in which he defines the criteria of truth, in regard to the theoretic,
as in fact sensuous perceptions, and, further, as conceptions or
anticipations (προλήψεις); in regard to the practical, as the passions,
impulses, and affections.[148]
a. On the theoretic side the criterion, closely considered, has,
according to Epicurus, three moments, which are the three stages of
knowledge; first, sensuous perception, as the side of the external;
secondly, ordinary conception, as the side of the internal; thirdly,
opinion (δόξα), as the union of the two.
α. “Sensuous perception is devoid of reason,” being what is given
absolutely. “For it is not moved by itself, nor can it, if if is moved
by something else, take away from or add to” that which it is, but
it is exactly what it is. “It is beyond criticism or refutation. For
neither can one sensation judge another, both being alike, since both
have equal authority;”—when the presentations of sight are of the
same kind, every one of them must admit the truth of all the rest.
“Nor can one of them pass judgment on another when they are unlike,
for they each have their value as differing;” red and blue, for
example, are each something individual. “Nor can one sensation pass
judgment on another when they are heterogeneous; for we give heed to
all. Thought, in the same way, cannot criticize the senses; for all
thought itself depends on the sensation,” which forms its content.
But sensuous perception may go far wrong. “The truth of what our
senses perceive is first evinced by this, that the power of perception
remains with us; sight and hearing are permanent powers of this kind
as much as the capacity of feeling pain. In this way even the unknown”
(the unperceived) “may be indicated by means of that which appears”
(perception). Of this conception of objects of perception which are not
immediate we shall have to speak more particularly hereafter (p. 292)
in dealing with physical science. “Thus all” (unknown, imperceptible)
“thoughts originated in the senses either directly in respect of their
chance origin or in respect of relationship, analogy, and combination;
to these operations thought also contributes something,” namely as the
formal connection of the sensuous conceptions. “The fancies of the
insane or of our dreams are also true; for they act upon us, but that
which is not real does not act.”[149] Thus every sensuous perception
is explicitly true, in so far as it shows itself to be abiding, and
that which is not apparent to our senses must be apprehended after the
same manner as the perception known to us. We hear Epicurus say, just
as we hear it said in everyday life: What I see and hear, or, speaking
generally, what I perceive by my senses, comprises the existent; every
such object of sense exists on its own account, one of them does not
contradict the other, but all are on the same level of validity, and
reciprocally indifferent. These objects of perception are themselves
the material and content of thought, inasmuch as thought is continually
making use of the images of these things.
β. “Ordinary conception is now a sort of comprehension (κατάληψις),
or correct opinion or thought, or the universal indwelling power of
thinking; that is to say, it is the recollection of that which has
often appeared to us,”—the picture. “For instance, when I say, ‘this is
a man,’ I, with the help of previous perceptions, at once by my power
of representation recognize his form.” By dint of this repetition the
sensuous perception becomes a permanent conception in me, which asserts
itself; that is the real foundation of all that we hold true. These
representations are universal, but certainly the Epicureans have not
placed universality in the form of thinking, but only said it is caused
by frequency of appearance. This is further confirmed by the name which
is given to the image which has thus arisen within us. “Everything
has its evidence (ἐναργές) in the name first conferred on it.”[150]
The name is the ratification of the perception. The evidence which
Epicurus terms ἐνάργεια is just the recognition of the sensuous through
subsumption under the conceptions already possessed, and to which the
name gives permanence; the evidence of a conception is therefore this,
that we affirm an object perceptible by the senses to correspond with
the image. That is the acquiescence which we have found taking place
with the Stoics when thought gives its assent to a content; thought,
however, which recognizes the thing as its own, and receives it into
itself, with the Stoics remained formal only. With Epicurus the
unity of the conception of the object with itself exists also as a
remembrance in consciousness, which, however, proceeds from the senses;
the image, the conception, is what harmonizes with a sense-perception.
The recognition of the object is here an apprehension, not as an
object of thought, but as an object of imagination; for apprehension
belongs to recollection, to memory. The name, it is true, is something
universal, belongs to thinking, makes the manifold simple, yea, is in a
high degree ideal; but in such a way that its meaning and its content
are the sensuous, and are not thus to be counted as simple, but as
sensuous. In this way opinion is established instead of knowledge.
