EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY 258 EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY
ful;" he was "a kind-hearted friend, and even a pat- riotic citizen." He kept aloof from the political dis- tractions of the time, and took no part in jjiiblic affairs. His maxim was \ci9t ihojffac — avoid notice in life. The political and social disorders of the time, amid the wars of tlu' Diadochi and the factious contentions of a city where lihcrty was supplanted by tyraimy or an- archy, might suggest the philosophy which is supposed to have regulated his conduct, viz. that the mind alone is free ; all without is at the mercj' of capricious vio- lence or incalculable contingencies. In the progress of civil discords and convulsions the only hope of tran- quiilitv must be sought in absolute seclusion and dis- regard of public transactions.
In his quiet and graceful retreat, surrounded by af- fectionate pupils and admiring friends, enlivened bj' the frequent presence of brilliant hetoerce, one half of the long life of Epicurus was passed. His intercourse was characterized by genial good-humor, and his es- tablishment was conducted with frugal elegance. His temperament and his doctrine, his habits and his pre- cepts, were in entire unison. He sought and obtained for himself the gentle ] .'easure, the unruffled serenity which he preached to his liearers. He was laborious in the dissemination of his opinions. He is designated as TToXvypcKpiOTCtTog b}' Diogenes, and is said to have written three hundred volumes, filled, of course, with repetitions. This copious autlientic promulgation of his philosophy dispensed with any necessity for ex- pansion or commentary. The theory- was, indeed, so simple and perspicuous that nothing remained to be stated after the first exposition.
Before the death of Epicurus in A.C. 270, a rival school had arisen in Athens under the colonnades of the Painted Porch, and nearly every one of his tenets was directly opposed bj' Zeno of Citium and the Stoic philosophy'. The reaction excited by the extreme materialism and fortuitism of Epicurus occasioned an equal extravagance on the other side. With Epicurus the universe was an aggregate of blind atoms com- pacted and diversified by an equally blind chance ; with Zeno it was a divine organism, vital in all its parts, and governed by the immutable decrees of fate. With Epicurus the deities were incognizant or regard- less of temporal affairs ; with Zeno everything was controlled by a superintending Providence, wliose will was an unalterable necessity, and manifested by the heavenl}' orbs (ddera consclafati).
The Phllosoj)hj rf F.jiicunix divides itself naturally into three parts, Theology, Ethics, and Physics. The last alone received any thoroughly systematic devel- opment. It was devised as a scientific basis for the two former, -vvhiih were rather foregone conclusions, in which "the wish was father to the thought," than strictly logical deductions from established principles. The philosophy of Epicurus was designed for his own immediate satisfaction, and for the practical uses of life. The logomachies of Eleatics and Sceptics, Soph- ists and Socratics, had produced no settled convictions, and had arrested neither public calamities nor private wretchedness ; a doctrine was desired whicli might bring peace to the individual, and restore happiness or enjoyment to life. The canonization of pleasure, the regulation and sanctitication of natural passions, seem- ed to afford the solution required, and Epicurus was to his time what Fourier was to tlie last generation. In order to sanction pleasure as the guide of existence, it was necessary to get rid of the menaces of conscience and the terrors of heaven. Hence Epicurus practical- Ij' denied the gods by relegating them to the eternal isolation of unctmcerned indolence and reverie. This was regarded h\ his votaries as the most essential service of his career (Lucret. i, G3-80). But to exor- cise the divinities and to abrogate religion, it .was nec- essary to explain the marvelous order, economy, and variety of the creation, without recourse to a creator; to furnish, like La Place, a system of the world which
should exclude the notion of a divine architect. This task Epicurus undertook, with such materials as were at hand. The Eleatic School had asserted an absolute severance of the divine and the transitory, and had devoted their regards to the former. Epicurus repu- diated the former, and confined his attention to the material and sensible, disproving all creative or divine agency b}' his ph^'sical doctrine, and maintaining the authority of carnal impulses and earthly pleasures by the repudiation of the gods and of their worship.
Theology of Epicurus. — Epicurus acquiesced in the existence of the gods, but denied them any participa- tion in the process of the universe. He ascribed to them immortality and human form, and assigned to them attenuated and spectral bodies, as Jlilton also appears to have done (^'■negat esse corpus deorum^ sed tamquam corjnis, nee sanr/iimem, sed tamqvam sangui- nem" Cic. De Nat. Dear, i, xxv). He accords to them indestructibilitj', immutability, and the serene happi- ness of eternal repose. Their tranquillity would have been disturbed by any care ; accordingly, thej' are en- j tireh' unconcerned with everything that falls under human apprehension. This mode of recognising and at the same time cashiering divinity has been recently imitated by Herbert Spencer. So far as human ac- tions or thoughts are concerned, the gods are practi- cally non-existent, and religion is nothing better than a vague and irrational superstition, founded upon dreams, and cherished by ignorant fear.