religion, 209.

CHAPTER X.

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY .

Dislike to formal logic, 212; experience versus
reasoning, 215 ; the genesis of knowledge, senses and
association, 216 ; prolepsis or preconception, 220 ;
aversion to abstract ideas and to mathematics, 222 ;
the imaginative impressions of the mind, 224; tests
of truth, 226; Epicureanism ignores the "I think,"
230 ; Fhilodemus on inductive logic, 232 ; sensation
a mode of motion, 235.

CHAPTER XL

HISTORICAL SKETCH AND CONCLUSION . 239

^/ Influence of Epicurus, 239 ; causes of the popularity
of his system, Z4f^ political corruption of his time,
244 ; persecutionof the Epicureans, 245 ; their alleged
infidelity, 247 ; incident from Lucian, 248 ; Epicurean
ism at Rome, 250^ Amarmius and Lucretius, 251 ;
Cicero in his relations with Epicureanism, 253 ; Phi-
lodemus, 255 ; chairs of philosophy at Athens, 257 ;
the Christian Eathcrs on Epicureanism, 259 ; Epicu
reanism in the Middle Ages and at the Renaissance,
260; Gassendi, 263; modem works on Epicurus,
265 ; Modern Hedonism, 269.

EPICUREANISM,

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

WHEN the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, to
wards the close of the second century of our era,
resolved to give Imperial sanction to the higher
teaching of the Roman world by the state endow
ment of a philosophical professoriate, he found four
schools or sects dividing the public favour and
drawing in their several directions the best thought
of the time. These schools were the school of Plato, .
known as the Academic ; the school of Aristotle, ~ .
known as the Peripatetic ; the school of Zeno, known
as the Stoic ; and the school of Epicurus, known as
the Epicurean. It was not without a cause that the
fourth school continued to be known by the name
of its founder, which it did not exchange like the
others for an epithet drawn from some favourite locality.
To the very close of its career the Epicurean sect
clung reverently and lovingly to the person of the
master, to whom, with one accord, his followers at
tributed their escape from the thraldom of superstition
and of unworthy fears and desires. The member of

2 EPICUREANISM.

another school might assert towards his teachers a
certain impartiality of critical examination. If Plato
and Socrates were dear to the Platonist, truth was
dearer still. But to the Epicurean the belief in
his characteristic doctrines was blended with, and
humanized by, attachment to the memory of the
founder of his creed.

Of the four schools, two were more ancient than
the others. The Academics and the Peripatetics
preceded the Stoics and Epicureans by more than
half a century ; they continued to exist and flourish
long after the younger sects had died away into
silence. But during the four centuries which wit
nessed the rise and spread of Epicurean and Stoical
doctrines, from B.C. 250 to A.D. 150, the two other
,^\ schools were forced into the background, and aban
doned by all but a few professed students. In the
Roman world, the Stoic and Epicurean systems
divided between themselves the suffrages of almost
all who cared to think at all. Plato and Aristotle
were almost unknown, for the two schools which
professed to draw their original inspiration from
these masters had rapidly drifted away from the de
finite doctrine of their leaders. The .doctrine both
i>t' IMato anil nf Aristotle had I'cen of a kind which,
in modem times, we should term Idealism. It had
been sustained by an enthusiasm for knowledge, and
carried on by a great wave of intellectual energy.
Plato and Aristotle gathered the ripe fruit from that
Athenian garden where Pericles, Phidias, and So
phocles had visibly signified the spring-time of

INTRODUCTION. 3

blossom and brightness. Strong in the accumulated
strength of a century of Athenian power and splen
dour, they raised their eyes fearlessly upon the world,
and tried to discover its plan and meaning as the
home of humanity — the humanity which they saw
around them and felt within them. They endea
voured to trace the steps in the long ladder of means
and ends, which, from the analogy of what they saw
in their types of human society, they believed would
also be found in the natural world. They looked
upon everything in nature and in humanity as the <
realization of an idea, as a stage in the unfolding of
a ruling principle. Everything to Plato was the pro
duct of an " idea of the Good " ; everything to Aristotle
was a step in the development of the ends of an in
telligent Nature. To exist, for both of them, meant
to embody or to express an idea, or plan. At the
summit of all things, the principle and centre of the
phenomena of the human and the natural world, was
a creative plan or intellect, always carrying itself forth
into activity, everlastingly productive, and consciously
surveying and embracing its own several manifesta
tions. The question as to the materials employed in
order to carry out these plans, was noticed by these
thinkers only as it served to illustrate the process of
realization. At least, this is the case with Plato to a
large degree, to a less degree with Aristotle.

The point on which both schools originally laid
most stress, next to their fundamental principle, was
an analysis of the order and concatenation of exist
ence as a reasonable and intelligent system. They

B 2

4 EPICUREANISM.

fixed their attention on the connection of one idea
with another, on the relation between one stage in
the complex scheme of actual existence and another.
To bring together and to divide, to see differences
where they are concealed, and to find sameness be
tween things different, to discriminate and connect
kinds and classes, is, according to Plato, the main
work of that discussion or conversation (dialectic)
which is the true art of the philosopher. In other
words, the point towards which his interest is con
verging, as distinct from the fields in which that
interest is operative, is what a later age would de
scribe partly as logic, partly as metaphysic. It is
metaphysic, when the relations and connections under
examination are supposed to be the real underlying
relations in the existent objects of the world. It is
logic, when these relations and connections are re
garded as modes of our thought, the means or me
thods by which we as intelligent beings seek to
comprehend and rationalize the objects of nature and
art. So far as Plato is concerned, it is scarcely pos
sible to say when we are in metaphysic and when we
are in logic. The ideas which are the denizens of a
logical heaven, which are the patterns embodied in
nature, are in his own writings not quite cut off
from the ideas which the mind entertains when it
attains knowledge. But in Aristotle the distinction
between logic (or, as he rails it, Analytic) and
Metaphysics (or, as he terms it, Theology or the
First Philosophy) has been accomplished. The
latter, as well as the former, he in part inherits from

INTRODUCTION. 5

Plato ; but it is in logic that he is most original, and
gives most substantial extension to the philosophic
field. On another side, too, Aristotle carved out a
course of his own. The physical universe had a
double attraction for him. On one hand it pre
sented itself to him under the aspect of a process of
movement, a working-out in time and space of the
same eternal principles and relations of being which
had formed the topic of his metaphysics. Under
this point of view, a somewhat abstract and meta
physical one, he treats existence, in those books
which bear what seems to a modern reader the some
what misleading title of " Physical Lectures." But
there is another side to Aristotle's interest in nature.
In psychology, in natural history, and in his political
studies, he is not merely a great metaphysician : he
is a keen observer, and a laborious collector of facts.
He enumerates, with all detail, the actual phenomena
presented by experience, quite apart from the theoreti
cal relations of the system under which they ought,
from the other point of view, to range themselves.

Thus, in Plato and in Aristotle, there were war
ring tendencies. In Plato there is, on the one hand,
the political and practical instinct which makes him
a moral or educational reformer, and, on the other
hand, the logical, or, to keep his own larger word,
dialectical interest which impels him to criticise and
to analyze, and to say that, " the life to which cri
ticism is denied is no life for man."1 In Aristotle,

1'latu, Apologia, 31 A.

6 EPICUREANISM.

again, we see a constant wrestling of spirit between
the ideal and metaphysical bent which is at home in the
abstract forms of being, and the realistic sense which
notices every detail in the operations of the rational
mind and in the phenomena of animate nature, so
as to assign to all minutiae, even to the most de
graded animals,1 their place in the ample collection
of instances.

The two schools which inherited the Academy of
Plato and the Peripatos of Aristotle did not in
either case carry off more than a fragment of their
master's mantle. The Academic sect came more
and more to give the reins to the critical, logical ten
dencies, which, in Plato himself, had been subordi
nated to his deep sense of the surpassing value of
ethical ideas and the moral life. With the New Aca
demy, as it is termed, the school of Arcesilaus and
Carneades, every dogmatic tinge in the teaching had
paled before the predominance of sceptical and criti
cal polemic against other doctrines. The New Aca
demy, inspired by the influence of its contemporary
Pyrrho, the great sceptical philosopher of the ancient
world, became the main arsenal where were forged
the weapons of a universal destructive criticism.
Such, in a mild form, was the attitude from which,
for example, Cicero dealt with the dogmas of philo
sophy. It was the spirit which denies, the reason
which rends in pieces its own constructions, that pre
vailed in the Academic school.

1 Arbtotle, De Partibus Animalium, I. 5

INTRODUCTION. 7

The case was a little different with the Peripatetic
school which immediately succeeded Aristotle. If
Plato was not an Academic or Platonist, no more
was Aristotle a Peripatetic. His immediate followers,
Theophrastus and Strato of Lampsacus, soon left the
metaphysical idealism of their master. The great
principle of a cosmic reason, an intellectual deity at
the head of all existence, was abandoned and neg
lected. The logical and the physical departments
were made the predominant feature in the tradition of
the school, and gradually usurped the place of meta
physical inquiries. The speculative, transcendental
element in Aristotle was eliminated, and nothing left
but " positive " science. Aristotclianism was thus like
a cask which had its bottom knocked out : it col
lapsed into fragments. Strato of Lampsacus spoke
no more of Clod, but only of nature, and practically
set aside the distinction which Aristotle had drawn
between the reason and the senses. In the next
generation, Aristotelianism sank into greater stagna
tion ; it became more positive and less philosophi
cal ; it passed into scholasticism, and put learning in
the place of wisdom and research.

A day, indeed, came when both Platonism and
Aristotelianism entered on a new phase. In the
early centuries of our era the writings of the two
philosophers were made a text for philological study :
they were interpreted, annotated, reconciled, and
systematized by the commentators of the first six
centuries, from Andronicus to Simplicius. But for
our immediate purpose it is sufficient to remember

8 EPICUREANISM.

that in the generation which succeeded Aristotle the
Academic and Peripatetic schools no longer repre
sented the mind of their founders. They became more
and more exclusively intellectual, logical, and formal :
the philosophers degenerated into professors and
schoolmen. For the most part they taught some
thing of logic and rhetoric. And the inability of the
followers to sustain the idealism of their first chiefs
led to a growth of sceptical and critical intellect
Philosophy ceased to be the serious enterprise which
Socrates had made it. It was no longer the arbiter
of life and conduct — something than which, as Plato
says " no greater good came or will come to mortal
race by the gift of the gods." It was now only a
preliminary training which communicated the art of
reasoning and the abstract principles of morals and
legislation. It had become then indeed, what it has
mainly become at the present day, a recognised part
of the university curriculum, and nothing more.

The great schools of Plato and Aristotle had in
the hands of their successors declared themselves
bankrupt. Idealism had apparently proved a failure.
One by one the great ideal principles had been sur
rendered. Aristotle had attacked the transcenden
talism of Plato : he was himself superseded by a
more realistic doctrine ; and in the period of general
scepticism which set in like a flood the only thing
that seemed worth cultivating was the little gram
matical, philological or physiological knowledge that
had been at that period collected. Amid the general
dissatisfaction with the results to which thought,

INTRODUCTION. 9

rising into the empyrean and tracing from an ideal
standpoint the plan of the world, had led its adherents,
there was in the air a desire for a new doctrine, a new
moral panacea. This time the doctrine must be
realist. If the old schools had been spiritualistic,
the new doctrine must be materialistic. If the old
schools had made thought and ideas all in all, the
sole true existence, the new school must admit the
existence of nothing which was not corporeal. Instead
of reason, the new school must base everything on
sensation. The old schools of Plato and Aristotle
had gone boldly to work, confident in the strength of
thought. The new schools must justify their starting-
point, and prove their foundation in the presence of
a strong hostile force of sceptics.

The circumstances of Greece, too, had changed*}
greatly since Plato and Aristotle wrote. A period of
petty republics, of a more or less aristocratic charac
ter, had been succeeded, since the conquest of central
and southern Greece by the Macedonians, by a period
of fusion and of confusion. The monarchical prin
ciple, which had established itself at the summit of
the State, had not yet been able to organize itself in
the details and connect itself with constitutional life.
The city was not, as it had been in Plato's time, its —
own sovereign : its affairs were subject to the will of
some foreign king, himself but insecurely seated on
his throne, and acting more often as an instigation to
evil-doing than as a hope to those who did well. The
glory and charm of the old Greek political life in the
service of those who were almost personal acquaint-

10 EPICUREANISM.

ances had passed away. Political life in the Macedo
nian epoch was only possible either for those who had
the courage to adopt and foster the wishes of their com
patriots to regain their freedom, or for those who could
dare the mistrust and enmity of their fellow-citizens by
acting as the ministers of an alien despot. The first
course was dangerous, and often unwise : the second
was generally ignoble. All that was left for those who
were neither disposed to suffer martyrdom as patriots,
nor to court princely favours by a knavish submission,
was to take part in the farce, as it had now become,
of municipal government. But to undertake such a
post might be performed as a duty : it could not, and
must not, be sought as an honour.

The distance between the age of Plato and the
age of Zeno and Epicurus, the founders of the two
new sects which supplanted their predecessors, may
be illustrated by the character of the comic plays,
which found favour with cither. The comedy ot
Aristophanes has for its scene the main resorts of the
public political life of its time. It is a caricature
of public men and public measures. Athens, with
its foreign relations and its domestic politics, is the
topic which reappears in a hundred shapes and drags
into its compass even the inmates of the women's
chamber and the characters and ideas of the public
thinkers. In the new comedy of Menander and
Philemon, public life is unknown. It is the family
and the social aspects of life which are the perpetual
theme. Instead of generals and statesmen, dema
gogues and revolutionaries, the new comedy presents

INTRODUCTION. II

a recurring story of young men's love affairs, and old
men's economies, of swaggering captains and wily
valets-de-chambre, hangers-on at rich men's tables
and young women working mischief by their charms.
The whole comedy turns on one aspect of domestic
life — it is full of embroiling engagements between
lovers, and brings the cook and the dinner-table
prominently on the stage.

In such a set of circumstances rose the systems of
Stoicism and Epicureanism. Like all systems they
were the products of their age, but not merely a
product. They summed up and drew out the con.
elusions to which the past had furnished them with
the premises ; but by the very act of formulating the
result, they gave it greater consistency and power.
They helped men to see the ideals of life, which their
circumstances were leading them, hesitatingly and
imperfectly, to adopt.

Already in the lifetime of Plato other disciples of
Socrates had learned a different lesson from their
common teacher. The self-reliant spirit of criticism
and the independence of conventionality which
marked Socrates had touched them more than his
interest in all that was Athenian and his love for
knowledge. Whilst to Plato and Aristotle the highest
knowledge had been valued solely for its own sake
and not as a means to any further end, to the thinkers
of whom we now speak knowledge seemed worthy to
be prosecuted only so far as it tended to produce a
clear self-centred judgment, and to give some principle
for the regulation of personal conduct. Those thinkers

12 EPICUREANISM.

belong to two kinds. At the head of the one stood
Antisthenes, the founder of a sect which came to be
called Cynical, and of which the most noted member
was Diogenes. At the head of the other stood Aris
tippus of Gyrene, from whom his followers have been
called Cyrenaics.

i The foremost characteristic of these schools is their
/ hostility to all conventions. They were outrageous
realists. They disregarded and despised the follies
of those who allowed themselves to be enthralled by
the bands of opinion, of custom, fashion and con
ventional decorum. Aristippus was a man of the
world, who shrank from the bonds of political life.
He told Socrates that he was, and meant to be, a
stranger everywhere,1 free as the bird from all the
burdens and privileges of citizenship, making himself
everywhere at home, bound by no ties and no associa
tions, enjoying each scene of life as it came with no
thought of other times, and with butterfly-like light
ness flitting to-morrow to other scenes and new
delights. A life of pleasant and varied excitements,
untroubled by any checks from fashion, morality or
^ religion, was the ideal of Aristippus. He let others
keep the political life going, and came in as occasion
suited to enjoy the fruits of their labours. Antisthenes
and Diogenes could scarcely be more cynical than
Aristippus, but they showed their cynicism in another
way. They, too, claimed independence as the chief
good. But while Aristippus was a man of substance,

1 Xcnophon, Memorabilia, 1 1. I, 13.

INTRODUCTION. 13

they had no fortune or social position to fall back
upon. Antisthenes was a poor man, who earned a
living by teaching rhetoric. Of Diogenes and his
tub everybody has heard. These men sought inde
pendence in renunciation and asceticism. Let a man
learn how little he really needs, tHey said, and he will
soon be master of his own welfare and superior to
the caprices of fortune. What Aristippus with his
buoyancy and versatility obtained in a round of
pleasures, the Cynics sought in self-denial and the
practice of endurance. Like Aristippus, they were
indifferent to country : they professed themselves
citizens of the world.

During the times of Plato and Aristotle, doctrines
like these were only in opposition, and even as an
opposition they made but a slight figure. They were
mainly a practical protest against the dominant ten
dency to sacrifice the individual to the community. \
They had and could have but little in the way of
systematic doctrine. They live in the pages of the
history of philosophy by the repartees of which the
anecdotes about them are full. As is natural with
those who protest against the exaggeration of a prin
ciple, they took up an exaggerated attitude themselves.
Very soon the Cyrenaics found that a round of
pleasures was likely to contradict its professed aim, *
and one of them Hegesias, swung round so far as to
declare happiness impossible, and to suggest the
desirability of death. As for the Cynics, they could
never know where to stop in their asceticism : and
were rightly reminded that so long as they failed to

14 EPICUREANISM.

throw off their cloak and imitate the naked sages of
India, they might be charged with luxurious habits.

It was different when Stoicism and Epicureanism
appeared. What had previously been the protest
emphatically acted by a few, had now by the force of
circumstances become the general position and drift
of the world. A country to live and die for, — to be
the scene and the reward of one's highest aspirations
and best labours, — hardly existed for any one. More
and more the old separations between cities were
breaking down and the old jealousies were fading
away. Athens had admitted many aliens within her
walls. From Syria and Phoenicia, from Tarsus and
Berytus, came strangers who soon made themselves
at home. The successors of Alexander, by their
changing alliances and continual wars, waged largely
around Greece, the carcass over which these vultures
hovered, introduced a kind of loose unity among the
peoples on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
The Hellenistic period began.

In these circumstances Zeno and Epicurus about
the year 300 B.C. founded at Athens two new systems
of philosophy. Almost from the beginning they were
in opposition to each other, and the intensity of their
opposition did not diminish during the five or six
centuries while they subsisted side by side. But in
certain important points in opposition to the doctrine
of Plato and Aristotle they were at one. ' Both of
them practically ignored the State, and struck away
whatever influences interposed between the individual
man and the ultimate springs of human actions.

INTRODUCTION. 15

Both dealt with man solely as an individual, who
can, if he thinks it desirable, make terms with society,
but who has a prior and natural right to live and
progress for himself. To the perfection or the hap
piness of the individual everything was made subordi
nate. A man's sole duties were, according to their <
view, towards himself.

In pronouncing this decision, they carried to its
further result that separation between the life of
political or public activity and the life of studious
search after truth, and that decided depreciation of
the former which both Plato and Aristotle had some
times suggested and sometimes expressed. But when
they went further in this direction, and made the
search for truth only a means to secure freedom from
fears and passions, they presented a marked contrast
to their predecessors. With the Stoics and Epicu^
reans ethics is the end and goal, and an ethic moreover
which looks only to the interests of the individual.,'
To Plato and Aristotle morality was the elementary^
basis for a reasonable life, — the presupposition on
which a man was to raise a superstructure of science, "^
and work for the welfare of his community and of
the human kind. Such is the conception, for example,
embodied in Plato's " Republic." But to the Stoics and
Epicureans the main question was how each was to ,
save his own soul, to secure his own independence
and serenity, and to live his own life well and happily.

The Stoics and Epicureans addressed themselves
to the human being who, whatever may be his associa
tions, is still at the root of his nature alone. They

[6 EPICUREANIS\f.

treated him as something which is an end in itself,
not as a mere fragment of society. Like Christianity,
they spoke to the human soul, stripped of most of
its national and social disguises. They appealed
to a wider public, and a more generically human
interest than Plato or Aristotle. They spoke to the
man, and not merely to the citizen, — to the common
man, and not merely to the scholar, — to the whole
man, and not merely to the reason. It was of these
schools that Lord Bacon spoke when he said that the
I moral philosophy of the heathen world was a sort of
uheology to it. They really covered the same ground,
at least in part, which is now taken up by religion.

Both of them are in the main ethical systems, if by
ethics we mean an attempt to discover what is the
chief end of man, and how it can be attained. To
that everything else was subordinated. It is in these
schools, especially in the Stoic, that we first come upon
the division of philosophy, afterwards so general, into
three parts, an ethical, logical, and physical theory.
.'The physical and the logical are for the sake of the
jethical. And it is in these points that they especially
differ from the Cyrenaic and Cynic schools. They
proceed more systematically, and lay their foundations
deeper. They do not scorn, especially the Stoics, to
• take a leaf out of the note-books of Plato and Aris
totle. The Epicureans were all for practice, and
opponents frequently derided them as illiterate and
illo{£cal. The Stoics, on the contrary, were pertina
cious and somewhat pedantic logicians, to whom the
scholastics really owed many of those logical sub-

INTRODUCTION. 17

tleties which are commonly by mistake attributed to I
Aristotle. But in whatever way they sought it, the
aim which both Stoic and Epicurean had in view in
their logic was to reach certainty and reality. The
question of the criterion, or how we can know whether
our thoughts bring us to real existence or no, is a
fundamental problem with them. And combined
with this is a conviction common to both, that the
real is the material, corporeal, — what is touched and

These three points, — their individualism in morals^
^ their subordination of all science to an ethical end.
j and their materialistic realism, — are perhaps the three
points most conspicuously common to the two schools.
When we look at their differences, we find that the
Stoics were less opposed than their rivals to the general
character of philosophic tradition and to the currents
of public opinion. In fact, between the three schools
of Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, on the one hand, and
Epicureanism on the other, there was a considerable
interval. The three former had more of a scholastic >
land philosophical culture, and were more suitable •*><"
/ instruments for training young pupils. The fourth
i>< hool appealed to maturer but less educated cha- '
r.u ters.

The Stoics, on the whole, supported the interests of i--
the existing religious and social order. They held
that a man ought, save in peculiar circumstances, to
take an active part in public life and to found a family
in the commonwealth. The saving clause, of course,
m.iy admit of a very wide interpretation. The
c

1 8 EPICUREANISM.

majority of the school, too, tried to give a rationalized
explanation of the popular mythology, and thus to
^justify the religious creed of their country.1 They
accommodated themselves in these points to circum
stances ; but the perfect Stoic, or as he was still called,
the Cynic, the ideal saint of the Stoical writers, rejected
these modifications, and gave his whole life to preach
and practise righteousness. Other characteristics of
the Stoics lay in the conception of duty and obligation,
which, at least among the Roman Stoics, came promi
nently forward amongst their minor morals ; in the
doctrine of man's dependence on the general order
of the universe, — a doctrine which tended to inculcate
a fatalistic Quietism, had it not been counteracted by
the energetic self-consciousness encouraged by the
Stoical doctrine from another side, — in the absolute
distinction set between the wise and the foolish as
two diametrically opposite categories of man, — and,
above all, in the reference of all the training and
ideals of the Stoic to action, performance of function,
doing the duties of that situation in life where
providence had placed him.

The Epicureans stood aloof from practice to a far
greater extent than the Stoics. The end of their
system looked to life, and not to business : the end of
their wisdom was to enjoy life. They did not profess,
like the Stoics, that their wise man was capable of
doing well any of the innumerable vocations in life

1 Panaetius, the Roman Stoic, is an example of the "radical "
wing of the Stoic school, which held a different attitude on these
and other points.

INTRODUCTION 19

which he might choose to adopt. They claimed that
he would live like a god amongst men and conquer
mortality by his enjoyment at every instant of an im
mortal blessedness. While the Stoic represented man i
as the creature and subject of divinity, the Epicurean 1
taught him that he was his own master. While the
Stoic rationalized the mythology of their country into
a crude and fragmentary attempt at theology, the
Epicurean rejected all the legends of the gods and
denied the deity any part in regulating the affairs of
men. Both agreed in founding ethics on a natural
as opposed to a political basis. But they differed in
their application of the term nature. To the Stoic it
meant the instinct of self-conservation — the main
tenance of our being in its entirety,— acting up to our
duty. To the Epicurean it meant having full possession
of our own selves, enjoying to the full all that the
conditions of human life permit.

These were the main schools of ancient philosophy.
But there were other schools, or at least other names
of philosophical opinion, current in the early days of
the Roman Empire. One of these, and the longest-
lived of all, was Pythagoreanism. Like Epicureanism,
it had a semi-religious character ; it clung to the name
of its founder, and maintained a long tradition. But
it was very unlike the latter in the poetical and fan
tastic character of its doctrine, in its proneness to
superstition. About the first century after Christ it
was brought into renewed fame by the alleged miracles
and superhuman wisdom of Apollonius of Tyana,
and from that time onwards it continued to exert a

C 2

20 EPICUREANISM.

great, if a not very beneficial influence on the pro
gress of ancient philosophy and religion. Lastly,
there were a few Sceptics, those nomads of the philo
sophical world,1 who disdain all persistent culture of
the soil, and hover round the hosts of dogmatic
thinkers, seeking to cut off their squadrons in detail
by the manoeuvres of a minute and captious criticism.
Let it be remembered in all cases that to the
ancients philosophy was no trifling, merely intellectual
pursuit. " Philosophy," says Seneca,2 " is not a theory
for popular acceptance, and aiming at display. It is
not in words, but in deeds. Its vocation is not to
help us to spend time agreeably, or to remove ennui
from our leisure : it moulds and fashions the mind,
sets an order in life, directs our actions, points out
what ought to be done and to be left undone ; it sits
at the helm and guides the course when the voyager
is perplexed by dangers on either hand. Without it
none can live undauntedly, none securely : every
hour there occur countless things which call for
counsel, and counsel can only be found in philosophy.
Some one will say : ' What good can philosophy do
me, if fatalism be true ? What good can philosophy
do me, if God directs the world ? What does it avail,
if chance is in chief command ? For what is fated
cannot be changed, and against uncertainties no
preparation is possible. Either God has anticipated
my purposed plan and settled what I am to do, or

1 The phrase is from Kant, Crit. of Pure Reason.

2 Seneca, Epist. Moral. , II. 4 (Ep. 16).

INTRODUCTION. 21

chance leaves my plan no room.' Be each of these,
or all of them together, true, I reply, philosophy is
our duty : whether destiny constrains by an inexorable
law, or God is judge of the universe and settles its
order, or chance irregularly impels and confounds the
affairs of man, philosophy ought to be our safeguard.
It will encourage us to obey God willingly, to obey
fortune without yielding ; it will teach to follow God,
to put up with chance."

22 EPICUREANISM

CHAPTER II.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE.

THE founders of the Stoic and Epicurean sects were
contemporaries. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was
a native of the town of Citium, in Cyprus, and was
born about the year 359 B.C. He died in 267, at
the ripe age of ninety-two. Epicurus was born in
341 B.C., seven years after the death of Plato, and
almost twenty years before the death of Aristotle.
He died in 270 B.C., "at the age of seventy-one.
For more than thirty years Zeno and Epicurus were
fellow-citizens of Athens, during the period of their
manhood and old age. And yet their paths never
met, they moved in different orbits. The founder of
the Stoic school was a public and popular character.
The King of Macedon looked up to him as to a master
and a conscience, and the people of Athens not merely
evidenced their faith in him by putting the keys of
their city into his veteran hands, but publicly decreed
him the honours of a golden crown and a national
entombment, in consideration of the character of his
life and teaching. Very different was the lot of
Epicurus. He and his friends lived in quiet, unosten-
_ tatious privacy. They were barely heard of by the
mass of their contemporaries. Kings and common-

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 23

wealths belonged to another order of things, removed
from their interests and sympathies.

Along the cool sequesterM vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Epicurus was the son of Neocles and Chrerestrata.
The name of his father, being the same as that of
the father of the great statesman Themistocles, sug- 1
gested a couplet of the poet Menander where he '
contrasts the son of Neocles who freed his country j
from slavery, with him who freed it from foolishness. I
The precise spot where Epicurus was born it is impos-i
sible with complete certainty to determine. He was
an Athenian, and belonged in particular to the little
village or demos of Gargettos, about seven miles north
east of Athens. But it is most probable that he first
saw the light in the island of Samos. In the year
365, twenty-four years before the birth of Epicurus,
the Athenian general Timotheus had attacked Samos,
which was then hostile to Athens and acting in the
interests of the Persians. After the conquest of the
island, several of the natives who belonged to the
hostile party were expelled by the general, and their
lands were assigned to Athenian colonists,1 who, it
appears, gradually encroached upon their neighbours,
till there was scarcely one of the original landholders
left. Among the Athenians who sought to better
their fortune in Samos were the parents of Epicurus.
For Athens had lost the commercial and maritime
supremacy in the Levant, for which she had struggled

1 Diotlorus Siculus, XVIII. 8, 7; Strabo, XIV. I, 18.

24 EPICUREANISM.

a century before in the Peloponnesian war, and still
more recently in the year 378. By the middle of the
fourth century, B.C. 355, she was forced to surrender
her claims to the mastery of the seas. The island of
Rhodes on the south-east, and the town of Byzan
tium to the north-east of the ^gean Sea, became the
main seats of commercial activity.

There was great depression both in the public and
private finances of Athens, and the opportunity of
finding relief in a colony was too tempting to be
resisted. Neocles, the father of Epicurus, was one of
two thousand Athenians who hoped to find an allot
ment of land in the island of Samos, — a beautiful
and fertile region of about thirty miles in length and
of an average breadth of eight miles. By profession,
Neocles is said to have been a schoolmaster : at any
rate, he kept an elementary school,— a business which
then, as now, seems to have been one of the last
shifts of impecuniosity in a new settlement. The family
evidently was not in a brilliant position. According
to the gossip of a later day, the youthful Epicurus
was his father's assistant in the school, and helped
to prepare the ink for the use of the pupils. But if
the function of elementary teacher was attributed to
the father, even less creditable was the vocation
assigned by rumour to the mother of Epicurus. She
was a minister in the service of foreign superstitions,
of a church or chapel unauthorized by public or
national establishment. Regarded half as a witch or
sorceress, and half as a deaconess in a dubious con
venticle of low and probably superstitious worshippers,

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 25

she was no doubt scarcely a creditable parent in the
eyes of the world. And at these rites, too, Epicurus
was present as a boy helping his mother.1

It is very likely that these stories — reminding the
classical student of the picture drawn of the youth
of an Athenian orator by a rival contemporary who
sought to blast his fame — are complete fabrications.
The friends of Epicurus on the other hand, laid
some stress on his descent from the Philaicke, the
family from which Pericles too had sprung. Both
statements may have some truth in them. If oncj ,
stops at the right place in genealogy, a creditable 3
ancestry is always obtainable. And, on the other
hand, it is not inconceivable that even in boyhood
Epicurus was placed in antagonism to the dominant
aristocracy of his time, no less in his religious asso
ciations than in his social circumstances. We
know enough of Greek history in this period to be
aware that the national gods had formidable rivals in
a number of foreign deities, mainly of Oriental origin.
In the port of Athens, in Rhodes, and other com
mercial centres, the existence of religious societies is
revealed to us by the monumental stones which pre
serve the record of their constitution, the duties of
their members, and scattered incidents in their
history.- Very probably these were haunts of super
stition ; but they were also guilds and brotherhoods
of religion, with a domestic and social, no less than

1 Diogenes Lacrtius, x. 2-4.

* Foucart, Lts Assotiations Keligieusts chez Us Grecs.
Paris, 1873.

26 EPICUREANISM.

an ^ecclesiastical character, and by their means the
stranger, the outcast, and the poor found compensa
tion for their exclusion from civic ceremonial and
festivity in these small chapels and jnoje limited con
gregations, where they had a temple-worship jmd a
litany of their own. Epicurus from his birth was
outside the pale within which national idiosyncrasy
and political pride confined their religious and their
moral standards.

In his eighteenth year he went to Athens to take
his place amongst his countrymen. At that period
of his life every young Athenian presented himself
before the members of his demos or parish, and after
an examination, which in older days had been
intended to test the qualifications of the candidate
to sustain his post in the national army, but was
probably now little more than a form, he was " con
firmed " as an aspirant citizen. On that occasion he
took what was called the oath of the Ephebi to be
true to the service and interests of his fatherland.1
When Epicurus in this way was enrolled as a mem
ber of the Athenian State-and-Church, — confirmed, as
it were, as a citizen, — one of his comrades in the rite
of initiation, and one almost to be styled his college-
friend, was the great poet of the New Comedy,
Menander. In later days the period of novitiate
between the eighteenth and the twentieth year was
a time when the young Ephebi enjoyed the privileges
and submitted to the restraints of a sort of student

Pollux, vin. 105.

FPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 27

and college life. But it was probably not as yet
customary to give to the period of opening manhood
a training so predominantly intellectual as it came to
be in the early centuries of our era.1 And, at any
rate, the times were evil. In 323 B.C., when the
news of Alexander^thc Greats death 'was wafted jo
"TTfecce, the Athenians, in the restless spirit which often
had led them to ulury, took up arms to recover their
"own mclepcmlenre and to liberate Greece from
^ ^Macedonian rule. The troops which Alexander had

1 disbanded on the completion of the conquest of
Persia had gathered in great numbers at Taenarum,

v in the south of the Peloponnesus ; and the money
which Harpalus, a runaway viceroy of Alexander's,
had brought to Athens, easily enabled the Athenians
to equip from these warriors, impatient for employ
ment, a force sufficient for the moment to paralyze
Antipater, who held Macedonia in the interest of the
" kings,'' the sons of Alexander the Great. But in
no long time Antipater, whom the vigorous outburst
of the war had shut up in the town of Lamia, in the
south of Thessaly, was able to resume the offensive
with his reinforcements; and in the year 322 B.C.,
the seaport-heights of Munychia and the Piraeus, the
harbour-forts of Athens, were garrisoned by Mace
donian troops.

Nor was this all. The regent of the Empire and
administrator of the young princes, acting on the

1 Capes, University Life in Ancient Athens, Lond. 1877 ;
Dumont (A.), Essai mr fEphebie Attiqne, 2 tomes, Paris,
1876.

a8 EPICUREANISM.

advice of Antipater, determined to break the insur
rectionary spirit of the Athenian democracy. The
civic franchise was restricted to those who had
property to the amount of at least two thousand
drachmae : and it was openly suggested to the poor
disfranchised Athenians that it might be well for
them to seek their fortune in the towns lately founded
by Macedonian kings on the coast of Thrace. More
than half of the existing citizens seem to have been
thus exiled. And Athens, restored to only a com
munal or municipal independence, was left in the
control of the propertied and aristocratic classes, who
loved peace and so were well content with the
supremacy of Macedon. But Perdiccas, the admini
strator of the young princes, and Antipater went
further. They restored Samos from the possession of
Athens to its old proprietors, who had been banished
from their native island more than forty years : and
the Athenian settlers were forced to quit the ground
they had usurped, and seek a refuge on other shores.1
Neocles and his family — for Epicurus had at least
three brothers — went from Samos to the neighbouring
coast of Asia Minor. They seem to have found some
difficulty in fixing on a home. Colophon and Teos
are two places mentioned as their abodes :2 the former
is said to have been the spot where Epicurus found
his father on his return from Athens. Colophon not
long before was the home of a lyric poet of some note,

DioUorus Siculus, xvm. 18; Plutarch, Phocion, 28.
Strabo, XIV. I, 1 8 ; Diogenes Laert., x. i.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. *9

Hermesianax, who gave to three books of his odes the
name of Leontion, his lady-love : a name which will
aftenvards recur in the history of Epicurus. Whether
the lady of Hermesianax was also the lady of Epicurus
is one of those questions which are apparently un
answerable, and probably for that reason excite the
curiosity of a leisured fancy and afford ample ground
for the grave disquisitions of philologists. Nor do we
know how long Epicurus stayed in Colophon or Teos.
At any rate, we know that about his thirtieth year he
was temporarily settled at Mitylene, in the island of
Lesbos. And it was at Mitylene that he first came
forward as a recognised philosopher.

Of his apprenticeship to philosophy we have but
scanty hints. It was told by his friends that the
future philosopher had betrayed himself even in his
schoolboy days. As he read the uTheogony " of Hesiod
with his tutor, he stumbled at the line which told how
the origin of all things was from chaos. " But what/'
asked the young Epicurus, "was the origin of chaos ?"
The teacher, who did not profess anything beyond
grammar, naturally declined to solve the difficulty,
and recommended Epicurus, it is said, to consult the
professors of philosophy.1 His chief teachers in that
department are said to have been Nausiphanes, a
Democritean of Teos, and Pamphilus, a Platonist of
Samos.2

Of Nausiphanes, fortunately, we have some slight

1 Sextos Empiricus, Adv. Malh.t x. 19.
* Diogenes Laeilius, x. 8 (14).

30 EPICUREANISM.

record. He seems to have taught at Teos, a place
which on the collapse of the Ionic revolt (about 494
B.C.) had been brought into very intimate relations
with AJbdera, the native city of the philosopher Demo-
critus, the founder of the Atomic School. But
Nausiphanes, though styled a Democritean, had had
for his immediate master a man rather different from
Democritus.1 This was Pyrrho of Elis, the noted
Sceptic of antiquity. But it is somewhat misleading
j to term him a sceptic, in the modern sense of that
( term. He had seen the revolutions of Greek philo
sophy from Plato and Aristotle to their followers ; he
had at companied the army of Alexander the Great to
India, and had learned the falsity of much in dog
matic philosophy, and the uncertainty of much that
seems fixed in morals. The lesson taught by Pyrrho
intellectually was suspension_ofjudgment ; morally, it
was imperturbability. " Whoever desires to attain true
happiness, must," said Pyrrho, "find an answer to the
< three following questions.2 What is the constitution
\ of things ? WThat ought to be our attitude towards
/ them ? And, lastly, WThat will be the consequence to
\those who adopt this right attitude ? " The first ques
tion we cannot answer, and therefore in the second
place we must simply reserve our judgment and
refuse to fix anything absolutely. We can only say :
'Probably,' and 'It seems so.' In this way we
attain an undisturbed repose of mind. Such a scep-

1 Diogenes Laertius, ix. n, 7.

1 Eusebius, Prejxir. Evangel., XIV. 18, I.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 31

ticism, if it checks curious questioning, does not dis
turb our practical life : we can continue to act, though
we act only according to probabilities.

Pyrrho himself wrote nothing, and those who were
curious to know something of the doctrines of one
whose fame was widely spread had to seek their in
formation from his pupils. Such were Timon and
Nausiphanes : and the latter used to relate in later
years how Epicurus had again and again questioned
him about the habits and tenets of the great sceptic.1
But Epicurus could hardly have been in the ordinary
sense a pupil of Nausiphanes ; he must indeed have
been rather older than his alleged master. Nausi
phanes, however, it seems, claimed him as a disciple,
much to the annoyance of Epicurus, who acknow
ledges that he did occasionally drop into the lecture-
room of the " Mollusc " as he calls him, and found
him expounding his doctrines to a few bibulous lads.
And from all that one can learn about Epicurus, it is
plain that he could not have been much of any man's>»*
pupil. He claims that he was self-taught ; and that
was in the largest sense true. That the contemporary
philosophy did not influence him, it would be absurd
to maintain ; but his acquaintance with it was evi
dently confined to the main doctrines, in which it was
popularly recognised. Where he did read was in the
now perished writings of the philosophers anterior to
Plato and Aristotle ; for these last, in the main, he
simply ignored. From Democritus he directly or in- -

1 Diogenes Lacrtius, ix. II, 4 (64). Cf. Sext. Emp., p. $99
(ed. Ik-kker).

32 EPICUREANISM.

directly gained his physical theories ; and a good
authority informs us that his favourite philosophers
were two of these pre-Socratic speculators, Anaxagoras,
and Archelaus, the so-called teacher of Socrates.1
What he found in them to admire we can only guess :
probably the physical and mechanical explanation of
the universe and of man, in which Anaxagoras seems
to have abounded. At Mitylene disciples gathered
round him ; and at Lampsacus, a ferry-town on the
Dardanelles opposite to the modern town Gallipoli
(the city of Callias), where he spent another year or
two, he gradually became a recognised head of a
philosophic school. He came, says an ancient writer,
to look upon Lampsacus almost as his country.2
The best of its inhabitants became his friends : par
ticularly Idomeneus, and Leonteus with his wife
Themista, Polyaenus and Metrodorus ; and the friend
ships then formed lasted through life. In later days
he kept up a correspondence with them, as with the
philosophers at Mitylene ; and twice or thrice crossed
the sea to visit the scenes where disciples first be
lieved in him. If Athens was the Mecca of this
prophet, Lampsacus was his Medina.

In 307 B.C. Epicurus settled in Athens. Since he
had left it, in 322, its fortunes had not been brilliant,
but they had given it tranquillity. In the year after

- the death of Antipater, in 319, it had been for a while
drawn into the whirlpool of Macedonian politics.

j

1 Diogenes Lacrtius, x. 7 (12).
3 Strabo, XIII. i, 19.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 33

Enticed by the promises of Polysperchon, who hoped
to enlist the democratic passions of the Greek cities
on his side, Athens rushed from one political extreme
to another. The violent reaction was not accom
plished without bloodshed. Old Phocion and his
conservative associates in the Macedonian interest
fell a victim to fanatical and patriotic republicans,
who doubted the honesty of his cautious policy. He
and his friends were executed as traitors. But the
hopes then encouraged of a renewal of Athenian
sovereignty in Greece were soon disappointed. In__
3 1 8, Athens was at the mercy of Cassander : and that
prince, who not long afterwards made himself un
disputed master of Macedon by the assassination of
all the seed-royal of Alexander, continued to hold the
city tight in his hands by means of the Macedonian
garrison in the ports. From 318 to 307, the practical
ruler of Athens under the Macedonian king was
Demetrius of Phalerum. Under his government the
city enjoyed considerable material prosperity : com
merce flourished, and the three hundred and sixty
jtatucs jihidi are reported to have been erected
throughout Attica in honour of Demetrius himself are
aproof that art was nut neglected Demetrius was at
once a scholar and a man of the world.1 In early
life it is said he had exhibited the simplicity of a
hermit in his fare of island cheese and pickled olives.
But prosperity apparently changed him : he became

} Athenaeus, xir. 542; Diogenes Laertius, v. 5; Diodorus
Sicuius, xviii. 74 ; Stratx>, ix. 398.

34 EPICUREANISM.

a beau, devoting art and time to elaborating his per
sonal appearance, and did not scruple to give free
play to his sensual proclivities. Under such a. regime
public morality and spirit necessarily deteriorated;
*fne "fashionable philosopher of the period was a pupil
of Aristotle, Theophrastus, the friend of Cassander
and of Ptolemy. Two thousand disciples, it is said,
flocked to hear his lectures.1 Even more vehement
was the attraction exercised by Stilpo/i, of Megara,
when he visited Athens : the very workmen flocked
from their workshops and ran to look at him.