γ. In the last place, opinion is nothing but the reference of
that general conception, which we have within us, to an object, a
perception, or to the testimony of the senses; and that is the passing
of a judgment. For in a conception we have anticipated that which comes
directly before our eyes; and by this standard we pronounce whether
something is a man, a tree, or not. “Opinion depends on something
already evident to us, to which we refer when we ask how we know that
this is a man or not. This opinion is also itself termed conception,
and it may be either true or false:—true, when what we see before
our eyes is corroborated or not contradicted by the testimony of the
conception; false in the opposite case.”[151] That is to say, in
opinion we apply a conception which we already possess, or the type, to
an object which is before us, and which we then examine to see if it
corresponds with our mental representation of it. Opinion is true if
it corresponds with the type; and it has its criterion in perceiving
whether it repeats itself as it was before or not. This is the whole of
the ordinary process in consciousness, when it begins to reflect. When
we have the conception, it requires the testimony that we have seen or
still see the object in question. From the sensuous perceptions blue,
sour, sweet, and so on, the general conceptions which we possess are
formed; and when an object again comes before us, we recognize that
this image corresponds with this object. This is the whole criterion,
and a very trivial process it is; for it goes no further than the first
beginnings of the sensuous consciousness, the immediate perception
of an object. The next stage is without doubt this, that the first
perception forms itself into a general image, and then the object which
is present is subsumed under the general image. That kind of truth
which anything has of which it can only be said that the evidence of
the senses does not contradict it, is possessed by the conceptions of
the unseen, for instance, the apprehension of heavenly phenomena: here
we cannot approach nearer, we can see something indeed, but we cannot
have the sensuous perception of it in its completeness; we therefore
apply to it what we already know by other perceptions, if there is
but some circumstance therein which is also present in that other
perception or conception (_supra_, p. 282).
b. From these external perceptions of objects presently existing, with
which we here began, the affections, the internal perceptions, which
give the criteria for practical life are however distinguished; they
are of two kinds, either pleasant or unpleasant. That is to say, they
have as their content pleasure or satisfaction, and pain: the first, as
that which peculiarly belongs to the perceiver, is the positive; but
pain, as something alien to him, is the negative. It is these sensuous
perceptions which determine action; they are the material from which
general conceptions regarding what causes me pain or pleasure are
formed; as being permanent they are therefore again conceptions, and
opinion is again this reference of conception to perception, according
to which I pass judgment on objects—affections, desires, and so
on.[152] It is by this opinion, therefore, that the decision to do or
to avoid anything is arrived at.
This constitutes the whole Canon of Epicurus, the universal standard
of truth; it is so simple that nothing can well be simpler, and yet it
is very abstract. It consists of ordinary psychological conceptions
which are correct on the whole, but quite superficial; it is the
mechanical view of conception having respect to the first beginnings
of observation. But beyond this there lies another and quite different
sphere, a field that contains determinations in themselves; and these
are the criteria by which the statements of Epicurus must be judged.
Nowadays even Sceptics are fond of speaking of facts of consciousness;
this sort of talk goes no further than the Epicurean Canon.
2. METAPHYSICS.
In the second place, Epicurus enters on a metaphysical explanation of
how we are related to the object; for sensuous perception and outside
impressions he unhesitatingly regards as our relation to external
things, so that he places the conceptions in me, the objects outside
of me. In raising the question of how we come by our conceptions,
there lies a double question: on the one hand, since sense-perceptions
are not like conceptions, but require an external object, what is
the objective manner in which the images of external things enter
into us? On the other hand, it may be asked how conceptions of such
things as are not matter of perception arise in us; this seems to be
an activity of thought, which derives conceptions such as these from
other conceptions; we shall, however, see presently (pp. 287, 288) and
more in detail, how the soul, which is here related to the object in
independent activity, arrives at such a point.
“From the surfaces of things,” says Epicurus in the first place, “there
passes off a constant stream, which cannot be detected by our senses”
(for things would in any other case decrease in size) and which is very
fine; “and this because, by reason of the counteracting replenishment,
the thing itself in its solidity long preserves the same arrangement
and disposition of the atoms; and the motion through the air of these
surfaces which detach themselves is of the utmost rapidity, because
it is not necessary that what is detached should have any thickness;”
it is only a surface. Epicurus says, “Such a conception does not
contradict our senses, when we take into consideration how pictures
produce their effects in a very similar way, I mean by bringing us into
sympathy with external things. Therefore emanations, like pictures,
pass out from them into us, so that we see and know the forms and
colours of things.”[153] This is a very trivial way of representing
sense-perception. Epicurus took for himself the easiest criterion of
the truth that is not seen, a criterion still in use, namely that it is
not contradicted by what we see or hear. For in truth such matters of
thought as atoms, the detachment of surfaces, and so forth, are beyond
our powers of sight. Certainly we manage to see and to hear something
different; but there is abundance of room for what is seen and what is
conceived or imagined to exist alongside of one another. If the two are
allowed to fall apart, they do not contradict each other; for it is not
until we relate them that the contradiction becomes apparent.