Probably, however, with all these disadvantages,
Athens may have seemed to some a more desirable
residence than most of the Greek towns. Its old
glories still won for it occasional reverence from the
potentates of Asia and Egypt. In most of the other
communities of Greece revolution was in permanence.
Each party, as it gained the supremacy, in its turn
massacred the prominent members of the opposition.
Tyrants in name or in reality ; foreign adventurers in
search of power or pleasure j mercenary troops with
£o national ties and no respect for law, morality, or
religion ; exiles saturated with the gathered hatred ot
years : these and such like inflammable materials
throughout Greece made the life of a peaceful ijv
habitant impn«;sihlp. With no security for life and
* Eioperty, poverty and lawlessness spread apace : and
the young not unfrequentlv grew up jndiffercnt to
their country, sceptical of their religion, bent upon

1 Diogenes Laertius, v. 2, 5 (37). 2 Ibid. II. n.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 3$

enjoyment, and seasoning sensuality with a dash of
literary and philosophic cultivation. Such, in its
worst aspects , was Greece in the beginning ot the
^r<T century" 'ilc. One 'fact alone may tell of the
misery of the time. In the year 308, a Cyrenean
adventurer advertised his intention of leading a horde
across the deserts against Carthage, which was then
staggering under the blows of another adventurer of
great ability and greater unscrupulousness, Agatho-^
cles, the despot of Syracuse. Numbers of Athenians
and other Greeks joined the enterprise. For, says
the historian, the ceaseless wars and rivalry of princes
had brought all Greece low and made it feeble, so
that men not merely looked to an expected good
fortune, but were influenced by the prospect of release
from their present ills.1

The arrival of Epicurus in Athens in 307 was
almost simultaneous with a change in the situation of
Athens, by which the city was more openly involved
in the wars between the successors of Alexander.
Each of them hoped to win Athens to his side. The
material support which she could render was indeed
small, but the intellectual prestige of her name was a
tower of strength for her friends. Macedonia had
hitherto held her in tutelage by means of Demetrius
of Phalerum. In 307, he was forced to abandon the
city and flee to Egypt, before the attack of another
Demetrius, the Besieger (Poliorcttcs), the son of
Antigonus. Antigonus had made himself one of the

1 Diodonu Siculus, XX. 40.
D 2

36 EPICUREANISM.

most potent of the generals, who, after Alexander s
death, gradually dared, in name as in fact, to divide
his empire among themselves. From his seat of
government in Phrygia he kept up an incessant and
generally successful system of encroachment upon his
neighbours, Ptolemy in Egypt, Seleucus in Babylon,
and Lysimachus in Thrace. His son, Demetrius, is
one of the most remarkable characters in the age of
Epicurus. In him was combined the intellectual
ingenuity of the Greek with the despotic sensuality
of an Oriental sultan. He seems to have been pos
sessed by a genuine enthusiasm for Athens.

Aihens, .restored tojiominaniberty by the young
Dcmetrju^fell into an intoxication of flattery. De
metrius and his father were proclaimed kings : they
were worshipped as the " gods and saviours " of the
state ; a priest for their godheads' service was yearly
appointed ; their images were woven on the great
veil of the Parthenon amongst the pictures of the
other gods ; two new tribes were formed and named
after the liberating kings ; one of the months (Muny-
chion) had its name changed to Demetrion ; and the
last day of the month was styled Demetrias.1 But
perhaps the best evidence of the worship and fetes
which attended Demetrius in Athens is an ode or
hymn sung, on one occasion, in his honour. " For
other gods," it says, " are either far away, or have no
ears to hear, or are not at all, or have no mind or care
of us whatever : but thee we see before us, no god of

1 Plutarch, Demetrius, c. 10.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 37

wood or stone, but a real god and true."1 This burst
of devotion to their saviour, whilst it shows the de
gradation of religious feeling and the lapse of the
national faith, and whilst it is a bitter accusation against
the rule of the Macedonian, proves also how completely
the old spirit of Athens had sunk, and how hopeless
was its political regeneration.

But the relief from Macedonian occupation was
not lasting. Demetrius was called away by the other
engagements of his father's policy, and Athens had
to sustain, unaided, a combat with the King of Mace-
don. It was, probably, at this time that a curious
incident in the history of philosophical teaching took
place. The democracy, which was now in power,
looked with suspicion on the philosophers, who were
mostly conservative in their sympathies, and who, at
least the Peripatetics, were attached to the Mace
donian rule. Accordingly, a law was passed forbid
ding any one, under pain of death, from opening a
philosophic school without the consent of the supreme
council and people. Theophrastus, and, probably,
other philosophers, rather than comply with the order,
left the city : but Athens was too dependent on her
schools, or the Macedonian party soon raised its
head ; at any rate, the law was repealed next year, and
the offended philosophers returned to their schools.2

At Athens Epicurus purchased a house and garden.
The former, at least, was in the quarter of the city

1 Athenaeus, VI. 253.

1 Diogenes Laertius, v. 38; Athenaeus, xi 1 1. 610; Pollux,
ix. 42.

38 EPICUREANISM.

known as Melite', the elevated south-western district
between the Acropolis and the Piraeus. This garden*
was the head-quarters of the friends of Epicurus when
they visited Athens, and became the hearth and home
of the school which gathered round him. If we
could believe one account of the matter derived from
an author1 who depended too much on compilations
from books, one might fancy Epicurus and his com
pany settled in a town-house with a garden around it,
introducing into ancient life a sweet odour of the
country, and anticipating the coming of a time when
cities would no longer be fortresses, but blossom out
into a variegated scene of roofs embowered in leaves.
That such a custom came in as the peace of the
Roman Empire encompassed a larger sphere is well
known ; and if Epicurus did surround his home with
a garden, he did what seems to have been done be
fore his time. But one does not feel certain that the
house and the garden were contiguous : on the con
trary, the reverse, as we shall see, is probably, the truth.
We are told that the garden cost eighty minre, i.e.
about ^320; but the information scarcely enables us
to fix the size of the property.

For a period of about thirty-six years Athens was
the home of Epicurus. He never djiring that time took
public life, never sol ici^^j thn

were openjto the ambitious. A calm, unosten
tatious life devoted to study of the nature of the world
and morality, and enlivened by the-companionship of

1 Pliny, Natural Hist., XIX. 51 j but see Isacus, v. n.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGK. 39

like-minded men and women, and by correspondence
with those who, in other places, were aiming at the
same ends, was the life of Ij/picuri^s. In thus standing
aside from the business of the commonwealth he ran
counter to the teaching of some earlier philosophers,
though not, perhaps, to the practice cither of Plato
or Aristotle. But the altered situation ought to be
taken into account. Xne Athens of his time was no
longer a sovereign state, ruling imperially over Jhe
islands of the Archipelago, nor was it the mer<
municipality which it afterwards became under thu
Roman Empire. Public life in such ambiguous
circumstances was unreal and deceptive. The real
springs of political force were to be found in the
diplomatic intri^uopof royal courts. Accordingly
.picurus, like Socrates before him, preferred to stand
away out of the giddy whirl of politics, and devoted
his best efforts to give a simpler and more natural
tone to the aims and aspirations of individual li f e .
It scarcely needs any argument to show that in such
a season he chose the better part. In this time of
instability, to act beneficially through the medium of
politics, was only possible for a king or potentate
possessing the rare desire to ameliorate and humanize
his people. But men out of power could still show

How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

In religious matters Epicurus was not a dissenter
from the national faith. He worshipped the gods of
his community and his age, and took part in the

40 EPICUREANISM.

observance of religious services and of festival
pageantry. So, too, he instituted services to com
memorate the names of some of his beloved dead.
From neither the dead nor the gods did he expect any
reward. But to both he felt an overflowing of a full
heart, gladly showing forth in act its sense of fellow
ship and kindred with the august and distant gods
and the near and dear departed. We are told with
pride, too, by Philodemus, the contemporary of
Cicero, that Epicurus was never molested by the
comic poets, — never banished or put to death as an
1 ,'7 atheist and infidel.1 Philodemus was, no doubt, think
ing of Socrates ; but he hardly realized how different
Athens was in the two periods, and how very great
was the contrast between Socrates, freely discussing
on the streets and squares, with all comers, on all
topics, and Epicurus conversing quietly with his
friends in his garden.

Thus tranquilly passed these thirty-six years in
Athens. The position of Epicurus was very unlike
that of his contemporaries in philosophy. Some of
them like Zcno. the Stoic, and the heads of the Peri
patetic school, Theophrastus, Strato, Lyco, and De
metrius were on terms of friendship and familiarity
with the princes and great men of the time. It was
not a rare or surprising event to see philosophers
acting as the ambassadors of their native state, in its
transactions with foreign powers. Thus Menedemus,
of Eretria, was entrusted by his fellow-citfzens with

1 Philodemus, De Pictate (ed. Gomperz), p. 93.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 41

the plenipotentiary disposition of their town ; he was
sent on embassies to foreign kings, such as Lysi-
machus, Ptolemy, and Demetrius ; and the young
king of Macedonia was proud to subscribe himself as
his pupil. Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt had been
a scholar of Strato of Lampsacus. And Arcesilaus,
the Platonist, though he declined the efforts made to
get him to meet the King of Macedon, was an inti
mate friend of the captains or governors who held
garrison in the Piraeus, and stood well with Eumenes,
the son of Phileteerus.1

Another class of philosophers established them
selves in the favour of the successors of Alexander
on less equal terms than those claimed by the chiefs
of Platonism and Aristotelianism. Men like Theo-
dorus, the witty Cyrenaic, and Crates the Cynic, with
his Cynic wife, Hipparchia, made themselves regarded
as an acquisition at the kingly courts by their powers
of repartee, and the reputation of their bans mots.
Their jests at the orthodox beliefs and their unblush
ing disregard of conventional standards, perhaps in
creased the piquancy of their company. Thus, when
Stilpo was asked by Crates if the worship and offerings
of the faithful gave the gods any satisfaction, he
only replied by saying that the question was one
not to be asked on the highway, but when they
were alone. Another of these scoffers, Bion of
Borysthenes, acquired quite a reputation by his re
ligious indifference, though when sickness visited

' Diogenes Lacrtius, n. 17 ; v. 3 ; IV. 6, 39.

42 EPICUREANISM.

him he sought relief in the use of amulets, and abjured
all the errors of his tongue. The court of Lysima-
chus, prince of Thrace, seems to have been a favourite
resort of emancipated free-thinkers, both male and
female. Hipparchia, the Cynic, and Theodorus, the
Cyrenaic and professed atheist, sometimes met there.
Theodorus was the typical representative of the ad
vanced thinkers of the time. He professed open
contempt for the popular theology ; he was a thorough
cosmopolitan ; and morality he regarded as one of
those conventions which the elect spirits of society
might treat as past and obsolete, for all but the
narrow-minded Philistines and bourgeoisie. Before
kings and people he was equally careless of his
language. Athens was shocked at his open irreligion,
and Mithras, the chamberlain of King Lysimachus, had
to call him to account for his want of respect.1

While it continued to be the chosen home of
Epicurus and his followers, Athens passed through a
series of vicissitudes. Demetrius Poliorcetes, its
liberator from the Macedonian yoke, had been forced
to withdraw his help, and as soon as he had gone,
Cassander, the king of Macedon, renewed his efforts
to impose his supremacy upon Athens. But in the
hour of their peril the Athenians cried aloud for help
to their former saviour, and in 303 B.C. Demetrius
re-appeared in the Athenian territory, and succeeded
in driving the Macedonian armies to the north of the
pass of Thermopylae. In consequence of this relief,

1 Diogenes Laertius, n. 8, 1 6 ; VI. 7.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 43

the Athenians were reckless with delight, and their
gratitude found vent in a shameful servility. The
Parthenon, the temple of the maiden goddess, was in
part assigned to the prince as a lodging, and there for
a short time he kept up a succession of imperial
revelries with his mistresses and the artistes of his
court. But these hours of intoxication were soon fol
lowed by a terrible awakening. In ?oi B.C. Deme-
trius and his father succumbed under the combined
attack of the other " kings," as the successors of Alex
ander had lately come to style themselves. After the
battle of Ipsus, in which Antigonus lost his life, Lysi-
machus became master of both sides of the sea of
Marmora, and Demetrius found that the Athenians
were not disposed to afford him any shelter or aid in
his misfortunes. Athens, with the general selfishness
of the age, declared itself neutral, and proceeded to
rearrange its own affairs. But this was now in reality
impossible. Where the aims of those who dreamed
of maintaining for Athens an independent existence
and policy clashed with the interests of the adherents
of the Macedonian power and of those who sup
ported the plans of other princes, faction was in
evitable ; and about 297 H.C. Athens fell into the
hands of a popular chief, called Lachares. This man
is described by an ancient writer as of all tyrants
known the most savage towards men and the most
unscrupulous towards God.1 Demetrius PoliorcCtes,
now that Cassander was dead, determined again to

1 Pausanias, i. 25 ; Polyanm*,!!!. 7 ; Athenacus, ix. 405.

44 EPICUREANISM.

try to get a footing in Athens. He invested the
city by sea and land, and cut off all provisions from
the inhabitants. A dreadful famine in the city was
the consequence ; the necessaries of life began to
fail. A bushel of salt sold for twenty shillings, and for
a peck of wheat people were willing to pay more than
ten pounds. In one house a father and son were
sitting in moody despair : suddenly a dead mouse fell
from the roof, and the two wretched creatures sprang
up and fought over the tiny prey. Epicurus and his
companions managed to subsist on beans, counted
out in equal numbers to each member of the house
hold.1 Even the tyrant suffered in the general distress.
At length he fled, — not, it is said, without plundering the
temple, — and the city fell into the power of Demetrius.
The trembling citizens expected vengeance for their
falling-off from his side some years ago ; but Deme
trius, who had always a softness for Athens, was con
tent to ignore their insincerity, and to secure himself
against any repetition of it by fortifying and garrison
ing the Museum rock in the city, as well as the mari
time forts of Pirceus and Munychia (295 B.C.)

For the next seven years, during which, by one of
those strange vicissitudes so common in that period,
Demetrius held the throne of Macedonia, Athens re
mained tranquil under the Macedonian garrisons at
her gates. But in 288 B.C., when Demetrius was
forced to abandon his Macedonian kingdom, the old
Athenian love of independence revived, and young

1 Plutarch, Demetrius, c. 34.

KPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 45

and old alike, under the leadership of Olympiodorus,
rose in rebellion and defeated the Macedonian garri
son when it attacked them, and captured the fort on
Museum hill, though the garrisons in the forts still
remained. Athens, thus liberated, by the help of
Pyrrhus of Epirus, showed its changed circumstances
by setting up honorary decrees as a tribute to the
great orators who had urged the state a generation
before to resist the power of Macedon. But the
spirit of ancient independence was gone. It was to
foreign kings that Athens was indebted both for its
nominal independence and for its very subsistence.
The princes of the Crimea made it frequent gifts of
wheat. Foreign patronage is the evidence given by
the honorary decrees to the kings of the Bosphorus
and of Paeonia, to Lysimachus of Thrace, Pyrrhus ot
Epirus, and Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt.

In the last years of Epicurus Athens lived at peace,
with Macedonian garrisons at her gates ; in the
Piraeus, in Munychia, and in Salamis. In Macedonia,
Antigonus Gonatas, the son of Demetrius, had sue
ceeded to his father's kingdom in 2 7 9, and kept up with
Zeno and some others of the philosophers a friendly
intercourse. With Epicurus, who lived out of the
sphere of politics, and with Arcesilaus, who banished
politics from the Academy, he had no dealings.
Greece, under Macedonia, like Judea under the
Romans, was not exactly the place where the king
and the philosopher could meet on fair terms.

Epicurus had been from infancy of rather feeble
health. In his boyhood, it is said, he was so weak

46 EPICUREANISM.

that he had to be lifted down from his chair, and so
blear-eyed that he could not bear to look upon the
sun or fire. His skin, too, was so tender that any
dress beyond a mere tunic was unbearable. Such is
the account quoted by a lexicographer of the Byzantine
period :l and the maladies of Epicurus are treated as
an anticipatory judgment of heaven upon him for his
alleged impieties. Curiously enough, the biographer
of Jeremy Bentham tells us how Bentham was so weak
at seven years of age that he could not support him
self on tiptoe, and he spoke of himself as the feeblest
of feeble boys:2 but the greatest bigot would hardly
go so far out of his way as to suggest that Bentham's
views richly deserved such an organization as his por
tion. It was also suggested that Epicurus's ill-health
was due to his loose and luxurious life. One of his
pupils apparently wrote in refutation of these charges.
In the year 270 B.C. Epicurus died at Athens. For
a fortnight before his end he had suffered much from
obstruction by stone in the bladder.3 But up to the
last moment his intellect was unimpaired : he dwelt
both in conversation and his letters, on the memories
of philosophic fellowship

When each by turns was guide to each,
And fancy light from fancy caught,
And thought leapt out to wed with thought
Ere thought could wed itself with speech.

* Suidas, under the word " Epicurus."

2 Bentham's works, vol. X., p. 31.

3 Diogenes Laertius, 5c. 1 5 ; cf. fragment restored by Compere
in Hermes, v., p. 391.

EPICURUS AND HIS AGE. 47

His last intellectual care was for his doctrines — he
bade his friends remember what he had taught.
His last personal care was for the children of a disciple
who had died before him, and for whom he asked his
benevolent friends to continue the attentions and sup
port which they had hitherto given to himself.

48 EPICUREANISM.

CHAPTER III.

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD.

" WHEN the stranger," says Seneca, " comes to the
gardens on which the words are inscribed, —
' Friend, here it will be well for thee to abide : here
pleasure is the highest good,' he will find the keeper
of that garden a kindly, hospitable man, who will set
before him a dish of barley porridge and water in
plenty, and say, ' Hast thou not been well enter
tained ? These gardens do not whet hunger, but
quench it : they do not cause a greater thirst by the
very drinks they afford, but soothe it by a remedy
which is natural and costs nothing. In pleasure like
this I have grown old.' " l "Epicurus, the Gargettian,"
says another writer,2 " cried aloud, and said : ' To
whom a little is not enough, nothing is enough.
Give me a barley-cake and water, and I am ready to
vie even with Zeus in happiness/" In words, like
these we have a picture of the garden of Epicurus.
At first sight it presents the idea of a society of
ascetics rather than of voluptuaries, and of dietetic
reformers rather than philosophers. "We ought,"

1 Epist. Moral., n. 9 (21), 10.
, Var. Hist., iv. 13.

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 49

says Epicurus, " to be on our guard against any dishes
which, though we are eagerly desirous of them before
hand, yet leave_nq_sense of gratitude behind after we
have_ enjoyed them."1 Instead of the revelry and
dainty dishes which we should probably associate
with the name of epicure, we find a meal of plain
bread and water, with half a pint of light wine occa
sionally added. " Send me," says Epicurus, in one
of his letters, " send me some cheese of Cythnos, so
that when I will I may fare sumptuously."2 The life
of the Epicurean circle attempted to inculcate plain
living, not as a duty, but as a pleasure. Probably, if
we believe the stories of the ill-health of Epicurus and
his friends, there may have been something of a
dietetic experiment in this behaviour. The society
was not, indeed, in principle vegetarian ; on the con
trary, they justified the use of animal flesh for food,
much on the same metaphysical ground as Spinoza^
afterwards employed ; i.e., the immense generic dif
ference which they believed to separate man from the
brute, Hut in practice, their diet, like that of so many
other philosophers, was mainly vegetarian. Their
temperate habits seem to have drawn down upon
them the jokes of the comic poets. " Your water-,
drinking," says a character in one of their plays,3^.
makes you useless to the state : whilst by my pota
tions I increase the revenue." Philemon puts the
following words into the mouth of one of his charac-

1 Porphyry, De Abstinentia, I. 53.
1 Diogenes Laertius, x. 6, 1 1 .
» Bato in Athcnscus, IV. 163,

50 EPICUREANISM.

ters : — " This fellow is bringing in a new philosophy :
he preaches hunger, and disciples follow him. They
get but a single roll, a dried fig to relish it, and water
to wash it down." l So, too, when Juvenal draws his
sketch of the real wants of human nature, he iden
tifies what is required to free us from cold and thirst
and hunger, with the conveniences which Epicurus in
his little garden found sufficient.2

To place this aspect of Epicureanism in the fore
ground seems justified by the whole tenor of the
system. To them the life of man was a life at once
of the body and the soul. Epicurus declared himself
unable to understand what was meant by a pleasure
where the body and its various senses were utterly and
entirely ignored. The common doctrine of so many
ancient philosophers, that the senses and the instincts
must be checked, repressed or ignored, — that apathy,
or the absence of sense and feeling, is the ideal per
fection of the sage, — was a doctrine against which he
always contended. It was easy for opponents to say
that such a protest opened the door to sensuality,
and to hint that she was even asked to come in. But
it is easy to see that the point with Epicurus was that
philosophy must keep constantly in view the fact,
that humanity is embodied in flesh and blood, and
that the body, if ignored in theory, will somehow
manage to avenge itself in practice. He had come
to know the experimental truth of the proposition,

Philemon in Clemen. Alexandr. Stromat., II. 493.
Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 319.

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 51

that what we are depends so much on what we eat
And the words of Metrodorus his disciple, which gave
so much offence to delicate ears, — when he says, that
" the doctrine which follows nature has for its main
object the stomach,"1 were probably not so heinous
in their meaning as some critics supposed. A good
digestion is the basis of a happy Life : and dyspepsia
is the root of all evils. This aphorism, paradoxical and
one-sided as it may be, is not necessarily vicious. Plato
had already partly recognised the truth of the obser
vation ; and one may pardon the emphasis laid on
the doctrine, if we assume the speaker to have been
somewhat of ajvaletudinarian. It is one of the ten
dencies of our day to lay stress, probably an exagge
rated stress, on the personal care of health, and to
attach enormous importance to a reasonable diet.
The moral doctrines of Plato and Aristotle had been
a trifle too exacting for humanity : they elevated
virtue, as Descartes says, to a great height, but they
scarcely showed how the height could be scaled.2
Epicurus comes and begins at the beginning: a simple
and natural life with simple enjoyments is his ideal.
If we remember, too, that according to the Epicurean
theory pleasure is defined as the complete removal
of the painful state, and that, once achieved, the
pleasure can never be intensified, but only varied by
any subsequent additions, we can understand how
Epicurus bids his friends to rest content with simple

1 Athcnacus, vn. 279.
1 Descartes, Disiouis dc la Atttkode
E 2

52 EPICUREANISM.

fare. Costly fare only gives a character of variety
and multiplicity to the enjoyment which it cannot
increase.

Who were the members of this society ? the guests
who sought the hospitality of the sage ? the friends
who permanently remained with him ? The brother
hood was not a fixed and stationary band. Freely,
they went and came to hear and see their teacher.
Foremost of them all in the affections of the master
was Metrodorus. It was at Lampsacus that Metrodo-
rus, who must have then been about twenty years only,
first came into contact with Epicurus. It seems to
have been a case of love at first sight, as it were, and
the union between them became so close that the
two clung to each other like an elder and a younger
brother, and Metrodorus never was absent from the
circle save for six months, while he paid a visit to
his native town. Epicurus was never tired of prais
ing his friend for his goodness and unwearied spirit.
He married Leontion, another disciple of the garden,
and died at the age of fifty-three, seven years before
Epicurus, leaving behind him a son and a daughter
to the care of the survivor. His brother Timocrates
was for awhile another of the band, but he ultimately
became a renegade and an opponent. His sister
Batis was married to Idomeneus, another disciple, also
belonging to Lampsacus, and of some note as an his
torian ; another brother is also mentioned. A fourth
disciple from the same place was Polyaenus, who is
said to have been before his conversion a notable
mathematician. From Mitylene came the successor

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 53

of Epicurus in the headship, Hermarchus. He was
the son of poor parents, and had begun life by the
study of rhetoric, but afterwards distinguished himself
as a philosopher. To Lampsacus, too, belonged
Leonteus and his wife Themista. Their son was
named after their teacher. From Lampsacus also
came Colotes, of whom it is told that when first he
heard Epicurus expounding the natural system, he
fell at his feet and did him reverence ; whereupon
Epicurus, not to be outdone, worshipped and compli
mented him in return. It would have made, says
Plutarch in a scoffing mood, an excellent subject for
a picture.1

There were other members of the society, such as
Pythocles, a young man, on whom Epicurus had
built high hopes of future excellence. Leontion has
been already mentioned. With her and Themista
Epicurus kept up a correspondence, as he did with
his other friends. Lecintion belonged to the class of
women whom the Greeks termed female comrades —
the same class to which Aspasia, the morganatic wife
of Pericles, had belonged. Of her history and cha
racter we know almost nothing. That she possessed
some literary and philosophic abilities may be in
ferred from the statement that she wrote an essay in
criticism of a work by the philosopher Theophrastus.2
According to the marriage-laws of the old Greek com
munities, it was impossible for her to form a legiti-

' Plutarch, Adv, Colotem, c. xvii. 3.
'* Cicero, Dt NatitrA Dtorum, I. 33, 93.

54 EPICUREANISM.

mate union with a citizen. She was excluded from
the fashionable and respectable womanhood, and in
the demi-monde to which she belonged could only
win at the best a dubious rank by her wit, her learn
ing, or her beauty. In the constant wars and revolu
tions which destroyed the male population of many
Greek towns of those times, and threw numbers of
women destitute upon the world as slaves or as
homeless aliens, women of this class must have been
numerous. They possessed or acquired qualifications
in their intelligence, accomplishments, and knowledge
of the world, which made them abler to attract and
enchain men than their more respectable and ex
tremely ignorant sisters, who had never left the seclu
sion of their homes to mingle with the world, and for
whom wedlock meant simply an arrangement for
housekeeping. To have married an undowered wife
would, to an Athenian, have seemed a monstrous im
possibility. The readers of Terence (whose originals
depict the contemporaries of Epicurus) are aware
that a young lady who had been left penniless had no
course open except to become an artist, a singer, a
player on the flute, or dancer, if she wished to rise
above indigence ; and thus circumstances forced her
into the demi-monde of the large towns. But to
judge of these hetcercB^ or emancipated women, we
must look at them in the light of their historical
surroundings, and not by abstract principles or by
considerations derived from modern European
morality.

I^eontion had become, as far as she apparently

THE EPICUREAN RROTHERHOOD. $$

could, the wife, i.e., technically or legally, the concu
bine of Metrodorus, whose mother and sister sent
congratulations on the occasion of the marriage.1
But Leontion was not, according to various chroni
clers, the only lady to be found among the disciples
of Epicurus. Marmarion (or, as she seems more pro
bably named in the manuscripts of Herculaneum,
Mammarion or Mammaron),2 Hedia (Sweet), Erotion
(Leveling), and Nikidion (Victorine), are the names
given by one writer; another adds Boidion; and a third
erroneously inserts Philaenis, among the "young and
handsome women," who, as it is phrased, " haunted
the garden." Scandal fastened with avidity on these — .
circumstances. Partly, it seems, through the agency
of a Stoic, called Diotimus, who bore the Epicureans
a bitter grudge, there appeared a collection of fifty
letters, purporting to be the correspondence between
Epicurus and his mistresses. Leontion was the chief
victim of these libels, which human nature unfortu
nately is inclined to believe must have something in
them, once they have been published. What Leon
tion was like we know not. But we do know that
there were two portraits of her known to the historian
of ancient art, the elder Pliny. The first is not
specially described. But the other depicted Ixjontion
in the attitude of thought.* With Mammaron and

1 Plutarch, Non />0sse suavittr iiivi sfcuttt/um Epicurum% c. 1 6.

1 Volum. Hcrculancns. Collect. Altera, torn. I. p. 149; cf.
Oxford Tracings, Papyrus 10x35 ;• $pengel in
vol. ii.p. 534.

* i'liny, 2\'rt. Hist., xxxv. 99 and 144.

56 EPICUREANISM.

the rest scandal was equally busy, telling how each of
them was the favourite of one or another of the chief
disciples of Epicurus. To these scandals the school
opposed in antiquity a unanimous denial, and we
have no grounds for refusing to accept their dis
claimer. It is one of the regular consequences at
tending a departure from the standard of social
morality, that failure in one department is presumed
to carry with it failure in any of the rules of ethics.
Nothing is too bad to be believed of such a one.
And so later gossip-mongers fastened with avidity on
the theme. They drew fancy pictures of the loose
society and depraved manners of the garden, and de
picted Leontion as an unblushing daughter of sin,
and Epicurus as her special paramour. In one of
the writers, who wrote letters purporting to be the
composition of well-known persons of the past, and
sketched novelettes in correspondence, we find Epi
curus represented as a hoary valetudinarian sinner,
urging his unwelcome love on the young Leontion,
who has given her heart and person to another lover.1
Some enemies of the system were even inclined to
attribute the ill-health of its early chiefs to their
licentious lives.

These slanders not unnaturally grew up in the
minds of those who combined the fact that women
were not excluded from the garden, with the open
doctrine of the school, that pleasure was the aim of
life, and especially with sayings of Epicurus, in which

1 Alciphron, Efist., ii. 2-

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 57

he claimed for our animal nature its right to free de
velopment. But there can hardly be a doubt that
they are gross exaggerations, springing from that
common failing which accuses an intellectual oppo
nent of all manner of vices and immoralities. These
meetings, where, as an old French writer says,1 " the
fair sex, despising all that slander and jealousy could
say against them, wished to have a share, and grudged
men the good fortune of being the sole disciples and
hearers of this philosopher," were probably as harm
less as other gatherings of unlicensed religious
sects, where the suspicion of foes has been ready
to suppose all unholy excesses of sensuality. Had
the life of Plotinus been written by an enemy instead
of a friend, we should have probably heard a very
different story about the lady in whose house he
lived, her daughter, and the other women who fol
lowed his steps. Yet, at the same time, it would be
a mistake to suppose that the ideas which chivalry
has made lamiliar to the modern world were present
in the Epicurean fold. Such sentiments, elevating
womanhood into a religious power, and a symbol of
the best and sweetest humanity, were unknown to the
ancient world. The Greek world, in particular, never
rose much above the naturalistic and practical
aspects of conjugal life. ./Esthetic emotions and
ethical influences were not conceived as any part
of the love of woman. All that we can safely
affirm of the Epicurean society is, that licentious-

' Sorliicre, f.tthts ft Discwrs (lettre 33). Paris, 1660.

58 EPICUREANISM.

ness is unproven. That the purity of womanhood,
the dignity of ladyhood, existed in the society
otherwise than in the surrounding world is what we
must not affirm.

There is another side to the picture, probably
equally exaggerated with the last. As that alleged
debauchery, so this presents us with a picture of a

• — • hospital or infirmary. The chief philosophers in the
school are in this account all the victims of some
malady, due probably to their own misconduct, and
they all die wretchedly, as atheists and infidels ought.
An older writer speaks in somewhat milder terms. He
tells us what a source of joy and consolation it was
to Epicurus to think of three of his friends and dis
ciples, whom he had tended through their sickness,
and now fondly recollected when they had de
parted.1 His best-loved disciples, Metrodorus, Poly-
aenus, and Pythocles, died before him. Epicurus
having tenderly cared for them, wasted no time in
unavailing regrets. A true friendship and a pure
love are an imperishable inheritance for the soul who
has enjoyed it, and the memory of such concordant
lives may be a source of strength and great joy to
the survivor. It was one of the sayings of Epicurus,
that we are ungrateful to the past in not recalling the

^•—blessings we have ere while experienced, and count
ing them among our permanent joys. The three
brothers of Epicurus, Neocles, Chaeredemus, and
Aristobulus, also died before him. Perhaps no circum-

1 Plutarch, Non posse snaviter vivi sec. Epicur.^ c. 5 and 22.

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 59

stance connected with his disciples is more note
worthy than the way in which they clung to him
and his doctrine. " Great was the reverence of his
brothers towards Epicurus," says Plutarch ; " their
affection and brotherly feeling made them enthusi
astic disciples ; and even if they were mistaken in
the belief, which they had from their very boyhood
formed, that there was no one so wise as Epicurus,
still, the man who could inspire such a feeling, and
those who could feel it, deserve our admiration."1

But the real picture was a pleasing one. Friendship
was the prevailing spirit of the garden, and knit
together its members in every part of the world. A
common life supplemented the common doctrine.
The pupils, if pupils they may be called, were more
the associates and companions of the master than
auditors of his lectures. It was their fellowship with
their leader which made them great men, and not his
instruction merely. They took a deep affectionate
interest in all the concerns of one another ; and their
letters to each other in their temporary absences
exhibit the tender domestic tie which bound together
the members of the inner circle. One instance may
be given. We knew that Epicurus during the second
half of his life twice or thrice tempted the dangers of
the sea (he was nearly drowned, it seems, on one
voyage) to visit his friends in Asia Minor.2 Among
the charred manuscripts recovered from Herculaneum

1 Plutarch, De Fraterno A more t c. 16.

1 1'lutaich, Non posse wav. v iv i sec. Eficiir., c. 6.

60 EPICUREANISM.

there is found a mutilated letter apparently written by
Epicurus, and apparently addressed to the daughter
of Metrodorus, the young girl for whose welfare he
felt anxious on his death-bed. " We have arrived,"
says the writer, " safe and sound at Lampsacus, — I
and Pythocles and Hermarchus and Ctesippus, and
there we found Themista and the rest of oui friends
safe and sound. I hope that you, too, are well, and
mamma, and that in all things you are obedient to
her and to Papa and Matro, as you used to be. For
remember, my bairn, that we are all of us very fond
of you — so be obedient to them."1

On certain days the community seems to have
observed a fast. In a letter to Polyaenus, for instance,
Epicurus indulges in playful boast that while Metro
dorus has only reduced his expenses to sixpence, he
himself has been able to live comfortably on a less sum.2
The purpose of such abstinence was not ascetic ; but
to determine on how little it was possible to be happy.
A life led on these maxims can scarcely have pro
duced those "fat sleek swine of Epicurus's herd"3
to which Horace alludes ; and one is more inclined
to say with Seneca that the pleasure of Epicurus is
very " sober and dry,"4 and "reduced to small and
slender dimensions."

In this brotherhood, where reasoning on the
aims of life took the place of a lecture, and simple

1 Ed. by Gomperz in Hermes, \. p. 388.
3 Seneca, Epist. Mor., n. 6 (18), 9.

3 Horace, Epist., T. 4, 16 ; Cicero in Pisonem, XVI. 37.

4 Seneca, Dialog., vn. 12, and vn. 13.

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 6l

meals with kindly converse restrained the furies of
controversy, each was his brother's keeper. Even in
those early days all were not of one opinion. Leontion
and Colotes are alleged to have had their little errors.
When the chiefs of the sect saw such divergence, it
was not, however, their way to correct the offender
directly. Rather they wrote to another member,
exposing and correcting these errors as supposed
mistakes of their correspondent. In such a way
I^contion saw her mistakes pointed out in a letter of
the master to Colotes.1 But, on the whole, though
there was a certain liberty left on secondary points,
the main doctrines of the society were stereotyped.
The disciples were recommended to get by rote the i
fundamental articles or catechism, in which the I
doctrine was summarized. "Which of you, "says Cicero
to the Epicureans, " has not learned by rote this cate
chism ? " '2 And in some points, therefore, blind
following of the master's authority was preached in
the school : his writings, and those of the two other
members of the Epicurean triumvirate, were treated
as authoritative, as inspired, as a sort of Bible. Thus,
in the close of one of the fragments on Rhetoric
written by Philodemus, we find that author saying :
" If Epicurus and Metrodorus and Hermarchus
declare that there is such an art (as sophistical rhetoric),
as we shall point out in the sequel, then those of our
sect who write against their view are not very far from

1 Volum, Hcrculan. (Napol.), Coll. Prior, v. 2. 17.
3 Cicero, Dt tfnitus, n. 20.

62 EPICUREANISM.

deserving the punishment of a parricide."1 But it
was no deterrent from composition that the writer was
bound by his creed " The Epicureans," says Cicero,
" do not refrain from writing on the same topics as
Epicurus and their old chiefs." On the contrary.
When Philodemus is drawing to the close of another
treatise, the thought occurs to him, that he may be
blamed for undertaking a work on economics. " It
is enough for me that Metrodorus, as well as Epicurus,
enjoins and advises and administers more diligently
and down to minor points, and even practises what
he teaches."2 But there are many points, it should
be added, in which the same writer indicates his
divergence from the leaders and teachers of his sect.
It may be asked how was this society maintained ?
It was not a class of pupils like those which
gathered round other philosophers. As Seneca says,
it was not the school, but the life in common with
Epicurus, which made Metrodorus and his companions
men of note.3 Some of his followers had suggested
that they should throw all their property into a com
mon fund ; but Epicurus rejected the suggestion of
communism as savouring of distrust and as laying a
restraint on freewill offerings. But though the friends
did not surrender their goods into a club-property, a
number of them paid a voluntary contribution or
rate to the head of the school : and we have a letter

1 Volum. Herculan. Coll. Alter, v. 35 ; pap. 1,427.
3 Volnm. Herculan. (Oxon.), I. 104.
Seneca, Epist. vi. 6; cf. xxxin. 4.

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 63

in which he requests that one of these contributors
will continue this payment after his death for the
benefit of the two orphan children of Metrodorus, in
whom he took an interest.1 In another letter to his
friend Idomeneus, he says : " Send us first-fruits,
therefore, unto the tending of the sacred body, both
for myself and the children."2 And, again, he tells
some other friends : " Bravely and splendidly you
showed care of us in the matter of procuring the
corn, and manifested prodigious tokens of your good
will towards me." But the gifts thus rendered were
paralleled by other gifts from Epicurus — when he
sent wheat or a bushel of barley,3 as it is sarcastically
put, among his needy friends.

The scene, in fact, presented by the history of the
Epicurean garden reminds us of the generosity and
brotherly charity exhibited by the various congrega
tions of the infant Christian Church : and the letters
of Epicurus and his chief followers are not without
their analogues in the Epistles of St. Paul. In both
there is the same mixture of discourse on high topics,
with allusions to humble matters of daily life. We
feel in both cases that the members of the sect take
a family human interest in the minutest concerns of
each other. Such trifles seemed to the dignified
and aristocratic ancient critics to be unworthy of a
philosopher. But in truth Epicurus came partly to
teach the importance of such little things in the

! Edited by Gomperz in Hermes, \, 391.

a Plutarch, Adv. Co/of tn., c. xviii. 3.

1 Plutarch, Non posse mceviter t'ivi, c. xv. 7-8.

64 EPICUREANISM.

economy of mankind. And his language, which,
presented apart from the context, appears often ex
aggerated and stilted, would probably offer another
aspect if we saw the whole. It is one of the great
losses, so far as our knowledge of ancient social life
is concerned, that the letters of Epicurus to and from
friends, which were preserved by his school as care
fully as the letters of the Apostles by the Christian
Church, have disappeared, leaving hardly a trace
behind. They were evidently in existence in the
second century of our era, and formed an important
element in the literature of Epicureanism.

According to Diogenes, the number of the friends
of Epicurus was so great that they could not have
been counted by whole cities. We have already
spoken of Metrodorus and his brother Timocrates.
The latter did not continue faithful to the cause : he
quarrelled with his brother, and the dispute was
carried into acrimonious pamphlets. Epicurus tried
to affect a reconciliation ; but his rebukes had not
the desired effect, and the renegade became one
of the chief accusers of the life and morality of his
former associates.1 Such charges from friends who
have become enemies are never very credible, but in
this case they are specially discredited by the common
tendency of the ancient world to adopt the language
- of Billingsgate against an opponent. Mithras the
Syrian, steward of Lysimachus, king of Thrace, was
another Epicurean who seems to have been a regular

1 Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi, 1098 B. ; 1126 C.

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 65

contributor. One of the essays of Epicurus was
dedicated to him. On some occasion he was in
difficulties at the Piraeus, and Epicurus loudly
praises Metrodorus for the goodly and gallant way in
which he had gone down to the sea to help him.1
These and other slight deeds are contemptuously
contrasted by Plutarch with the deeds of great
generals and statesmen. But it is not perhaps going
too far to say that these and other interchanges of
benevolence between the members of a sect which
did not count many rich or noble, are found entitled
to the blessing awarded to the cup of cold water given
to a disciple in the name of a disciple.

'''he affairs of the brotherhood were considerably
affected by a will which Epicurus left behind him.2
It divided his small fortune in two directions ; for
the general interest of his society and doctrine, and
the special behoof of the orphans of two of his
friends. According to the terms of the bequest,
deposited in the office of the State archives, the
temple of the mother of the gods (Metroon), his whole
property was handed over to two trustees for the fol
lowing purposes. The garden and its appurtenances,
and the school or lecture-room erected in it, were^o
be held for behoof of Hermarchus, the immediate
successor of Epicurus, and for all who might in time
follow him in that post. The house in Melite"
was to be used by Hermarchus and his fellow
philosophers as a dwelling during the life of the

1 IMutarch, Ari>« posse snaviter i>ivi% 1097 A.
1 Diogenes I^acrtius, x. 10(17-22).
V

66 EPICUREANISM.

former. A sum of money was further placed to the
credit of the trustees, who in conjunction with Her-
marchus were to divide it in certain portions. One
portion was to go to keep up the fite celebrated in
memory of the departed parents and brothers of
Epicurus. Another part went to defray the expenses
of the social meetings held annually on the anniversary
of the birthday of Epicurus (the loth of the Attic
month Gamelion), and on the 2oth day of every
month, in memory of the conjoint names of Epicurus
and Metrodorus. His brothers and his friend Poly-
aenus had also yearly days of remembrance appointed.
These provisions for the saints' days of the Epicurean
calendar were the general and permanent provisions
of the will.

Its special articles enjoined the trustees to be the
guardians of a younger Epicurus, son of Metrodorus,
and of the son of Polysenus ; as also of the daughter
of Metrodorus. The three children were to be sup
ported, and the girl when she reached marriageable
years was to receive a dowry from the fund, and to be
married to one of the members of the school selected
by Hermarchus. One of the older members of the
brotherhood who had left all to follow wisdom with
Epicurus, was especially commended to the notice of
the trustees. The books of the founder were to pass
over to Hermarchus. Finally, three of his bondmen
and one bondwoman were granted their freedom.

This testament, which maybe compared with others
left about the same time by the chiefs of the Peripa
tetic school, is in many ways noteworthy. Its care

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 67

for the young orphans is, in its affectionate decorum,
tfie best refutation of the calumnies raised against
Epicurus. His emancipation of the slaves may be
paralleled by similar acts in the testaments of
Theophrastus, Strato, and Lyco, the three succes
sive heads of the Aristotelian school. One of these
slaves, named Mys (Mouse), had been a fellow-worker
in philosophy with his master. The distinction in
the will between the house in Melite' and the garden
suggests some difficulties for those who, like Pliny,
suppose that the garden lay inside the city. Indeed,
from a remark in Cicero, it would seem indubitable
that the garden lay on the N.W. of Athens, a little
off the road which led to the " Academy " of Plato.1
In other words, it lay outside the walled city, and
like the local seats of two at least of the other schools
was an open garden in the suburbs. While Epicurus
thus endowed the Epicurean sect, the other sects had
done likewise. The will of Theophrastus hands over
" the garden and the walk, and the houses by the
garden " to certain of his friends for purposes of the
common pursuit of philosophy.2 The garden of
Plato similarly served as a meeting-place for his
school, who in the next generation after his death
began to erect small huts near the abode of their
muses.3 And in both schools common festivals, in
the shape of monthly dinners, kept the students
together socially. There is thus a pleasing family

1 Cicero, Dt Ftnibus, v. i. 3. » Diog. Ijiertius, iv. 3, 5.
1 Diogenes Laertiu*, V. 2, 14.
F 2

68 EPICUREANISM.

and home character about these sects, which contrasts
with the sterner practice of the Stoics.

Thus we see that philosophy was endowed long
before the emperor attached it to the patronage of
the State. Indeed, it may be suggested that public
governmental support was the last thing Epicurus
could expect. When the lectures are mentioned
which the Ephebi, or young Athenian collegians,
attended, one finds no notice of the schools of the
Epicureans among the rest.1 All along they seem
to have had little connection with the educational
machinery recognised by the State, and to have
formed a sect apart from their scientific and literary
rivals, and one can hardly argue from the latter to the
former. Young students destined to be future citizens
could learn little suitable for public Life, for the bar,
or for the senate, in the gardens of Epicurus.

The directions of Epicurus seem to have been in
all points faithfully carried out by his executors and
successors. An unbroken line of teachers sat in his
seat : — Hermarchus, Polystratus, Dionysius, Basilides,
and Apollodorus, surnamed " Prince of the Garden,"
were his five immediate followers in the headship of
the school. How succession to the headship was
determined we cannot say with absolute certainty,
but it is highly probable that the departing chief
named as his successor the man whom public opinion
in the society marked out for the post. We hear of
no squabbles about the succession, no attempts of

1 Dumont, Ephebie Attique, ii. 152.

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 69

ambitious youths to anticipate their time, and claim
a post reserved for mature experience. The birth-day
of Epicurus continued to be kept regularly as an
annual festival by his followers ; and the monthly
meetings on the 2oth (Eikas) became so prominent a
feature of the sect in the eyes of the world, that the
Epicureans came to be nicknamed Eikadistse (or
Men of the Twentieth.)1 Pictures of Epicurus were {
found in the rooms and bed-chambers of Epicureans,.;
and even on their rings and their plate.2

The school clung faithfully to the doctrines of their
master. He himself had composed short synopses
to keep the main outlines of the system constant in
the memory. In the latter part of the second
century A.D., a Pythagorean philosopher contrasts,
with the divergence of the later Academy from the
teaching of Plato and with the variety of opinion
amongst the Stoics, the unfaltering adherence of the
Epicureans to the dogmas of their master. " Innova
tion," he says, " is condemned by them as a crime, or
rather an impiety. The school of Epicurus resembles
a true commonwealth ; free from civil war, exhibiting
a single mind, a single opinion."'' In similar terms
Seneca, in the first century A.D., adverts to the
deference of the sect to the dicta of the master;

1 Athcnunis, vn. 298; cf. Cicero, De Finitws, n. 163.
Some lines of Philodemus in the Greek Anthologia (XI. 44)
allude to one of these simple meals.

a Cicero, De Finibus, v. 5; Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxxv. 5.

3 Numenius, quoted by Eusebius, Prapar. Evangel.,
xiv. v. 3.

70 EPICUREANISM.

and a century before his time Cicero has the same
story to tell.

The language in which the Epicureans speak of
their master is quite unlike that of any other philo
sophical school for its founder. When the Stoic is
asked to point out an historical type of his ideal wise
man, he confesses the shortcomings even of Zeno,
and is unwilling to affirm that either Socrates or
Diogenes the Cynic will stand the test and present
an incarnate paragon of goodness and wisdom.

But even in the lifetime of Epicurus we have
seen the almost divine worship of which he was the
object. Colotes falls down at his feet and does him
reverence — though, it is true, Epicurus gently returns
the compliment and chides his extravagant admirer.
Metrodorus speaks of the truly god-revealing sacra
mental services (orgia) of Epicurus.1 To the
Roman Epicurean poet his master seems a grander
and more beneficent being than any of the gods
whom his countrymen held in reverence : his words
are golden words, ever most worthy of an endless
life.3 And the language of the speakers on the
Epicurean side in Cicero's works is of the same
tenor : Epicurus is the one man who has seen the
truth, freed men's minds from the greatest delusions,
and taught all that is needful for a good and happy
life : he is the discoverer of truth and the architect
of blessedness : his rule of conduct has, as it were,

1 Plutarch, Adv. Colotem., 1117 B. /(&
Lucretius, III. 13 j v. 8. /£/

LIBRARY £

THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 71

descended from heaven to give knowledge to all
mankind.1 The devotion of the school and its
quasi-religious observances, in fact, formed a favourite
subject of jesting for the world

1 Cicero, De Unibus, I. 32 ; I. 64 ; I. 14.

72 EPICUREANISM.

CHAPTER IV.

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES.

THE student of Epicureanism is placed at a great dis
advantage, as compared with the student of the other
schools of ancient philosophy. The historians of
Platonism and Aristotelianism have a large collection
of the writings both of Plato and Aristotle, on which
to base their expositions. In their case the want of
authentic documents only makes itself felt when an
— attempt is made to trace the historical career of the
two systems. There is also no doubt a textual diffi
culty to be met. Questions must be answered about
the several portions of their reputed works — as to the
genuineness of particular dialogues of Plato, or treatises
of Aristotle, and as to the relations of one part of the
system to another. In the case of Stoicism and
Epicureanism there is quite another condition of
affairs. The writings of the founders of these schools
/ and of their early disciples have almost entirely dis-

%" -appeared, and we are dependent on the statements of
/authors who lived more than two centuries after the

^organization of the system. But even here Stoicism
is better off than Epicureanism. The works of
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius exhibit in
large outlines, and amid varied surroundings, the main

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES. 73

dogmas of the ethical creed of the Porch, as it was
understood and practised in the first and second cen
turies, A.D. We catch the general spirit of Stoicism
in this way much more tangibly than can be done by
observing a number of isolated aphorisms.

Yet, one writer Epicureanism does possess, in whom
the spirit of the system has found ample expression,
coloured, perhaps, by the Roman utilitarian and di
dactic spirit, and by the Roman sense of dignity, and
stamped with the earnestness of the man. Lucretius,
in his poem on the nature of things, " I3e Nafura
Rerum," has given a Latin representation of the Epi
curean creed which must be pronounced to be, on
the whole, accurate and faithful. But the poem,
posthumously edited, did not receive the last touches
of its author's hand. It is full of casual or unskilful
junctures, and wanting in continuity ; it emphasizes
certain sides of the system to the neglect of others,
and it is too much encumbered by the exigencies of
verse to be able to follow freely the subtleties of ar
gument. Yet, as the only exposition of Epicureanism
by a zealous convert to its creed, it claims a unique
value amongst the authorities on this subject.

In some respects, however, the standard and pri
mary authority for the system, as well as for the
history, which others may supplement and correct,
but cannot entirely supersede, is the tentl^ book of the
history of the lives and opinions of the ancient philo
sophers, by Diogenes_Laertius. This book, of which
Thomas Stanley's " History of Philosophy," ] may
1 First edition, London, 1655.

74 EPICUREANISM.

practically, for English readers, be regarded as a para
phrase, is an extremely unsatisfactory and tantalizing
performance. It is a compilation made in the third
century A.D. from the contents of a large number
of works on the history of the several sects of an
cient philosophy — works which have not come down
to us. It mixes up the most irrelevant matters ;
indulges largely in gossip, scandal, bon-mot, and
anecdote ; and is almost blameless of any attempt at
artistic or critical arrangement. Contradictory state
ments from different authorities are placed impartially
side by side, and you are left to choose from the
heap your materials for a harmonious and intelligible
picture. Of course, it is invaluable to have this
variety of aspect ; but in the want of some central
point around which the variations may be grouped,
and with our ignorance of the value of many of
these authorities, the task of the critical historian is
onerous, and at many points hopelessly insuperable.
In the tenth book, which is entirely devoted to Epi
curus, these faults are not so prominent as in other
parts of the work. Diogenes (of Laertes, a small
place on the coast of the rocky Cilicia)1 has been
supposed to be either an adherent or admirer of Epi
cureanism. This is, to say the least, doubtful ; but
in any case he has largely availed himself of sources
in which Epicurean sympathies predominated.2 After

1 Strabo, p. 669.

* Diogenes is eclectic without choice, and rather chameleon-
like in his sympathies. The " Sceptical " sect he carries as far
as 220 A.D. or thereabouts (Diog. ix. 12).

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES. 75

giving at some length the stories told to the discredit
of Epicurus, he begins a contradiction of them by the
emphatic words : "But these men are mad : for of
the excellent candour of Epicurus towards all men
there are many witnesses." Besides a copy of the
will of Epicurus, his account contains three epistles
purporting to have been written by the philosopher to
three of his disciples. The first of these, addressed
to one Herodotus, contains an epitome of the main
principles by which Epicureanism explained the con
stitution of the universe and the process of know
ledge ; in other words, its natural philosophy. The
second epistle, that to Pythocles, deals with the
principles employed in accounting for the phenomena
of astronomy and meteorology. The third letter to
Menceceus summarizes the moral teaching of the
school, and is supplemented by quotation of the
Articles (the Kvpmi co&u).1 How far these letters,
which as they stand exhibit a somewhat difficult and
apparently corrupt text, were really written by Epi
curus is a question which, considering the tempta
tion to the forgery of letters in antiquity, has na
turally been raised. Of the genuineness of the second
letter, that to Pythocles, we know that doubts had
been raised in the first century B.C.2 We know also,
however, from the agreement between it and the
fifth and sixth books of Lucretius that it corre
sponded with the Epicurean doctrine in that age. And
the same may be said of the two other letters, of

1 These seem to be given completely.

» Voll. Htrculan., Coll. Alt., vol. I. p. 152.

76 EPICUREANISM.

which the genuineness has been unreasonably doubted
by Buhle and others. They could subserve no pur
pose, as far as we can see, except to epitomize and
make accessible to the faithful the fundamental views
of Epicurus. If not genuine, they seem at least to
be authentic. No personal or polemical motive enters
into the first and third ; and the polemic of the
second introduces no names.

Of other sources for Epicureanism the principal
are Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Stobaeus, and Athe-
nseus. Joannes Stobaeus, a Byzantine writer of the
sixth century A.D., as well as the original compiler of
the treatise conventionally ascribed to Plutarch on
the opinions of the philosophers, contain a few, not
particularly intelligent, statements as to the Epicurean
views on sundry topics of physics, and quote occa
sionally what professes to be Epicurean phraseology.
Plutarch, besides incidental references scattered
through his genuine writings, has devoted two of his
essays to a keen criticism of the Epicurean views,
in the course of which he refers to many points in
the history of the sect, in a way to show that material
on that topic was in his time abundant. The two
treatises are entitled : " On the Impossibility even of
a Pleasant Life, for One who adopts the Principles of
Epicurus " ; and " Against Colotes " (the Epicurean).
Of course, in accepting his statements, it is necessary
as far as possible to discount the bias in his point of
view, which tended in the direction of a religious
and mystical Platonism. As for Athenseus, who wrote
about a century after Plutarch, towards the close of

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES. 77

the second century A.D., his " Deipnosophists" is too
much of a chronique scandalense and too prone to
after-dinner exuberance to have more than a very
subordinate value as an historical document.

Cicero and Seneca both tell us a good deal about
Epicureanism, but in a fragmentary way. In his " De
Finibus," his " De Natura Deorum," and the " Tuscu-
lan Questions," Cicero introduces the Epicurean doc
trine, supported and expounded by Torquatus and
Velleius in the first and second of these works
respectively. Cicero seems a fair and honest reporter
of what he does understand, but his method of
composition, consisting in a free translation and con
densation of some of the advocates of the systems
he expounded, was not favourable either to depth of
insight or harmony of exposition. There are places
in the Tusculan Disputations where he seems to forget
himself, and holds a brief for Epicureanism without
perceiving the contradiction with previous statements.
His information is mainly confined to the ethical
l>ortions of Epicureanism, and even there it leaves
behind an impression of inexactness and want of
contact with the original ideas, which he looks at too
exclusively through a literary medium. Nor did
Cicero ever possess any genuine interest in philosophy
except as an interesting topic for discussion ; and a
philosophy which so completely ignored practical and
political life could hardly find n him a very sympa
thetic interpreter. Still, as the contemporary of
Lucretius, his estimates of Epicureanism in Rome are
full of interest.

78 EPICUREANISM.

Seneca, the Stoical tutor of Nero, frequently quotes
the sentiments of Epicureanism. In his " Moral
Letters" where he poses as a spiritual director to
Lucilius, he closes many of these epistles with a short
maxim from Epicurus, as a moral lesson for his friend
to ponder and practise. In others of his writings too
he shows greater familiarity than Cicero with the
physical doctrines of the school of Epicurus. Like
Plutarch he seems to have been intimately acquainted
with the letters of Epicurus, and Metrodorus, and the
brethren ; which, apparently arranged according to
chronological order, formed a large part of the Epi
curean literature. l

Epicurus himself was a voluminous author, vying
with the Stoic Chrysippus in the number of his works,
and surpassing him far, when the fact was taken into
account that he did not, like the latter, fill his books
with quotations from other authors. Three hundred
volumes or rolls is the number at which his literary
labours are roughly estimated by his biographer.2 Of
his style we can simply judge by report and a few
samples. It is utterly without rhetorical grace, ex
hibits little variety, and is somewhat deficient in
logical symmetry. He has a very decided manner of
his own, not moulded upon classical examples, but
aiming, not always successfully, at the directest and
most characteristic expression of his thoughts. The
sole principle of his utterances was to be perspicuous,

1 Seneca, Epp. 18, 21, 79, 98, 99.: cf. Philodem. de Pietate
(Gomperz), pp. 105, 127.

2 Diogenes Laertius, x. 17.

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES. 79

— to be understood. He is often, however, involved,
and does not shrink from repetitions. With iteration
of phrase he returns again and again to the essential
features of his system.1 The individuality of his
style extends even to the formulae of social inter
course, which he endeavoured to restore to significance.
The ancients noticed that instead of the conventional
wish for " joy " to the recipient of a letter, he sub
stituted one for " welfare " or for " good life." Others
objected to the occasional exuberance of his style,
and to his polysyllabic words for simple things.

Of these three hundred rolls many no doubt were
trifling in extent. The list of the more important of
them given by Diogenes begins with a work on Nature,
in thirty-seven books, and ends with his Letters ; and
includes amongst others, essays on the following
topics : On Atoms and Void ; On Love ; On the
Criterion, or Canon ; On the Gods ; On Piety ; On
Lives ; Symposium ; On Sight ; On Touch ; On Fate;
On Music ; Views about Diseases ; On Monarchy,
&c. And of all these up to the middle of the last
century, there was known no more than the pieces
quoted by Diogenes and by the other writers men
tioned above.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century various
excavations were made on the site of the cities which
had been overwhelmed in the eruption of Vesuvius
in 79 A. D. About the year 1752 when the explora-

1 An energetic attack on his style is matle by Cleomedes,
Cydic. Thtor. Meteor., \\, i.f jjg 91-92.

80 EPICUREANISM.

tions had already been for some time going on at
the side of the ancient Herculaneum, our knowledge
of Epicureanism received a considerable addition.
A peasant proprietor of Resina on sinking a well
through the lava which entombed the old city came
upon what turned out to be the remains of an ancient
villa of considerable extent and in good preservation.1
Its inhabitant had evidently been a man of taste and
wealth, for its open spaces contained some fine works
of ancient art. In one place of the villa stood the
busts of Epicurus, Hermarchus, Zeno of Sidon, and
Demosthenes ; three heads of the Epicureans, beside
the great orator. Among the others were two busts
which modern research, confronting them with the
oration of Cicero against Piso, has suggested to be in
all likelihood the busts of Piso and Gabinius.3

But the main discovery was a room containing a
large number of rolls of papyrus. At first they were
treated as worthless. Charred and blackened by fire,
they seemed like anything but the receptacles of
literary treasures. At length, when the nature of the
discovery dawned upon the investigators, it was appa
rently hopeless to do anything with them : they had
been so solidified into a single black mass by the
action of the fire, that it seemed impossible to unroll
them ; nor did the attempts of Sir Humphrey Davy
to apply the resources of chemistry mend matters.
\ The method, first suggested and employed by a monk,

1 See the " Philo. Trans, of the Royal Society " of that time.

2 Comparetti in " Pompei ela Regione Sotterrata dal Vesuvio
nell' anno LXXIX." Napoli, 1879.

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES. 8 1

from Northern Italy,1 to open the papyri by attaching
gold-beater's skin to the outside-edge of the manu
script, and then slowly unwinding it by means of
screws, is the only method which has proved at all
feasible. By this means about 341 of the 1,800
papyri found in the library of the Herculanean villa
have up to the present date been unwound ; and of
these 195 have been published. When the news
first spread through Europe that a whole library of
ancient manuscripts had been disinterred, the hopes
of scholars played freely on the possible issues. The
lost books of Livy or Tacitus, the plays of Menander, ~v
and other desiderata of ancient literature, were among
the treasures expected. But great was the disappoint
ment which awaited the philologists. As one by one
the dilapidated rolls were slowly deciphered, and
their inscriptions copied, it was found that almost
all of them were treatises of Epicurean philosophy.—
Of the works to which the name of the authors
can be attached, there have been published, up to the
present day, sixty-five. Of these, eleven manuscripts
contain works by Epicurus ; but nearly all of them
belong to his work " On Nature." 2 These have
been edited, but except in occasionally fortunate
passages, where conjecture is easy and almost certain,
they are a mere wreck of fragments. A few others

1 Father Antonio 1'iaggi, a Genoese.

1 In the Rwista di Filologia e d* Istru^^^m* Classica for 1879,
p. 400, Comparetti argues that a papyrus, published in Voll.
Here. C. A., vol. xi., L> the work by Lpicunia "On Choice*
and Avoidances"

G

82 EPICUREANISM.

belong to the known names of the Epicurean school,
such as Polystratus and Colotes. But the great bulk
' of these papyri, about forty-five in number, consist of
essays by Philodemus, the contemporary of Cicero.
Of these, again, there are thirty rolls which contain
what seem to be either parts, or modified and cor
rected versions, of a treatise on rhetoric. Besides
these there are amongst his essays, papers treating of
/ a great number of subjects, showing that at least in
/ his case the Epicurean was not idle, and dealt with
\ other topics than the merely ethical. We find
treatises on the virtues and the vices, on the gods,
on piety, on anger, on death, on wealth, on econo
mics, on poetry, on music, on inductive logic ; be
sides a number of compilations dealing with the
history of the sect, and a variety of notes which
Philodemus took from the lectures of Zeno, the
" Coryphaeus of the Epicureans " in the first century

15. C.

It is scarcely possible to resist the evidence thus
supplied that the room containing these manuscripts
was the library or study of Philodemus ; thatr at any
rate, it was the receptacle of all his papers published
or unpublished. There, a century after his time,
they were overtaken by the eruption of 7 9 A.D., and
buried for nearly seventeen centuries. Scarcely less
clear is the inference, that the villa in question was
the property of one who had a special attachment to
Philodemus, — an author of whose prose works we do
not even hear elsewhere. We know that Calpurnius
Piso Caesoninus, the father-in-law of Caesar, afforded a

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES. 83

domicile to Philodemus, who rendered him literary
and professional services ; and thus it seems as if the
villa discovered in Herculaneum had been Piso's sea-
side residence. But whether this be so or not, the
value of the discovery for the history of ancient phi
losophy is not lessened. In this respect, indeed, it
is easy to cherish extravagant hopes. The state in
which the papyri were found was most disheartening
and baffling. Scarcely ever is a line absolutely com
plete. Even when a few successive lines are so far
perfect that a very little ingenuity can supply the
defective letters or syllables, a great gap suddenly
occurs and completely blocks the way to all intelli
gence of the contents. In such circumstances some
of the earlier editors gave free play to the constructive
imagination, and made the mystery into something
comprehensible, but — after all — only conjectural. It
will be some time, and will require great diligence
combined with scholarly ingenuity, before the full
fruits, at best somewhat insipid, of these new docu
ments can be won. Already Theodor Gomper/, of
Vienna, and other German scholars,1 as well as
Domenico Comparetti, of Florence, have done much
in this work — especially the first named.

The papyri themselves, so far as they have not
been destroyed, as too often happened in the first
attempts at owning them, exist in the officina dci
Papiri at Naples. Under the auspices of the
Neapolitan Government several of them were edited,

1 Huchelcr, Kahnsch, Spcngel.
O 2

84 EPICUREANISM.

with extensive commentary and dissertation, in about
ten volumes folio, between the years 1795 and 1855.
A new series of these " Volumina Herculanensia," as
they are entitled, was begun in 1861, and is still
slowly going on. This collection is a lithographic re
production from the copies taken on unrolling the
manuscripts, and is free from note or comment. In
England, the Bodleian Library rejoices in the posses
sion of excellent copies of a large number of the
manuscripts, in the shape of very accurate pencil
tracings on paper, taken on the spot, and presented
to the University of Oxford by George IV. Out of
these a selection, dictated at least to some extent by
the legibility of the manuscripts, and apparently in no
connection with the interest of the contents, was litho
graphed, and published in the year I824.1

1 Four specimens of the charred manuscripts (nut yet unrolled)
may be seen in the Bodleian Library.

EPICUREANISM. 85

CHAPTER V.

GENERAL ASPECT OF THE SYSTEM.

THE i>opular conception of an Epicurean has varied
at different times, but at no time has it been either
very fair or very favourable. To the writers of the
Roman classical period the charges against Epicurean
ism were drawn from its denial of the divine pro-
vidence, its open proclamation of pleasure as the
riTTef "good, its opposition to a merely literary and
intellectual culture, its withdrawal of its followers
from political interests 'and occupations, and the
grotesque features in some oi its physical and physio
logical speculations. Its unscjentific character, and
its jtiiflii'fl jndiflWonrf, and Wen hostility, to the
prevailing literary and logical as well as mathema-
1tCaT"investigaTR5TnrT)l that epoch, were probably the
chief charges in the count. Jhiring the ages of
theological supremacy which succeeded the downfall
of the F-mpiiv. Kpit urcan l>cc aino synonymous with
jithcist and unbeliever : it meant a follower of the
justs of the flesh, with whom there was no fear of
God to terrify, no ideal aspirations to ennoble, no
belief in immortality to check or cheer. Irreligion,
free thinking, scepticism, infidelity, on the side of
divine affairs : and on the human side, a selfish

86 EPICUREANISM.

devotion to one's own ease and comfort, with no care
for country or kindred, were the chief ideas connoted
by Epicureanism. If we come down to more modern
times, the Epicurean of Hume's essays is " the man
of elegance and pleasure." He refuses to be bound
by the arbitrary restraints which philosophers impose
in seeking to " make us happy by reason and
rules of art " : he alternates his hours between the
" amiable pleasure " and " the gay, the frolic virtue" ;
"forgetful of the past, secure of the future," he
enjoys the present : the sprightly muses are the
companions of his cheerful discourses and friendly
endearments ; and, after a day spent in " all the
pleasures of sense, and all the joys of harmony and
friendship," the shades of night bring him " mutual
joy and rapture," with the charming Celia, the mis
tress of his wishes.1

A cloud hangs, and has hung, over Epicureanism ;
and though we can say with confidence that much of
the obloquy is undeserved, there will apparently
always be a good deal in its teachings on which cer
tainty, or even intelligence, is unattainable. The
unbiassed documentary evidence for exposition which
we possess is fragmentary, obscure, and does not
extend to every part of the philosophic field. On
the other hand, from a variety of causes, misconstruc
tion and misrepresentation have made it their victim.
It has been treated as an enemy and an interloper
by the statesman, the priest, and the philosopher.

1 Hume's Essays: "The Epicurean."

GENERAL ASPECT OF THE SYSTEM. 87

It has shared the common fate of every system which
attacks either of these great powers, the State, the
Church, and the republic of arts and letters, and
does so without relying on the support of one mem
ber or other of the triumvirate against the others.
Science and literature, politics and religion, each and
all found themselves assailed by the system of
Epicurus. That system came forward as a philo
sophical system, and yet it turned a hostile front to
the customary views of education and of culture, and
to the accepted methods and results of the sciences.1
Whilst other philosophical doctrines either supported
or did not interfere with the claims and projects of
the political world, Epicureanism openly preached a
cosmopolitan and humanitarian creed, which taugh t
the citizen to stand aloof from patriotic and national
obligations, and to live his own life as a human being
amongst others, in the realm of nature and not of
statecraft.- As to religion, the case was much the
same as it was with the State. The gods, like the
government of the State, disappeared at the fiat of
Epicureanism from their commanding position above
nature, to become part and parcel of the great natural
process in which they, like all other things, live and
move and have their being.3 Above the intellectual
structures of science and art, above the gods of

1 Cicero, De Fin., I. 7, 26 ; Plutarch, 1094 E. ; Athciuvus,
XIII. 588.

* Seneca, Efist., 90, 35 ; Plutarch, 1125 €.-1127 ; Kpictetus,
Disscrtat., II. 20, 2O ; III. 7, 19.

3 Seneca, D<' Bt tuftf., IV. 19.

88 EPICUREANISM.

religious faith, above the laws of political convention,
rose man, the real individual man, seeking in volun
tary association with his fellow-men to live his own
life to the fullest of his capacity and with fullest
satisfaction.

Of Epicureanism, as of all philosophy, it may be
said, that it aims at emancipation, liberation, freedom.
But scarcely anywhere was the emancipation carried
to the same length as in Epicureanism. Generally
speaking, emancipation has meant and means the
substitution of an ideal for a material or sensuous
sovereignty. We are freed from the dominion of
the passions and the flesh by being handed over as
subjects to the spirit and the reason. We are taken
out of the bondage of this world by taking upon our
selves the yoke of the other world. The heavenly
frees from the earthly, and the intellectual from the
sensual. Epicureanism professes to impose no yoke
or obligation. It agrees with other philosophies in
distinguishing between the intellect and the senses
(or what it calls the flesh), and, even in a way, in
subordinating the latter to the former. But the man
of Epicureanism is no abstraction — a reason strug
gling in the bonds of an alien flesh, which in Pytha
gorean, and occasionally in Platonic language, forms
its prison. Man was not held to be a merely " rational
animal," as he was defined by the Stoics. The reason
or understanding in Epicureanism is neither the pri
soner de facto, nor the lord de jure of the body or
flesh. The flesh, in the view of Epicurus, is our un
enlightened, the understanding our enlightened self.

GENERAL ASPECT OF THE SYSTEM. 89

The reason is the light which shows us the complete
nature which we unwittingly are, and in which we
blindly and ignorantly live ; which tells us those laws
and limits of our existence of which the fleshly nature
is unaware, and ignorance whereof breeds vain and
inevitably baffled hopes. Naturally, or in our flesh,
we are like children stranded in the darkness of
night, with no idea of our true position in the world,
and inclined to fancy terrors in the gloom which
surrounds us.1 Hence arises the need of philosophy;
which, said Epicurus, is an activity that by doctrine
and reasoning prepares the way for the happy life. 2

The main problems of philosophy are, therefore,
two in number ; or, Epicureanism falls into two parts.
The first is a theory of man and of the universe,
explaining his p'ositioiTTKerein, his constitution, and
natural powers. This is the physiology (^o-ioXoy/o),
or philosophy of nature. The other is the practical
application of the knowledge so acquired to the
regulation of conduct. This is the practical or
ethical part of the system. It i :U the same time
evident that the two parts cannot be completely
separated. The theoretical examination has its course
limited by the practical need : it is knowledge, not
for the sake of knowledge, but for the sake of action,
and the rule of conduct. Scientific investigation is
permitted only so far as it lays down the true place
and position of man in the world of things.

And this exclusion of extraneous considerations

1 Lucretius, n. 55. ' Sext. limp. adv. Ethit, 169.

90 EPICUREANISM.

may be presented under another aspect. If there
are any sciences which deal with words and ideas
rather than things — and the sciences of rhetoric,
grammar, and mathematics come in different ways
under this description — then application to their
study can only be held to be waste of time. They
divert attention from the one thing needful. The
human soul cannot find nourishment in mere words :
it craves for realities. Epicurus, following up cer
tain ideas which Socrates had emphasized, asks of
every science, Does it deal with facts ? and is it use
ful to me as a human being? If it does not, it
may possibly be the pastime of an idle hour ; but it
should never claim the devotion of a life, because it
makes a man miss his true good. It should never
be forgotten, therefore, that the natural philosophy
of Epicurus is the foundation of his ethics ; its
raison d'etre is, that it renders possible a theory of
conduct.

Besides these two parts of the system, however,
there is another, which may be styled introductory.
It deals with the general principles on which we are
entitled to assert anything. This is the Canonic, the
doctrine of the canons, or grounds of evidence. But
the Canonic can scarcely be said to form an in
dependent part of Epicureanism : it goes little beyond
a few general and preliminary remarks on the ques
tion, " What right have we to believe or affirm?" It
is, in short, a protest against the scepticism which
declares that every statement is uncertain, and
science only a probability ; and which maintains that,

GENERAL ASPECT OF THE SYSTEM. 9 1

in these circumstances, the only thing left for man
is to keep himself free and unshackled from all one
sided adherence. The Canonic is thus the begin
ning of a logic, dealing, not with the grounds for
inferring one proposition from another, but with the
more fundamental question : On what ultimate
grounds is a statement of fact based ?

The three parts of Epicureanism arc, then, Logic,
Physics, and Ethics, if we apply to Epicureanism the
distinction which had been applied by the Stoics
to the doctrines of their own school. But, at the
same time, the terms are infinitely misleading when
so applied. Of logic, in the sense in which the term
was understood by Aristotle and the Stoics, there
was none in Epicureanism. Nor was this all. The
Epicureans regarded it as folly, as unnecessary trifling
with useless questions. Still less, again, is there a
distinction between the Epicurean physics and ethics
as independent or parallel branches of inquiry.

The case stands thus : The Epicurean school pro
fesses, in the first instance, to be founded on the
senses and the feeling, to be based on reality, as
popularly understood. It appeals to our immediate
perception and feeling, "qpcT declares that these must
neVer be recklessly set aside. What we immediately
feel and perceive, that is true ; what we directly find
ourselves to be, that is what we ought to do. Act
what thou art is its motto, and sense and feeling tell
thee with sufficient distinctness what thou art. But
the promise thus held out is certainly not kept to the
letter. What we supposed to be our feelings and

92 EPICUREANISM.

sensations turn out to be less trustworthy than we
had been, up to this point, led to suppose. The
greater number of our beliefs and opinions are due to
hasty and erroneous inferences. What seemed to be
perception was really reasoning. We must, there
fore, get back to our original perceptions. We were
told originally that we must believe nothing for
which we have not the evidence of the senses and
the feeling. It becomes apparent that that evidence
does not go so far as we had supposed. Our
senses and our feelings seem to mislead, and yet, if
we reject all sense and feeling, knowledge is made
impracticable.

In other words, the world is not as it seems :
all our perceptions cannot, without examination or
qualification, be relied upon. This, however, is only
because in our perceptions there constantly intrudes
an element which is not sense. The other element,
which is truly sense, is infallible.1 All our sensations
are witnesses to reality, only liable to be misinter
preted. Above all, there is a great deal which is
inaccessible to direct observation altogether. But
though it is unknown, the human mind cannot let it
alone. Hence arises the need of a canon of in
ference, which is given as follows : — Everything that
is supposed to happen in the sphere beyond know
ledge must follow the same laws of operation as what
is known to occur within the range of our experience.

1 Cicero, De Finibus, I. 7, 22 ; Acad., II. 29 ; Diogenes,
x. 31.

GENERAL ASPECT OF THE SYSTEM. 93

Whether it happen in what is beneath the range of
the senses (i.e., in the microscopic world, and what
lies beyond the power of the microscope), or beyond
the range of the senses (/.*•., in the telescopic world, and
what lies beyond the reach of the telescope), it is
governed by the same laws as regulate the occur
rences visible to unaided sense.

The canonic thus justifies those inferences which
go beyond sense. It is right and just to affirm about
the unknown, either what is confirmed and witnessed
by the known, or what at least is not witnessed
against by the known.1 But, at the same time, it is
well to note in which sense the reason is here said to
go beyond the sense. It goes beyond simply quanti
tatively : it carries us further and deeper, but there is
a general likeness between the one case and the
other. The atoms, e.g., which are intellectually per
ceived, have precisely the same qualities as the
bodies which are sensibly perceived, when we de
duct from the latter all which can be shown to be
the effect of a combination of circumstances. The
intellect is only a subtler and more far-seeing sense,
and the sense is a short-sighted and grosser intellect.
In Epicurean phraseology, in fact, the particles
which constitute the one are said to be finer and
more ethereal than those which constitute the other ;
and for that reason, and that reason only, they are
susceptible to minute influences, to which the grosser

1 Diogenes Laertius, x. 24, 51 ; Ibid., 25, 88.

94 EPICUREANISM.

particles composing the senses are stolidly in
sensible.1

The Epicurean logic, then, if logic it can be called,
is in the direction of inductive logic. It lays down
the senses as the first, and, we may say, the ulti
mate court of appeal as a criterion of reality. They
never can be mistaken, though the mind may be
wrong in the inferences it draws from them. This is
the first principle ; and the second is, that the un
known is regulated by the same laws as the known :
that is to say, the operations in the world invisible to
the senses follow on a larger or less scale the same
principles as govern the operations of the visible world.
We do not, in the intelligible world, find ourselves
lifted into a world where new categories and higher
conceptions prevail. Thirdly, language in the Epi
curean logic is subjected to scrutiny. Everyword, if
it is to pass muster in argument, must be en rapport
with a clear and distinct conception, which again
must finally be based upon one clear and distinct
perception.2 These are the three main principles of
Canonic : that sensation is the only guarantee of
reality, that language must be able to recall distinct
images, and that reasoning must employ known and
familiar processes to make unknown and mysterious
facts explicable.

1 Lucretius, in. 1 80.

3 Diogenes Laertius, x. 24, 38 ; Lucretius, IV. 478.

EPICUREANISM. 95

CHAPTER VI.

THE NATURAL WORLD.

THESE logical principles prepare the way for the
physiology or natural philosophy of Epicurus. Be
ginning with the senses, we ask what the senses
reveal? The answer is, that the only phenomenon
which they reveal is matter in motion. This double
conception is the groundwork of all Epicurean philo
sophy, the main effort of which is to reduce everything
To modes of matter and motion. Matter is the sole
reality : movement is the generic form to which all its
phenomena may ultimately he reduced. The in
corporeal is the same as the non-existent. Epicurus
departs from Aristotle, to follow the doctrines taught
by Anaxagoras and Democritus. " Generation and
destruction," said Anaxagoras,1 " are mistaken ideas
amongst the Greeks. For generation, the right term
would be composition ; and for destruction, sepa^
ration."

Matter is that which can be touched. Touch,
says Lucretius, is the sense of body.2 The tangible,
both in the active and- the* passive application of that
term, is the corporeal. All the senses are but modi-

* Simplic. Comment, in Arirtot. Physic., fol. 346.

* Luc re tiu.-, II. 435.

96 EPICUREANISM.

fications of touch : only what we can touch and what
"caTTtouch us has reality. ^Toych, again, is impact
upon the organ of sense, and is thus only a special
case of the more general phenomenon of impact.
ImpacTTs body ~moving_and causing motion. And
thus we are brought round to a conception of
things in which we find body acting upon body, so
as, generally speaking, to cause motion ; in some
special cases, however, giving rise to another pheno
menon, to be called sensation or intelligence. The
latter phenomenon may, however, for the present be
left out of account. Epicurus, so far as we know, as
little succeeded in explaining the connection, if any,
between this exceptional, and, so to speak, collateral
result of impact, and the general phenomena of move
ment, as any of his predecessors or successors have
done.

According to Epicurus, the only facts of which
philosophy can take account are material, tangible
things. Mind, if real, is tangible somehow, is a kind
of matter. Immaterial mind would be a nonentity.
Obviously, however, everything depends on what we
mean by matter. The popular conception of matter
takes things too concretely, and with too little
analysis. It follows the deliverances of the unin-
structed senses, which present things as qualitatively
distinct from each other. We must go to the reason
to reconcile and explain the imperfect information
thus given by the senses. We must see behind the
differences of colour, taste, smell, of vegetable and
animal organization, of life and death, into the

THE NATURAL WORLD. 97

ultimate something, of which these are only manifes
tations, due to transient and accidental conditions.
What, then, is the verdict of the reason, as contrasted
with the senses ?

Every body is composed of a greater or smaller
number of atoms, or indivisible particles, in various
degrees of proximity to each other. What appears
to be solid is never absolutely so. The air, the
water, the fruit, the rock, have all an atomic or mole
cular constitution. The tiny particles of which they
are comi>osed float in an ocean of empty space,
where they are forced into closer or laxer proximity
to each other. How small these atoms are we can
not tell. They are cognisable by reason and thought,
but they are beneath the power of sense, at least of
unassisted sense. Whether further aids to percep
tion might reveal them is a question apparently not
suggested to Epicurus. But of such elementary par
ticles every existing structure has been built up : into
such it will sooner or later return. Nor is the pro
cess limited to the world we see around us. We
have no reason to suppose there is a limit set to
existence at the furthest point whither our vision
can carry us. Away and away beyond the horizon
of the senses, the same process of the construction of
worlds out of molecular aggregations is endlessly
repeated. It would be as absurd to suppose only
one world in the infinite as to conceive a great corn
field with only a single stalk of grain in it.1

1 Mctrixlorus, as quoted by Plutarch, De rituit rAi/oso/>A.t 1. 5.
H

98 EPICUREANISM.

A question, however, arises about the movement
of the atoms. The only case of apparently uncaused
movement is the fall of unsupported bodies to the
earth. That fall takes place in a straight line.
Neither the circular movement, which Aristotle holds
to be the natural and perfect movement of the celes
tial bodies, nor the upward movement which, in his
opinion, characterizes fire, correspond in the judg
ment of Epicurus with the observed facts of terres
trial change. Upward movement is a mistake. As
for circular movement, it is explained by subsequent
science as a conjunction of two rectilineal move
ments acting at right angles to each other. We can
not, therefore, assume an initial tendency of atoms
to attract or repel each other, or to revolve round
each other. But, in apparent conformity with expe
rience, we may assume that the atoms fall down
wards. Of course, an up and a down in a vacant
world can only be arbitrarily fixed,1 and a modern
would object that every fall presupposed attraction.
But Epicurus is content with the phenomenon of fall
as experienced in daily life : he asks for no cause of
the movement so denominated, but regards it as
natural and primary. Thus, in the primeval void,
all atoms are perpetually falling. To assume more
would be to affix active properties to the atoms ; but
such properties the atoms, however erratic, as we

1 An obscure passage in Diogenes Laertius, x. 60, seems to
attempt a justification of the distinction. Cf. Lange's History
of Materialism, vol. I., note 21 on chap. I.

THE NATURAL WORLD. 99

shall see, have none. Hut if these bodies perpetually
fall in parallel lines, never overtaking each other,
because of equal velocity,1 they will practically just
remain where they were in equilibrium. All we gain
is a picture of atoms flitting after each other across
the field of imagination ; but, for any result so arising,
except weariness of the continuous fall into the abyss,
the atoms might as well remain at rest. To a theory
which places its ultimates in atoms which have no
further qualities than shape and size (so as to make
them picturable), it is evident that attraction and
repulsion are obscure and occult ideas. To accept
their aid towards an explanation of movement would
be to surrender the citadels of the system. It seems,
therefore, as if the molecular equilibrium would
remain eternal, in the absence of a sufficient cause
to bring the atoms in contact.

The senses and the feelings, however, suggest a way
out of the difficulty. In our own experience as
conscious beings we seem familiar with the fact that
not unfrequently we suddenly change the direction
of our action ; we swerve from the line in which
obvious motives were urging us ; we form a new
resolution and break up an old habit. We seem to
recognise in ourselves a principle of spontaneous and
sudden change, an incalculable spring of deviation,
a power of resisting and contradicting the tendency
impressed upon us by circumstances and fortune.
In this power which we feel ourselves to have — the

1 Diogenes Lacrtius, x. 61 ; Lucretius, n. 240.
H 2

100 EPICUREANISM.

power of free-will or spontaneity — of originating
movement apart from and in divergence from the
movement given from without — we find a suggestion
towards removing the difficulty. In the atom, then,
Epicurus assumes the existence of a similar incalcu
lable and unpredictable element which, some time
(we know not when) and some where (we know not
where), either once or oftener (our authorities do
not answer the question), impels the atom from its
previous direction. The amount of the divergence
from the perpendicular is, like all qualities connected
with the magnitude of the atoms, an innnitesimally
small one. And the reason for minimising the de
flection is obvious. If we allow it to become so
great as to be observable, the phenomenon of motion
in an oblique direction thus created would openly
contradict the well-known experience that all uncaused
motion is naturally perpendicular.

By means of this clinamen or TrapiyKXurtg of the
molecules,1 Epicurus at once tries to retain the spon
taneity of individual action or the superiority of man
to circumstances, and at the same time, in his ex
planation of the primeval conditions of contact be
tween the atoms, shrinks from running too openly
counter to the recognised experience of material
movement. Let us assume, then, that his purpose
has been attained. The molecules, small and great,

1 Lucretius, n. 216-293 ; Cicero, De Finibus> i. 19 ;
Dt Nat. Dear., i. 25, 69. Stobaeus (Eclog. I. 346) attri
butes to Epicurus a distinction between motion in a straight
liuc and slanting motion.

THF NATURAL WORLD. IOT

of one shape or another, meet with each other ; and
their impact is followed by various consequences.
Sometimes they are mutually repelled, and fly off to
other spaces ; sometimes they are locked in by cir
cumambient atoms and forced to juxtaposition; some
times their peculiar shape, weight, and size, make
them to cohere closely together and form combina
tions of considerable permanence and stability. In
this way the spaces of infinity are parcelled out into
innumerable folds containing large aggregations of
matter in various shapes and structures. In such an
enormous aggregation, which may be called a world,
there are several tolerably united bodies, composed
each of a number of molecules in aggregation, but
not in any case in absolutely close contact. Every
where between the molecules there is empty space —
absolute vacuum. The densest, heaviest, hardest
body has less vacuum within it than a rare, light, or
soft piece of matter ; but vacuum is never completely
wanting. Nothing therefore is ever a complete unity;
it only seems to be continuous and whole : really, if
we could look deep enough into it, we should see
that it is only a collection of parts held together by
the fortuitous influences of circumstance.

Such combinations or aggregations however exhibit
a number of phenomena which were not found in the
elements from which they sprung. Great, indeed, is
the virtue of aggregation. The original atoms were
extended bodies, too small singly to be perceived by
sense, and differing from each other in no points
besides figure, size, and weight. Hut, as every one is

IO2 EPICUREANISM.

aware, a difference of size or weight or shape may
often lead to differences which seem quite other than
quantitative. So is it here. In the first place, as we
have already noticed, it leads to the explanation of
the distinction between mind and body. Epicurus
is, as will be seen, a materialist, and so far as he
goes is in earnest with his materialism. That is to
say, he does not merely ignore the mind : he ex
pounds it, i.e. the basis of psychical phenomena, to be
a finer species of matter composed of rounder and
minuter particles. It is true that he introduces a
further subtlety by distinguishing between the soul,
or principle of life and feeling which pervades the
whole body, and the rational mind which inhabits
the region of the heart. Sufficient is it to remember
for the present that the soul is a subtler and more
refined materiality which is thus endowed with more
delicate and refined perceptions than the bodily
organs.

In the second place, life and sensibility are the
characteristics of certain forms of aggregate matter.
Epicurus does not, like a modern, fictitiously get
over the difficulty by introducing the term organized,
but honestly enough maintains the general uniformity
in the process of aggregation in all parts of nature
as a thing differing in degree, not in kind. He simply
asserts — what, no doubt, is the fact — that certain (or
uncertain) combinations of the primeval molecules
present the phenomena of life and consciousness
which are entirely absent from the original molecules
themselves. How such a remarkable result can be

THE NATURAL WORLD. 103

produced is a question which apparently never oc
curred to him ; and he therefore did not feel any
need of recurring to hypotheses like those by which
modern speculators have endeavoured to exhibit
mind or consciousness as the development of latent
possibilities in the unconscious matter.1 It may also
be hinted that Epicurus, unintentionally perhaps,
did service to the psychologist by maintaining that
the processes in the human organism which are the
physical concomitants or antecedents of thought and
sensation are distinctly mechanical processes of
matter in motion. Ignorant, however, of the structure
of the brain and the laws of nervous action, he could
give only a rough-and-ready hypothetical explanation
of the mode of transmission of sense-impressions and
volitions through the organism.

Perhaps, too, we may notice what seems in his
doctrine of the mind at once to betray a departure
from his original principles and a sense of the in
adequacy of his explanation. According to the
statements given both by Diogenes Laertius and
Lucretius, the soul is a complex of elements from
air, fire, and wind, and a fourth unnamed element.2
The last, which is the differentiating constituent of
the mind, suggests that it is postulated by the feelinp

1 Such as Hartmnnn's hypothesis of "The Unconscious,"
and the " Plastic Nature " of Cuchvorth, but more especially
ideas on the nature and powers of so-called matter like those of
Professor Tyndall.

a Stobaeus, Ed., I. 226; Diogenes Laertius, x. 63-^4;
Lucretius, in. 241-24$.

T04 EPICURE ANISM.

that there is more in the psychical than physical
analogies altogether explain. And further, the intro
duction of air, fire, and wind, suggests that Epicurus
supplements the stricter atomic theory of Democritus
by additions derived from the early physicists who
identify the soul with air, or fire, or wind ; and from
Aristotle, in whose system the combination of the
four principles of cold, hot, wet, and dry, played a
main part, as explaining the processes of nature.

But, passing on to a further point in the results of
combination, we have now to consider the way in
which Epicurus explained the fact that the visible
world is supposed to possess colour, sound, taste,
smell, softness, &c. To do this is partly the aim of
the Epicurean theory of sense-perception. In every
body of matter, every object of perception, there is,
besides the primary particles of which it is composed,
a further complement of secondary particles of finer
quality, partly maintaining a position over the whole
of its superficies, partly existing in the interior inter
stices between its constituent atoms. These minor
molecules, which vary from body to body, are in a
continual flux ; they are always floating away from
the body to which they belong, and wandering aim
lessly hither and thither about the world. For a
considerable length of time these filmy membranes,
which bodies are continually throwing off, preserve
the shape and arrangement they possessed on the
original body; though, of course, in time, if they
meet with obstructions, as they are sure to do, they
will be broken up, and lose all resemblance to their

THE NATURAL WORLD. 105

present frame-work. Those films which are sloughed
off the surface of bodies find in the visual organs
an appropriate medium ; they penetrate the eye, and,
preserving the position they had in the object, cause
the mind to see the latter, even though distant. By
their direct contact they reveal the distant objects
which they resemble. Similarly, the throngs of filmy
particles from the interior of bodies when they happen
to meet a nose, reveal the smell of the body ; when
they meet an ear, produce the perception of sound ;
and when they touch the tongue, lead to the per
ception of the body's taste. Thus colours, sounds,
tastes, are not qualities of primary body; they are only
found where minutest particles from the real bodies
come into contact with the organs of sense 1 in an
animal structure.

How absurd this theory is we need hardly trouble
ourselves to explain. It gets rid of mathematical
optics by a return to rude, primitive fancies of the
barbarian age. It refuses to be satisfied with any
such makeshifts as are afforded by the mathematical
assumption of immaterial rays of light, and the still
more awkward assumption of material pencils of rays.
It certainly recognises the doctrine already laid down
by Democritus, and in modern times re-asserted by

1 Diogenes Laertius, x. 46-53 ; Lucretius, iv. 42-109. The
second book of Epicurus I)e Natura, of which fragments
have been recovered in the Herculaneum MSS., treats of
this topic. It is often alluded to : t.g.t Apuleius, Afolog., 15 ;
Quintilian, /ntt. Oraf., X. 2, 15; Macrobiiw, So/urn., vii.
•4. 3-

106 EPICUREANISM.

Galileo and Locke, of the profound distinction be
tween the primary qualities of body (figure, size, &c.)
and the secondary, such as colour, sound, taste, &c.
The latter, as it points out, only belong to matter in
so far as it comes into contact with organisms pecu
liarly sentient. But all this doctrine of sense-percep
tion is in a way only part of a larger doctrine which
has important and direct bearings on the moral
theory.

In the first place, not merely do the skins shed by
the objects around us meet the eye now ; but, even
long after the objects to which they may have
belonged have ceased to exist, these phantom husks
float about the world. Thus it happens that the forms
of the departed may visit us long after their decease.
They may occur to us even in daylight, when our
attention is not engrossed by terrestrial business, and
when, in the dead of night, our eyes are closed to
the objects around us. Such is the Epicurean expla
nation of ghosts: they are disembodied films or loose
skins, like those the insect leaves upon the bushes
after its transition to other forms.

And, secondly, there are probably such gather
ings (ffva-uang) sometimes formed in the void
which do not owe their origin to any real bodies at
all, are not thrown off from any surface, but are for
tuitous and casual gatherings accumulated without
cause or reason, and assuming the shapes of familiar
objects. Such fantastic forms, or mirages, deceive
the unwary traveller. Thus what optical science
explains by complicated processes of reflection and

THE NATURAL WORLD. 1 07

refraction, and by premature interpretations of the
observer, Epicureanism explains by an hypothesis
quite in agreement with its own doctrines and partly
compatible with observed facts, but unnecessarily
multiplying the causes and entities supposed to
underlie phenomena.1

Thirdly, and here is a main point of the same
theory, there are perceptions in our mind — so, at
least, Epicurus affirms— of beings brighter and
better than man. These images visit us when the
mind is no longer besieged by the objects of sense.
In the night season, and in quiet reflection, we have
visions of the gods, as beings beyond the reach of
trouble or of death— beings endowed with immor
tality and supreme felicity. Whence can such images
come? There is no place for them in the world,
where is incessant mutation — one thing encroaching
upon another, and each impelling the other. They
can only come from some place beyond the world,
and, as there are innumerable worlds, from the spaces
intervening between the worlds — the intermundia
(fttTfiKoa^im). In these intervals between world and
world exist the real gods — not such as popular fancy
paints them — but eternally blessed, beyond the pres
sure and vicissitudes of the manifold worlds. They
are products of the same elements as man and
animals, only fabricated of finer stuff, less liable to
destruction from opposing elements ; superior in
every way to humanity, but not the lords of man or

1 Lucretius, iv. 129-142, and 749-776.

I08 EPICUREANISM.

of creation ; only co-ordinate results of the same
eternal laws which have produced the rest of
things.

This doctrine, which, as it were, explained away
the popular religion arid theology, is one of the most
striking, but also one of the darkest in the Epicurean
system. It admits, and even asseverates, the exist
ence of the gods, but it minimises the importance of
the admission by refusing to the beings thus acknow
ledged to exist all influence or government over
human affairs. The fear of God is thus removed,
obviously at the price of losing the love of God also.
Man has no longer a tyrant in the heavens ; but he
has no longer a friend there. As for the latter part
of the sentence, indeed, the idea was scarcely likely
to occur to a Greek of the age of Epicurus, who
considered the popular mythology only; and it is
evident that Lucretius never entertained the thought
of such a possibility. The tenants of the heathen
heaven were beings to be propitiated, entreated,
dreaded, and not to be loved. Nor did such an idea
of God as that taught by Plato and other lofty
minds, according to which He is the cause of good,
and good only, the ideal of justice and goodness and
truth, ever largely find entrance into the popular
creed. Even Plato himself departs from his concep
tion, and presents Deity as an avenger and an execu
tioner of judgment. The doctrine of Epicurus
offered an explanation of the wide-spread belief in

1 Lucretius, v. 1 161-1193,

THE NATURAL WORLD. 109

the existence of divine beings, but so emptied that
belief of practical significance that in popular esti
mation the Epicureans were naturally, though not
very fairly, treated as atheists.1

Connected with this was the question of existence
after death, and of future punishment. Whatever
may have been the case in earlier ages of Greece,
there is no doubt that in the age of Epicurus the
doctrine of a judgment to come, and of a hell where
sinners were punished for their crimes, made a large
part of the vulgar creed. The sixth book of Virgil's
.•Eneid, with its faint outlines of an inferno, is still
a great advance in gloom upon the rather neutral tints
of tho eleventh book of the Odyssey. Orphic and
other religious sects had enhanced the terrors of the
world below ; whilst they had done very little to
wards the provision of a heaven, except for those
who conformed to their own special rites. This
gloomy prospect beyond the grave aggravated and
embittered the natural fears of death. Against such
fears the Epicurean doctrine of the relation of soul
to body claimed to supply a safeguard. It laid down
as its cardinal dogma the interdependence of soul
and body, neither of which continues to exist after
the connexion has been severed at death. When the
soul leaves the body, it is dispersed into unconscious
elements : when the body is left without soul, it ere
long moulders away into other forms of existence.

1 As in several passages in Lucian. For the expression of
the licavy yoke imposed by religion, sec Lucretius, v. i ;
Citciu, DC Nat. Deor.t \. 54.

110 EPICUREANISM.

The dissolved elements of the living being are in
sensible to pain or pleasure.1 The Epicureans appa
rently believed that death was divested of its terrors,
when that " dread of something after death," which
" puzzles the will," was declared to be groundless.

The removal in this way of the fears of the gods
and of the fears of death is the preliminary con
dition and preparation for the practical lessons of
Epicurus. These are the two main results to which
the natural philosophy has led up. As such they
form the two first aphorisms of the Articles : "I.
The blessed and incorruptible has no toil or trouble
of its own, and causes none to others. It is not
subject either to anger or favour. II. Death is
nothing to us. That into which dissolution brings
us has no feeling or consciousness, and what has
no consciousness is nothing to us."2 These decla
rations set human life free, as it were, from all con
trolling powers in the heavens, or in the dim
hereafter. By two tremendous strokes, Epicurus
cut the Gordian knot of destiny, emancipated man
from divine control, and bade him freely concentrate
himself on the present life without any thought of
consequences beyond the tomb.

So eager was Epicurus to exclude all possibility of
divine interference in the world that he gave with
great detail a. series of suggestions for the hypothetical
explanation on non-theological principles of the ce
lestial and meteorological phenomena. It is in these

1 Lucretius, ill. passim', Diogenes, x. 81.

2 Diogenes Lacrtius, x. 139.

THE NATURAL WORLD. I IT

occurrences, belonging, as Epicurus thought, toasphere
where science is impossible, that the mythological ex
planation by direct divine causation is most at home.
The phenomena of eclipses, for example, have seemed
to many barbarous peoples a calamity overtaking their
deities, or an expression of divine anger ; and even
in less rude ages the popular mind is reluctant to
believe that the meteorological changes are no more
and no less directly in the hands of Providence than
the presence or absence of a gold-mine in a particular
district The letter of Pythocles (in Diogenes Laertius)
and the fifth and sixth books of Lucretius's poem
exhibit with much curious fulness this aspect of Epi
cureanism. At first sight, it is one of the strangest
features of a strange system. We begin with the
amazing doctrine that, rather than let slip a palpable
fact, a false explanation is preferable to any view which
leaves deity free to interpose its agency. But a second
principle seems still more counter to the spirit and
methods of science. A warning is loudly uttered
against any doctrine which states one single and
uniform explanation of the celestial and meteorological
phenomena ; and there is presented, on the contrary,
an embarrassing choice of alternative hypotheses.

A few examples may be given of the way in which
Epicurus seeks to keep out the hypothesis of deity
as a physical cause. To begin with, we are told that
the sun is about the same size as it appears,1 which

1 Diogenes Laertius, x. 91 ; Lucretius, v. 564-591. Cleomedes,
in his Cyclic. 77ifor., 1 1. i. 87, is very severe on this peculiar
doctrine.

112 EPICUREANISM.

at once disposes of the astronomical theories of
Eudoxus and the Pythagorean school. Next we find
the earth made the centre of our world, and the sun,
moon, and stars, reduced to insignificant attendants
upon it. In these statements the apparent fact is
taken as the final truth. We now come to the as
sumptions rendered necessary in consequence of such
premises. " The rising and setting of the sun and
moon and stars may be due to the lighting and the
extinction of these bodies ; they may also be due to
other causes. Their movements may not impossibly
be due to the revolution of the whole heaven, or to
their own revolution whilst the heaven remains at
rest. The waning and waxing of the moon may be
due to the turning of that body ; they may also be
due to certain formations of air, to the intervention
of another object, and in all the ways in which the
terrestrial phenomena in our midst suggest an expla
nation of these changes of form — unless one is so
devoted to the single method of explanation (novayos
rpuitov) that he rejects all others, having failed to
perceive that some things are accessible to human
science and others not, and in that way tries to solve
insoluble problems."1 All the explanations given by
all the physical philosophers of antiquity meet in
Epicurus as possible theories so far as they are in
harmony with familiar phenomena.

Epicurus, however, has another opponent in view
throughout this letter — an opponent whom he dreads

1 Diogenes Laertius, X. 92-94.

THE NATURAL WORLD. I 13

even more than the mythologists. That opponent is
Fate («i/*of>/i/nj). The doctrine of divine interference
may be bad ; the doctrine of fatalism is worse.
Epicurus will have neither. He rises up against the
dogma of a universal law welding all the parts of the
world into a gigantic machine in which human
beings are involved. Unlike Aristotle,1 who quotes with
approval the Homeric line which holds that " many
masters is not a good thing : let there be one ruler,"
he would rather see the several provinces of nature
democratically independent of any central despotism.
To him the recurrent phenomena of the universe
are not results of a united plan : they are to him, after
all, only contingencies. The sun rises and sets
regularly only because the combination of elements
evolves that particular chance again and again with an
approximation to uniformity. There is no controlling
design which all the movements of the universe co
operate in their several parts to execute and realise.
Each event, therefore, has, as it were, to stand by
itself and be explained on its own merits. But a
science of the events of the meteorological and
astronomic sphere has been declared impossible for
man : all that he need hope for or care for is to get a
plausible explanation conforming to the well-known
canon, that it must either be confirmed by familiar
experience, or, at least, not be contravened by such
experience. So he shall not tremble as if the
thunder were the voice of angry gods, or the

1 Aristotle, Mttafhys., xil. 10(1096, a. 4).
I

IT4 EPICUREANISM.

thunderbolt a minister of divine vengeance upon
the wicked.

Throughout the whole of his explanation of the
origin of the earth and of the arts and civilization of
the inhabitants, Epicurus is careful to exclude any
reference to divine action. There was no design, no
plan determining beforehand the process of evolution,
and adapting one part of the cosmic structure to
co-operate with another. The sun was not formed
that he might serve the uses of man, vivifying and
fertilizing the earth by his rays. In all its phases
teleology is extruded. The very animals which are
found upon the earth have been made what they are
by slow processes of selection and adaptation through
the experience of life. " Many races of animals,"
says Lucretius, "must have perished and failed to
propagate their kind. Those which we see at present
alive owe their continued existence to their superior
cunning or their bravery or their speed ; whilst others
have been preserved because they were found useful
to men."1 According to the same theory, which is
ultra-Darwinian in its character, there must often, in
the early ages of the world, when complex forms first
casually arose, have been seen strange mixtures of
unaccordant limbs and diverse natures, which, how
ever, were unable to maintain themselves and so
passed away.

Of course, in this there is no implication of the
peculiarly Darwinian doctrine of descent, or develop-

1 Lucretius, v. 855-861.

TUP NATURAL WORLD. 115

ment of kind from kind, with structure modified and
complicated to meet changing circumstances. Natural
selection of those species which were favoured by
their qualities or by circumstances in the competition
for life is no doubt affirmed by Epicurus, as it had
been by Empedocles and others before him. But the
point on which he chiefly insists is the naturalness of
the organic world. Plants and animals have the same
source as rocks and sands. It is from the seeds or
elements contained in the earth that the animals have
in some strange maternal throes (as Lucretius some
what figuratively puts it) been evolved in their
season : they have not fallen from heaven.1 The
same naturalistic explanation is given of the special
endowments of human beings. The organs of sense
were not given us ready-made in order that we might
use them : that which is born in our body, on the
contrary, generates for itself a use.2 The structure,
for example, which we call the eye was not given us
as an organ of vision : it arose, we need not too
curiously inquire how, and it was found to be useful
for the perception of objects in the light. Whether
this use by degrees created an organ more and more
appropriate for its purpose — function, as it were, per
fecting the organ — is a point apparently not discussed
by Epicurus.

Similar considerations explain how man came to
have language. Words originally were not conven
tional symbols : the first words were natural utterances

' Lucrelius, v. 793. * Ibid., 1\. 834.

1 2

Il6 EPICUREANISM.

of man corresponding to the cries peculiar to every
species of animal, and signified the objects and scenes
around him as they happened to gratify or excite
his wants and feelings. These utterances naturally
varied in proportion to the variety of national cha
racters and of individual human beings, and to the
peculiar images excited. In this way, in different
regions, a special form arose in which the air was
expelled from the lips and the sound formed. Dif
ferent nations made different languages. Within the
same nation special utterances came to be recognized
by the whole community as expressive of one fixed
object or occurrence, and so was avoided the am
biguity which would have supervened if no agreement
were made. What was thus begun in reference to
visible objects was extended subsequently so as to
denote objects not accessible to sense : sounds were
appropriated to invisible objects: and the mass of the
people adopted the terms thus introduced, either from
compulsion or by conviction of the reasonableness of
the proposal.1

All the advances of cultivation were due to the
intelligent improvement of what was offered or sug
gested to man by natural occasions. Man raised
himself from a state of primitive rudeness and bar
barism, and gradually widened the gulf which sepa
rated him from other animals. From the stage when
men and women lived on the wild fruits of the wood

1 Diogenes Laertius, x. 75-76; Lucretius, v. 1028-1090;
Vitruvius, n. i.

THK NATURAL WORLD. I 17

and heath, and drank the running stream — when they
ran about naked and homeless, knowing not the use
of fire, and living in constant fear of the claws and
fangs of savage beasts — to the stage when they formed
civic communities and obeyed laws, and submitted to
the ameliorating influences of wedlock and friendship
— all has been the work of man utilizing his natural
endowments and natural circumstances. For none
of the blessings of cultivation have men to thank the
gods. Their worship rather has been the cause of
endless woes, and has checked or prevented the
course of progress. In fact, the use of money and
the fear of celestial powers have been the two main
baleful influences in civilization.1

Above all, the world is too full of flaws, too im
perfect, too inharmonious and ill-adjusted, to be
deemed a divine creation — Tanta stat pradita culpa?
Not that Epicurus is a j>essimist, or that he believes
the net result of existence to be a preponderance of
evil. Ifwe can apply either term safely to him, we
should rather say that Epicurus was optimist, or his
whole doctrine of the aim and end of life must be
treated as illusory and misleading. He holds that,
whatever the chances of life are, and in whatever
direction they may preponderate, it is always in the
power of reasonable men, if they will, to make all
things work together for happiness. But to this end
it is essential that man should not have his hands tied

1 Lucretius, V. 925-1457. The Epicureans seem to have
made the first attempt to write the natural history of civilization.
* Ibid., v. 199.

Il8 EPICUREANISM.

by fate or divine arbitrary will, but be free to do the
best he can for himself. To trap ///xac aoeWoror : 1 we
are our own masters, so far, at least, that no over
mastering destiny drags us along in its train whether
we will or not. The gods have left man alone. Is
it possible even, asks Lucretius, that any being, how
ever wise and powerful, can have his eyes on all the
corners of the earth at once ? At any rate, it is not
the case that the immortals interfere. Man has his
hands free to scale the heavens and make himself
blessed as the gods.

Has man, then, according to Epicurus, a free will ?
It is, perhaps, hazardous, in the scanty supply of evi
dence, to attempt a categorical answer to the question.
Except a brief reference in Lucretius and Diogenes,
and a somewhat ambiguous passage in the recently
recovered fragments of Epicurus himself, there is
nothing specially fixing the problem one way or
another.2 It is true that we may argue from other
principles of his system. Too much reliance, how
ever, may be placed on such consistency. It is per
fectly conceivable that a philosopher while binding
Nature fast in fate may leave the human will free ; and
so, although Epicureanism, in its theory of perception,
seems to reduce the mind to a mere re-agent for the
various idola, or spectra, which flood in upon it from
outward sources, it need not follow that he denied all

1 Diogenes Laertius, x. 133.

2 Diogenes Laertius, x. 133 ; Lucretius, IV. 777-817. Gom-
perz has edited and commented upon some fragments on this
question (from papyrus 1056, in Coll. Prior, X. 697).

THE NATURAL WORLD. 119

spontaneity to the mind. Rather, this last question
he does not appear to have touched. When Lucretius,
for example, approaches it in his argument, and asks
how a man comes to think of one particular object
and not some other, he simply alludes, as if it were in
need of no explanation, to the circumstance of the
mind being able to attend, to abstract, to concentrate
itself. In other words, he takes for granted a spon
taneity — a power of initiation, selection, and deter
mination — which his primitive atoms are not supposed
to possess, but which he naturally enough, if some
what illogically, assumes to exist and operate.

After all, too, Epicurus was no metaphysician, and
in this question of the will he seems rather to be
arguing against extreme theories already in vogue
than adding to them a new one of his own. The
free-will controversy, if it be an intelligible dispute at
all, and not rather a battle in which each side fights
not against the other, but against an imaginary enemy
of its own creation, had scarcely formulated itself de
finitely in his time. What Epicurus has in view seems
to be on the one hand a popular illusion, and on the
other a metaphysical dogma. The popular illusion
is a belief in the efficacy of chance or fortune ; the
metaphysical dogma is that of fatalism, or necessita
rianism. According to the Stoics, who derived their
doctrine from Plato and Aristotle, every act and
event is regarded as part of a vast pre-ordained order
from the bonds of wl ich there is no escape. Fata^
says Seneca, volenUm ducunt, nolentem trahunt —
" The willing arc led, the unwilling dragged by the

120 EPICUREANISM.

fates." But willing or unwilling must alike testify to
the supremacy of destiny. Our fancied indepen
dence is the veil which we draw over our inevitable
participation in the great circles of the wheel of pro
vidential doom. It is against this lordship of the
universal law that Epicurus raises his protest. For
him there is no law higher than the law of kind ;
each species has its appointed limits, which it cannot
transgress if it is to live and flourish. But there is
no higher law to which the species is subject — ex
cept the law of chance, which presides at the forma
tion of kinds and of worlds. It enters into no grand
plan, makes part of no system. So long as it obeys
its own laws it is free. And such is the freedom of
man. To recognize the end or limit of his nature,
and to gain freedom by acting in constant accordance
with the conditions thus discerned, is the part of the
wise man, of the philosopher.

On the other hand, man is not the mere creature of
chances, and least of all in proportion to his progress
in wisdom. Intelligence renders him superior to
fortune, or at least diminishes to the lowest point the
effects of chance and circumstance. Within the
limits laid down by his own specific nature, man may,
if he will, be above all external forces. Thus Epi
curus contemns both fate and chance. However
much he indicates that in a formed character the
actions flow from self as a concentrated and self-
contained cause, while in an unformed and immature
being they are a varying resultant of passions from
within and impressions from without, still there is a

THE NATURAL WORLD. 121

residuum of spontaneity which he seems unwilling to
ignore, though unable to explain. Man, like the
atoms, has something incalculable in him ; even as
in the soul there was a fourth " unnamed " essence.
The anonymous and the spontaneous lurk at the
bottom of these explanations.

Neither in life nor in death, therefore, can anything
entail defeat or cause a regret for the wise man who
has freed himself from the blindness born in his flesh,
and learned what humanity really requires. " The
reasonable man," says Philodemus, in his treatise on
Death, " having learnt that he can acquire all that
is needed for a happy life, from that moment, having,
as it were, prepared himself for burial, walks about
and reaps profit from a single day as if ijt were an
age." 1 Once for all he dismisses the thought of death
from his mind when he has once for all grasped its
necessity and the utter indifference to us of the
state which succeeds it. " The free man," says
Spinoza, " thinks of nothing less than of death, and
his wisdom is not a meditation of death, but of life."2
Convinced that death is an absolute end with no
other life beyond, his motto is not, as is vulgarly
said, " Eat, drink, for to-morrow we die " ; but he
argues that, though we may die to-morrow, still the
fear of death should not poison and embitter to-day.

The annihilation of the personality by death is not
an idea peculiar to the Epicureans ; it appears in

1 Gompcrz, in the 7/trmes, xn. 223.
7 Spinoza, Ethic., iv. 67.

122 EPICUREANISM.

ancient writers in various tones, from solemn en
thusiasm to frivolous mockery. The passionate re-
jection of immortality by the elder Pliny is well
known. " What accursed frenzy, to think that life is to
be renewed by death. And where are those who have
been brought into being ever to find rest, if the spirit
retains its consciousness in the world on high, and the
shade in the world below ? Verily this sweet fancy
wherewith men beguile themselves deprives us of the
chief blessing of nature, destroys death, and doubles
the pain of dying by reflection on what is to
be hereafter. For, even if present life is sweet, who
can find it sweet to have lived ? How much easier
and surer were it for each to believe himself, and to
take his experience of the time that preceded his
birth as an argument that he need feel no anxiety for
the future ? !>1 In the second and third centuries, the
phrases, " To security," " To eternal rest," " To ever
lasting sleep " (securitati, ictertuc quieti, atenio somno\
arc not unfrequently found on tombstones. The
prospect of an utter end to existence seems to have
been felt by some, of those times, as no gloomy idea,
but as a welcome hope of unbroken and unending
rest. In others, the gross sensuality of some aspects
of Roman character is conspicuously displayed. " I
was nothing : I am nothing : and thou who art alive,
eat, drink, play, come." " All that is man's own is
what he eats and drinks " is the refrain of many of
these inscriptions on the tombs.2 In Greek epitaphs

1 Pliny, Nat. Hist., vii. 188-190.

2 See Friedlander, SiUengcschichte Roius, III. 616, seqq.

THE NATURAL WORLD. 1 2J

the denial of immortality is less obvious perhaps ; but
in all the thought is turned backward to the life that
is past, and seldom to the life that is to come, and
the seriousness of the tomb is for them not incom
patible with a note of cheerfulness and even of
mirth.

Ancient philosophy was divided on the question of
immortality. The school of Aristotle rejected the
doctrine of personal existence after death ; and though
the Stoics in general approximated towards it, still
Panaetius, the most original of their Roman ad
herents, departed in this as in so many other points
from the doctrine of his school. With the Platonists,
on the contrary, and especially with those who com
bined Platonic with Pythagorean ideas, the immor
tality of the soul was a cardinal tenet. But apart
from philosophic opinion, two facts seem tolerably
certain which bear upon this point. The great
majority of the Greek and Roman world believed in
some sort of after-existence ; but they differed largely
in the minutiae of belief. And, secondly, though the
conceptions of the other world in general do not appear
to have cast any prevailing gloom over this life, yet, if
we can trust Plato, Epicurus, and Lucretius, the
general conviction of a judgment to come, where
the deeds done in this life would receive their reward
and punishment, seems to have been widely felt, and
to have been, for priests and prophets, a fruitful soil.
Indulgences for sin, propitiation of impiety, sacra
mental atonement, not to mention magic and baser
forms of superstition, flourished alongside of Kpicu-

124 EPICUREANISM.

reanism all through its career, and probably reached
their maximum in the first and second centuries of the
Christian era. For all such modes of salvation
Epicurus declared there was no need. Man alone
could save himself; he needed neither redeemer
nor priest. To know and obey the law of Nature
was the only and the certain way to happiness and
goodness. If help were needed in the work of life,
it could be found in the sympathy of a true friend.
On earth was the portion of man : on earth blessed
ness could be either won or lost ; and death closed
all accounts. Goodness carried with it its present
reward : the prize of virtue was not postponed.

EPICUREANISM. 125

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHIEF GOOD.

WE may now pass on to what would, in ordinary
parlance, be described as the moral theory or ethical
system of Epicurus. On this topic we get little help
from Lucretius, whose poem breaks off before it has
even completed the theory of natural phenomena.
But in Diogenes Laertius, in Cicero and Seneca, there
are a number of fragmentary statements, and even of
tolerably connected passages, which help us to form in
outline at least a conception of the Epicurean Ethics.
But we must not expect too much from this title.
We shall find no code of duties, no principle of
obligation, no abstract standard of morals ; and still
less any discussion of the moral faculties. In morals
we are referred as elsewhere to the guidance of feelmg.
InTeefing, properly interpreted; we Tiave our~ruT(F;
and we have only to use our intellect to see that we
are not led astray from obedience to its voice. Our
feeling unequivocally tells us the genera[ character of
what we should pursue^ y[z.,_[)leasure. It is the
business of our reason to prevent this object l>eing
lost by injudicious pursuit, or by mistaking a less
pleasure for a greater. Pleasure always is our aimj
the natural aim of every living being, the end or law

126 EPICUREANISM.

of nature. It needs some care, however, to discrimi
nate real pleasure from pretended. We are corrupted,
we inherit a perverse taste ; and it is the office of
philosophy to purify our feelings, to make our taste
for pleasure true.

As an introduction, we may take a letter of Epicurus
in which he presents a summary of his theory of life
and conduct ; it is given by Diogenes Laertius : — l

" EPICURUS to MENCECEUS.

" Be not slack to seek wisdom when thou art young,
nor weary in the search thereof when thou art grown
old. For no age is too early or too late for the
health of the soul. And he who says that the season
for philosophy has not yet come, and that it is passed
and gone, is like one who should say that the season
for happiness has not yet come, or that it has passed
away. Therefore, both old and young ought to seek
wisdom, that so a man as age comes over him may
be young in good things, because of the grace of
what has been, and while he is young may likewise
be old, because he has no fear of the things which
are to come. Exercise thyself, therefore, in the
things which bring happiness ; for verily, while it is
with thee thou wilt have everything, and when it is
not, thou wilt do everything if so thou mayest have it.

"Those things which without ceasing I have
declared unto thee, those do and exercise thyself
therein, holding them to be the elements of right

1 Diogenes Laertius, x. 122-135.

THE CHIEF noon. 127

life. First, believe that God is a being blessed and
immortal, according to the notion of a God com
monly held amongst men ; and so believing, thou
shalt not affirm of him aught that is contrary to
immortality or that agrees not with blessedness, but
shalt believe about him whatsoever may uphold both
his blessedness and his immortality. For verily there
are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest ;
but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing
that men do not uphold steadfastly the notions they
currently believe. Not the man who denies the gods
worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of
the gods what the multitude believes about them, is
truly impious. For the utterances of the multitude
about the gods are not true preconceptions, but false
assumptions ; according to which the greatest evils
that happen to the wicked, and the blessings which
happen to the good, are held to come from the hand
of the gods. Seeing that, as they are always most
familiar with their own good qualities, they take
pleasure in the sight of qualities like their own, and
reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.

" Accustom thyself in the belief that death is no
thing to us, for good and evil are only where they
arc felt, and death is the absence of all feeling :
therefore, a right understanding that death is nothing
to us makes enjoyable the mortality of life, not by
adding to years an illimitable time, but by taking
away the yearning after immortality. For in life there
can be nothing to fear to him who has thoroughly
apprehended that there is nothing to cause fear in

128 EPICUREANISM.

what time we are not alive. Foolish, therefore, is the
man who says that he fears death, not because it will
pain when it comes, but because it pains in the pro
spect. Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is
present causes only a groundless pain by the expec
tation thereof. Death, therefore, the most awful of
evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we are, death
is not yet, and when death comes, then we are not.
It is nothing, then, either to the living or the dead,
for it is not found with the living, and the dead exist
no longer. But in the world, at one time men seek
to escape death as the greatest of all evils, and at
another time yearn for it as a rest from the evils in
life. The mere absence of life is no object of fear,
for to live is not set in view beside it, nor is it re
garded as an evil. And even as men choose of food,
not merely and simply the larger lot, out the most
pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is
most pleasant, and not merely that which is longest.
And he who admonishes the young men to live well,
and the old men to make a good end, speaks
foolishly, not merely because of the desirableness of
life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to
live well and to die well. Much worse is he who
says that it were best not to be born, but when once
one is born, to pass with greatest speed the gates of
Hades. If he, in truth, believes this, why does he
not depart from this life ? There is nothing to hinder
him, if he has truly come to this conclusion. If he
speaks only in mockery, his words are meaningless
among people who believe in them not.

THE CHIEF GOOD. I2Q

" Thou must remember that the future is neither
wholly ours, nor wholly nut ours, so that neither may
we wholly wait for it as if it were sure to come, nor
wholly despair as if it were not to come.

" Thou must also keep in mind that of desires some^
are natural, and some are groundless ; and that of
the^ naTuraTsomc are necessary as well _as natural ,
and some arc natural j>nly. And of the necessary,
desires, some are ne^Cjs^rxJLj^Jir^to^be happy,
and some if the boo!y is to remain unperturbed, and
some if we are even to live. liy the clear and cer
tain understanding of these things we learn to make
every preference and aversion, so that the body may
have health and the soul tranquillity^ seeing that this,
is the sum and end of a blessed life. For the end of
all our actions ~is to belVee fronijKun and fear_; and
when once we have attained this, all the temi>est of
the soul is laid, seeing that the living creature has
not to go to find something that is wanting, or to
seek something else by which the good of the soul
and of the body will be fulfilled. When we need plea-
sure, is, when we are grieved because of Die absence
of pleasure ; buT wlu:n~wc"Teel^K7 pjun, then we no_
longer stand in need of pleasure^ Wherefore we call
pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life.
I Measure is our first and kindred goodT "From ills
the commencement of every choice and every aver
sion, and to it we come back, and make feeling the
rule by whicH to ludtfc ofevery ^ood thing.

" A"d since pleasure is our first and native good,
for that reason _we do^not choose every pleasure
~~~

130 EPICUREANISM.

whatsoever, but ofttimes j)ass__over many pleasures
when a greater annoyance ensues from_th£m_. ^.nd
ofttimes we consider pains superior to pleasures,
and submit to the pain for a long time, wKen_it"is
attended for us with a greater pleasure. All plea-
sure, therefore, because of its kinship with our nature,
is a good, Put it is not in all cases "our choice, even
as every pain is an evil, though pain is not always,
and in every case, to be shunned. It is, however,
by measuring one against another, and by looking at
the conveniences and inconveniences, that all these
things must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good
as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good ;
and we regard independence of outward goods as a
great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so
as to be contented with little, if we have not much,
being thoroughly persuaded that they have the
sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in
need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily pro
cured, and only the vain and worthless hard to win.
Plain_Jare gives_ as jiuich_pjeasure as a. costly^ diet^
when, once the pain due to^vant^is rempvgdj and
bread and water -confer_jhe^ highest pleasure when
they aro^_hroiji^jif to hungry lips. To habituate
self, therefore, to plain and inexpensive diet gives all
that is needed for health, and enables a man to meet
the necessary requirements of life without shrinking,
and it places us in a better frame when we approach
at intervals a costly fare, and renders us fearless of
fortune.

" When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and

THE CHIEF GOOD.

aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal,
or the pleasures of sensuality, ns we are understood
by some who are either ignorant andprejudiced for
other views, or inclined to misinterpret our state
ments. By pleasure, we mean the absence of painrZy7
in the body and trouble in the soul It is not an ^
unbroken succession of drinking feasts and of re
velry, not the pleasures of sexual love, not the enjoy
ment of the fish and other delicacies of a sjdendid
table, which produce a pleasant life : it is sober
reasoning, searching out the reasons for every choice
and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through
which greatest tumults take possession^of the soul.
Of all this, the beginning, and the greatest good, is
prudence. Wherefore, prudence is a more precious
thing even than philosophy : from it grow all the
other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot lead a life
of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour,
and justice ; nor lead a life of prudence, honour, and
justice which is not also a life of pleasure. For the
virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and
a pleasant life is inseparable from them,..

" Who then is superior, in thy judgment, to such a
man ? He holds a holy belief concerning the gods,
and is altogether without fears about death ; he has
diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and
has understood how easily the limit of good things
can be satisfied and procured, and how either the
length or the strength of evils is but slight. He has
rejected fate which some have introduced as universal
mistress, no less than chance, in respect of what
K 2

132 EPICUREANISM.

is due to human agency, for he sees that fate
destroys responsibility, and that fortune is incon
stant ; as for our actions, there is no lord and master
over them, and it is to them that blame and praise
naturally ensue. Better were it, indeed, to believe
the legend of the gods, than be in bondage to the
destiny taught by the physical philosophers ; for the
theological myth gives a faint hope of deprecating
divine wrath by honouring the gods, while the fate of
the philosophers is deaf to all supplications. Nor
does he hold chance to be a god, as the world in
general does, for in the acts of God there is no dis
order, nor to be a cause, though an uncertain one,
for he believes that good or evil is not given by it to
men so as to make life blessed, though it supplies
the starting-point of great good and great evil. He
believes that the misfortune of the wise is better than
the prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that
what is well-judged in action should not owe its
successful issue to the aid of chance.

"Exercise thyself in these and kindred precepts
day and night, both by thyself and with him who is
like unto thee \ and never, Cither in waking or in
dream, wilt thou be disturbed, but wilt live as a god
amongst men. For in nothing does he resemble a
mortal creature, the man who lives in immortal

Thus imequivocaHy does Epicureanism prpclaim_
pleasure to be the end of nature — the first good,
common to the whole race of inaiL The announce
ment of such a doctrine naturally gave rise to a

THE CHIEF noon. 133

chorus of reproving and protesting voices. Even if
it be true that we are irresistibly urged towards
pleasure by an impulse of our nature, it is our duty,
say the objectors, to guard against the temptations
thus arising. We have nobler aims to live for than
mere pleasure. Honour and duty demand our
allegiance : obligations bind us to our family and
friends and to our country. Pleasure is of the earth,
lmt_ virtue calls us to make ourselves worthy of heavenT
A mere pleasure-seeker is of all beings the most
miserable :a his search is hopeless : and the fruits he
plucks are but as apples of Sodom and turn into
ashes between his teeth. The man of pleasure must
inevitably, it is said, cry out, Vanity of vanities : all is
vanity. Worse than this : his pleasures will become
more and more sensual, degrading, and animal. As
life goes on, his jaded sensibilities require more
poignant excitements to ward off the attacks of
ennui. A life of pleasure hardens the heart, and the
sense of enjoyment comes to find a peculiar delight
in the sight of others suffering. Domitian at Rome
and Catherine the Second of Russia are pointed out
as the examples warning against lawless lust for
pleasures. That Epicureanism should inculcate a
lesson which bears such fruits seems argument enough
to condemn it.

In all of this the truth is marred by exaggeration.
There Ls a long interval hetS!^ejiJhe_jtajejnejit_^lwt
pleasure isjhc_DiUural law, and the recommendation
to pursiiejjleasurcs everywhere and above all things.
The former can hardly be disputed, when explained ;

134 EPICUREANISM.

the latter is unwise and, possibly, impracticable advice.
To do justice to the doctrine of Epicurus we should
never forget that it is to a large extent the reaction
and protest of an opposition. Its statements to be
understood must be taken in connection with the
doctrines to which they are antagonistic. Every
thesis loses half its meaning, and almost all its truth,
when completely dissevered from its antithesis. The
expression of a dogma in such a case is misleading.
The author, strong in his sense of a correction to be
made, hardly gives full place to the large and im
portant body of doctrine which he accepts without
correction. His exposition is fragmentary and un
balanced, and requires to be interpreted with caution.
Because something is passed over in silence, we must
not infer that it is denied. Every revelation of new
truth, every attempt at reform, always and necessarily
assumes and tacitly embodies with itself much that
was old.

| Epicureanism need not be assumed, therefore, to
abolish or contradict the old morality altogether,
although it proposes to put it upon a new foundation,
and denies the especial principles on which the
Virtues were sometimes said to be founded. In the
moj^l_s^stems_of _Plato and _Aristnt]f a very subgr-
dinate and undignified place was assigned to pleasure.
When Aris^mTe7TrrmT^ Ethics " attempts to find the
characteristic mark of virtue, he sees it in the circum
stance that the end or aim of the action is ru wiXoi'.1

1 Aiist., Ethics, iv. 2, i, &c.

THE CHIEF GOOD. 135

The beautiful — the idea of an objective perfection
and symmetry which is to be maintained — the entirely
ideal motive of correspondence with an existent law
of rectitude, — the desire to reflect a moral beauty in
our individual conduct — that is the sunlight which
elevates acts out of mechanical obedience into con
scious actualization of an ethical world or moral
cosmos. The presupposition here, as in Plato, is that of
an order which exists before us, of an ideal perfection
which we do not make, and can but approximate to.
Of the origin and authority of this fundamental idea
of his ethical system Aristotle can scarcely be said to
render any account. What the " beautiful " is, and
how it comes to sway our conduct, is rather removed
from his range. Nor can Plato be said to carry more
conviction when he asserts, what in its way is true
enough, that these conceptions are the very ante-natal
dower of the soul — the ideas which mind has been
familiar with before it sank into the darkness of this
sense-world in which we live. The interesting question
still remains how we as human beings come to shake
off the confusing influences of nature, and learn to
see the idea of goodness in its very truth. But Plato,
though he attacks this question, does not answer it.
He discusses an analogous question, viz., how the
statesman is to be equipped for his duties ; and to
the statesman thus formed and perfected he entrusts
the task of telling the ordinary human being what is
to be done and what is not to be done. And a like
criticism may be passed on Aristotle. 'I1iev_bothhad
in view an objective order and system whidfT stood

136 EPICUREANISM.

above the likes and feelings of men : and a willing
conformity to. this Qjxler__vvas_Jhe_juni which they
assigned to the legislator in his normative action in
society. So long as there was a tolerable agreement
between this ideal order and the actual constitutions
under which men lived, so long their theory might be
accepted. But when even the blindest eye could no
longer refuse to see in the existing political forms
only a tissue of vice, injustice, and baseness, then the
ideal order, bereft of its sensuous vicegerent, the
State, must collapse or find another support.
The ancient sages before JgjoicjLirjjsJmd condemned
it to virtue. A few of them

went so far as to carry out the implication, and to
assert the absolute incompatibility of pleasure and
virtue. Aristotle Tiacl not been so extravagant. In
pleasure he recognised the sign that the capacity antP
terulencjr Jo__good__which habit and discipline had
jn-oduced_ had_at length become a second nature^1
He had spoken of pleasure as the accompaniment of
suclTaction as combined the fullest expansion of a
natural power in the agent with the most satisfactory
condition of the objects in which it found room for
its exercise. Pleasure was the concomitant of action
when the perfect agent found a perfect medium for
his action. But the character of the "active power
made a profound difference in the estimate to be
formed of the pleasure. There were higher pleasures,
and there were lower pleasures. This distinction of

1 Avist., Ethics, II. 2.

THE CHIEF HOOD. 137

the worth or worthlessness of different pleasures rests
upon the presumption that there is a hierarchical
system of ends in life, that somc~ac!s or ihings are
intrinsically worth more than others, quite apart from
the pleasure whrchjndwiduals may derive from thernT
It rests on a belief in ideas and on ideal truth : on
the faith that man is only a member of a great order,
an everlasting realm of truth and goodness, which
receives him when he conies into the world, and
which connects him with the past and the future, as
well as with his contemporaries in the present.

Such an order Epicureanism ignores. It isolates a
man from his membership of the body politic ; it
cuts him off from anything beyond this life by the
doctrine of man's absolute mortality. FojiJilpjcu^
rcanism man is a sentient being, capable of pleasure
and pain^_and possessed of an ilnteiligcnce wluch
enables him to take forethought for both. Around
him are other sentient beings similarly circumstanced,
with whom it is often necessary, and sometimes con
venient, that he should come into contact and relation
ship. But these connections are lax, accidental, and
temporary ; the unions so formed are transient, and
owe their existence and maintenance to the con
venience of individuals. They have no subsistence
in themselves, no rights as against individuals, no
powers to enforce obligations or require duties. The
individual being, susceptible to pains and pleasures, «c
the standard. Nothing exists /

outside him which should thwart and check the
claims of his person to enjoyment, nothing of an

138 EPICUREANISM.

idcnl kind, at any rate. To some extent, however,
the bond which is thus taken off is reimposed as the
easier and lighter yoke of friendship.

Antiquity is almost unanimous in the praises it
bestows upon the friendly affection which prevailed in
th'e communities of Epicureans.1 Friendship en
hances the charm of life ; it helps to lighten sorrows
and to heighten joys by fellowship. In itself, the fact
of friendship bears witness to something beyond the
mere individual, perhaps — but it speaks only imper
fectly and indistinctly. Reflection seems to show
that all friendship has a selfish basis, and is built upon
utility. In every union of affection the cynical
observer is able to point to something which may be
interpreted into the presence of an earthly element,
a self-regarding consideration. Nor is the cynical
observer to be pronounced in error. The self-re
garding cannot be entirely absent from anything
human ; the absolutely and wholly unselfish is the
divine. But the cynical observer is wrong in em
phasizing this fact to the exclusion of another side.
The prophet and the reformer are not to be regarded
as hypocrites because even in their holiest fervours
and their purest counsels the absence of self is never
perfect and undisputed. Rather were it well to note
the different contents and structure of the self which
is operative in different individuals. There is a wide
interval between the self which excludes all others in
antagonism and the self which includes them in love.

1 Cicero, Acad. TV., II. 115; De Fin., T. 2C 65.

THF. CH1F.F COOP. 139

\Vt for an ordinary world, the cynicism \vhic-h
reminds us that utility is the creator of law and
morality is not altogether without its value. Harsh
as it may sound against more ideal or more senti
mental principles, the assertion of utilitarianism has
at least the advantage of fighting against an un
reasoning conservatism adhering to the past with
Mind tenacity. Even if utility be not an adequate
formula to account for the existence of the organiza
tion of human society on its present basis, it at least
affords a mark for the reformer, and suggests amelio
rations. In the great words in which Plato pro
claimed the rights of reason against authority and
tradition,1 there is not and never will be finer phrase
than this : — Only the useful is truly beautjful and
harjviful truly unsightly and bad.

Kiit the basis of utilitarianism may be different, as
the doctrine itself varies. It may rest on a philan
thropic sentiment, a humanitarian feeling. Such a
foundation must to Epicurus have seemed vague and
uncertain ; and he builds his creed accordingly on a
more solid foundation ; more solid, that is, if we
compare sentiment with sentiment. He bases it on
the natural feeling of j)lcasurc. and on the gencral_
gravitation of allluiman kind'towards pleasure. No
more than otheTwiiters is~Epicurus able to~give a
definition of pleasure. To know what is meant_by
being pleased we must go to consciousness, to fceji
" The state of pismire.." says Professor Bain,

1 IMato, RtfuMif, v. 457.

140 EPICUREANISM.

" is anjjltimate, indefinable experience of the mind.
The fact itselMs known to each person's conscious
ness : the modes, varieties, degrees, collaterals, and
effects of it, may be stated in propositions."1 In a
sense, it is quite true that every one does understand
whaf is meant by pleasure. Unfortunately, however,
trTeTword pleasure, like all words of this ' abstract '
description, easily becomes ambiguous. It denotes
not merely the abstract and general relation in virtue
of which an act or object is termed pleasant, but also
the particular objects or acts themselves which give
pleasure to some, or perhaps to the majority of man
kind. Like other abstract tftrmst_iLj5L-interpreted
and defined by _tHe~Tiabits and experience of each
individual. It is specified into various concrete
pleasures, and identified with certain things which
produce pleasure. Every man has pleasures of his
own, and the cases are rare where the same thing
gives pleasure to everybody.

The phrase " pursue pleasure," is therefore some
what elliptical. Strictly speaking, we do not and
cannot pursue pleasure.; which is as great an abstrac
tion as the pursuit of truth, perhaps even a greater,;
for the latter, at least, is in some degree objective
and abiding, whereas pleasure i_sjtra.nsient_ and suj>_
jective. What we pursue are certain objects of desire,
the attainment of which causes pleasure. Pleasure in
itself, if we jriay use such an expression, is neither
one thing noL.another: what it is depends entirely

•v '' The Emotions and the Will," p. 12.

THE CHIEF GOOD. 141

on the^ naturejof the_person. and jhc character of the
object No so-called pleasure has the power of pro
ducing pleasure, inevitably and in all circumstances.
Yet for this reason, it may be said what we desire
is not a thingj but rather an action. It is the eating,
and not the food^whichjjives pleasure to the hungry.
There is a controversy, in some respects verbal,
raised on this point. It may be said, that ^hcj^bjej..!
of ajiesire is not pleasure, but some specialjihingjjr
lictT " All particular api>etites and passions," says
llishop Butler,1 u are towards external things them
selves, distinct from the pleasure arising from them."
Action, which should have in view no particular^
object but only the general end of pleasure, would
be so indefinite and vague as to be unreal. The
actual appetites of the actual human being go straight
at their specific ends. It is only with reflection and
thought that the voluptuary who pursues pleasure for
pleasure's sake becomes in any degree possible. A
mere liking for pleasant things does not make a
voluptuary, or few would escape the name. To
become a voluptuary, a human being must care for
and desire nothing in these pleasant things but the
pleasure which they bring to his individual self.
Kvery concrete reality fades away into nothingness in
his eyes except his own consciousness, and the honey
which can be extracted by him from the vast world,
for whose intrinsic existence and fortunes he has no
interest whatever. To such a person, if he can be

XI. (On the Luve of our Neighbour.)

T42 .EPICUREANISM.

said anywhere .tojjxist, jn full-Jfledggd jrealitj^jhe doc
trine that pleasure is the sole object of desires may
be applied.

No such assertion does Epicurus, however, make.
The end of nature, he says, is pleasure. Pleasure,
and not pain, is the end towards which all things in
the world tend as their natural^nd_ normal condition.
But what are pleasure and pain ? It is necessary to
look at them together. No doubt it may be said
that there Js a third or neutral state, which is neither
pleasure nor pain. There are certainly many states
of consciousness, which we should not in ordinary
language describe as either pleasant or painful. But
whether that gives a ground for asserting that these
states are absolutely without such quality, are wholly
indifferent, is a question which seems difficult to
answer in the affirmative. It may, however, be con
venient to assume the existence of some such point
of transition and indifference as a terminus from
which we ordinarily measure the degree of pleasure
or of pain, or as an average level of no very definable
character, and liable to divergence on two sides.

According to J?lato. however, there are two cate
gories of pleasures ordinarily so called.1 There are
pleasures which rest, to some extent, upon an illu
sion ; they seem pleasant, that is, when set in contrast
with a background of pain. In themselves they are
nothing positive : they are no more than the absence
or the removal of uneasiness. They presuppose an

I'lato, Republic, IX. 584.

THE CHIEF GOOD. 143

antecedent pain : they are the satisfaction of a want.
Of this kind, for example, is the pleasure derived
from eating by the hungry man. These pleasures
are unreal and untrue. On the other hand, there
are pleasures, — as an instance, Plato gives the plea
sures of smell, — which are preceded by no pain.
They accompany certain exertions of activity or cer
tain states of susceptibility: they come unsought, and
leave no sense of want behind them. Such pleasures
are positive and real.

It may be doubted if this distinction rests on
wholly satisfactory ground. The sense of want or desire
which accompanies certain \ leasures as their con
dition, is probably to be explained by their close
connection with our nature and character, whether
original or acquired. The pleasures of smell, to take
Plato's instance, excite no previous desires in most
cases, because they have little connection with our
well-being ; and the pleasure they do produce may,
perhaps, be due directly or indirectly to an associa
tion with life-giving and beneficial function. Perhaps,
too, the facility with which certain pleasures may be
represented by imagination in the objects which
habitually cause them, has something to do with the
feeling of uneasiness which Plato alludes to. At any
rate, all pleasures seem to be, at least in the case of
those who feel them most acutely, attended by the
sense of want. But, of course, there is a difference
67 another oTTgin which has a bearing upon the point.
The pleasures of the sensualist are much less within
his own power than those of the inlellectualist. The

1^4 EPICUREANISM.

former is in a large degree dependent on the favour
of external circumstances, and thus inevitably he
must occasionally be deprived of a favourite gratifica
tion, must surfer want and pain. The intellect carries
its own resources, at least, to a large extent, and is
less dependent on external help. But even in the
case of intellectual delights, the absence of intellec
tual exercise would be felt as a pain and loss, and a
man would put himself to pain and trouble to re
cover his mental ease and freedom. The various
conditions under which pleasure is experienced seem
to point in the direction of the relativity of pleasure
and pain. Whether as the removal of an obstruction,
the conquest of a difficulty, the replenishment of a
void, the satisfaction of an uneasiness, the re-establish
ment of an equilibrium, the enlargement of an impri
soned force, pleasure presupposes something of its
opposite.

It is in this sense that Epicurus defines pleasure :
" When once the pain arising from deficiency has
been removed, the pleasure in the flesh admits of no
further augmentation, but only of variation : and
similarly the limit of the pleasure of the mind is
reached, when the causes of our principal mental
fears have been removed.''1 The limit of pleasure,
according to the stock phrase, was the eradication of
everything painful.2 When so much has been gained,

1 Diogenes Laeitius, x. 144.

2 ») Trairoj; rov oAyof'vroi; vTrt^uiptffi^. From papyrus IIO2,
p. IO (Oxford copies), it appears that the texts even then varied
in tliis standard phrase. Some omitted Trai'Toj;, and others read

THE CHIEF GOOD. 145

no further increase in the amount of the pleasure is
possible. Subsequently, of course, variety may be
introduced by more costly appliances, but the net
result will be the same as that gained by simpler
methods. And for that reason it is a wise precau
tion to find out experimentally the simplest and least
expensive mode of gratifying our wants, not with any
ascetic intention, but simply to prepare for a state of
affairs when the more costly means is not at our com
mand. If it be said that the variety and vicissitude
of luxuries also satisfies what is to many a real want,
Epicurus replies by instituting a distinction between
our wants. Of the desires, some arc pronouncedjo
be natural and necessary; qthcrs_to bc_ natural, but
pot necessary ; a third class includes desires which
are neither natural^nor nccessaryt but due merely to
fancy and fasjiion. This division of desires and plea
sures into the natural and the artificial comes from
older sources : it is laid down, for example, by the
Cynics. But it is in the application of the distinc
tion to hedonism that the important point lies for
Epicureanism. Epicurus, like the Stoics in his own
time, and like Rousseau and his adherents in the
last century, tries to find in nature a help against
fashion and civilization. It is nothing to have cast
away the rags of superstition, if we still retain the
artificial vestments of human culture. Avoid all cul
ture, was the advice of Epic urns.1 He is at war with

1 Diogenes f.acrtius, x. 6; 1'lutarch, A'vti poise suuv.,
XMI. I.

146 EPICUREANISM.

the artificialities of life. Nature had made man up
right, but he had sought out many inventions. An
exclusive literary training was leading men away from
the perception of the truth of life, to spend their
days in a hollow world of unreality, filled with
esthetic vanities, with political pomps, with religious
anxieties. To the doctrine that poetry and art had
a useful end, the Epicureans opposed a denial ;
poetry might be justified on some grounds, but cer
tainly not for its utility.1 If the hard-worked states
man, said Epicurus in his work on Kingdom,2 desires
relaxation, let him seek it in the tales of war, or even
in rough common jesting, but not in aesthetic discus
sions, on topics of music and poetry ; let him seek
his amusement in spectacles and pageants, in the
drama and the concert, but not in critical or philolo
gical investigations of the principles of art. Epicurus
is impatient of the nebulous regions which only exist,
according to him, for highly sensitive and sentimental
souls.

In this way Epicureanism seems to approach to a
point of view at the opposite pole of opinion, viz.
Cynicism or Stoicism. " Man needs but little here,"
is its assertion. " Riches._accordin£ to nature, are
of limited extent, and_can easily ; j^e jprocuredL; Jb&L
the wealth cravecTaftcr by vainjancies knows neithcx
end nor limit. " " He who has understood the limits
of life, knows how easy to get is all that takes away

1 Sextus Empir., Adv. Musicos, c. 27.
• Plutarch, Non tosse SIMV., xin. i.

THE CHIEF GOOD. 147

the pain of want, and all that is required to make
our life perfect at every point. In this way he has
no need of anything which implies a contest."1 Thus
Epicurus can scarcely be identified with the ordinary
advocates of pleasure. His hedonism is of a sober

and reflectiyekincL It rests on the assumption that
pleasure is the end or natural aim, but, it adds, that
the business of philosophy is to show within what
limits that end is attainable. Thus, if, on one hand,
it declares against the philosophers that pleasure is
the law of nature, and that ideal ends ought to promote
the welfare of humanity, it declares on the other
against the multitude that the ordinary pursuit of
pleasure, and the common ideas of its possibilities, are
erroneous. To the ordinary vision the search for plea
sure is endless: one beckons after another: illimitable
vistas of new delights seem to extend before the
ravished eyes. All this is a delusion, says Epicurus.
True pleasure is satisfaction, and not a yearning, which.
though momentarily stilled, bursts forth again.

It would almost seem a misnomer to call this
pleasure. As true politeness, so-called, often differs
widely with what is usually understood by politeness,
so true pleasure seems far apart from pleasure in its
vulgar meaning. A body free from pain, and a mind
released fromj>erturbations, is the ideal of Epicurean
life.___The prominent point,~IrTshort, is~not the doc
trine that pleasure is the natural end. That Epicurus
asserts as a universal law of animated existence.

1 Diogenes Laertius, X. 144, 146.
L 2

148 EPICUREANISM.

But what he emphasizes is rather the conditions
under which this end is possible for man. He
seems, at first sight, to describe pleasure, as Scho
penhauer, as a merely negative state, as the absence
of pain. It would, however, be a grave mistake were
we to suppose that because this condition is nega
tively described, it was a mere abstraction or nega
tion. The imperturbability of the Epicurean was not
an ascetic or an insensate withdrawal from all life
and action. But it certainly introduced a rational
and reflective aspect into the doctrine of hedonism,
as it had been practised or taught by Aristippus of
Cyrene. The Cyrenaic preached enjoyment of the
present moment : he took pleasure as he found it
scattered all over the earth. He did not balance
pleasure against pleasure. His theory was, that as
pleasure is the one thing desirable, the main aim
of education should be to fit men to enjoy with all
their heart, to give them that strength of mind and
body, which enables them to take pleasure in any
thing. He said, Learn to enjoy : at each moment
the absolute good of life is before you, and you ought
to attain it. You need not wait for the lapse of
time, so as to see how it has turned out upon the
whole. Comparison and reflection are the foe of
pleasure. You must be able to throw yourself wholly
into what this moment presents, as if this moment
were eternity with no before or after. When another
moment comes, you treat it in like manner. Thus,
while you enjoy each in its turn to the full, you
remain detached from its control, you are still your

THE CHIEF COOP. 149

own master, your action creates no obligation, you
are equally free to enjoy what conies next.

To all of this the reply of the Epicurean is that
such a doctrine, if practicable at all, is only possible
under exceptional circumstances. To carry it out im
plies a previous training and reflection on life as a
whole, on its capacities and its needs, on the Jaws of
nature, and the relations of men to one another. A
happy tact, a natural taste, may, in peculiarly gifted
natures, and in favourable circumstances, enable a
man to enjoy, without running upon the shoals and
quicksands which beset the course of the pleasure -
se'.-ker. But in the vast majority of cases, where no
aesthetic instincts guide the decision, the search for
pleasure proves a chase after a phantom, which
allures only to deceive. For " the flesh takes the
limits of pleasure to be endless, and an endless time
would be needed to provide it ; but the mind, having
learned the limit and the end of the flesh, and having
cast away fears about the distant future, has made
for us life perfect and adequate, and we no longer
need infinite time. And yet it has not been an exile
from pleasure, and when the time comes to depart
from life, it closes with no sense of having fallen
short of felicity."1 In other words, if we really and
truly enjoy the moment, we can only do so by having
taken, some time or other, a view beyond the moment,
and having learned to see each moment in the
light of the whole life, of our nature as a whole. We

X. 145.

150 EPICUREANISM.

must refer each action to the end and aim of nature,
and not throw ourselves blindly into what promises
pleasure.

" No pleasure is evil in itself, but the objects pro
ductive of certain pleasures may lead to annoyances
many times greater than the pleasuj£xl' l Hence the
place of prudence or reflection in the Epicurean
system, as the chief of the virtues. But it must not
be supposed that the function of ^ovr^ai^ is in Epi
curus any more than in Aristotle, merely to weigh
pleasure against pleasure, so as to choose the heavier.
l Prudence, here as there, means the intelligent con-
'ception of human nature, as a whole, in its limits
and its powers. It is not a fitful and casual agent,
interfering with the natural bent towards pleasure,
and exhorting it to hear reason, but a deep-settled
and permanent character — the second nature of the
Epicurean sage — which acts like an instinct to pre
serve from extravagance and excess. If reflection,
indeed, were employed to choose amongst pleasures
with a conscious reasoning at every moment, such a
process would certainly be a kill-joy. But this is
only the case with the learner, who is endeavouring to
correct his natural errors. As he advances in the
path of perfection, the feeling of opposition between
the habi(ual tendency fostered by evil influences and
the rational law of nature grows fainter, till at last, in
the character of the ideal sage, it disappears alto
gether. Once for all, the wise man has counted the

1 Diogenes, x. 141.

THE CHILF GOOD. 15!

cost, and learnt the real worth, of various enjoy
ments ; he has learned to discriminate apparent from
real pleasures, and can turn away without a single
sigh of regret from many entertainments which the
world esteems highly.

This, then, is one point of contrast between
pleasure, as understood by the Cyrenaics and
Epicureans. With the former it was the pleasure
of the moment, of action and excitement : life, as a
whole, did not enter into the account — it was taken
as a series of moments, and each moment deemed an
eternity. \Vith thejatter it was the pleasure of a life,
in which_the j>lejisure_s pf the several moments togk
theiir^ l^ajc_e_in_a_systeiii^ _and^j}io^ifled_each jother.
The pleasure of the Cyrenaics was a keen sensation
— in motion, Kit'tjo^, as the technical phrase described
it : that of__thc Epicureans was more tranquil and
sedate— an habitual and permanent rather than a
changeful and temporary enjoyment.1 With the
Cyrenaic it was the pleasure of the healthy and
vigorous natural man ; with the Epicurean, of the
philosopher, and, j>erhaps, to some extent, of the
weakly valetudinarian. Epicureanism could thus
appeal to the_ Jjnany^. whilst Cyrenaic theories could
only find an echo in specially-endowed personalities.
Few in any age can stand for a portrait like that
drawn by Cicero,2 of M. Thorius Balbus. "This man
was a citizen of Lanuvium. He lived in such a way

1 Diogenes Lac r l i us, x. 1 36.
1 Cicero, De Fin., n. 20, 6j.

152 EPICUREANISM.

as to miss none of the finest pleasures ; for in nil
kinds of pleasure he was an amateur, connoisseur,
and adept. So free was lie from superstition that he
treated with scorn many of the sacred places and
religious rites of his country : and yet so fearless of
death that he fell on the battle-field fighting for his
fatherland. He limited his desires, not at the point
fixed by Epicurus, but by his own satiety : yet never
so as to injure his health. His exercise was arranged
so as to make him come hungry and thirsty to dinner ;
his food was at once calculated to please the palate
and promote digestion, and his wine was selected of
such quality as to give pleasure and produce no injury.
As for the other enjoyments which Epicurus declares
to be an essential part of the conception of happiness,
he tasted them, too. He did not suffer from pain ; yet
when it did come he bore it manfully, trusting per
haps more to a physician than a philosopher. He had a
splendid colour, sound health, great popularity ; in a
word, his life was brimful of every variety of pleasure."
But people with all these advantages are on the whole
rare, and a gospel for their benefit is scarcely needed.
Epicureanism addressed itself to a frailer and
humbler multitude, who neither in circumstances nor
in personal endowments were equal to making the
world comport itself to their demands. It proposed
to enable them, by discipline, to gain all that the
others acquired by wealth, position, and innate force.
It preached that pleasure was not restricted to the
rich or to the mighty, but was equally attainable by
the poor and the lowly. It levelled all ranks and

THE CHIEF GOOD. 153

equalized men, by showing that it is the variety and
superficial glitter of pleasure and not its essence
which imposed upon the powerful and their admirers.
Epicurus thus took from Cynicism its representation
of the difference between artificial and natural
pleasures and desires ; but he employed the dis
tinction for different purposes, and with other pre
suppositions. He did not, like them, allow the means
to become an end.

It is sometimes put as another difference between
Epicurus and his Cyrenaic predecessors, that while
the latter put the bodily pleasures highest, theformer
g;;ve preference to_tho pl.-n^nn-s of \fa mjpd.
It may, of course, be said that as the mind, whether
as animus or as anima (to adopt a Lucretian dis
tinction ]), is, according to Epicurus, only a species of
body or matter, any distinction between the mental
and bodily in such a system can be of little import
ance. This, however, would be to confuse the ex
planation of a difference with the difference itself.
To the Epicureans, as to everybody else, the dis
tinction between body and mind was an important
one, however it was accounted for in terms of their
especial creed. Hut the ground on which the mental
is put higher than the corporeal in its capacity for
enjoyment or misery is not based on abstruse con
siderations, but simply on the fad that while the

1 The animus (Lucret. ill. 136 scq.) or nuns is the reason
or intellect ; it is superior, and seated in the breast : the animdt
or sentient soul, is dispersed throughout the bo<ly. Hoth are
atomic and corporeal.

154 EPICUREANISM.

flesh simply felt in the moment, and for the moment,
the mind could be under the combined influence of
past, present, and future. The flesh, o«(>'t, as Epi
curus terms the blind, natural, and unconscious self
in us, looks neither before nor after ; it pines for
nothing, and has no prospects of coming joy. It is
buried in itself. The mind, on the contrary, the in
telligent self, has a larger range, both in its plea
sures and its pains. Yet it might be urged that this
consideration tells both ways : the mind can relieve
its pain by the prospect of deliverance, and can damp
a joy by the reflection on future or contemporaneous
pains.

Yet it would be a foolish mistake to suppose that
when Epicurus thus advocates the primacy for mind,
he is doing more than asserting that the pains and
pleasures of the intelligent man have an intensity and
vigour exceeding those of the mere boor. He has
no idea of pleasures which exclude the body from all
share. On this point we have a sentence which his
adversaries have quoted and misconstrued to their
own delight. " I am unable," he says, " to form any
conception of good, from which have been eliminated
the pleasures of eating and drinking, the pleasures of
sexual love, the pleasures of music and eloquence,
and the pleasures of shape and pleasant movements." '
Of course this does not mean that pleasure merely
lies in these things. But it does assert that a pleasure
from which they have all been excluded as unreal and

Alhcn&us, vn. 279; Ciccru, DeFin., n. 10, 29.

THE CHIEF GOOD. 155

incompatible, is to Epicurus an imix>ssible and fan
ciful conception —a mere dream of the idealist. And
it is to be looked at in that light, as a protest against
a school of ethics which regarded bodily pleasure as
something unworthy and degrading, and held that the
true and real pleasure was intellectual or mental. It
is here that Epicurus is directing his remarks against
the idealist philosophers, who made their heaven a
life of intellectual vision of truth. Such a one-sided
view of human nature as a mere spirit or reason is
what Epicureanism constantly and rightly denies.
But, as we have seen, it equally on the other hand
refuses to acknowledge the supremacy of the mere
flesh. It never flinches from the difficult task of em
phasizing the complete constitution of human nature
— as flesh and spirit.

In the same way we have this double edge of Epi
cureanism presented in the statement that, " Itjs_jm^__
possible to live pleasantly without living wisely, and
well,jind justly, and it is impossible to live wisely
and well, and justly, without living pleasantly."1 The
path of virtue and_thc path of pleasjjre_coincide. "It
is my belief," says Seneca, " however much my
fellow-Stoics may disagree with me, that the teaching
of Epicurus is holy and right ; pleasure with him is
reduced to something small and slender, and the very
law which we impose on virtue he lays down for
pleasure : he bids it obey nature. And, therefore, I
shall not say, like many of the Stoics, that the sect of

1 Diogenes, X. 140.

156 EPICUREANISM.

Epicurus is a guide to vice ; but this I say, it has a
bad name, an ill-repute, and that undeservedly. Its
countenance gives room for such stories, and suggests
wrong expectations. It is like a brave man dressed
as a woman." 1 But Epicurus was denied the credit,
and even the right, of making this identification be
tween true virtue and true happiness. Words of his
were quoted to the effect that " we should honour
virtue and goodness and the like, if they produce
pleasure, but not otherwise ;" or that " he scorned
virtue and its foolish admirers when it produced no
pleasure."2 To understand these statements and
give them no exaggerated sense, it is well to recollect
against whom they are directed. They are no ab
stract enunciations, but polemical remarks directed
against exaggeration on the opposite side. And that
exaggeration is found in certain forms of Stoical and
Cynical doctrine, which make virtue an end in itself,
not merely irrespective of the amount of pleasure it
may bring to the individual on a special occasion,
but without any consideration of its utility to mankind
at large. These enthusiastic friends of virtue have
confounded its accidental divergence from pleasure,
in the lower sense, when it takes its colour from sen
suality, with a divergence from pleasure in its higher
sense, when pleasure means the blissful feeling of
well-being. The whole character of the dispute re
minds us vividly of Bentham's assaults upon the
ascetic moralists — as those who " have gone so far as

1 Seneca, Dialog., VH. 12-13. 2 Athcnjcus, xn. 546.

THE CHIEF COOn. 157

to make it a matter of merit and of duty to court
pain."1 Of course, Epicureanism is a great deal more
than utilitarianism. It is a theory of life and nature
as a whole, and not a mere hypothesis to explain the
existence of moral distinctions. Epicureanism is an
attempt to afford human souls a guide amid the per
plexities of life : it is as much a religion as a scientific
theory. Its end is practice, and not mere doctrine.
It speaks for the benefit of the individual man as a
being for whom life is pregnant with possibilities of
pain and pleasure, while utilitarianism is mainly en
gaged with a speculative problem. Yet, in some ways
the drift of Epicureanism would be made clear if it
were described as an assertion of the " principle of
utility." When Bentham says that " A man may be
said to be a partizan of the principle of utility when
the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any
action or to any measure is determined by and pro
portioned to the tendency which he conceives it to
have to augment or to diminish the happiness of the
community," he at least expresses one side of Epicu
reanism. But he does not afford equally adequate
expression to the personal, practical, and inward
aspects. The ethics of the individual, according to
Epicurus are not merely and wholly determined by
the interests of the community. Man has a right and
a law of his own, the right to enjoy existence, and the
duty to secure his own full and free development.

1 "Introduction to the Principle^ of Morals and Legislati
th. U. sec. C.

158 EPICUREANISM.

The rights of society over the individual, the subor
dination of the individual to the laws and institutions
of the State, are in this theory supplementary and
derivative.

It is in its remarks on justice and the political
virtues that Epicureanism comes nearest to the stand
point of English utilitarianism. " It was not because
sovereignty and dominion were intrinsically good
that men sought for fame and glory in society, but in
order to fence themselves round from their fellow-
men." l Political life is a//V at/er, or at any rate the
current forms and institutions of political life have
only a relative and subsidiary value. The school ot
political philosophy to which Epicurus, Hobbes,
Hume, and Rousseau in very different ways belong,
insists upon an original compact between the indi
vidual members of society as the origin of its
establishment. It is probably possible at the present
day to acknowledge the amount of truth contained in
this doctrine without committing one's self to its
absurdities. It is no doubt true that society as it
exists upon the face of the earth is largely due to the
operation of natural causes, with which purpose or
deliberation has exceedingly little to do. The neces
sities of procuring the means of subsistence, the
exigencies of the sexual passion, and the natural
force of kindred in the human race, will always and
inevitably form societies of differing character and
extent. But it is a long way from such animal and

1 Diogenes Laertius, x. 140.

THE CHIEF GOOD. 159

natural unions to the mature forms of family and
civic life. The operations of instinct only go a small
way to explain the rise of domesticity and political
associations. The influence of the family instinct, if
unaided, seldom goes beyond a narrow circle ; and,
if the world had to depend on that alone, the race of
men would be broken up into an endless number of
miniature societies. But other agencies step in to
complete the work, and to resist the disintegrating
tendencies of selfishness. On one hand tradition —
the reverence for what is, the might of the existent
to maintain itself, — prevents change, and keeps up old
unities. Thus even children's children bow to the
supremacy of the family chief. And on another hand
the necessities of self-defence and the pressure of
war check the separatist forces of individualism.

In what sense, then, it may be asked, are the family
and the State due to a contract ? Their comparative
indissolubility seems to put a great separation between
them and other contracts. They are not, as Kant in
one instance supposed,1 mere partial contracts for a
special purpose and a special function. Their will
and tendency are to claim the whole human being,
to demand an undivided and a perpetual allegiance.
It is against such a sweeping universal claim that
the theory of contract has a certain relative justifica
tion. It is thereby declared that the rights of the
individual, though for the time they may be put in
abeyance, are not wholly annihilated. The rights of

1 " Kcchtslehre,'1 $ 24.

l6o EPICUREANISM,

the individual are in a sense paramount over those of
the community. Such, at least, is the assertion of
Epicureanism, and such seerns to be the direction in
which, even in many modern communistic schemes,
the thought of the world is moving. The old Greek
theory of an omnipotent State and the Catholic
dogma of indissoluble wedlock are set aside. In their
stead modern legislation tends more and more to
emancipate the members of the family from the bonds
of status ; and modern politics tend more and
more to found Government on a constitutional coin-
pact between the rulers and the subjects. Here as
in many other places Epicurus is practical, realistic,
and modern.

Undoubtedly, neither side of the relationship can
be ignored. To sacrifice the interests of the indi
vidual bars the way to reform. To put these interests
forward in a one-sided way is to banish the very
possibility of order and permanence. And, unques
tionably, Epicurus was in harmony with the general
feeling and opinion of his time. Man the individual,
is the only real unit of social life : all other unities
are so far ideal and fictitious, and are due to the
combined effort of individual wills. They are entered
upon with certain presuppositions ; should they con
tinue, when these presuppositions are no longer
fulfilled ? At any rate, when the State and the family
cease to be mere natural unions, due solely to the
instincts of sex and of self-defence, steadied and per
petuated by the influence of imitation and authority,
there must be some sort of understanding or compact,

THE CHIEF GOOD. l6f

tacit or formal, in the shape of a common law or
customary right, accepted by the members of a com
munity as binding upon them all. Not that such
a compact is an arbitrary act, depending entirely on
the will cither of the majority or of a natural aristo
cracy. The customary law is an attempt to give
expression to the principles which are required in
order to make human society possible ; to state, so
far as individual bias or prejudice on the part of
the expositors will allow, the conditions and relations
which must be maintained if a society is to flourish
and its several members reap the full advantage of
its constitution. Such is the profession made by
law ; unfortunately, law, in its actual shape, repre
sents seldom the relations of the community re
garded as an organic whole, but more frequently
the relations imposed upon a community from the
point of view afforded by the privileged position
of some one class or caste of men in the body
politic.

The point especially emphasized by Epicurus is,
that law was made for man, and not man for law.
Law has no intrinsic or abstract claim on the obedience
of men except in so far as its precepts and its sanc
tions have the welfare of humanity for their aim. It is
not, in short, because it has been legislatively declared
and enacted that a law has obligatory force, but
because it is right and expedient. Epicurus is at one
with Hume, who says that, " Public utility is the sole
origin of justice, and reflections on the beneficial
consequences of this virtue are the sole foundation of

M

1 62 EPICUREANISM.

its merit.1 " " Natural justice," says the former,2 " is
a contract of expediency, so as to prevent one man
doing harm to another. Those animals which were
incapable of forming an agreement to the end that
they neither might injure nor be injured are without
either justice or injustice. Similarly, those tribes which
could not or would not form a covenant to the same
end are in a like predicament. There is no such
thing as an intrinsic or abstract justice."

So far there is not, perhaps, much practical objec
tion to be taken to the theory. The case seems
different when we hear that, " Injustice is not in itself
a bad thing : but only in the fear arising from anxiety
on the part of the wrong-doer that he will not always
escape punishment."3 This anxiety, according to
Epicurus, inasmuch as it never can be annihilated,
but always lingers on in an evil conscience, is a
sufficient deterrent from criminal actions. If we
interpret this doctrine, after the example of some of
the ancients, to mean that any wrong-doing would be
innocent and good, supposing it escaped detection,
we shall probably be misconstruing Epicurus. What
he seems to allude to is rather the case of strictly
legal enactments, where previously to law the action
need not have been particularly moral or immoral :
where, in fact, the common agreement has established
a rule which is not completely in harmony with " the
justice of nature." In short, Epicurus is protesting

1 Inquiry Concerning tJic. Principles of Morals, ill. I.

3 Diogenes Laertius, x. 150.

3 Ibid., x. 151 ; Plutarch, No n posse sua:'., xxv. 33.

THE CHIEF GOOD. 163

against the conception of injustice which makes it
consist in disobedience to political and social rules,
imposed and enforced by public and authoritative
sanctions. He is protesting, in other words, against
the claim of the State upon the citizens for their
complete obedience ; against the old ideas of the
divine sanctity and majesty of law as law ; against
theories like that maintained by contemporaries of
Socrates, that there could be no such thing as an
unjust law.1

The Epicurean accepts the existence of an orderly
society as a condition of a satisfactory life, but he
does not admit that it has a right to demand his
services. " When safety on the side of man has been
tolerably secured, it is by quiet and by withdrawing
from the multitude that the most complete tranquillity
is to be found." " A wise man will not enter upon
political life unless something extraordinary should
occur." "The free man," says Mctrodurus, "will
laugh his free laugh over those who are fain to be
reckoned in the list with Lycurgus and Solon."2 A
man ought not to make it his aim to save his country,
or to win a crown from them for his abilities. Political
life, which in all ages has been impossible for those
who had not wealth, and who were unwilling to mix
themselves with vile and impure associates, was not
to the mind of Epicurus. If he be condemned for
this, there are many nobler and deeper natures in the

1 Cf. Plato, Crito. ; Xcnophon, Memorab., IV. 4.
1 I'lutarch, Aitv. Co/of., xxxin. 8.
M 2

1 64 EPICUREANISM.

records of humanity who must be condemned on the
same account. But it is hard to see why he should
be charged with that as a fault which is the common
practice of mankind, and which in a period of
despotism, of absolute monarchy, is the course of
obvious wisdom. And, above all, it is not the duty
of a philosopher to become a political partisan, and
spend his life in the atmosphere of avaricious and
malignant passions.

For politics, Epicurus substituted friendship. " Of
all the things which wisdom procures for the happi
ness of life as a whole, by far the greatest is jhe_
acquisition of friendship." l We have already spoken
of the friendship of the Epicureans : a characteristic
which did not disappear down to the latest times of
the sect. But here, too, Epicurus is true to his realistic
and non-mystical creed. Friendship is based upon
utility mutually enjoyed : only some one must begin
the career of service-rendering, just as we must sow
the ground in hopes of a future harvest. Or, as
Professor Bain puts it2:— "The giver should not expect
compensation, and should, nevertheless, obtain it."
The same realistic tone is apparent in Epicurus's views
on sexual love : where he rejects altogether what in
modern times has received the somewhat misleading
conventional name of Platonic love.3 Love, as he
remarks, and as Cicero approves, is in the strict sense
of the term, not accidentally, but essentially different

1 Diogenes Laertius, x. 148.

2 The Emotions and the Will, p. 299.

3 Tuscul. £>»/>,, iv. 70.

THE CHIEF GOOD. 165

from affection or friendship. The former is a passion
or instinct. The latter is a rational and reflective
relation of one human being to another. It is in
friendshij), freely formed and imposing no inalienable
obligation, no binding impersonal law, that man,
according to Epicurus, finds his true home. The
only duties which he recognises are those voluntarily
accepted on reasonable grounds, and not from natural
instincts or through the compulsion of circumstances.
The family and the State impose permanent checks
and obligations which to him seemed to diminish the
independence of man, and to make him a slave of
external powers. Thus, the principle of community,
rejected in its more stable forms, is accepted in its
laxest and most flexible shape, where it is maintained
solely by participation in pleasures in common. To
leave it to such attraction alone seems to expose the
communion of man and man too much to chance :
it seems to provide too weak a safeguard against the
inconstancy and inequality so characteristic of most
human feelings. Yet, on the other hand, to maintain
an association when it is only a form or bond, and
not the genuine birth of a free spirit, seems to be
dangerous and immoral. And perhaps Epicurus is
right in holding that the best security of permanence
in attachment is given not by imposing a yoke on
unwilling or at least varying tempers, but by so
unifying all the nature of man that his choices and
appetencies will not change from day to day, but
maintain a uniform tenor through all varieties of
circumstance.

1 66 EPICUREANISM.

Iii the ethics of the post-Aristotelian schools the
sage or wise man plays a prominent part. In his full
perfection he is the property of the Stoics, and re
presents their ideal of what the perfect man ought to
be. The Epicureans, however, seem to have fol
lowed their example and drawn up an ideal picture,
in which the main features exhibit an intentional
contrast to the demands of the opposite sect. The
wise man, they said, cannot arise in any race what
ever, and must possess a well-ordered constitution,
for virtue is not enough without certain natural
endowments. Once he has attained that rank, he
never loses it : once wise, he is wise for ever. But
there are various degrees of wisdom, and not one
hard-and-fast line of distinction between wise and
unwise. The sage is not inaccessible to feelings : he
will feel pain, and will cherish compassion. But
though pain affects him, it will not deprive him of
his happiness : he will moan when put to torture,
but still retain his superiority to fate and circum
stance. When his dependents misbehave, he will
chastise, yet not as if without pity. All sins are not
in his eyes of like magnitude : there are degrees in
vice, as in virtue. He will not be over-anxious to
figure in the public eye, even in his own special
department as a philosophic teacher. Though he
set up a school, he will not care to draw crowds of
pupils : it will only be by constraint that he will read
in public, and he will rather leave what he has to
teach, in his writings, than try to proclaim it in places
of general resort. He will not be indifferent to secure

THE CHIEF GOOD. 167

for himself a capital for his subsistence, but will keep
aloof from commerce, except when in poverty he
may be able to earn something by his teaching. The
wise man will never fall in love with women, for such
love is not heaven-sent. He will neither take a wife
nor become the father of a family, except in very
special circumstances ; nor will he take part in the
business of the State, nor seek for fame, except to
avoid contempt.

But we need not complete the list of what the sage
will or will not do — a list which is full of confusion
as it stands, and largely unintelligible. Its last words
are : — " He will dogmatize, and not merely raise dif
ficulties. He will be like himself in sleep, and a
time may come when he will die for a friend." This
incongruous assortment is a specimen of the system
and manner with which Diogenes Laertius tells his
tale.1

We may conclude the lemarks on the Ethics of
Epicurus by quoting a few of his sayings, mainly
taken from Seneca : —

" If you live by nature, you will never be poor : if
by opinion, you will never be rich.

" Cheerful poverty is an honourable thing.

" Great wealth is but poverty when matched with
the law of nature.

" I said this not to many persons, but only to you :
we are a large-enough theatre, one for the other.

" You must be a bondman to philosophy, if you
wish to gain true freedom.

' Diogenes L.icrtiu.->, x. 117-121.

1 68 EPICUREANISM.

" If any one thinks his own not to be most ample,
he may become lord of the whole world, and will yet
be wretched.

" We ought to select some good man and keep
him ever before our eyes, so that we may, as it were,
live under his eye, and do everything in his sight.

" It is an evil to live in necessity, but there is no
necessity to live in necessity.

" Among the other ills which attend folly is this :
it is always beginning to live.

" He enjoys wealth most who needs it least.

" A foolish life is restless and disagreeable : it is
wholly engrossed with the future.

" With many the acquisition of riches is not an
end to their miseries, but only a change.

"We ought to look round for people to eat and
drink with, before we look for something to eat and
drink : to feed without a friend is the life of a lion
and a wolf.

"Trust me, your words will sound grander in a
common bed and a rough coverlet : they will not be
merely spoken then, they will be proved true.

" Some people leave life as if they had just
entered it.

" It is troublesome to be always commencing life.

" It is absurd to run to death from weariness of
life, when your style of life has forced you to run to
death. What so absurd as to court death, when
you have made your life restless through fear of
death ?

" Uo everything as if Epicurus had his eye upon

THE CH1ET GOOD. 169

you. Retire into yourself chiefly at that time when
you arc compelled to be in a crowd.

" Learn betimes to die, or if it like thee better, to
pass over to the gods.

" The knowledge of sin is the beginning of sal
vation.

" I never wished to please the people : for what I
know, the people does not approve ; and what the
people approves, that I know not1

" We are born once : twice we cannot be born,
and for everlasting we must be non-existent But
thou, who art not master of the morrow, puttest off
the right time. Procrastination is the ruin of life for
all ; and, therefore, each of us is hurried and unpre
pared at death.

"If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto
his riches, but lake away from his desires.2

" He who is least in need of the morrow will meet
the morrow most pleasantly."3

1 Seneca, Ef. 16, 7 ; 2, 5 ; 4, 10 ; 7, 1 1 ; 8, 7; 9, 20 ;
II, 8 ; 12, 10 ; 13, 16; 14, 17 ; 15, 10 ; 17, II ; 19, 10 ; 2O, 9 ;
22, 14 ; 23, 9 ; 24, 22 ; 25, 5 ; 25, 6 ; 26, 8 ; 28, 9 ; 29, 10.

3 Stokcus, Florilfgium : De Parsimon., 28; De Confinf., 24.

3 Plutarch, De Tranquil. Atiim.t 16.

1 70 EPICUREANISM.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ATOMIC T H E O R Y.

THE theory on which Epicurus based his explanation
of the world was a revival of an earlier philosophy.
As the Stoics for their theory partly reverted to
Heraclitus, so Epicurus to Democritus of Abdera.
They both passed over Aristotle and Plato to seek
fresh inspiration in the vigorous thinkers who lived
anterior to, or outside of, the influence of Socrates.
Democritus was, indeed, a contemporary of Socrates,
but his work and character placed him quite on a
different level from the Athenian philosopher. Like
most of the earlier philosophers, his primary interest
was the physical universe. He was a traveller and
a man of science, who stood aloof from political life ;
while Socrates was as true to Athens as Dr. Johnson
was to Fleet Street, and cared for no science which
had not some bearing on human life.

The main achievement with which the name of
Democritus is connected is the atomic theory. The
theory and its consequences were afterwards intro
duced in a popular form into Athens by Protagoras ;
and the somewhat sceptical applications of it by
which that professor made himself notorious were
hardly likely to secure favour to the parent doctrine.

THE ATOMIC THEORY. 17 I

There is apparently no reference to it in the authentic
writings of Plato. The physical writings of Aristotle,
however, are full of criticism and comment on the
Democritean theory, to which the Stagyrite is in the
main antagonistic. The two thinkers belong to radi
cally different schools. The Athenian idealist school
dealt, as it is often scoffingly said, with words and
thoughts; the Abderite with things. The former tried
to analyze the laws of mind ; the latter to explain the
origin and constitution of the physical world, the
world of external realities. Even when Aristotle does
deal with physics, he reduces reality to its logical
conception, and not to its mechanical constituents.

The scientific principles of Aristotle were in spirit,
if not in form, in contrast with those of modern
science. In him the physical view of causality was
subordinated to the logical conception of reason and
consequence. The cause, according to Aristotle,
was the reason why, not the antecedent. His doc
trine of the four elements, long predominant in the
scientific world, started with a rough popular distinc
tion as the basis of a physical system. In his theory
of motion he failed to separate the cause of motion
from the body which is moved ; and he believed that
the body moved must be in mediate or immediate
contact with the body moving. He introduced
aesthetic considerations into his physical speculations,
and inferred that as circular motion is the most per
fect and simple, it must be the original movement of
the universe. In one word, Aristotle was a teleologist.
He held to a unity or plan in nature which deter-

172 EPICUREANISM.

mines the relations of the parts of the universe one
to another. Thought, that is, a thinker, a reason,
a productive mind, was the fundamental and primary
fact. Intelligence or unification presided in the
world ; isolation or individualization of parts was only
due to an act of abstraction, which, while it distin
guishes, never absolutely and entirely separates.

According to the opposite or mechanical and mate
rialist theory of the universe, thought is a subjective
phenomenon of the human brain, and has no
universal connection or significance in the universe
of things. As of only human interest, it ought to be
ignored in an attempt to understand how things came
to be what they are. The idea of a plan, or design of
an antecedent idea, must be treated as a piece of
anthropomorphism, and abandoned. Such is the
tendency of the philosophy of Democritus ; with
whom there came to the front for the first time a con
ception which, after much rejection and long neglect,
comes to the front again at the present day. The
earlier philosophers, Thales (600 B.C.), and his succes
sors, had attempted to explain the variety which at
present is found on the earth by supposing it to be
the last in the series of metamorphoses of some one
primitive body. Their idea of this original matter
was concrete and sensuous. They had at first no
conception of matter as something inert and in
animate, but believed it to be endued with the spirit
or personality which they felt in themselves ; and
even when they got rid of this vitality or animism, they
supposed that the primeval matter had qualitative

THE ATOMIC THEORY. 173

differences inherent and inseparable. It was .air, or
earth, or water ; and the result of this form of inves
tigation was to assume the existence of these various
modes of matter from the very first, and to argue
that they underwent new phases in the course of time.
They were in the line which would have tended in
the course of long and tedious investigations towards
a doctrine of the chemical elements ; but it need
scarcely be said that ages would have elapsed ere
experiments and analysis, the balance and the blow
pipe, could have led to such a result.

The current of philosophic thought flowed too ra
pidly to allow such experimental delays. Speculation
leapt forth to anticipate research. The atomic school
of I^eucippus and Democritus (430 n.c.) advanced a
step in the solution of the question, by suggesting a
new conception of matter or body, which threw off
all the old attributes as secondary or occasional, and
went down to primal attributes constituting the na
ture of body as such. The distinction between the
attributes, — called (by Locke and others) primary,
and believed to constitute the abstract and eternal
essence of matter, and the other attributes, called
secondary, and considered to flow from the relations
between the primary qualities of body, on the one
hand, and the human organism, on the other, — is
apparently due to Democritus. Body in itself, as it
exists abstracted from any sentient and incipient
beings, has only what may be called mathematical
qualities. Body is what fills space: is the "full."
Apart from it, or wherever there is no such fulness,

174 EPICUREANISM.

there is emptiness. The full and the empty : space
filled with something, and empty of something : such
are the two principles. But if we ask what that
"something" is which fills space, it is not easy for us
to guess what answer the Democriteans would have
been able to give to this question, which never seems
to have occurred to them. Mere extension is hardly
enough to distinguish matter from the void, although
the school of Descartes in more modern times did
put forward extension as the fundamental and distin
guishing attribute of corporeal substance, and accord
ingly denied all vacuum. But the ancient atomists
made the existence of a void, of absolute emptiness,
as essential a part of their systtm as the existence of
the " full,"— the atoms.

The three qualities which are usually said to dis
tinguish atom from atom are shape, order, and posi
tion.1 To these should, perhaps, be added differences
in size and weight. The last-mentioned, indeed, is a
disputable point. There are passages from wrhich it
seems that Democritus regarded weight as not an
attribute of the atoms, but only of the aggregations
which they compose.2 But probably these statements
are to be taken in a different sense. They may mean
that the atom in all cases, however it may vary in size
(and such variations are incalculably great), never
reaches a size which can be seen by the bodily eye,
and, therefore, inasmuch as the weight varies directly
with the size in the case of atoms, the atom is never

1 Aristotle, Metaph,, I. 4.

3 Plutarch, Plac. Phil., I. 3, 29.

THE ATOMIC THEORY. 175

ponderable except when it combines with other atoms
to form a body.

The atom, then, is invisible ; it never directly comes
within the range of our perception. Its differences
of size, shape, and position never emerge into the
region commanded by the senses. The atom is an
intellectual, not a mathematical point. It has mag
nitude : it is not mere position. But we cannot break
it up really into smaller portions (hence its name).
It is an utmost limit of disintegration, a sort of
absolute diamond, so hard that it is impossible ever
to find any cleavage in it. Solidity, impenetrability,
invincible resistance to any pressure, impact, or inci
sion, seem to be the essential and primary character
of the atom. The atom being indivisible, is also
indestructible. All that can ever happen to the atom
is either to be brought into conjunction with other
atoms, — that is, to a proximity so close that appa
rently the two atoms are united, or to be repelled
from some combination in which it was previously
found. But the atoms arc in themselves imperish
able ; they have always been and always will be. One
aggregation of atoms after another will fall into
pieces ; fabric after fabric in the visible world, from
the vegetables and animals around us, up to the
terrestrial mass itself, and the sun and stars, and
inward and unseen structures like the soul and mind
of man — all these will be dissolved ; but the atoms
which enter into their composition will remain un
changed, ever new and fresh, ready to form other
structures in the ages yet to come.

1 76 EPICUREANISM.

Such was in its larger outlines the theory of the
universe which Epicurus adopted from Democritus,
and developed for his own ends. An endless ex
panse and immeasurable depth of space, an abyss in
which there are no bounds, no bottom, no end ; and
in the vast reaches of this waste of space, an in
finitely numerous host of solid, imperishable mole
cules, too small singly to meet the edge of human
vision, ever in motion, and by means of that motion
entering upon combinations more or less lasting, but
in no instance everlasting, — such is the universe
which presented itself to the intelligence of an
Epicurean.

There are one or two points on which Epicurus is
said to have differed from Democritus. One is
apparently to be found in the primal movement of
the atoms. Democritus assumed that when once
these atoms were put in motion, they would form
vortices and revolve. He arrived at this conclusion,
it seems, by the consideration that the heavier atom
would overtake the higher, and then, perhaps, was
decided by dynamical considerations to assume the
rise of circular movements. But at any rate Epicurus,
as we have seen, professed to keep more exactly to
the facts of common experience by rejecting all
circular motion, and generalizing the data afforded
by the fall of unsupported bodies ; whilst as an
auxiliary principle, he had recourse to that spon
taneous swerving which he believed to be a fact of
common experience in the case of our own selves.
In another point, Epicurus, as represented by

THE ATOMIC THEORY. 177

Lucretius, seems to go further than Democritus
The atoms or molecules, though not susceptible of
physical separation or discerption, are still composed
of parts which can at least be distinguished from
each other. The atom is logically divisible ; for as
it differs in the shape of each example, it must consist
of not less than three parts — parts, however, which
are only mathematically distinguishable by their dif
ferent position or order in the total which they
constitute.1 Between such ideal constituents of the
atom there is no intervening void. They are com
pletely in contact with one another, and no force can
ever succeed in wrenching them apart. And thus,
for all the purposes of mechanical cosmogony, the
complex molecules, formed by the union of these
simple parts, may be treated as themselves simple
and elementary.

The scientific principles or axioms of Democritus
were also adopted by Epicurus.2 The maxim *.v
nihilo nihil Jit (out of nothing nothing can come)
stands foremost. Creation and annihilation are
equally and for the same reasons impossible. All
alteration and change is only combination or sever
ance of parts. There must be as much in the cause
as in the effect, the antecedents must contain all that
is found in the consequent. On this principle, be it
observed, the material cause is all-important. The
eternity and indestructibility of matter is the point

1 Lucretius, II. 485.

' Cf. I-ingc's History of Materialism, vol. I, (English transla
tion).

I 78 LPICUFEANIf M.

solely emphasized. The formal cause is compara
tively slighted. For if we look at the matter from
another point of view, and consider not the con
stituents, but the order or plan into which they enter,
we may rather say that at every moment and with
every change, we have an instance of creation and of
annihilation. Every step in organization, every stage
of growth, shows something new brought into exist
ence where previously there was nothing. The life
in the rose, for instance, can be traced back to
nothing in the chemical elements out of which it is
elaborated in the workshop of nature. The world on
its ideal side is continual emergence from nothing,
and disappearance into nothing. It is on its material
aspects only that the dictum of the atomista is fairly
and fully applicable. The dictum in other words
expresses an abstraction of truth. _Its value liejL in

itS accentuation j)f the prinriplp rtf rang^l^y ^ the

foundation of all scientific. truth. Its limitation lies
in the neglect of the law, that in every effect there
is a something which was not in the cause ; some
thing in the conclusion which was not in the
premises ; otherwise progress, change, growth are
impossible.

A second principle, not very different in meaning,
is that nothing occurs by chance, but all by reason
and necessity. That is to say, the reign of law is
absolute ; all interference with the regular chain of
causation is excluded. A third principle is more
specially confined to the Atomic school. If motion
is to be possible, so it is declared, there must be a

THE ATOMIC THEORY. 170

void ; if the universe were literally full, there would
be a complete block, and all would be stationary.
Change, in short, means locomotion or displacement
of the particles of matter. And, fourthly, everything
existent is nothing but atoms in space. Everything
else supposed to exist is but fancy or opinion, — the
human or subjective aspect of things as contradistin
guished from their truth or reality — superficial illu
sions due to the peculiar perspective under which we
as percipient and conscious beings are accustomed
to look at the world.

The atomic theory has had many hard things said
of it. It has been styled a conception which destroys
the beauty and grandeur of the universe, which sub
stitutes mere chances for a cosmical plan, and
mechanism for organic life ; and, in the face of Lord
Bacon's protest,1 that that school which is most
accused of atheism doth most demonstrate religion,
atomism has been assumed to find its inevitable
issue in atheism. These charges, though far from
groundless, are largely due to a misunderstanding ;
they express what is largely a grievance of the senti
ments and the higher emotions, and underestimate
the necessities of scientific explanation. All science
in its abstract processes of investigation must take
up a position at times antagonistic to the poetic and
religious tendencies of our nature. The analyst
must break up the unity into its ingredients, split
the whole into its fractions. The first < ondition of

1 Essays, xvi. Of Athei»ffl."
N 2

l8o EPICUREANISM.

the possibility of perfect knowledge is to be for the
time content to accept imperfect and piecemeal
acquaintance in special spheres. Before we can have
science, we must allow the several sciences to enclose
themselves in the limited range of their own depart
ments. The whole must be for the time put aside ;
the general meaning or drift of existence must be
ignored. In other words, the sciences know nothing
of ideals ; they are without God, because He is
neither a part nor to be found in any part, but is all
and in all. The man of science, as it were, steps into
the place of God. He takes the shapeless matter of
the world, and by the might of his intelligence creates
its various forms, — at least, in words.

Atomism carries beyond the range of direct obser
vation a condition of things which is suggested by
many phenomena within that range. It holds that
the apparent continuity of the smallest piece of
matter visible to the naked eye, or to the eye armed
with optical instruments, is not real. The apparent
continuity is a real discreteness ; what seemed one
uninterrupted total is declared to be an aggregation
of minute particles, no two of which are absolutely
in contact. Numerous phenomena point in this
direction. Every child is familiar with the illusion
by which the blazing torch swung rapidly round pro
duces a continuous ring of fire. The knife penetrates
between the particles of the apple. What appears a
level plain to the naked eye becomes under the
microscope a succession of hills and valleys. The tele
scope sometimes resolves the nebula into a number of

THE ATOMIC THEORY. l8l

single stars. The phenomena of light and heat, as
well as some chemical transformations, tend to suggest
the Atomic hypothesis as the simplest assumption for
their explanation.1 In one word, the atomic theory
is in complete accordance with the same character
istic of our intellect which finds its clearest expression
in number. The atomist regards every existing real
substance as a sura, collective or aggregate of a cer
tain number of units. The differences in the quantity,
value, purpose, &c., of these aggregates are reduced
in this way to mere quantitative differences in the
number, arrangement, or combination of these units
in a given extent of space. The contrast between a
solid and a fluid, or a gas, would be explained in this
manner to be a merely gradual distinction.

There are, however, two points to be noticed
when we compare the atomic theory of Epicurus
with that of modern times. In the first place, the
ancient atomism was mainly a hypothesis, invented
to afford a simple explanation of phenomena. It
rested, so far as we know, on slight experimental basis.
Modern atomism, on the contrary, is supported by a
large amount of experimental evidence ; it is a con
clusion forced upon us by exact weighing and
measurement. But a second difference is even more
striking. When we ask for the character of the
primeval units, the ancient and modern theories part
company. Epicurus gives us a picturesque scene in

1 Fi-chncr, Uebcr die Phyrikalisckt «;/</ Philosophise he Atomtn-
lehrt ; tf. l.ol/r, Afttafhysik, p. 364.

1 82 EPICUREANISM.

his atomic hosts. Applying his mental telescope, we
see accumulations of small bodies, of every variety
of shape, catching hold of each other's hooks and
corners, or rebounding from their rounded sides.
Geometrical solids touching each other in their course
and forming geometrical aggregations, this is the
kind of atomism in vogue with Epicurus. Newton,
in the close of his Optics, suggests a somewhat similar
conception of the world. It seemed probable to him
that " God in the beginning formed matter in solid,
massy, hard, impenetrable particles, ... of several
sizes and figures, and several proportions to space,
and perhaps of different densities and forces." l But
in Newton's idea, we see a new property of the atoms
emphasized, that of force. The atom has not merely
geometrical aspects ; it is treated as dynamical also.
In the modern theories of molecules and vortex-rings
we have an advance in the equipment of the ultimate
elements. No longer do they, almost devoid of pro
perties themselves, generate the complex variety of
properties in the actual world. The modern molecule
is a highly-organised body ; it possesses in miniature
the powers of spontaneity and movement which are
operative in the larger macrocosm, it is perpetually
vibrating, with an endless capacity of changing its
form. No longer a hard, dead thing, it may be
almost described as instinct with life. It is, moreover,
subjected to measurement. Instead of mere generali
ties about the infinitesimal size of atoms, we find the

1 Mouro's Lucretius. Nottrs on Book 1. 550.

THF. ATOMIC THEORY. 183

speculative physicist examining the thickness of a soap-
bubble, with a view to determine the mass of a gaseous
molecule, telling us, approximately, that two million
molecules of hydrogen in a row would extend for a
millimetre (less than ^ of an inch), and even fixing
the rate at which such a particle vibrates. Considera
tions like these would not have been to the mind of
Epicurus : they would have savoured of useless
curiosity. And even apart from this, it may be said
that whatever be their justification and their use for
mechanical and chemical science, or even, as in the
cellular hypothesis, for physiology, they do not, for
philosophical importance, rank on a level with the
somewhat crude doctrines of Democritus. As sug
gesting a more organic view of the constitution of
nature than the old atomists held, they deserve all
recognition. But the praise bestowed upon the old
doctrine for the simplicity of its elements cannot be
assigned to them.

The real advance of modern atomism, as seen in
the speculations of Kant or of Boscovich, is in the
substitution of forces for hard points. Matter is
looked upon as constituted by centres of forces, in a
complex set of relations, dependent one upon another,
and yet resisting each other's influence. The appear
ance of extension and solidity is pronounced to rest
upon the reciprocal attractions and repulsions of these
active centres. But, after all, when forces have been
substituted for extended atoms, the ultimate difficulty
still remains. Why are these forces so located, and
these atoms so arranged in tin; world ? And the only

184 EPICUREANISM.

possible answer to this question, other than a re-asser
tion that such is the given fact, is to refer to an
underlying power which divides its energies in these
diverse seats of force, and creates the show of a series
of molecules in reciprocal relations throughout the
universe.

It was something like this that was the drift of the
Monadology of Leibnitz. The pond, he says, which
looks a mere mass of water, is really teeming with
myriads of live fish ; every portion of matter is like a
garden luxuriant in vegetation. If we could only see
deep enough we should see endless life, and life
within life, throughout the universe. The ultimate
realities of the world are monads. These are not
mere dead matter, but endowed with vital forces, even
with the beginnings of consciousness. Every monad
is complete in itself, and lets nothing enter from
without ; it has a principle in itself which controls
the series of its changes. There is within it, as it
were, a spring, which has been wound up in the
beginning, and now goes on unwinding itself in an
endless chain of phenomena, without interruption
from forces external. But although not in any way
dependent upon each other, the monads are essen
tially parts of a great plan or pre-established harmony.
Each of them is a meeting-point to which converge
relations from every point in the universe ; not
merely is it a self-contained unit and law of its own
movement, but also from its own special point of
view, a mirror, in which the whole universe is ideally

THE ATOMIC THEORY. 185

contained, reflected as in a picture. Each monad is
thus in a way the whole world.1

Thus in the Monadology of Leibnitz we find an
attempt, based upon the conception of a divine plan,
to combine the fullest recognition of the individuality
of the elements in the universe with that peculiar
universality which they possess as so many little
worlds, whose limitation consists, not in the extent of
their contents, but in the comparative disorder and
displacement of their reflective or appreciative power
due to what we may term the parallax of their
position. Such a theory is the very opposite of that
of Epicurus. According to him there was no creator
who planned the order of the primary elements, and
overruled from the beginning their whole subsequent
career. The connections of one atom with another
are wholly external : impact and mechanical adhesion
connect bodies which have no congenital affinities
one to another. The monads are immaterial : and
materiality is only an appearance due to the con
ditions of human nature. The atoms, on the other
hand, are essentially material : they are not indeed
visible, but the essential qualities of visible matter
are what they would exhibit if we could see them.
All the difference between them lies in their variety
of size, weight, and sha|>c : a variety, however, whirh
though incalculable, is not infinite.

I.eUmitii, O/vra : ed. Frdmann, j>. 715 (Monadologie) and
fmtn'm,

1 86 EPICUREANISM.

With these simple elements Epicurus proceeded to
give an account of the various provinces of nature.
It would be tedious to follow him in detail into these
explanations. And it is also to a large extent un
necessary, from the circumstances of the case. For
the physical system of Epicurus falls into two parts.
There is, first, a general or metaphysical part, con
taining the principles and fundamental articles. The
general terms of his doctrine are dogmatic : they are
matters of principle, and not mere statements of
observation. Some of these have already been re
ferred to, such as the indestructibility of matter, the
absence of chance or of teleology from a scien
tific explanation of the universe. Another, and it is
one which is maintained by the Stoics no less mani
festly than by the Epicureans, is that existence, — by
which is to be understood activity and passivity, the
capacity of acting or being acted upon, — is body, of
corporeal nature. The incorporeal and the non
existent are only two names for the same thing.
Spirit, mind, or soul, if they are supposed to mean
anything immaterial, are rejected from the world as
understood by the Epicureans. All that happens is
only transference of matter from one place to another.

In its attempt to carry out these principles Epicu
reanism naturally found great difficulties — difficulties
increased by the imperfect state of many of the
sciences at the time. Its theory of perception, though
not without elements of truth, was lamentably marred
fiom the want of any knowledge of the mechanism
of vision, the laws regulating the dispersion of light,

THE ATOMIC THEORY. 187

and the structure of the nervous tissues by which the
impression from a luminous body is conveyed to the
brain. But these investigations, although they might
have altered for the better the details of the explana
tion, could never have got over its original defects, as
an attempt to render plain the genesis of life, sensa
tion, and thought

Of course, it is easy on this point to do injustice
to Epicurus. No theory whatever can explain the
relation between what are looked upon as two distinct
species of substances or phenomena, between one
thing called mind and another called matter. We
can, indeed, employ a number of phrases to convey
some views on this question. We can say that mind
and matter are the same substratum exhibiting
different phenomena : that sensation is another aspect
of the same fact which in one aspect is called motion :
that thought is a function of organi/ed matter, and
so on. But, after all, such verbal tricks throw little
real light upon the question. Epicurus is so far on
safer ground when he asserts that whatever acts or
suffers action has one general characteristic, viz.,
that it is bodily. But he fails to give due importance
to the point implied in this affirmation. His own
language, even, would lead us to the doctrine that
the essential characteristic of body is the exhibition
of energy. Force, be it only of impact or of resist
ance, is evidently the generic and primary quality
of what we describe as body— as the atom. As for
the geometrical qualities (shape, extension, portion)
on which the atomic theory of Epicurus lays most

1 88 EPICUREANISM.

weight, they are only of secondary importance as
indices or visible representatives of the degree and
amount and relation of the primary factor of force.
This point, though not ignored in the atomic theory
of the ancients, is not fully taken into account, or
submitted to analysis. Nor is this peculiar to
Epicurus. Plato similarly emphasizes " form " in his
ideal theory. Geometry, not dynamical physics, is his
model. They fail to note that force, function, or energy
is the real significance of what by the senses of sight
and touch is construed as extension. As that only
exists which is active, the real meaning of existence
is, as Aristotle said, activity (ivtryeia). Body makes
its presence manifest by its activity. Hence, although
we may accept the dictum of Epicurus that all
activity is connected with a corporeal substratum, or
is sensibly manifested (i.e. to the eye) as extension
and figure, still it is wrong to attribute all importance
to the second aspect, and deny it to the first. And
this is precisely what Epicureanism does.

And when Epicurus teaches the corporeality of
mind and soul, he falls into similar errors. He can
not recognise existence under any other shape save
that of extended matter. Mind, therefore, and soul,
which he, like the multitude, believes to exist, are
reduced by him to the level of extended and material
substance. They are made, it is true, of peculiar
and more delicate particles, a mixture of special
elements, as Epicurus holds, following a line of argu
ment which seems more kindred to the speculations
of Empedocles than of Democntus. In this point,

THE ATOMIC THEORY. 189

then, Dcmocritus is at variance with modern ideas,
even in the materialist school. To them mind is not
an extended substance, but, at the least, a function
of extended substance. It is not a thing, but an act,
or, as some of them might say, a permanent possibility
of action. They may believe that thought and con
sciousness are a function of the brain : they do not
identify the brain with the mind. Epicurus here, as
elsewhere, is on the level of popular thought, which
takes the soul to be a " thing " among other things,
forgetting that even in things the main point may not
be their capacity of filling space.

The refusal to recognise the existence of anything
beside corporeal substances led Epicurus to some
puzzling questions about the existence of attributes :
the conjuncta and cventa of Lucretius.10 The former
are the permanent and essential qualities, the " ever
lasting concomitants without which body cannot be
thought " as they are described by Epicurus himself :
the latter are the occurrences or phenomena by which
bodies manifest their action at special times. Gram
matically the wnjunda arc represented by adjectives ;
the evcnta by verbs. These, says Epicurus, are dis
tinguishable as aspects, but they never exist separately
from the totality or aggregate which we know as body.
But this, though perfectly true, scarcely gets over the
obscurity of their position, — as it were half-way
between existence in the full sense and non-existence.
It is only part of the general infirmity which sinks

1 Lucretius, I. 449-482.

190 EPICUREANISM.

the intelligible to the level of the sensible : which
regards the location of an act as the main point
about it. In regard to time, a similar question arises.
Space, of course, has been assumed as the condition
of visibility, under the somewhat condensed form of
the vacuum ; but time is still left. Upon that topic
Epicurus remarks, like Kant, that type ^ not a con
ception, and so we cannot get" afr^ldea of it by
examining our preconception, nor can it be made
clearer to us by substituting for it a%T phrase or
definition. Time, in short, he says, being an intuition,
is only to be understood as a generalization of our
consciousness, when we feel time to pass slowly or
quickly. It is the generalization of what we mean
when we distinguish days and nights, and hours.1 But
he makes no attempt to see what is implied in the
power of making such distinctions. We feel it : that
is enough.

Here Epicurus is at his weakest : metaphysics was
evidently not his forte. Yet in his indication of the
subjectivity of time, as part of our way of looking at
things, or as a condition of sensation, he seems to be
on the right route. And generally, we may say, that
Epicureanism taught in this whole matter a restive
truth. It rightly lays down that the laws which
regulate the movement of masses in the visible sphere
of mechanics are equally operative in the regions
subject to physiology. The process of vision may be
explained by the same principles and methods which

1 Diogenes Lacrlius, x. 72; Sext. Empir. , Adv. Math., x. 219.

THK ATOMIC THEORY. Igt

are used in accounting for the phases and revolutions
of the planetary system. There are no special
provinces in nature living under privileged constitu
tions, and exempted from the operation of the
uniformities of causation elsewhere prevalent. The
realm of physical investigation has no limits in reritm
natura. Mechanical theories, adopting atomic or
molecular hypotheses if necessary, are as competent
in dealing with the human organization as in dealing
with the constitution of a block of marble. But
when this has been admitted, the whole truth has
not been put forward. The phenomena of conscious
life are not explained when their mechanical aspects
have been analyzed. Scientific theories transgress
their bounds when they attempt to explain the
genesis of mind or soul : they transgress still more,
when, like Epicureanism, they dogmatically assert
the conditions for the annihilation of soul.

In the view of physical science, intelligence or
spirit is eliminated from the universe. The world is
reduced to a series of parcels of matter, deprived of
life and consciousness, and regarded solely as trans
mitting motion from one to another. Matter, indeed,
is either combined with force, or supix>scd to be
identical with force ; but in either case force is ulti
mately reducible to motion. All the various forces in
the universe are exhibited in various complicated and
disguised forms of movement. This doctrine, to
which modern science is led by its mathematical me
thods, is the fundamental proposition of Epicureanism.

192 EPICUREANISM.

And in movement there seems nothing mystical or
beyond the most vulgar apprehension. It is appa
rently a fact presented again and again in daily expe
rience. If Epicurus had heard of the paradoxes of
Zeno the Eleatic, about the reality or conceivability
of motion, he probably looked upon them as frivolous
quibbling about a point for which the evidence of
sense was undoubted. To conceive the whole world
as an immense commentary illustrating the text that
atoms and void are everywhere, is an easy task for
the imagination. It banishes occult properties,
metaphysical entities, and fantastic spirits from the
universe.

Atoms in the void, moving freely about like the
motes we see in the sunbeam, are continually waving
their mazy dance throughout the endless spaces, and
gathering into aggregations of a moderate degree of
persistence. A variety of worlds, of various shapes,
sizes, and contents, arises here and there, separated
from each other by spaces of comparative emptiness.
But the worlds thus created by the movement of
atoms at length disintegrate through similar causes.
It seems as if Epicurus, following the lead of the
Sicilian philosopher, Empedocles, had supposed that
there was an age in which the powers of union were
supreme, and an age in which the spirit of discord
waxed most powerful. And as these changes take
place the aspect of things varies in detail, though its
general features remain unchanged. As in the whole,
so with the particular world of earth, sun, and stars,
to which we belong. It, too, has its time of genera-

THE ATOMIC THEORY. 193

tion and birth ; it will, also, have its old age, and, as
the matron whose days of child-bearing are over, will
yield its fruit no more.1

1 Lucretius, v. 821-836.

194 EPICUREANISM.

CHAPTER IX.

COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY.

THE cosmology of Epicurus may receive some light
if we contrast with it the cosmology of Aristotle.
With Aristotle the earth, and all that lies beneath the
circle of the moon — the special region of humanity —
is an inferior province of the universe. The home of
the highest reason is beyond the sublunary sphere.
The earth lies in the centre of the universe. A series
of circles, each less perfect than the other, extends
from the first, or starry heaven, towards the earth.
The heavenly element of aether is on a different level
from the ordinary material of the four terrestrial ele
ments. Things are intrinsically light or intrinsically
heavy ; some of them tend towards the centre of the
sphere, whilst others tend upwards towards the cir
cumference. There is only a single world, or uni
verse : there is a limited and rounded totality of
things. While the aether on the circumference is
naturally endowed with a circular motion, the other
elements move in straight lines up and down. The
order and disposition of the world are eternal : it has
had no beginning, and will have no end. There is
no empty space in the universe. The starry sphere
is in immediate contact with the godhead. Indeed,

COSMOLOGY AND THPOI.OGY. T05

all the celestial spheres are regarded as beings en
dowed with life, and capable of intelligent action.
But especially is the ethereal sphere the home of
superior intelligence, which, in serene ease and
blessedness, circles for ever in its own most perfect
motion.

Nothing can be in greater contrast with these
Aristotelian ideas than the system of Epicureanism.
Instead of a central system we have an endless
number of cosmical bodies, no one of which is nearer
the centre than another. The earth is no longer an
absolute middle-point, around which the starry world
revolves. The starry sphere itself is made of a matter
noc of transcendent quality, but of the same constitu
tion as our earth. The world is no longer an intelli
gent and vital being, but a mere product of me
chanical unions, coherent only for awhile, but destined
to disruption. All matter is heavy, all tends down
wards. And thus Epicurus set aside the pictorially-
complcte conception of Aristotle for a new idea, in
which the earth and its starry and planetary attend
ants, as well as sun and moon, sink into a mere unit
in the endless series of worlds. But as he did so, he
diminished the grandeur of the sun and stars ; he made
them mere dependents and satellites of the earth, and
so took up an astronomical theory which is even more
fanciful and absurd than that of the Stagirite. For
when a modern speaks of other worlds than this earth
of ours, he thinks in the first instance of the other
planets belonging to the solar system : and if he goes
further, his imagination is carried on to the distant
o a

196 EPICUREANISM.

stars, each, perhaps, attended with their planets, and
these with their several satellites. But such an idea
is quite unlike that held by Epicurus. The planets
and stars are parts of this world in which we live,
and not very important or extensive parts of it
either.1

The ancients are never tired of expressing their
surprise and contempt for the astronomical doctrines
of Epicureanism. At first sight, indeed, it excites un
mitigated wonder that Epicurus, living in a genera
tion after Eudoxus, and not long preceding the two
great astronomers, Aristarchus of Samos, and Hip-
parchus of Nioea, should propound the doctrine that
the sun and the stars are of the same magnitude as
they appear to be, or, at any rate, only differ inap
preciably from their apparent size. Nor did the
Epicureans fail to argue from the facts of daily obser
vation in favour of this doctrine, alleging that distance
makes little or no difference in the size of terrestrial
flames so long as their light remains at all visible.
" Had the size been diminished to the eye of the
distance, much more would the colour have been
altered." So says Epicurus in the nth book of his
work of Nature ; but the fragments of that book
restored from Herculaneum help us little. All that
we can see is, that Epicurus, distrusting all lengthy
argument from various facts, supplemented and de
fined by the help of mathematics, adheres solely to
argumentation based on the immediate data of obser-

1 Aristotle, Metaph,, XII. 8; Physic., viil. 9; De Caelo,
I. 2.

COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 197

vation. The reasoning by which Aristarchus at
tempted to answer these problems in his book on the
magnitudes and distances of the sun and moon, was
of a recondite, mathematical character ; while the
speculations of Eudoxus on the same topic (he
Ijelieved the diameter of the sun to be nine times
greater than that of the moon) were complicated by
the introduction of celestial spheres.1

This indifference to astronomical science is evident
in other points. It cost no trouble to the Epicu
reans to suggest the idea that the sun and moon are
born afresh every morning and every evening : that
at fixed times the germs of fire which gather in them
come together, and again at fixed times are dispersed.
When we suppose that they are merely out of sight
it may be that they are really out of existence, and a
new sun perchance is created every morning, and a
new moon arises every month to go through its phases
in the accustomed order.

Such is one instance of the general method and
principle of the Epicurean theory of the celestial
movements and meteorological phenomena. Both of
these Epicurus believed beyond the reach of observa
tion. We can never hope, he said, to know the real
mechanism of the planetary and astral phenomena,
or the secret causes of the hail or the dew. We know
not the ordinances of heaven ; we have not entered
into the treasures of the snow, nor can we bind the
sweet influences of Pleiades. These matters are

Rcnouvier, Manuel tie Philosophic Amitnm (Paris, 1844),
tunic li.

l<)j EPICUREANISM,

beyond the ken of man : we cannot attain certainty'
on such topics, and those who profess to have attained
it are charlatans, anxious to impose upon the vulgar.
The ordinary terrestrial phenomena where we can
trace the connection of causes and effects have, it is
true, one fixed and settled reason to be given for
them, and no more. But such simplicity cannot be
looked for in the heavens, and there we must be con
tent to accept a number of solutions or explanations
as, in our state of ignorance, equally probable.

It would be wrong to suppose from this that Epi
curus regarded astronomical and meteorological
phenomena as merely casual, governed by no laws,
and exhibiting no regularity. His attitude is rather
that of one who distrusts the capacities of science,
and is especially suspicious of results won by the
help of mathematical processes which are inaccessible
to the multitude. The fundamental principles of
scientific inquiry he accepts, but he cannot follow
the intricate methods by which science establishes its
results. Let us remember that his main end is a
practical one, to free men's minds from the supersti
tious terrors connected, for example, with eclipses or
with thunder. For that purpose any explanation
which is in accordance with observed facts, and not
controverted by accepted laws of nature, is sufficient.
Probability is all that we can look for here, and it is
all that we need.1 Each phenomenon is, as it were,

1 Butler, in his I5th Sermon ("Upon the Ignorance of
Man "), takes up an analogous position.

COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 199

taken isolated from the others, and considered on its
own account. So long as we maintain this position,
obviously several explanations may seem equally pro
bable, and to adopt any one of them absolutely, to
the rejection of all the others, would seem an unjusti
fiable proceeding, an instance of mythologizing, as
Epicurus would say, instead of physiologizing. But
it is the mistake of Epicurus to stop short at this
point. It is only by an act of abstraction that we
have thus dissevered one phenomenon from its con
nections. Each forms a unity with others, and can
not strictly be explained without taking them into
account. The more circumstances we take into ac
count, the more our room for a variety of hypothe
tical explanations is narrowed. At last, when the
whole of the correlated phenomena are embraced
within our view, no more than a single explanation is
possible.

Epicurus, therefore, was wrong, but we may still
say something in his defence. To have waited for
an exhaustive and connected study of the pheno
mena in question would have been to postpone the
solution indefinitely. Even in astronomy, the cur
rent explanation of planetary movements in Epicurus's
day was a mistake, and to assert it as a certain truth,
as the explanation of the facts, was presumption.
The worth of Epicureanism lies in its maintenance,
even where direct proof is out of reach, of the faith
that the phenomena of the universe are governed by
the same laws as have become familiar to us in hum
bler spheres. We may not be able actually to assign

200 EPICUREANISM.

a certain and verified reason for a particular pheno
menon, but we are at least in no doubt that the
causes at work are perfectly natural and common
place, and, in illustration of this conviction, we can
assign various means by which the phenomenon in
question might plausibly have been produced.
" Only," says Epicurus, " let us have no mytholo
gical explanation." And he speaks disapprovingly
of "those who have adopted an impracticable me
thod, and lost themselves in baseless theories, by
supposing the phenomena to take place in one me
thod only, and rejecting all the others which might
have been admissible." "They have entered on a
realm of inconceivables, and have been incapable
of noting the visible phenomena which give the
key to the celestial mysteries." "They contend
with facts, and mistake the limits of human know
ledge."1

It is obvious, therefore, that Epicurus has mainly
in view the theories of the heavenly movements held by

* Aristotle and Eudoxus. These are " the slavish arti
fices of the astronomers" to which he refers; they

. are " the devotees of a vain astronomy." It is not
the astrology of the sorcerers which he condemns,
but that of the theoretical astronomers, with its cycles
and epicycles, its complex machinery for facilitating
the evolutions of the orbs of heaven, its fantastic
ideas of a peculiar virtue in the starry globes, its
attachment of divinities to the extreme circles of the

Diogenes Laertius, x. 84-94.

COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 2OI

cosmos.1 As against this gorgeous hypothetical con
struction, which extended itself further and further in
order to provide an adequate explanation of every
new phenomenon, Epicureanism raises the protest
that a true theory must base itself upon facts, that the
only facts obtainable are the familiar phenomena of
common life, and that there is no hierarchy in the
cosmical arrangements by which the stars and planets
should have a movement and laws peculiar to them
selves. A hypothesis, he says, must not assume
unknown and unfamiliar principles for the unknown j
it must be based upon, and accord with, the familiar.
Here, as elsewhere, Epicurus insists upon the unity
in principle and methods which pervades the world,
and rather neglects, as unimportant, any difference in
the various grades of organization.

It seems to some extent strange that Epicurus
should thus attack Aristotelianism and cognate
theories for the very fault Aristotle had found in Plato.
According to Aristotle, the theory of Plato assigns to
the soul of the world a fate like that of Ixion on the
wheel — an existence without leisure and reasonable
ease, maintaining without any slumber the forcible
movement of the sphere.2 He contrasts with this
the tranquil and blessed life of his heaven, which,
possessing by nature a circular revolution of its own,
needs no violence or effort to maintain its career,
but glides on tranquilly like an immortal god, free

1 Whewcll, History of the inductive Scitntts, vol. I., p. 170,
sec. 9.

a Aristotle, De C<tht II. I ; Plato, Tim*us.

202 EPICUREANISM.

from care and labour. In such a conception of the
heaven, indeed, the introduction of a God seems
superfluous : he enjoys perfect blessedness and re
pose, has no work or care to trouble him. He neither
creates nor acts : his life is pure self-consciousness.
Himself unmoved, he moves the world, not by exert
ing any activity, but by the attractive power in him,
by which the inferior is constantly drawn under the
sway of the supremely perfect. Thus, for each par
ticular movement we are obliged to discover a special
cause. God, in the Aristotelian scheme, because
He is the cause of everything in general, is the
cause of nothing in particular. His dwelling is on
the very limits of the world, beyond the sphere of
our dull earth.

In all this we are already far on the way to the
theology of Epicurus. Careless opponents have de
scribed Epicurus as an Atheist. But the existence of
the Gods is what he never denies : what he, on the
contrary, asserts as a fundamental truth. The ques
tion on which he diverges from popular faith is not
whether there are Gods, but what is their nature and
their relation to man. His special tenet is a denial
of the creative and providential functions of deity.
The Gods are away from the turmoil and trouble oi
the world. Going a step beyond Aristotle, he assigns
them an abode in the vacant spaces between the
worlds. It is a place of calm, where gusty winds, and
dank clouds and mists, and wintry snow and frost
never come. Its smiling landscapes are bathed in
perpetual summer-light. There the bounties of nature

COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 2OJ

know no end, and no troubles mar the serenity of
the mind.1 Such was the Epicurean heaven : there
was no Epicurean hell.

The Gods themselves were of human shape ; not
globes of rolling matter, nor immaterial forms sharing
in endless motion. For what higher form can human
imagination conceive than the human form ? Surely,
this is of a higher beauty than the shapes of brutes
or of mathematical figures. It is only with the human
form that in our experience is reason conjoined ; and
therefore if we are to argue from the known to the
unknown, like unto men must be the shape of the
Gods. And so in all respects, from the highest form
of life and intelligence with which we are acquainted
upon earth, we argue to the higher nature of the
Gods. But according to Epicurean theory, disem
bodied spirit is an impossibility : body and soul are
in the living being indissolubly united, and their sepa
ration means for both death. Hence the Gods have a
body, but it is not as cur body ; and they have blood
in their veins, but it is different from human blood.2

In all this, if we remember the fundamental postu
late of Epicureanism, forbidding us to regard the soul
as more independent of the body than the body is of
the soul, we see a process common in some degree to
all theology. A God out of all relation or similarity
to man would be for man unintelligible. In God
he believes he will find all that is best and highest in

I ucretius, III. 18-24.

Cicero, De -A'o/. Dtoi: i. 18 (46).

204 EPICUREANISM.

himself. If he regards his body as an imperfection,
he will naturally dwell on the spirituality of Godhead.
If, like Epicurus, he hold the body no less sacred
than the spirit, he will imagine his God endowed with
an ethereal body. He may, like some at least of the
followers of Epicurus, go a step further. Regarding
the Greek as pre-eminent in culture over all barbarian
races, he will believe that his Gods in their quiet
dwellings and unclouded sky, as they eat their angelic
food and quaff their purer liquids, converse with each
other in the tongue of Plato and Demosthenes.1

But it is only with the eye of reason that these
blessed abodes and their inhabitants can be dis
cerned. Their nature is not gross enough to affect the
organs of the sense ; far away and delicately fine, they
escape the tests of the eye and the touch ; they are
barely apprehended by the intelligence of the soul.
It is the rational soul, not the senses, by which we
are brought into relation with them. The finer par
ticles of the reasonable spirit are in some degree
suited to the impalpable structure of the divine
nature : like meets and apprehends like. It is espe
cially in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls
upon men, that the soul unsolicited by the impres
sions of the senses, responds sensitively to the images
of divine beings ever permeating the worlds. A belief
in the existence of the Gods arose, says Lucretius,
because in their waking hours, but still more in sleep,

1 Voll. Herculan., Coll. Pr., vi. 73-77 (Coll. 13 and 14),
from rhilodemus, in pap. 152, Oxon. ; cf. Metrodorus dt
s, in the same vol., Col x. pp. 19-21 and 35.

COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 2O$

men saw forms of excellent beauty, which seemed
without burden to themselves to move, and speak,
and act, and were of grander aspect than humanity.1
These forms were one kind of idola or spectra? Ac
cording to the Epicurean theory of perception, vision
is a species of tactile sensation. From all the solid
bodies around us there are constantly streaming in
uninterrupted flow images, consisting of minute par
ticles, which repeat exactly the shape of the body
from which they spring. But from the divine bodies
which, as of finer texture, arc located in a region
beyond the spheres of grosser materiality known as
worlds — there are also streaming effluxes of more
delicate constitution, which appeal only to the reason
able soul. These images as they pass from the Gods
to men are not distinguished one from another, like
the solid objects which we number and separate from
one another. Endless in their numbers, and indis
tinguishable in their outlines, the mind does not
gather from them any idea of a definite number of
individualized beings. One does not stand solid and
impenetrable to the others ; on the contrary, they
pass indistinguishably into each other in virtue of
their general similarity. Accordingly, the Gods we
perceive are not distinct individual figures, like the
deities of the old Olympus. IAJSS substantial and
sculpturesque in their outlines, they have a generic
character of deity about them. But the main result

1 Lucretius, v. 1161-1194.

1 Cicero, Efist. ad /-am. xv. 16.

206 EPICUREANISM.

of this character of our perceptions of the divine, is
that the Gods as they want the individuality of solid
material objects, gain in exchange permanence and
everlastingness. Their forms never cease, and we do
not distinguish individual from individual.1 Hence,
in the ceaseless succession of images of this subli
mated matter, alike and interchangeable, there grows
up an idea that they are eternal. If there be, accord
ing to Epicureanism, a balance between the two
halves of nature, so that a preponderance of the
transient here should be compensated by a prepon
derance of the immortal there, then we may infer
from this equality of distribution here and there that
the Gods must be immortal. But it is extremely
doubtful if any such idea of compensation by excess
here for defect there was an accepted dogma of the
Epicurean school. It is sufficient to say that the
immortality of the Gods was the natural conclusion
drawn from the character of the images by means of
which their existence was made known to the intelli
gence of man.

Of the conception of the godhead, then, deathless-
ness, a superiority to the general law of nature, was a
characteristic. It would be easy to ask, with Tenny
son —

" If all be atoms, how then should the gods,

Being atomic, not be dissoluble,

Nor follow the great law ? "

1 Cicero, De Nat. Dtor., I. 49, 105-109; Diogenes Laertius,
x. 139; cf. Schumann, Opuscula, vol. IV., j>. 336 (/k Epicnri
Theologia},

COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 2O^

But il is less easy to answer the question. One may
say, indeed, that the matter concerns not the Gods so
much as our notions of the Gods ; and that this, by
the circumstances of the transmission, forces us to re
gard them as eternal. Not less does our idea of deity
involve the blessedness of God. These two attri
butes, indeed — of eternal existence and of perfect
happiness — are, according to Epicurus, the two
fundamental elements which, in all ages and nations,
constitute the true idea of godhead— an idea which
is as widespread as the human race.

But if these two attributes are maintained as the
anticipation or preconception of God, then much that
is commonly attributed to the Gods must be rejected.
The godhead, indeed, is still worthy of all worship ;
its excellence and glory are properly met by the reve
rence and joyous regard of mankind. But prayers
and vows are out of place towards such a being.
He is neither weak enough to be biased by human
offers, nor is he malicious enough to seek to injure
man. lie stands aloof from the world, from the
denser play of matters affecting the senses. The
Gods live for themselves, and have no care for man.
Man, on the other hand, need have no fear of the
Gods. They are powerless equally for hurt or help.
Any worship rendered to them is inspired neither by
hopes nor fears, but simply by the outgoing of the
spirit towards auguster beings enjoying superhuman
blessedness.

The argument for the existence of the Gods, al
though not a strong one, is in agreement with the

208 EPICUREANISM.

spirit of the system. We have, as Epicurus alleges,
clear and manifest images presented to the mind of
such beings as, though like man, are superior to the
infirmities of human nature ; and we have also an
idea of deity. In this inference from an alleged
phenomenon of consciousness to the existence of its
cause, Epicurus follows the analogy of the senses ;
and from the peculiarity attending the reception of
the spectral images, he argues to a peculiarity in the
structures from which they originate. But, in the
first place, it would be extremely difficult to establish
the alleged fact of consciousness as an original state
of mind. Should we, irrespective of traditional be
liefs and irrespective of the dreams which restore the
dead to our intimacy, ever be visited by such phan
toms of the everlasting Gods? No doubt as the
years roll on, the images of departed ancestors may
recur with a glory and grandeur such as gathers
round the distant past, and a divine halo may embel
lish the recollections of our forefathers. But this
alone will hardly explain deity, or justify the proce
dure of Epicurus in arguing from these imperfect
premises.

In the second place, the inference seems to be
guilty of the same fault as that leading up to the
existence of the soul. The Gods or deity are, in the
first instance, concluded to be extended and material
substances, which are visible to the finer sensibility
of the intellect. In one respect, indeed, their posi
tion is peculiar; they have no distinctive individu
ality ; the images by which they are made known

COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 209

present a family likeness, and ihe variety of the
Olympian heaven has totally disappeared. Hut
whatever be the case in this matter, the fact re
mains, that the Gods are conceived as existing after
the analogy of the human animal. The godhead
is a thing, and to keen perceptions should be a
visible thing.

The whole doctrine amazes. Like the sceptical
astronomer, Epicurus, looking all through the world,
finds that he can see no God. And yet a conscious
ness of godhead does not allow him to deny the
existence of God altogether. Hence his attempt to
explain the fact so as not to interfere with his general
theory. But the belief in such Gods is a mere infer
ence of analogy. Primus in orbe deos fecit timcr<
says Petronius. " It was fear which first made gods
in the world," and it is to abolish that fear that
Epicurus is most anxious. The natural tendency of
the untutored mind, which sees a life like its own
in every object which surrounds it, its tendency when
it finds its efforts thwarted, or seconded, by no appa
rent causes, and in utter disproportion to the energy
exjxmded, is to refer the check or assistance to some
unseen being of like nature with its own. Hut in
this reference to divine power two cases may be dis
tinguished. When the individual feels himself one
with his tribe or nation, his God is the national spirit
in its unity and strength, the embodiment of the
national life ; who is thus regarded as the favouring
and protecting genius who works for every member
of the nation that walks according to its laws. The

2 TO EPICUREANISM.

individual, firm in the sense of national unity, sees, in
his God a principle and a power which is always on
his side, ready to fight his battles. Temporarily, in
deed, this God may turn away his face in anger, and
his people may be defeated or punished by plague
and famine. But for the most part in healthy poli
tical life, the religion of the State is not essentially a
religion of fear, but of joy, in the Lord. It is other
wise with the individual. In all that concerns him
self alone, he meets with many influences which
thwart his endeavours. The powers unseen are more
naturally regarded as adverse than as propitious ;
their interference with human wishes is more pal
pable than their coincidence. And when the feeling
of tribal solidarity is broken by the collapse of the
national State, the spirits of men naturally quail
before the powers of the unseen world, and a period
of superstition succeeds the period of national reli
gion. The single believer, deprived of the strength
he acquired by being a member of a great union, sees
himself confronted in various directions by the
threatened opposition of his God. His own con
sciousness emphasizes more acutely his individual
acts, than in times of tribal feeling. His sins rise up
to witness against him. Thus, with the growth of indi
vidual self-consciousness, and the collapse of national
and collective feeling, that thought of a presence
which is always with us, — a totality which determines
our career and envelopes our being on every hand, — a
power whose ways are not as our ways, and whose
thoughts are not as our thoughts, — comes before the

COSMOLOGY AND THKULOT.Y. 211

mind rather as an object of dread than of affection
or of confidence.

In such a situation the Stoics and Epicureans took
different courses. The Stoic accepted the belief, and
even carried it out to its extreme consequence. The
rolling world, he said, is a living indivisible being, con
trolling the movements of all its parts and fixing their
relation, so that nothing can take place unforeseen,
because ever)' event is the inevitable consequent of a
chain of causes and a group of conditions which are
all in the grasp and guidance of the universe. And
yet the Stoical sage asserts his superiority to fate by
affirming its decrees as his own. The Epicurean, on
the other hand, rejects the notion of a single all-em
bracing universe. There are worlds beyond worlds,
but they form no united and rounded system. When
a man looks outside himself he finds only an aggre
gate of details, a mass of particulars like himself.
There is no order in the universe irrevocably fixing
his place and duty ; for the universe is in a ceaseless
process of change, and will not be to-morrow what it
is to-day. A man, therefore, need not be dismayed.
The worlds beyond worlds, which he might sec in
thought if he followed his teacher, are even as the
world in which he lives. There is no far-off tyrant or
demogorgon in the recesses of the unseen ; only other
worlds, and lucid interspaces between, where tranquil
Gods lead a life of serenity, and meddle riot with the
ways of men.

p 2

EPICUREANISM.

CHAPTER X.

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY.

FORMAL logic has been in all ages the bete noire of
the empirical schools. Bacon and Locke, no less
than Epicurus, express their contempt for the frivolous
discussions of deductive logic, for the cobwebs by
which reasoning attempts to master facts. Formal
reasoning, says Bacon, constrains the assent, but not
the realities. You may prove by demonstrative
syllogism that black is white, but the fact all the while
is otherwise. The nets of logic entrap the intellect,
but he who keeps in the open air of experience can
despise their sophistries. " Epicurus, the despiser
and mocker of all logic," says Cicero,1 "will not admit
that such an expression as ' Hermarchus will either
be alive to-morrow or not ' is true, though the logi
cians hold that every disjunctive proposition of this
shape, either yes or no, is not merely true but neces
sary/' " Epicurus," he says, in another place,2 " is
afraid that if he admits this he must further admit
that whatever happens is due to fate." To Epicurus,
indeed, the two things were probably not far apart.

1 Acad, i. i, 97.

3 De Fato, 21 ; De Nat. Deot:, i. 69. Prof. Jevons seems
to agree with Epicurus on this point.

LOr.lC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 21$

Both fall under the charge of unduly accentuating the
ideal element, of taking the relation of our ideas for
a matter of fact. They are both forms of the & priori ;
they claim to anticipate and regulate experimental
fact. And the a priori, or necessary truth, which
from given experiences deduces by rational formula
certain conclusions prior to experience of their occur
rence, is unwelcome to Epicurus. Alike in mathe
matics and in deductive logic he disapproved of it.
He resembles the moderns, who shrink from the iron
chain of necessary law which science in its onward
march seems to be drawing tighter and tighter round
the Tree-will of man and the providence of God.

Epicurus, we are told, rejected logic. But this is
only by comparison with the technical elaborations of
the theory of proposition and syllogism by the Stoics
and Aristotle. No philosopher can altogether avoid
logic, unless he ceases to render a reason for the
creed he holds. But in a system which professedly
disclaimed a scholastic character, which stood aloof
from declamation and neglected rhetoric, the ordinary
deductive logic of Aristotle, with its disproportionate
discussion of the questions of necessity and contin
gency — and other questions of form more than of
reality — would have been of little use. As a matter of
fact, the ancient logic, especially in the hypothetical
syllogism, which was the great field of Stoic ingenuity,
has left behind a memory redolent of sophistical and
captious arguments rather than of real interest in
the metaphysical questions underlying these logical
disputes. And Epicureanism, whatever its faults,

214 EPICUREANISM.

always tried to steer clear of logomachies, or verbal
arguing.

Still, there are questions which no system can de
cline to answer, if it claim to be philosophical, espe
cially in an age when a sceptical or critical inquiry
has sapped the foundations of belief. In the first
period of Greek philosophy, from Thales to Anaxa-
goras, scientific inquiry had gone boldly on to infer
ences, transcending the phenomena of observation,
with a free faith in the power of reason to penetrate
all mysteries in the universe. The contradictory re
sults obtained in the independent prosecution of this
method by a multitude of inquirers rather discredited
it. And in the second stage of philosophy, from
Socrates to Aristotle, the analysis of ideas, of their
connections and relations, had formed the main
topics of investigation. The mind sought to win
clearness in the intellectual world with a conviction
that when that was accomplished there was little fear
of contradiction in the external objects. It fancied
that if the order of ideas was sufficiently discovered,
the order of things would follow of itself. This
assumption was shaken by the destructive criticism of
the immediate successors of Plato and Aristotle, and
by Pyrrho. Accordingly, when we come to the Stoic
and Epicurean schools, the common question that is
raised is, How can we know when our ideas are true
and represent objective fact ? Where is reality to be
found ?

It is the same question which at a much later age
was asked in Germany as the reign of the idealists

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 215

from Kant to Hegel drew to its close. These philo
sophers, it was urged, have " construed " God and the
universe in thought : but can they give us a reality ?
Can they construe the book which I hold in my hand ?
They construe the idea of God : but what we want is,
not an idea of God, but a real living and true God.
We want something positive : instead of being always
led about (in the phrase of Plato) l from ideas to
ideas through ideas. And that real God we find not
in dialectic arguments and processes of logical evolu
tion, but in two ways much more certain to give
reality. The one way is to set aside reasoning, and
go back to feeling, to our intuitive sense of the divine,
which is the presupposition and should be the sub
stitute of all mere argument on the topic. This was
the way of Schleiermacher. The other method was
to listen to the words of authentic witnesses who told
the story of the Divine life, and so come directly into
contact with the record of God's action ; as in the
former way we were brought close to the general
spirit of God. This was the way of Hengstenberg.
Unfortunately, it soon appeared that in the one way
as in the other the rejected reason had to be re
instated. We must believe with the understanding
as well as with the heart.

Something like this took place in antiquity when
Epicurus and Zeno attempted to find the principle of
reality which was missed by Plato and Aristotle.
Reality, they declared, must be body, and the evidence

p. 511.

2l6 EPICUREANISM.

for reality must be found in the senses. The sensible
and the material — such in more or less etherealized,
more or less gross forms — is the universe. The only
witness which, according to Epicurus, we have of
reality is sensation or feeling — at least in the first
instance. What our senses tell us, what our feeling
vouches for, that, according to him, is true and real.
But all feelings or sensations have not this character
istic. The voice of sensation or feeling, if it is to be
accepted as a witness to truth and reality, must be
clear and distinct, palpable, tangible, and unmistake-
able. Translating more liberally, we may interpret
Epicurus in the language of modern philosophy as
laying down immediate consciousness as the final
court of appeal. Clear and distinct consciousness is
not an unfair equivalent for his trupycm -/"ye uiaO>i0«i)r
(perspi'cuitas) or evidentness of perception.1

In dealing with the Epicurean and Stoical theory of
knowledge — their philosophy of cognition — we cannot
but be reminded of an important epoch in the
philosophy of our country. The problems, and the
answers to these problems, are to a large extent the
same as those of Locke and Hume. Sensation and
reflection are much in the same comparative position
and esteem in the ancient as in the modern empirical
school. Neither Locke nor Epicurus fail to acknow
ledge in general terms the spontaneity of mind. But
they do not, as Kant did, carry this superficial acl-

1 Diog. Laert., x. 31 ; Cic., AccuL, II. J9 ; Lucre t., IV. 480,
seq. ; Sext. Emp., Adv. Math., 63-66.

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 217

mission any further : they do not ask for the special
character or origin of that spontaneity : having
admitted it in a general way, they feel themselves
absolved from the trouble of detecting its place in
particulars. Hence, sensation has the main burden
thrown upon it in the account given by Epicurus of the
genesis of knowledge. Sense gives the real nucleus of
knowledge : all else is formal. Sensation is never
false : it is our inference about sensation which con
tains the germs of error. Even a dream or the fancy
of an insane person bears witness to reality. Being
an effect, it must have a cause. So-called optical
illusions are only illusions to the mind. The square
tower e.g. at a distance is seen as round : but what
we actually see, viz., the spectral husk which is thrown
off from the tower, has been really rounded in its
progress through intervening bodies.1 The sense,
strictly speaking, spoke the truth. Error arose because
the mind forgot to take account of the friction to
which the image or idolon is exposed. Error is
removed when we have learnt to allow for this effect
of distance.

Undoubtedly Epicurus is right in standing up for
the senses against those ancient philosophers who
treated them with scanty courtesy. Without the
senses the intellect would starve. But it is as well
to add that he scarcely notices how intellect, if it is
the cause of error by hasty and ungrounded inference,
is also the only means of reaching the truth. It

Scut. Empir., Adv. Math., vn. 208 ; Lucret., IV. 36*.

2l8 EPICUREANISM.

alone can heal the wounds which it inflicts. That
was the lesson which Plato had taught. Epicurus, on
the contrary, affirms in the language of Kant that
conceptions without sensations, ideas severed from
experience, are empty and unreal. A sensation is an
ultimate fact ; its infirmity lies in its isolation : and
it is a source of error, in consequence of its suscepti
bility to combination and interpretation. But it must
be accepted ; it cannot be disputed : in the words of
Epicurus, every sensation is unreasonable : we feel
it, and no argument can ever make it not be. Nor
can one be used to invalidate another.1 These sen
sations, however, do not remain unconnected or
isolated points in the mind. They naturally form
unions, just as the primary atoms do in the outward
world : sensations combine in various ways and build
up the world of our ideas. Our conceptions gradually
amalgamate and combine in obedience to such cir
cumstances as conjuncture of occurrence, similarity
of nature, similarity of relations, and the like.2 So
far Epicurus and the Stoics agree : and the same
doctrine of the genesis of our conceptions from
the agglutination, assimilation, and combination of
simpler elements is common ground in all experiential
psychology. Long before reasoning and reflection
awake in any individual to form conscious and
deliberate associations between the successive states
of mind, the psychical or physical machinery has
been silently forming its complex structure from th<

1 Diogenes Laertius, X. 31. * Ibid., x. 32; vn. 52.

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 2 19

rudiments furnished by the senses. It is not, for
instance, by a conscious act of comparison that the
perceptions of colour, taste, shape, size, in an orange
have been fused into a single conception, called by
one name. It is not by voluntary reflection that the
sensation of this moment calls up the accumulated
result of past sensations to complete itself. The
phenomenon, which has been styled apperception, is
an important factor in the explanation of mental
processes. In virtue of this process the present
sensation is taken up and moulded into a shape
determined by some familiar habit of the mind.
Every mind is in a peculiar state of susceptibility to
certain impressions. Whatever the original mind
may have been in the beginnings of organic life, the
mind of each conscious being, as we know it, always
gives a definite reaction, or interprets the data of
sensation in a special way. Every image on the
retina is not passively accepted, but is fused with the
bent or train of thought on which it enters. We
are not pure or neutral observers : the mind throws
out on the incoming perception a motion of its own,
and the combined movement is what we fancyour-
selves to perceive.

But apart from the unconsciously operative ma
chinery of associations, Epicurus admits the presence
of reasoning in these combinations which form ideas.
What at an early period of life is always done without
conscious effort comes in later years to be occasionally
done with voluntary agency and after reflection.
Even after certain ideas have been formed by pro-

220 EPICUREANmt.

cesses which underlie consciousness, we can go on to
the formation of new syntheses of sensations with
one another. Of course, if it be asked how reasoning
is explained by the Atomic theory, the answer does
not come readily. To give in terms of matter and
motion an intelligible account of what is to be under
stood by logical synthesis is a somewhat unpromising
task. But apart from its translation into Epicurean
phraseology the statement is one generally accepted.

How much is required to constitute a . sensation
effective or perspicuous is what we cannot tell, any
more than we can state in general language what
qualities in a perception " constrained assent '' for the
Stoics. The problem is in the last resort to be
answered subjectively. A sensation is palpably dis
tinct when it is felt to be such : and it is then a
witness to external reality. The ultimate criterion of
certainty is subjective consciousness : it cannot be
stated in abstract or general rules applicable to all
cases equally.

The point which Epicurus discusses after sensation
is what he called by the technical term of TrpoX^tf,
anticipation or preconception. It is explained as a
general idea stored up, a right opinion, a conception,
or the memory of what has been more than once
presented to us from without.1 When we apply a
name to an object we can only do so by means of a
previous conception corresponding to the name : and

1 Diog. Laert., x. 33; Cicero, De Nat. Dear., I. 43-44;.
Emp., Adv. Malh.% I. 57.

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 221

that conception is ultimately an image derived from
the senses. Epicurus, in explaining these " anticipa-
tions," says : " In the case of every term of speech
the primary ideas it conveys must be seen (by the
mental eye) and not stand in need of demonstration :
otherwise we shall have nothing to which to refer the
point in question."

These preconceptions are not in any true sense
innate. They are products of observation. Their
value lies in being common to the mass of mankind,
and so affording a basis of argument. In the case
of any dispute, in which general terms are employed,
the first question is : What clear and distinct idea can
we attach to it ? And this does not mean, can I
define it — can I substitute one set of general terms
for another ? But can I really put it before my in
tellectual vision distinctly? Epicurus, like Bishop
Berkeley, reduces general ideas to the individual
images which do duty for them in the imagination.
He wants us to realize our ideas in a concrete case as
the true test of our having them. And here, perhaps,
is a fundamental fallacy of Epicureanism. It holds
that truth is identical with what is clearly and dis
tinctly conceived. It substitutes imagination for
thought. Unlike Spinoza, who contrasts the imper
fect conception of the imagination with the adequate
knowledge of understanding, Epicurus abides by
what is easily and satisfactorily presented to the mind
under a pictorial or semi-sensuous aspect. Now,
imagination most easily reproduces the phenomena
familiar to us of bodies in motion. The ultimate

222 EPICUREANISM.

significance of motion being neglected, we stick to
the fact we have seen so often, and all the processes
that occur in nature are presented under the single
aspect of movement.

Epicurus, however, goes farther even than Lord
Bacon in his dislike to meaningless or ambiguous
language. The chancellor proposed in certain in
stances to remedy the fault by definition of the term.
But Epicurus would have nothing to do with defini
tion, i.e. with generalities and terms upon terms. He
wanted a solid ground on which to stand. He would
not, like the Stoics, allow the existence and quasi-
independence of a middle region of words between
thoughts (or mental images) and things. A word only
existed as the symbol of a mental image : and there
fore it must present its credentials in the shape of a
prolepsiS) i.e. a clear and distinct image, conveyable,
not in the general terms of a definition, but in the
precise and particular language of a description. Can
the conception be realized as an image ? If it can,
it is a safe and satisfactory basis of argument : if it
cannot, it must be dismissed.

A curious example of this dislike to generalities, to
definitions and divisions, is seen in the contest which
the Epicureans carried on against mathematics. If
we believe Cicero, Epicurus declared the whole of
geometry to be false : and he couples the remark with
an expression of surprise as to whether Polyaenus, who
had a considerable mathematical reputation, had put
the whole science aside after he became a disciple, of
Epicurus. We may be sure he did not; and the

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 223

very conjunction of the two statements suggests that
Epicureanism rather expressed a view of the nature
and method of geometrical truth, than a doubt as to
its scientific value. What the Epicureans principally
objected to, we infer, were the principles — the axioms,
postulates, and definitions : though others of them,
like Zeno the Sidonian, went further, and urged that
there were points involved in the demonstrations
which had not been explicitly accepted in the preli
minary principles. Now, the definitions of geometry
have the defect that they cannot be represented in
any distinct image. No man can conceive an image
of a geometrical line, or point, or surface ; the only
image which can be raised to meet these terms is
that of a physical line or surface, which is evidently
quite unsatisfactory for the purposes of mathematics.
Even if we go a step further, we can say that the
general conception of a circle or a triangle corre
sponding to the definitions of Euclid is such as can
only be realized in special and individual instances
of these figures. We need not particularly care for
the abuse which, according to an ancient mathema
tician, they lavished on the proof of the 2oth projK)-
sition of the ist Book of Euclid, as demonstrating
what was palpable even to a donkey.1 The main
ground of their attack on the mathematical sciences
was, that if they started from false premises (i.e. not
in accordance with facts), they ( ould not be true ;

1 rrocliu., Comment, in Euclid. Element. , p. 322, cd. Fried-
Icin.

224 EPICUREANISM.

and to this they added a second and more sweeping
one, that even if they were true, the exact sciences con
tributed nothing to the welfare and pleasure of human
life. Here, again, we are reminded of Comte and J. S.
Mill ; and probably Epicurus, whom Cicero accused of
overthrowing geometry, went no further than Mr. Mill,
when he says that " the suppositions (from which the
conclusions of geometry are deduced) are so far from
being necessary, that they are not even true : they
purposely depart more or less widely from the truth."1
These, then, are the two pillars on which Epicurean
science reposes ; sensations clearly and distinctly felt,
and words capable of being referred to clear and dis
tinct ideas. In the moral sphere the feelings or emo
tions play the same part as sensations in the theo
retical. We need only say a word about another
criterion of reality which was added by some Epicu
reans and is not excluded by Epicurus himself.
These were the imaginative impressions of the intel
lect,2 and in these we have a method of arriving at
truth additional to sensation. The precise meaning
of this source of ideas, however, has long been a
subject of dispute. According to one view, they
represent the free cast of the mind — animijactus liber
of Lucretius,3 — which leaps out to meet the sensation,
and transforms it into an intelligent perception, That
Epicurus recognises spontaneity on the part of the

1 System of Logic, 1 1 1 . s. I .

2 <pavra<JTiKat iTrifioXal rf/g Siavoiit^. Cf. on this topic, Tohte,
Epikurs Kiiteritn der Wahrheit (Clausthal, 1874).

3 Lucretius, v. 1047.

IOCIC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 225

mind is quite true ; hut he notices it mainly to show
that this participation of the mind is often a source
of error and delusion. It is, he says, because there
is a gap in the connection between the movement
which originates from within and that which comes
from without, that our opinions sometimes are false.1
But this meaning would be out of place here. The
" imaginative impressions on the intellect" are con
trasted with the sensations in such a way as to render
it more probable that we should understand by them
the images which present themselves to the intellect
(in the Epicurean description of it), and not to the
senses. In other words, they represent the impres
sions derived from the spectra or idola ^ which are too
delicate to affect the senses, but can act upon the
mind.

Such idola, however, are of various character, and
are of very different value as witnesses to real objec
tive existence. Some of those which are incapable of
moving the senses are due to accidental agglomera
tions of phantom husks floating about the air. For
example, in such a way the image of a unicorn may
rise before the mind. But as the idola come from no
real object, no solid body (impe/iKiox, as Epicurus calls
it), they are not evidence to more than themselves :
we have the idola presented to the mind ; but it is
only in sleep, or madness, or ecstasy, that we believe
these images correspond to any reality. When we are
awake and in health we soon recognise that we have

1 Diogenes I,aertius, x. 51.
Q

226 EPICUREANISM.

been the victims of illusion. There are, however,
idola, which like these, appeal to the intellect only,
^ and not to the senses : and these are the idola of the
Gods. They, too, are not derived from single solid
bodies ; but in contradistinction to the others just
mentioned they have a real object — or what, at least
is maintained to be such in the Epicurean theology.
At the same time one can see why Epicurus does not
distinctly enumerate these imaginative intellectual
impressions among the criteria of truth and reality.
They are not always to be depended upon : they are,
indeed, generally to be distrusted, and trust rested
solely on the deliverances of the senses. Yet, Epi
curus, unwilling to surrender his belief in the Gods,
seems to have recognised this avenue of ideas solely
on account of its theological bearings, without
minutely discussing or weighing its evidential worth.
Two cases seem to exist in which doubt may arise
as to the reality or truth-bearing quality of impres
sions. There is the case already noticed, of the im
pressions that solely affect the intellect and not the
senses. And on this point nothing further need be
said, except that, where the imaginative forms are not
dispelled by the comparison with what presents itself
in daylight and in our sober moods, then they must
be supposed to have some reality behind them. The
other case arises in dealing with strictly sensible im
pressions. An instance may be taken from the field
of optical illusions. The oar seems bent where
it touches the water : two parallel lines seem to con
verge as they retire. In these phenomena it would

LOGIC AND PSYCHOI0GY. 227

seem as if the senses were leagued to deceive us.
But it is really an error due to the addition made by the
mind to the information given by sense. The mind
has transcended the merely perceived, and has given
it a meaning. Imagination has been playing its game
with us. In such a case we compare the interpreta
tion given by the mind with others which have been
already more securely ascertained. If the known
phenomenon gives its evidence in favour of the as
sumed but uncertain phenomenon, or does not con
tradict it, the assumed perception may be taken as
real and true. If, on the other hand the familiar
phenomenon either controverts the interpretation
adopted by the mind, or does not witness in its
favour, the interpretation must be rejected as false.

But here there are two cases. There is the case
where we can by observation or experiment test our
provisional hypothesis, either by a future examination
of the object itself or of others in similar circum
stances. Thus, when we approach closer to the
tower and find that it no longer appears round, we
are led to modify our statement about its shape.
But in our attempts to get at the real and secret
causes of the phenomena of nature, such direct con
firmation or confutation cannot always be looked for.
In such cases, an explanation may claim our accept
ance if none of the familiar phenomena with whose
causes we are better acquainted contradict it, or are
inconsistent with its truth. Thus, the theory that
the real substratum of the world, external and in
ternal, is> to be found in the atoms and the void,

228 EPICUREANISM.

cannot be proved by direct evidence from sensation.
The atoms are too small to be singly perceived ; and
the void, because it is the non-existent, cannot be
perceived either. Hence, the existence of atoms is
only to be established, first, when we have shown
that any other explanation of the phenomena is at
variance with observed facts ; and, secondly, when
we have shown that all the phenomena of the universe
are consistent with the hypothesis of atoms, and that
the laws which regulate the movement of the atoms
are in agreement with the laws which we have found
to prevail throughout the range of familiar facts.

The atomic theory of Epicurus, therefore, is a
hypothesis, basing its claim for acceptance on the
harmony which it introduces into our conception of
the universe. He began, as we saw, by declaring
that the individual and subjective certainty of sensa
tion is the basis and starting-point of any attempt to
reach reality or truth and objective certainty. But,
though the starting-point, it is far from being all that
is needful to secure the end we desire. For in every
perception, i.e., in every interpretation of sensation,
there is a meeting of elements : the object perceived,
and the subject perceiving, severally contribute their
quota to the result. But the tendency thus exhibited
is a source of error, as well as of truth. The current
of impression from the object may lead us into con
fusion, so also may the current which starts from the
subject perceiving. In these circumstances it is
necessary to compare our perceptions with those of
others in the same phenomena, and to compare

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 229

similar phenomena with one another at different
times. In this way we gain a tolerable working cer
tainty, sufficient for all ordinary purposes. What
others perceive no less than ourselves, and what is
perceived identically at different times and places,
may safely be looked upon as real and true.

So far as this goes, however, we are not yet in the
region of scientific certainty. All men agree in per
ceiving the movement of the sun across the sky, its
rise and setting ; and the phenomenon is repeated at
different places and times without any variation. The
perception, therefore, that the earth is at rest, and the
sun revolves around it, was established as an objec
tive certainty for common use. But the Copernican
doctrine is a scientific truth which entitles us to set
the ordinary perception and its certainty aside. How
is the step from the one degree of certainty to be
made to the other? By the same process which,
when carried to a certain extent, gave the average
certainty of daily life ; by a repetition and extension
of the method of comparison and correction which
was applied to the perceptions of the individual. In
this way it may turn out that there are constituent
elements in the accepted perception which are strictly
subjective in their origin. The aim of the process is
to discover an objective certainty, something which,
in all perceptions, turns out to be a permanent
datum. It is the elimination of all which is merely
subjective which led Democritus and Epicurus to
assert the theory of atoms. They held that all the
phenomena of perception cuuld be bati:ifuLlurily ex-

230 EPICUREANISM.

plained, and, in some instances, explained away, by
means of their doctrine. They believed that they
had found in the atoms a fundamental truth by which
the process of sensation itself could be understood,
and things and thought alike receive their fair place
in the world. A molecular constitution of the world,
in which the molecules were homogeneous, and only
varied in size and shape, and that within infinite
simal limits (compared with ordinary visible dif
ferences), and in which these molecules, though in
finitely numerous, were always separated from one
another by an interspace of larger or smaller ex
panse : this seemed to them to get rid of numerous
difficulties which any other theories involved, and
to produce a conception of the universe which
was harmonious and accordant with every fact of
perception.

Epicureanism, therefore, is far from denying the
operation of intellectual or rational factors in the pro
cess of knowledge. What it does affirm is, that in
the earliest stages of experience a great deal goes on
by spontaneous aggregation of the materials furnished
by sensation, quite apart from the influence of reason
ing and reflection. Its point is rather like that of
Kant in his Critique of the Reason. Thought,
except so far as it has materials from sensation to
work upon, is only engaged in building houses upon
the sand for the tide to sweep away. But in the
elaboration of that material, in a criticism and sift
ing of the ideas which have grown up by nature
thought has its proper function, and obviously a

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 231

highly important one. It may be said, indeed, How
can Epicurus, regarding the soul as atoms in combi
nation, attach any meaning to its thought? This,
indeed, is a weighty objection, not, however, only
against Epicureanism, but against all attempts to render
patent the mechanism and operation of mind. And
further, it is not one whit more difficult for Epicurus
to regard a concourse of atoms as thinking than to
regard them as active in any way whatever. It is as
hard, and as easy, for an atom to move as it is for an
atom or group of atoms to think.

Like many other philosophers, who in their syste
matic exposition ignore thought and mind, Epicurus
starts from the assumption of consciousness or mind
in activity. The very existence of philosophizing
presupposes the exercise of thought. But this initial
adoption of the mental point of view does not, in his
case, lead on to any further examination of the
nature of consciousness, and the consequences which
flow from the recognition of its powers. He does
not, like Descartes, proceed from (i I think" to "I
am," and from our being to the being of an infinite
God, the upholder of 'all things and ourselves. He
does not, like Kant, proceed specially to ask, What
are the precise features of this consciousness by which
I survey the world, and how far do they necessarily
mould and form our conceptions of nature ? He
does not even ask, like Plato and Aristotle, what are
the relations of this thinking to the data of sense,
and how the grades and modes of our conceptions of
things are to be arranged and classified. The pro-

232 Ll'lCUREANISM,

blcm of classification, involving the questions as to
the nature of genera and their species, and their rela
tion to individual existence, has no interest for Epi
curus. The logic of Aristotle and the Stoics, with its
analysis of the processes of classificatory (dividing
and defining) thought, is wholly removed in his eyes
from any practical value. One part of logic only is
of interest either to him or to his school. And that
part is the theory of induction and analogy, and, in
general, of the process by which we are entitled to
extend what we have observed in one case to cases
lying beyond the range of direct observation.

It was long supposed, indeed, that because the
Epicureans rejected the scholastic logic of the Stoics
they had given no attention to general logical ques
tions. The manuscripts of Herculaneum have
enabled us to correct this view, and taught us that
the Epicureans were interested in those questions
which lie at the root of all inductive logic. The
treatise of Philodemus on Symptoms and Sympto-
matization is, as its editor entitles it, an essay on
inductive reasoning.1 It is in the main a defence of
the analogical argument from a known case to the
existence of certain properties in an unobserved case
of generally similar character. The Stoics, against
whom the essay is directed, were assailants who re
fused to admit anything but purely deductive reason
ing. " How can we," it is asked, " pass from the

1 Gomperz, Herkulanische St adieu, I. (Leipzig, 1865), with
the Commentary by Fr. Bahnsch (Lyck 1879) ; cf. Gomper/. in
Zeitschrift fiir Oesterreichischc Gynutasien (1872), pp. 24 32.

I.OC.1C AND PSYCHOLOGY. 233

known and apparent to the unapparent ? Must we
first of all, embrace the whole range of appearances,
or certain only amongst them ? To do the former is
impossible ; and as for the latter" — (here the papyrus
leaves us in the lurch. But the context shows that
Philodcmus is quoting an argument as to how far we
may argue, from the length of life commonly reached,
to abnormal instances, and enumerating the circum
stances which we know to make a difference in the
length). " As there are variations due to air, and
food, and physiological constitution, so there may be
cases due to other differences. Are we therefore
either to argue from the cases which exhibit no
variety of nature or force, or from those which pre
sent dissimilar features? To start from a completely
identical case is of no value as a symptom or sign ;
whilst to argue from a dissimilar case fails in proving
anything just on account of the dissimilarity." To
this the reply of the Epicurean Zeno was : " It is not,
on the one hand, necessary to examine the whole
range of familiar facts, nor, on the other hand, are
any casual instances sufficient. We must examine
several instances which, though exhibiting variations,
still belong to the same kind or class of things, so
that from what happens in their case, and from the
facts recorded about them, we may discover the in
separable concomitants of each several case, and then
carry on the inference to other cases." Such a rule,
though it has a slight resemblance to Mill's method
of agreement, is too indefinite to be of much value.
The Epicureans evidently felt that there were certain

234 EPICUREANISM.

uniformities which might claim the title of natural
laws, and others which were mere empirical state
ments; but they cannot state in a distinct formula
what makes the difference between the two cases.
They give no sign of feeling the difficulty which lies
under the statement, that the cases examined are to
belong to the same " kind ; " they do not, that is, in
quire how " kinds " come to be framed either in logic
or in nature. Of course, if things were all arranged
under genera, induction and analogy are easy, and
perhaps trifling processes. Thus, if we give them the
merit as against their Stoic and Peripatetic rivals of
emphasizing the place of the so-called " imperfect
induction" in the process of science, and of even
asserting particular experience as the foundation of
all certainty, we cannot go further ; and must add
that, so far as our information goes, they did little or
nothing towards establishing a truly scientific logic of
induction. They seem here, as elsewhere, only to
expound and defend the doctrines of their master,
perhaps, as was natural, modifying and developing
while they only professed to apologize. There is
little evidence in favour of any influence of Epicu
reanism on the sciences. It no doubt affirmed the
law of causation, but almost solely against divine inter
ference. Asclepiades, a physician and scholar of the
time of Cicero, is sometimes said to have introduced
Epicureanism into medicine ; but apparently only on
very general grounds.1

1 Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math., x. jiS.

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY. 235

As the Epicureans in general rejected logic, so they
also rejected any metaphysical investigation of the
conditions and nature of thought. Except as a means
of scientific investigation and of practical guidance,
thought had no interest for them. They, at least,
could scarcely be accused of introspection, of turning
the mind back upon itself, of " thinking about think
ing." They ignored the self or ego, and if they dealt
with it at all, treated it as a thing among other things
of similar character and agency. They saw them
selves only as part of the natural universe, and not as
occupying a special pedestal and possessing a power
which might be said to be the basis and creator of
all things. They found themselves exposed to in
fluences on every hand, and making part of an end
less series of accidents, of action and reaction going
on incessantly. This common action, they argued,
was only possible on the ground of a community of
nature. And they were right.

But they were wrong in supjxjsing that the simi
larity of nature freed them from the task of investi
gating fundamental differences. Like some modern
systems, just because the " 1 think " and " I will "
accompanies all our perceptions, they felt themselves
entitled to suppress the ego. They saw it mainly
act as a cause of error, — interfering with the play
of natural forces. Truth is impersonal, objective :
opinion is subjective and personal. The intervention
of mind seemed to be only a signal for mistake and
falsehood. And the popular conceptions of mind
are not so clear as to cause much trouble to such a

236 EPICUREANISM.

course. One can find indistinctness and flaws in the
semi-materialized images which in ordinary minds are
all that can be found to represent the terms of spirit.
God, will, freedom, and the like. The products
which imagination gives its votaries — and those are
the great bulk of mankind — cannot long stand the
strokes of criticism. They are soon shown to contain
incompatible elements, to be self-contradictory. Ask
any one what he understands by the "I" of which he
constantly speaks ; and if he proceeds, like Alcibi-
ades, in one of the doubtful dialogues accredited by
the title of Platonic, to the soul, it will not be hard
to show him that he cannot attach any clear figura
tion to what Aristotle defined as the " actuality of an
organic body, implicitly possessed of life." The
energy of thought is by Epicurus always reduced to
a phase of imagination : sensation is envisaged under
the aspect of motion. The ideal world becomes a
world of visibles in movement. In the world as thus
described, there is, to quote the words of Professor
Tyndall,1 " nothing which necessarily eludes the con-
ceptive or imagining power of the human mind. An
intellect, the same in kind as our own, would, if only
sufficiently expanded, be able to follow the whole
process from beginning to end. It would see every
molecule placed in its position by the specific attrac
tions and repulsions exerted between it and other
molecules ; the whole process and its consummation
being an instance of the play of molecular force." Of

of Science, vol. n. p. 83.

T.nr.IC AN'D PSYCHOI.or.Y. 237

course, for "the attractions and repulsions" alluded
to by Professor Tyndall, we should substitute the
impacts of atom upon atom in the Epicurean theoiy ;
a difference which would not render the process less
imaginable. But when we come to consciousness
and the relation to the physics of the brain, the case
is otherwise. "Granted," says the same writer,1
" that a definite thought and a definite molecular
action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not
possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any
rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass
by a process of reasoning from the one to the
other."

If we have rightly understood Epicurus, he has
simply ignored the ego and consciousness, and turned
solely to externality. He has adopted the attitude of
science, and not the attitude of philosophy. He has
fairly enough employed the ordinary conceptions of
matter to explain the processes of growth, nutrition,
sensation. If not an adequate mode of conceiving
these processes, it has, at least for most minds, the
merit of affording an easy and simple rationale of
them. But as a philosopher he should have gone
further. His only answer, however, to the question,
"What are we?" is, that we are what we see, and if
our vision were expanded might see. Each of us is
an object of sensitive and intellectual vision : of the
other fact, that each is a subject, he says nothing.
And by a subject is not meant merely that each of us

1 Fragments of Sfieti, /, vol. II. p. 87.

238 EPICUREANISM.

is active as well as passive. For that matter, the
same may be said of every piece of corporeal sub
stance in the universe : activity and passivity are the
very characteristics of existence in its very shape.
But in each of us there is the further element of
consciousness, sentiment, feeling, will, and know
ledge. Of this Epicurus has no other explanation than
to say that it is nothing separable from certain com
binations of molecules, and may even be treated as
a mere aggregation of ethereal atoms.

EPICUREANISM.

CHAPTER XI.

HISTORICAL SKETCH AND CONCLUSION.

EVEN in the life time of Epicurus his disciples and
adherents were numerous. His personal influence
seems to have acted as a charm. Yet probably his
mind was one neither fitted for abstruse speculation
nor susceptible of deep feeling and lofty sentiment.
Everything seems to show that he was as indifferent
to the vocations of the scholar and the artist as he
confessedly was to the business and intrigues of poli
tical life. The magic of his power lay in the bright
and sweet humanity of his person and character.
Possessed of a calm and happy temper, which passion
and lust did not easily excite, and of a perspicuous
eye which saw through the hollowness of mere word-
wisdom and the dishonesty of many social conventions,
he blended the underlying cynicism of his nature
with so much geniality and urbanity that no trace is
to be found of the sourness of the disappointed
prophet or of the sternness of the moral reformer.
Though he lived out of the world, he had nothing ol
the recluse or of the ascetic about him. Unlike
other teachers, he was not for ever claiming to be
called "Rabbi, Master." He lived among his fol
lowers like an elder brother ; not as a professor among

240 EPICUREANISM.

pupils. His was a pre-eminently social nature, find
ing in friendly communion the very salt without
which life lost its savour. Women were conspicuous
among his friends ; and without going so far as to
call him a ladies' man, one may say that he exhibited
a decided taste for feminine society ; of deeper rela
tions to the fair sex, however, there is no indication ;
and it seems improbable that he should have felt a
grand passion. His nature was too calm and his
affections too generically human for that. Perhaps
for that very reason he was the better fitted to become
the focus of an admiring and affectionate fraternity.
With no wife or children of his own, he was more
likely to become the correspondent of other women,
and to have a warm heart for the children of others.
Self-centred without selfishness, kindly without inten
sity or passion, wise without pedantry, Epicurus
naturally had many friends and adherents.

The aim and character of his doctrine were also
such as to awaken interest and win popularity. In
name, at least, he proposed pleasure as the end of
life ; and even if the pleasure he meant was not what
vulgar sensualists understood by the word, the name
was one that did not repel that numerous class who
cannot understand why unhappiness should be treated
as intrinsically meritorious. A dogma of this kind is
perhaps especially appropriate to the sunny south
and to the bright-souled and simple-tasted Greek.
Without wholly breaking away from the traditions of
the national faith, he nullified the power of the priest,
the confessional, and the indulgence-monger, by

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 24!

den) ing to deity both the will and the power to punish
human beings for their conduct. He attempted even
to dispel the terrors of death and the grave, by repre
senting it to a weary world as an endless and
dreamless sleep. He did not disdain to deal even
with precepts of diet and hygiene, — as matters of
importance if life was to be made as happy as it might.
To explain the origin of the world and man, he gave
a theory which called for no extraordinary acumen,
no preliminary study of mathematics, no scientific
training, but was level to the comprehension of ordi
nary mind:;. Professing to build upon the irrefutable
testimony of sensation, he dismissed logical intricacies
as superfluous. Above all, he gave an unhesitating
dogmatic answer to the doubts and anxieties which
perplexed men then as they do now, as to whence
man comes and whither he goes. Instead of criticism
and argument, he propounded what claimed to be an
infallible aim for action, and a complete theory of
existence. At last, he said, after the world has for
ages groped for a way amid the darkness of super
stition, and after one philosophic system after another
has tossed men tu-and-fro on a sea of groundless
opinions, at last the true light has been revealed.
Henceforth the way seemed to be made clear;
erring wanderers had only to learn and practise the
precepts of the Gargettian sage, and thereafter their
lives would be happy and their souls at rest.

It need cause no surprise, therefore, when Cicero
declares that, not merely Greece and Italy, but the
barbarian world lying round soon felt the influence
K

242 EPICUREANISM.

of Epicureanism.1 To minds burnt up by the un
availing strife of politics, and harassed by a succes
sion of wars and rumours of wars, a creed which
released man from the bondage of political life could
not but be welcome. After the conquest of Persia
and the tightening of the ties between Asia and
Greece, as well as Egypt, which followed that event,
the Greek world was forced to surrender its burghal
exclusiveness, its petty jealousies between town and
town, its antiquated distinctions of class, its contempt
for the foreigner and the " barbarian." The old
civic constitutions fell in pieces, fortune and power
changed hands, the old seats of supremacy had to be
yielded to young and untried aspirants, in the shape
of those erewhile secondary states which now came
to the front. People of alien race and sensibilities
got mixed up together. And if this was the effect
of the Macedonian conquests, still greater was the
influence of the advance of Roman power in produc
ing like results. From that time cosmopolitanism
became a fact as well as an idea, for the many races
brought under the dominion of Rome. To such a
cosmopolitan society, the great majority in which
had, and could have, no interest in war and politics,
the gospel of Epicurus came as a message of good
tidings. He pronounced openly the thought which
everybody was in secret cherishing. He spoke to
the poor and the unlearned, as well as to the rich
and educated. To science and art, to culture and

1 Cicero, Dt Fin., n. 49.

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 243

learning, Epicureanism was almost hostile, so long,
at least, as it saw in them attractions which withdrew
men from the one thing needful. A mere literary
and aesthetic as well as a mere scientific training
were not, according to Epicurus, adequate for
man : humanity is greater than either art or
science. The Stoic philosopher had to tread a mazy
path of dialectic before he could reach the higher
wisdom of life, and to some minds the fascinations
of difficulty were so strong that they forgot the great
end of all logic, and spent their lives in intellectual
warfare. But on the Epicurean there was not im
posed the necessity of maintaining a lengthy argu
ment in defence of his faith. His duty was to appre
hend and remember the precepts and principles
enunciated by the founder of his sect. These prin
ciples were simple, and the precepts seemed easy to
follow. The question was often asked : Why are
there so many Epicureans ? No doubt many were
attracted by the promising name of pleasure. To
such might apply the sarcasm of Arcesilaus, who,
when asked why there were so many deserters to
Epicureanism from other schools, while no Epicurean
ever became a renegade, replied : " A man may
become a eunuch, but a eunuch can never become a
man."1 The theology of Epicureanism, too, had its
charm. There is an unmistakeable earnestness in
the tone of Lucretius, when he speaks of the awful
load of religion under which the world of his time lay

1 DiogciK I^acrtius, IV. 6, 43.

K 2

244 EPICUREANISM.

crushed. And strange as it may sound, the very
idea of a divine Providence watching over the ways
and fates of men meant only the uneasy and grue
some sense of a ghostlike presence always hovering
around.1

The historical circumstances of the age of Epicurus
can scarcely be dissevered from his doctrines. The
wars of the Diadochi, or successors of Alexander, the
chaos of Grecian politics, and the career of Agathocles,
the despot of Syracuse, seem a practical and illus
trative commentary on the morals and theology of
Epicureanism. The reader of the lives of Eumenes
and Demetrius in Plutarch, and of the books of
Diodorus, which trace the vicissitudes of Sicilian his
tory from 317 to 289 B.C., almost feels that he has
looked upon a world from which the merciful and
righteous Gods have departed. A story told of Uanae,
the daughter of Epicurus's Leontion, may illustrate the
impression. This lady was the friend and companion
of Laodice, the widow (and murderess) of Antiochus
the Second. She had learnt that her royal mistress
had decided to put treacherously to death an officer
named Sophron, and she gave the latter, who had
once been her lover, an intimation of the doom in
tended for him. Sophron made his escape : and
Laodice, in her indignation, ordered Danae to be
thrown down a precipice. The unhappy girl, who
had disdained to say a word in the presence of her
destroyer, broke out, as she was led to her execution,

1 Cicero, DC Nat. Dear., i. 54,

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 245

in these words : " The world does right to despise the
Gods. This is the reward I receive from God for
saving my husband, while Laodice, who has killed
hers, is invested with honour."1 Few epochs in his
tory have been so disastrous in their immediate
effects upon the happiness and the morality of man
kind. But, like the wars of the First Napoleon, the
contests of the tyrants and usurpers of the age of the
Diadochi perhaps helped to prepare the world for a
larger measure of freedom and federation.

Of the actual spread of Epicureanism during the
two centuries after the death of Epicurus we are only
vaguely informed. But that it did spread and that
a succession of teachers carried on the tradition of
the school are certain. It is probably to the close of
the third century B.C. that we must refer two incidents
which are handed down on the authority of the lexico
grapher Suidas. His statement is that some Epicu
reans took up their abode in the town of Lyctos or
Lyttos in Crete. A decree was at once promulgated
for their expulsion. It banished from the town " those
who had invented a womanish and ignoble and dis
graceful philosophy, and who were enemies of the
Gods." If, however, the offenders should return,
(the decree continued) a worse j>enalty awaited them.
They were to be set fast in the stocks, naked, their
skin besmeared with milk and honey, and left for
twenty days to the stings of the wasp and gadfly. If
they survived this horrible ordeal, they were next to

1 Athenarus, XIII. 64.

246 EPICUREANISM.

be dressed like women, and dashed to death from the
top of a rock. At Messene, in the Peloponnesus,
Suidas locates another case of like fanaticism. The
Epicureans were outlawed as defilers of the temples
and as a disgrace to philosophy, through their atheism
and indifference : they were ordered to be beyond the
borders of Messene before sunset, and the magis
trates were directed to purify the city and shrines from
all traces of the heretics.1 We can almost fancy as
we read that we are dealing with a persecution of the
Christians in the second century of the Empire, or
with the rough methods sometimes employed to check
Roman Catholicism. One would have been glad to
know more of the circumstances, and of the special
characters of the Epicureans in question. In the
absence of such details, we may infer that the acts in
question had something to do with the bitterness and
intensity of political enmities due to the contests of
the Achrean and .^Etolian Leagues, of Macedonia and
Sparta, during the years from 250 to 150 B.C. The
offence of the " Epicureans " so-called was doubtless
political dissidence, rather than religious heresy,
though the latter charge might be used to justify an
attack made really on the former ground. In the case
of Lyttos, particularly, we have the facts of the
coalition of the other Cretan states against it, and the
complete and treacherous destruction of the city by
the rival town of Cnossos about the year 200 B.C.2
The pious and bigoted Aelian, who lived towards

1 Under the word "Epicurus." '; Polybins, iv. 53-54.

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 247

the close of the second century A.D. wrote a work on
Providence, in which the Epicureans largely figured.1
From the fragments which editors have patched
together out of the references in dictionaries, we learn
that it was full of tales of divine judgments on un
believers, and of miraculous conversions. One of
the unconsecrated ministrants in the mysteries, he
tells us, an adherent of the effeminate and impious
creed of Epicurus, pushed forward into the most
holy place, where none save the high-priest might
enter, and would thus have practically evinced his
disbelief in the interference of the Gods with man.
Suddenly he was seen to shudder, and a wasting
disease fell upon him. In another story, <m Epicurean,
who was suffering from pleurisy, was taken into the
temple of /Ksculapius ; and while there was told in
a dream by one of the priests that his only remedy
was to burn the books of Epicurus he possessed,
and apply the ashes kneaded up with wax as a poultice.
His subsequent restoration to health is said— and not
unnaturally — to have made a deep impression on his
fellow free-thinkers. Another Epicurean, again, who
was heard scoffing at the vows and prayers made by
the worshippers at the altar of Castor and Pollux,
was attacked by an offended believer, who seized the
sword of one of the Twins and smote the reviler,
hurling at the same time a blast of defiance against
Epicurus and his dogmas.

Whatever we may think of the truth of these stones,

1 Arlinn, Fragmtitta (ed. Hrrclu-r), from Sui«1as.

248 EPICUREANISM.

their general meaning is tolerably clear. The objec
tions to the Epicureans rest on two grounds. The
first is their abstinence from political duty : their
philosophy is womanish. Even in modern times the
public mind has regarded with distrust those sects
which, like the Quakers or the Unitarians of Tran
sylvania, have refused some of the recognised obliga
tions of the citizen. Much more would an ancient
city, obliged constantly to defend itself against
enemies without and within, abhor and punish the
advocates of political indifferentism. And apparently
political life in Greece had been much quickened
after the time of Epicurus. The reforms attempted
in Sparta by Agis and Cleomenes, and the extension
of the Achaean league, were the closing exhibitions of
the old spirit of Hellenic life, before Rome reduced
all to silence.

The second charge against the Epicureans was
that of atheism and irreligion. In general they were
the avowed enemies of superstition and priestly
deception. Though, like Epicurus himself, they did
not ostentatiously dissent from the national rites of
religion,1 they were suspicious of all secret worships,
mysteries, and the like. This position, curiously
enough, seems on one occasion to have made them
the allies of the Christians. In the second century
A.D. Paphlagonia was ringing with the fame of a new
prophet, Alexander by name, who had set up an
oracle at Abonutichos, which was the object of pious

Cicero, De Nat. Deor., i. 85.

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 249

pilgrimages from far and near. According to the
essayist Lucian, who describes the rise and progress
of this charlatan, the Epicureans, who were numerous
in the provinces bordering on the Euxine, detected
and published the tricks by which Alexander managed
to impose upon his admirers. The false prophet
immediately appealed to the fanaticism of the province
to destroy his opponents, who included Christians as
well as Epicureans. He waged a merciless war
against Epicurus "the man who had studied the
nature of things, and who alone knew the truth that
was in them." To the inhabitants of Amastris,
which was the head-quarters of the Epicurean oppo
sition, he denied all approach to the privileges of his
sanctuary. At his solemn religious ceremonial, the
service was preceded by the herald's proclaiming
(after the manner of a similar proclamation made at
the Eleusinian Mysteries) : " If any atheist, Christian
or Epicureanx has come to spy the sacred rites, let
him depart." And as the herald called, " Away with
the Christians," the people responded, " Away with the
Epicureans." The catechism or articles of Epicurus,
even, the prophet caused to be burnt on the public
square, and its ashes to be thrown into the Euxine.
" He knew not," says Lucian in a passage of unusual
earnestness, "what blessings that book brings to those
who come to it, what ]>eace and tranquillity and free
dom it works within them, setting them free from
terrors and spectres and portents, from vain hoi>es
and superfluous desires, putting within them truth
and understanding, and truly purifying their souls,

250 EPICUREANISM.

not by torch and squills, and such idle ceremonials,
but by right understanding, and truth and open-
mindedness." Of Epicurus he speaks as " a man
truly sacred and prophetic in nature, who alone knew
and taught the good and true, and was the liberator
of those who companied with him."1

Erelong a third charge was added to the list of
impeachments. The name Epicurean was identified
with sensualist : an Epicure was another name for a
gourmand. And this view of Epicureanism, which
apparently came latest, was also perhaps in later times
the most widely spread.

It is impossible to say precisely when Epicureanism
appeared at Rome. When the ambassadors of
Athens arrived at Rome in 155 B.C. to plead the
cause of their city in the question of Oropus, they
included no representatives of Epicureanism. Car-
neades of the Academy, Critolaus the Peripatetic, and
Diogenes the Stoic, carried off the honours of the
day. Yet Epicureanism had quietly found its way
to the capital of the world. About the middle of
the second century, an obscure statement tells us, two
Epicureans, Alcius and Philiscus, were expelled from
Rome on the ground of immoral influence on the
young.2 It is certain that about that period the
Roman government made some ineffectual attempts
to check the corruption of manners and the decline
of faith, which accompanied the conquest of the

1 T.ncian, Alexanders. Pseudomantis, 25, 38. 47, 61.
8 Athcnxus, xii. 68.

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 251

transmarine provinces. The decree against the
Bacchanalia in 186 and the general order given to
the executive in 161 B.C. to keep a sharp eye on
philosophers and rhetoricians, betray uneasiness in
the governing circles at Rome.1

The earliest expositor of Epicureanism in Latin
was a person called Amafmius : and the publication
of his work was the signal for large accessions to the
sect of Epicurus.2 The attractive power did not lie
in the style in which the new doctrine was conveyed.
The writings of Amafinius, like those of Epicurus
himself and those of later Epicureans, were written
in a vulgar language, and dealt with very common
things. They were devoid of rhetorical embellish
ments, and even of logical order. The scholarly
critic of the period remarked that they were said to
be in Latin : but he regarded them as far from
classical in form, and beneath the dignity of science
in their contents. Cicero himself is fain to boast
that he had not read them. They wrote, he says,
for their own sect, and not for the literary world : and
as they neglect the graces of style, the public passes
them by. It is the same argument as a classical
author two centuries later might have used to set
aside the letters of St. Paul or of early Christian
writers on the ground of defective style. Yet, as in
the case of the Christian Scriptures, these badly-
arranged and poorly-written words of the Epicureans

1 AulusGellius, xv. n.

1 Cicero, Acad. Post., I. 5; Tit',: Disf., IV. 6 ; //-. n. 7;
Di I- in , ill. 40.

252 EPICUREANISM.

had the power to convert men. Nor was Amafinius
alone. A host of writers sprang up in his train, and,
in the words of Cicero, took possession of all Italy.
But the only names recorded in literature are those
of Rabirius, and Catius the Insubrian. The latter
died before 45 B.C., and is mentioned by Cicero only
casually : a later critic speaks of him as a not un
pleasant writer.1 Even the great poet who wedded
Epicureanism to immortal verse, Lucretius Carus, is
mentioned by Cicero only to say that he agrees with
his brother Quintus in considering the poem to in
dicate skill more than brilliancy or power. The
poem on the Nature of Things — DC Natura Rerum
— was published in 54 B.C., and its author had ap
parently died the year previously in the forty-fourth
year of his age. Poetry can scarcely be regarded as
an adequate exponent of philosophical doctrine. But
if we except the abstract exposition of the theory of
constituent atoms and of vision, Epicureanism with
its freedom from logic and metaphysics, its direct
appeal to the ordinary mind, the pathos of its ethical
tone, and the humanistic character of its historical
philosophy, seems more congenial to poetry than .any
of its contemporary systems. The perennial charm
of Lucretius is due partly to his dignity and apostolic
earnestness, partly to his fresh eye for the phenomena
of nature and humanity.

There are other indications of the progress of
Epicureanism at this epoch. A professor of Greek,

Quintilian, x. I, 124.

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 253

Pompilius Andronicus, by birth a Syrian, who must
have been contemporary with Lucretius, sjx>iled his
chances as a teacher of literature by his devotion to
Epicureanism. It was supposed that his creed would
make him indolent in his teaching and less able to
maintain discipline : and so the poor man saw him
self distanced in the competition by inferior men.
He withdrew to Cumac, and there living frugally and
working hard he produced a valuable critical treatise,
which he was glad to sell anonymously in order to
gain a livelihood.1 Amongst the circle of Cicero's
friends there were many Epicureans — more perhaps
than members of any other sect. Atticus, a wealthy,
cultured, and kindly man, who steered clear of po
litics, stands first in the list : and with him one may-
join Verrius, Saufeius, Papirius Paetus, Trebatius
Pansa, and Cassius, one of the assassins of Caesar.
Cicero himself drew his first draughts of philosophy
from the wells of the Epicureans. Phaedrus, an illus
trious member of the sect, contemporary with Zeno of
Sidon, its head for the time, had found his way to
Rome, and about the year 90 B.C. gave young Cicero
his first philosophical lessons. The friendship thus
begun was terminated only by the death of Phccdrus.
The orator always speaks of his early teacher with
kindly respect. Originally esteemed for his instruc
tion, Phaedrus, when his philosophy had ceased to
interest, was still dear to him for his probity, virtue,
and urbanity. In the year 79 B.C Cicero spent six

1 Sucloaiiu, D: (jrumnuUuts, 8.

254 EPICUREANISM.

months at Athens among the philosophers, chiefly
attending the lectures of Zeno of Sidon on Epicu
reanism. Not long before Athens had suffered terribly
from the arms of Rome. In the war between Mithri-
dates of Pontus and the Romans, Athens took the
side of the Oriental. Aristion, or Athenion, a philo
sophical professor, sometimes spoken of as a Peri
patetic and sometimes as an Epicurean, induced the
turbulent spirits of Athens to join in the crusade
against the great despotism of the West. Throwing
himself at the head of 2,000 men into the city he got
rid of all who were too rich or too indifferent to risk
a desperate struggle for freedom, and made himself
absolute dictator. Sulla, after a tedious blockade, in
which the groves of the philosophers were cut down
to furnish materiel of war, took the city by storm ;
and the last frantic effort for Greek independence was
quenched in seas of blood.1

Cicero subsequently paid a visit to Athens in 5 1
B.C., when he was on his way to the provincial go
vernment of Cilicia. Even at this date the displace
ment of the old site of Athens had begun : and in the
general movement of habitation to the northward the
quarters of the city nearest the harbour were falling
into decay. The house of Epicurus was a ruin : and
a Roman noble, the very Memmius to whom Lu
cretius dedicated his poem, had got the authorisation
of the Areopagus to employ it as a building-site.

1 Appian, Mithridat., 28 ; Athcnaeus, v. 4^-53 ; I'ausauiaa,
I. 20.

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 255

Whether the proposed edifice was a memorial to
Epicurus we know not : at any rate, the Epicureans
were alarmed at the suggestion to desecrate their holy
places. Patro, who was now the head of the sect,
wrote to Cicero, whom Phaedrus had interested in the
question, and asked him to interfere and maintain
for the sake of the society, " honour, duty, testa
mentary right, the injunction of Epicurus, the pro
test raised by Phasdrus, the abode, the dwelling, the
footprints of illustrious men." As Atticus supported
the request, Cicero promised to write to Memmius,
who had already abandoned his architectural designs,
but was on bad terms with Patro. The issue of the
intervention is unknown.1

Philodemus, another Epicurean writer of the
Ciceronian epoch, has, through the discoveries at
Herculaneum, attained a celebrity which his intrinsic
merits would scarcely claim. Like many philosophers
of those ages, he was not a Greek, but a Syrian, — a
native of Gadara, on the skirts of the Anti-Libanus.
In classical history he is known as the author of a
few erotic stanzas in the Greek Anthology, and is
alluded to by Horace, Cicero, and Diogenes Laertius.
In his attack upon Piso Caesoninus, however, Cicero,
without naming Philodemus, describes him ; and the
rolls of Herculaneum form a comment on his words.
In the speech — a long fierce tirade against Piso and
(iabinius, during whose consulship Cicero had been
exiled from Rome — there is a graphic picture of the

1 Cicero, Efut. ad /<;/»., XIII. 1 ; ad Attic., v. 19.

256 EPICUREANISM.

grim, haggard, earnest face of Piso, and the girlish,
curled head of Gabinius. Piso bears the brunt of
the assault. He is described as a barbarous Epicurus,
an Epicurus from the pigsty, an Epicurus moulded
out of potter's clay and mud. " With him," says
Cicero, " lives a certain Greek whom I know to be
a person of refinement. He has attached himself to
young Piso, and become his constant comrade. But
the pupil fails to appreciate the distinctions drawn by
his friend and guide. This Greek, unlike other pro
fessors of Epicureanism, is at home in literature. His
poems display inimitable grace, felicity, and humour.
Unfortunately, his artistic powers are often put at the
disposal of his pupil."1 The Epicurean philosopher,
whose position as the client of the powerful Piso
Cicero thus deplores, was the Philodemus whose
treatises have been unearthed from the Herculanean
villa.

We need not attempt to give a complete list of the
Epicurean names under the Empire. Just because
independent opinion was less esteemed than in other
schools, we may expect to find fewer distinguished
adherents. Nor can we always pronounce those to
be Epicureans who remind us of its characteristic
doctrines. In Caesar and Catullus, still more in
Virgil and Horace, we detect features of Epicureanism.
One of the Lives of Virgil tells us how he lived for
several years in leisurely freedom, after the manner
and doctrine of Epicurus. And the words of the

1 Cicero, In

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 257

Gcorgics which praise " the blessedness of him who
has learned the secrets of the world, and has laid
beneath his feet all fears, and the doom which no man
can escape and the din of Acheron craving its prey,"
are in the genuine spirit of Epicurus and Lucretius.
In the early Empire we find frequent allusion to
characteristic Epicurean tenets, — to its theory of
sense-perception and its anti-providential dogmas.
Both Seneca and Juvenal speak of Epicureanism in
no inimical terms. Quintilian seems to have been
chiefly struck by its hostility to liberal culture.1 Its
schools at Athens were still frequented. Apollonius
of Tyana, who went the round of the sects, heard a
course on Epicureanism : " for even it he did not
disdain to study."* Two Epicureans are mentioned
in the symposium of Plutarch. The treatise of Lucian
above alluded to (p. 249) is addressed to an Epicu
rean named Celsus, who lived in the time of Hadrian.
He has been identified by Origen and subsequent
writers with the author of the " True Discourse," the
earliest polemic against Christianity which remains
to us ; but almost certainly this identification is a
mistake.

About the year 176 A.D., the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius assigned to each of the four schools of
ancient philosophy a yearly revenue of 10,000
drachma:.3 Whether this sum went to a single pro-

1 Quintil., II. 7, 16; XII. 2, 24.
' Philostratus, A poll. Tyati., 6.

' I.ucian, Etmufk.t 3; rhilostr., Vit.Sofh., IF. 3; IMo Cas
sias, I.XXI. 31.

S

258 EPICUREANISM.

fessor, or was divided among several, \ve know not.
We are told that the emperor left the choice of the
professor to Herodes Alticus, the patron of philo
sophy in that period. After his time the appointment
seems to have been vested, probably, in the Areo
pagus, who decided after hearing the competitors.
Of these professors of Epicureanism we hear nothing.
Aulus Gellius, who studied philosophy at Athens
while Herodes Atticus was there, hardly alludes to
Epicureanism, save to quote the bitter words of
Hierocles the Stoic : " Pleasure the end, is a harlot's
doctrine : no providence, is not even .a harlot's doc
trine." 1 Longinus, who visited Athens for a similar
purpose about 240 A.D., though he speaks of the
teachers of other schools, does not even mention the
Epicureans.2 Yet if Epicureanism was not in good
odour at the University of Athens, it would be a
mistake to infer that it had been reduced to silence.
The physicist Cleomedes, who cannot be placed
earlier than the second century, attacks the doctrines
of Epicurus in language so vehement that one must
believe they still had considerable popularity. And
Diogenes Laertius seems also to testify to its con
tinued existence in his day. Yet, in the latter half of
the fourth century Epicureanism had no longer a fol
lowing, and even its literature had begun to disappear.
" Praised be the Gods," exclaims the Emperor Julian,
" for having annihilated Epicurean doctrine so com-

Aulus Gellius, vin. 5, 8.
Porphyrius, DC vita Plotini, 20.

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 259

plctely that it» books even are grown scarce." l Natu
rally, in the closing struggle between paganism and
Christianity, a system like Epicureanism was out of
place. The only philosophy in which dying poly
theism could hope to find comfort was the spiritualist
doctrine of Neo-Platonism.

The fathers of the early Church have occasionally
expressed their views on Epicureanism. Tertullian,
while he contradicts the theological dogmas of the
sect, uses language occasionally which is in harmony
with its fundamental principle. Nihil est incorporate
nisi quod non est : and, Omne quod est, corpus cst sui
gctieris? (Nothing is incorporeal except the non
existent : Everything which is, is a body of its kind.)
And when he boldly declares that the Christian re
gards the teaching of secular literature as folly in the
sight of God, he seems to re-echo in part the words of
Epicurus.3 Lactantius, in his " Divine Institutes "
(310 A.D.), has given a fine enumeration of the
secondary causes which may account for the spread
of Epicureanism.4 " It tells the ignorant they need
study no literature : it releases the niggardly from the
duties of public beneficence : it forbids the lounger
to serve the State, the sluggard to work, and the
coward to fight. The godless are told that the gods
are indifferent : the selfish and malevolent is ordered
to give nothing to any one, — because the wise man
does everything for his own sake. The recluse hears

1 Julian, Fragm. Ef>ist.t 301, c. ' De Came CAris/i, c. n.
J DC Spfdafutis, c. 1 8. « Divin. Jnstiln(., in. 17.

S 2

260 EPICUREANISM.

the praises of solitude ; and the miser learns that life
can be supported on water and polenta. The man
who hates his wife is presented with a list of the bless
ings of celibacy : the parent of a worthless offspring
hears how good a thing is childlessness : the children
of impious parents are told that there is no natural
obligation upon them. The weak and luxurious are
reminded that pain is the worst of all evils ; and the
brave man, that the sage is happy even in tortures.
Those who are ambitious are bidden to court the
sovereign ; and those who shrink from worry are
directed to avoid the palace." It is in a fairer tone
that Gregory Nazianzen speaks of Epicurus as show
ing, by his temperate life, that the pleasure he
preached was not the vulgar delights of licence.1 No
doubt this last was the current interpretation ; and it
seems to have been in the mind of Augustine, when in
unregenerate days he would have given Epicureanism
the palm, if only immortality had not turned the scale.8
From the third to the seventeenth century, Epi
cureanism was dormant as a system. The name,
however, still survived as a stigma. Amongst the
Rabbinical writers, the Hebrew transliteration of the
word is used to denote a free-thinker, loose liver, and
transgressor of the Mosaic law. Korah, who headed
the movement against Moses, and the serpent who
tempted Eve, are both described by the Hebrew
commentators as Epicureans.3 Similar was the use

1 Carm. Iamb., XVII. * August., Confess., VI. 16.

1 Selden, Opp., I. 1555-6 ; cf Levy, Neuhtbraisches W&rt*
ttbuch, i. 143.

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 26 1

in the Middle Ages and at the Renaissance. Tims,
Yillani declares that the troubles of Florence (1115-
1117) were " not without cause and judgment of God,
because the city was in those times exceedingly cor
rupted by heresy, and among the others the heresy of
the Epicureans pcrritio di lussuria et di gola, whereby
the people of the city were so divided they defended the
said heresy with armed hand."1 And, again, speaking
of Manfred, Villani says : — " His life was Epicurean,
not believing in God or the saints, but only in corporeal
delight." The same usage occurs in Boccaccio ; and
writers like John of Salisbury illustrate the meaning
attached to it. The great Epicurean of the time, in
some of its good, as well as its bad senses, was the
free-thinking and free-living emperor Frederick II., of
whom Gregory IX. wrote to the Archbishop of Canter
bury, that he held it wrong for a man to believe any
thing which he could not prove by the force and
reason of nature (77 d ratione nahtra)?

With the Renaissance there appeared sporadically
a naturalism, often licentious, which sometimes
claimed kindred with Epicureanism. Partly from a
misconception of Christianity, but still more from the
peculiar conditions of mediaeval existence, there had
been a long divorce between the theology of the
Church and the life and language of ordinary huma
nity. The re-awakening of natural affections and in
stincts into a free and passionate life was one of the
aspects of the Renaissance, in which Epicurean ten-

1 Villain, IV. 29; \i. 47. * Lal.hc, CoruMa, XI. 348.

262 EPICUREANISM.

dcncies might be traced. The philosophic expression
of this revolt and protest is found in a small dia
logue by Lorenzo Valla, On Pleasure and True Good>
written between 1430 and 1435. Here we find put
into the mouth of a contemporary poet a glorification
of nature and of the natural law of enjoyment. The
delights given through the senses — beautiful forms,
musical tones, sweet tastes and smells — are the first
class of pleasures enumerated. But the advocate of
pleasure goes a step further, and defends the relaxa
tion of sexual restraints. The treatise is a crude
and hasty generalization, made under a not inex
cusable hatred of monachism and conventionality. It
turns into logical and systematic shape those de
mands of the heart and passions which can only
claim our partial sympathy when presented in the
colours of concrete life.

The same revival of the heart and the natural in
stincts is seen in a more mature and tranquil form
when we look at Erasmus, Luther, Rabelais, and
Montaigne. All of them, sin their several ways, con
tend against the stagnation of conventionality, against
the reign of asceticism, — all of them are humanists,
in the wider sense of the word. The true Christian,
says Erasmus, is the true Epicurean. The marriage of
Luther, the monk, with Catharine Bora, the nun, was
a defiance to the theological morality of the cloister.
Rabelais substitutes for the conventual institutions
of the past an abbey where the restraints of formal
rules are abolished, and makes the novitiate of young
men and maidens the preparation and beginning of

HISTORICAL SKFTCH. 263

a useful, happy, and holy life. Montaigne writes
with the mellowed and kindly cynicism of an Epicu
rean sage.

Hut it was not till the seventeenth century that Epicu-
rcanUiii reappeared as a system. In that age more
than one effort was made to rehabilitate the philo
sophic schools of antiquity with the changes neces
sary to accommodate them to Christendom. The
most conspicuous of these efforts was the exposition
and adaptation of the Epicurean system by Pierre Gas-
sendi (1592-1655). Gassendi published three works on
this topic : the first, on the life, character, and doctrine
of Epicurus ; the second, a commentary on the loth
book of Diogenes I^aertius; and the third, a system
atic account of the Epicurean philosophy. In these
works much was done by comparison, by critical in
genuity, and by sympathetic interest, to clear Epicu
reanism from the obloquy and misunderstanding
under which it was buried. After pointing out the
divergencies between Epicureanism and Christianity,
he proceeded in a new work, the Syntagma Philoso-
phicum, to sketch a system in which what he under
stood to be the principles of Epicurus were carried
out, except in those points, such as the nature and
oj>erations of God, and the immortality of the human
soul, where Epicureanism is unchristian, and in the
logical introduction, where he went beyond his guides.

The second half of the seventeenth century was a
I>eriod of philosophical excitement in France ; and
Gassendi had his partisans, though neither so numer
ous nor so well known as those of Descartes. Samuel

264 EPICUREANISM.

de Sorbiere, the translator of Sextus Empiricus, ex
pressed warm approval of Gassendi's enterprise.
Francois Bernier (1620-1688) a physician and traveller,
defended and epitomized the doctrines of Gassendi,
to whom personally he had shown a really filial affec
tion. Another Frenchman, Jacques Rondeau (Ron-
delhis], sometime Professor of Eloquence at Sedan,
published in 1679, a tiny book on the life of Epicurus,
which was translated both into Latin and English
(1712). It is an enthusiastic defence of Epicurus,
written with more zeal than knowledge, attempting to
establish for its hero the possession of every virtue.
The lighter graces and easy-going morality of Epicu
reanism found a skilful advocate in St. Evremond,
whose letters to the modern Leontion, as he calls
Ninon de 1'Enclos, give what we may style the French-
novel version of the liaison between Epicurus and his
lady disciple. He finds nothing incompatible in a
sensual and an intellectual friendship to the same
person : which as a general truth need not be denied,
though one may demur to its special application.

In more modem times the two men who in dif
ferent ways most recall Epicurus are Jeremy Bentham
and Auguste Comte. Both of them were founders of
systems of thought which have been the objects of
virulent attack; both of them attached to them a
circle of devoted disciples, and have been gradually
extending their range of influence. Bentham at his
" Hermitage," — a " unique, romantic-looking home
stead," dark with the shade of ancient trees, — con
versing simply and gracefully with such friends as

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 265

James Mill, Brougham, Romilly, and Dumont, — not
averse to good fare, and fond of flowers and music,
may serve for a modern Epicurus. Like Epicurus, he
aimed at founding morality on an intelligible basis of
fact, rejecting every tincture of asceticism, and espe
cially insisting on the relativity of all legislation to
human happiness. Like Epicurus, he offends some
times by the blunt, hard language in which he de
stroys cherished prejudices, without seeming to care
for the injury he may for the time cause to tender
consciences and deep-rooted sentiments. In the case
of Comte, we find enthusiastic disciples contributing
towards the supi>ort of the needy thinker, as in the
days of Epicurus. The anti-theological character of
Positivism, the humanistic religion in which it culmi
nates, and the fete-days in the Positivist calendar, are
features which have a certain similarity to Epicurean
ism. But it may be added that the sentimental ten
dencies of Positivism set a wide barrier between it
and the older system ; which is strengthened when
we take into account its merits as a philosophy of
the sciences.

Guyau's work, La Morale <? Epicure (Paris, 1878)
as well as those of Trezza, Epicure e C Epicurcismo
(Firenze, 1877) and of Conte and Rossi, Esame del/a
Filosofia Epicitrea nelle sue fonti e nella storia (Firenze,
1879) show the interest taken in the subject at the
present time.1 M. Guyau treats Epicureanism

1 Not to forget Mr. Courtney's interesting css.iy on Kpicurus
in Hellenica (London, 1880); and a creditable degrcc-cxcrcite
by I'. V. Guycki (Halle, 1879).

266 EPICUREANISM.

mainly as the ancient forerunner of utilitarian
and hedonistic theories. Signer Trezza gives a
somewhat idealized picture of it, as the ancient
gospel of a full and free humanity, living in the per
ception of the great law of nature and of love, and
anticipating by two thousand years the advent of
true philosophy. In the joint work of Signori Conti
and Rossi the chief merit is a clear and moderate
statement of the actual doctrines of the school, so
far as they can be elicited from ancient documents,
with a succinct, if somewhat unsympathetic, exami
nation of Lucretius.

In the paucity of material, an estimate of the value
of Epicureanism can scarcely fail to be influenced by
the views or sentiments of the critic. Yet one or two
points may perhaps be stated with moderate con
fidence. Its atomic theory, however crude and un
scientific in some details, has the merit of clearly
setting forward certain principles which the physical
sciences are guided by. Even if we do not say with
Hegel, that " Epicurus is the inventor of empirical
natural science " we may still admit that he comes
nearer to stating the general method of science than
Aristotle. He is the foe of d priori methods, of
arguing with abstract terms. His restriction of the
scientific field to what he calls " body " is equally in
its own sphere an advance. Nothing is gained, and
much confusion is caused, by mixing up the spiritual
with the material The reduction of all physical
phenomena to modes of motion, together with a more
strictly " scientific " conception of what motion is, all

CONCLUSION. 267

proceed in the same line of thought. His banish
ment of consciousness from the scene is equally in
accordance with the procedure of the sciences in
their stricter phase. If science is an analysis, then
the atomic theory, which, setting life and conscious
ness aside, sees in the world an agglomeration of
mere lengths and breadths and depths without any
qualities whatever to characterize them, must be
regarded as the ne plus ultra of science. Yet in the
actual world there is a principle of unification :
thought, life, action are all synthetic. Of these
asj>ccts of the world Epicureanism is almost silent.
They are accounted but temporary and unimportant
incidents on the great expanse of eternal silence —
the wilderness of atoms.

In its theological doctrines, Epicureanism may be
allowed the merit of a vigorous protest against super
stition and the more degraded aspects of so-called
religion. Its arguments have weight against the
sacrificial rites of polytheism. It distinctly shows
that God is not such as one of His terrestrial creatures,
nor even as the orbs of heaven : that He is not to be
identified with the world or any part thereof. It
affirms that we are to conceive of God as having in
Himself all that is best and noblest in man, and
remove from our idea of Him all that is evil and
miserable. It no less declares that this world has
other purposes than to serve for the well-being of
man, and asserts for the various provinces of exist
ence a right to their own independent development.
Uut, on *he other hand, it puts God outside the

268 EPICUREANISM.

world, and reduces deity to the level of what is
only a brighter and more ethereal humanity. As for
the grounds on which the existence of these Epicurean
Gods is proved, they seem utterly inadequate.

The psychological basis of Epicureanism is indis
tinct and apparently contradictory. While it claims
to rest all truth and reality upon sensation, its own
theory of the world is confessedly at variance with the
verdict of sensation. It is reason, and not feeling,
which pronounces for the atomic constitution of
things : it is reason, and not feeling, which enlightens
a man as to the limitations of life and pleasure. The
fact seems to be, that by feeling or sensation Epicurus
meant two things, which he did not distinguish : on
the one hand, the principle or power of immediate
and intuitive certainty, of clear and distinct conscious
ness; and on the other, the power of sense-perception,
or feeling in its more concrete shapes. What is only
true of the former, he transferred to the latter. Still
on this point Epicureanism may be commended for
its distrust of mere ratiocination, and its evident
endeavour to get close into contact with individual
reality. It is quite right in founding all knowledge
on individual perceptions ; only, and this it does not
explicitly state, these perceptions are the product of
factors which are essentially universal and intellec
tual. The forms of thought it treats as neglectfully
as it did the synthetic aspects of existence.

The moral doctrine of Epicureanism sins mainly
by its indenniteness as to pleasure. It leaves the in
terpretation of what is pleasure open to the pleasure

CONCLUSION. 269

or will of each individual. No doubt it assigns to
prudence or wisdom the task of selecting and regu
lating pleasures ; but, unfortunately, wisdom has no
idea or ideal to guide it in the task. It may be said,
that it will be determined in the choice by the consi
deration of what is best for the development and
welfare of man. Such an ideal of self-realization,
however, cannot be formed out of the individual
consciousness alone: it implies the recognition of the
solidarity and unity of man with man, as a body in
which none lives unto himself, and where we are all
members one of another. That unity had been detected
by Aristotle and Plato in the Greek State. Epicurus
saw that the merely political bond was often a hind
rance to development ; and he cast it aside as only
an accident. Yet particular duties all presuppose
the general conception of duty as the obligation of
the individual towards something more than his
natural self. Hence Epicureanism, which ignores any
such obligation, must, if unchecked by other tacit
motives, lead to a life of quietism, of indifference to
all save intimate friends ; and, at the worst, to
sensuality and mere selfishness. But similar charges
may be brought against all systems which emphasize
exclusively one side of the truth.

Modern hedonism — the doctrine which measures
the worth of life by its pleasures — refuses, Proteus-
like, to be caught in any definite shape. Sometimes it
api>ears in the bright hues of -artistic culture ; some
times in the gross garb of sensuality ; sometimes in
the gray abstractions of utilitarianism. It declines to

270 EPICUREANISM.

recognise its idol in the dust and ashes to which the
ethical analyst professes to reduce pleasure. But
whatever it may be, modern hedonism is unlike
Epicureanism, whose grave simplicity contrasts with
the refinements of aesthetic emotion, — whose sober
humanity puts selfish pleasure to shame, — and whose
plainness of speech dispenses with the ratiocination
of utilitarian systems. What Epicureanism taught was
the unity and harmony of human nature ; and its aim
was to make life complete in itself and independent
of all external powers. Cheerfully, though gravely,
the Epicurean took this present world as his all, and
in it he hoped by reason to make for himself a heaven.
Many things were ignored by Epicureanism. But in
its frank acceptance of the realities of our human life,
and of the laws of universal nature, — in its emphasis
on friendly love as the great help in moral progress, —
and in its rejection of the asceticism which mistakes
penance for discipline, Epicureanism proclaimed ele
ments of truth which the world cannot afford to
lose.

INDEX.

ACADEMIC sect, 6

Aelian, 246

Agathocles, 35, 244

Alexander of Abomitichos, 248

Amafmius, 251

Andronicus (Pompilius), 253

Andronicus of Rhodes, 7

Antipater, 27

Arcesilaus, 6, 41, 243

Aristippus, 12, 148

Aristotle, system, 2-6 ; ethics,
134 ; on pleasure, 136 ; scien
tific principles, 171 ; cosmo
logy, 194, 201

Asclepiades, 234

Athenaeus, 77

[Cyrenaics, 12-13, '48, '51

DAKAR, 244
Dnrwinism, 114
Demetrius Phalereus, 33
Demetrius Poliorcetes, 35
Democritus, 170, 173
Diogenes the Cynic, 12
Diogenes Laertius, 73- 74
Disjunctive Syllogism, 212
Dreams, 106

EMl'EDOCI.KS, 192

I Ephebi, 26, 68

Epicurus, parentage, 23 ; at
Mitylene, 29 ; at Lampsacus,

Athens, 23, 27, 33, 42-415,254 32 ; at Athens, 37 ; death,
Atoms, 97, 101, 174-176, 179- 46; character, 239; garden,

Augustine (St.), 260
Aurelius (Marcus), I, 257

BENTHANf, 157, 264
Bodleian Library, 84
Butler (Bishop) quoted, 141,
198

CANONIC, 90-94, 226
Celsus, 257
Cicero, 77, 251
Cleomedes, 258
Clinamen, loo
Colophon, 28
Colotes, 53, 70
Comedy, 10
Comte, 265
Cynics, 12 13, 153

38 ; religion, 39, 202 ; man
ner of life, 49 ; brothers, 58 ;
letter to a child, 60 ; susteii-
tation fund, 62 ; testament,
6$ ; devotion of adherents,
61, 69 ; letters in Diog., 75 ;
works, 79
Eudoxus, 196

FATE, 113, 119
Force, 187
Frederick II., 261
Free-will, 118, 132
Friendship, 59, 138, 164

GASSENOI, 263

Gods (theory of the), 107-108,

127, 203-209
Gregory Nazian/eu, 260

272

EPICUREANISM.

HELLENISTIC period, 14, 242
Herculaneum, 80-84
Hermarchus, 53, 65, 68
Hierocles, 258
Hume, 86, 216

Idola, 104, 205, 225
Idomeneus, 52, 63
Immortality of the soul denied,

109-110, 121-123, 127
Individualism, 137, 160
Inductive logic, 232
Intellect, 93, 225, 231

JULIAN (Emperor), 258
KANT, 159, 183, 190, 230

LACHARES, 43
Lactantius, 259
Language (origin of), 115
Leibnitz, 184
Leonteus, 53
Leontion, 52-56, 29
Locke, 173, 216
Lucian, 249
Lucretius, 73, 252
Lysimachus, 42
Lyttos in Crete, 245

MESSENE, 246
Metrodorus, 52
Monadology, 185

NAUSIPHANES, 29-31
Newton, quoted, 182

PHAEDRUS, 253
Philodemus, 61, 81-82,232, 255
Piso, 80, 82, 255
Plato, 2-6, 67, 134; on plea
sure, 142

Plutarch, 76
Polysenus, 52, 60
Prolepsis, 220
Prudence, 150
Pyrrho, 30
Pythagoreanism, 19

RENAISSANCE, 261
Rondeau, 264

ST. EVREMOND, 264

Samos, 23, 28

Scientific^ principles, 177, 186,

229
Seneca, quoted, 20, 48, 167 ;

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Sensation, 104, 216
Soul, 103, 153, 1 88, 236
Spinoza, 50, 121
Stilpo, 34, 41
Stobacus, 76
Stoicism, 14-18,91, H9> 21I»

213

Strabo, 7, 67
Sun (size of), Hi, 196

TERENCE, 54

Tertullian, 259

Thales, 172

Theodoras, 41

Theophrastus, 7, 34, 37, 4°, 53.

67

Thorius Balbus, 151
Timocrates, 64
Tyndall (Prof.), quoted, 236

UTILITARIANISM, 139, 157

VALLA (Lorenzo), 262
Villani, 261

ZENO the Stoic, 22
Zeno of Sidon, 80, 253

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