“Error,” as Epicurus goes on to say on the second point “comes to pass
when, through the movement that takes place within us on the conception
therein wrought, such a change is effected that the conception can no
longer obtain for itself the testimony of perception. There would be no
truth, no likeness of our perceptions, which we receive as in pictures
or in dreams or in any other way, if there were nothing on which we,
as it were, put out our faculty of observation. There would be no
untruth if we did not receive into ourselves another movement, which,
to be sure, is conformable to the entering in of the conception, but
which has at the same time an interruption.”[154] Error is therefore,
according to Epicurus, only a displacement of the pictures in us, which
does not proceed from the movement of perception, but rather from this,
that we check their influence by a movement originating in ourselves;
how this interruption is brought about will be shown more fully later
on (pp. 290, 300).
The Epicurean theory of knowledge reduces itself to these few passages,
some of which are also obscurely expressed, or else not very happily
selected or quoted by Diogenes Laërtius; it is impossible to have a
theory less explicitly stated. Knowledge, on the side of thought, is
determined merely as a particular movement which makes an interruption;
and as Epicurus, as we have already seen, looks on things as made up
of a multitude of atoms, thought is the moment which is different from
the atoms, the vacuum, the pores, whereby resistance to this stream of
atoms is rendered possible. If this negative is also again, as soul,
affirmative, Epicurus in the notional determination of thinking has
only reached this negativity, that we look away from something, _i.e._
we interrupt that inflowing stream. The answer to the question of
what this interrupting movement exactly is, when taken for itself, is
connected with the more advanced conceptions of Epicurus; and in order
to discuss them more in detail, we must go back to the implicit basis
of his system.
This constitutes on the whole the metaphysic of Epicurus; in it he has
expounded his doctrine of the atom, but not with greater definiteness
than did Leucippus and Democritus. The essence and the truth of things
were to him, as they were to them, atoms and vacuum: “Atoms have no
properties except figure, weight and magnitude.” Atoms, as atoms, must
remain undetermined; but the Atomists have been forced to take the
inconsistent course of ascribing properties to them: the quantitative
properties of magnitude and figure, the qualitative property of
weight. But that which is in itself altogether indivisible can have
neither figure nor magnitude; and even weight, direction upon something
else, is opposed to the abstract repulsion of the atom. Epicurus even
says: “Every property is liable to change, but the atoms change not. In
all dissolutions of the composite, something must remain a constant and
indissoluble, which no change can transform into that which is not, or
bring from non-being into Being. This unchangeable element, therefore,
is constituted by some bodies and figures. The properties are a certain
relation of atoms to each other.”[155] In like manner we have already
seen with Aristotle (p. 178) that the tangible is the foundation of
properties: a distinction which under various forms is still always
made and is in common use. We mean by this that an opposition is
established between fundamental properties, such as we here have in
weight, figure and magnitude, and sensuous properties, which are
only in relation to us, and are derived from the former original
differences. This has frequently been understood as if weight were in
things, while the other properties were only in our senses: but, in
general, the former is the moment of the implicit, or the abstract
essence of the thing, while the latter is its concrete existence, which
expresses its relation to other things.
The important matter now would be to indicate the relation of atoms to
sensuous appearance, to allow essence to pass over into the negative:
but here Epicurus rambles amidst the indeterminate which expresses
nothing; for we perceive in him, as in the other physicists, nothing
but an unconscious medley of abstract ideas and realities. All
particular forms, all objects, light, colour, &c., the soul itself
even, are nothing but a certain arrangement of these atoms. This is
what Locke also said, and even now Physical Science declares that
the basis of things is found in molecules, which are arranged in a
certain manner in space. But these are empty words, and a crystal,
for instance, is not a certain arrangement of parts, which gives this
figure. It is thus not worth while to deal with this relation of atoms;
for it is an altogether formal way of speaking, as when Epicurus again
concedes that figure and magnitude, in so far as pertaining to atoms,
are something different from what they are as they appear in things.
The two are not altogether unlike; the one, implicit magnitude, has
something in common with apparent magnitude. The latter is transitory,
variable; the former has no interrupted parts,[156] that is, nothing
negative. But the determination of the atoms, as originally formed in
this or that fashion, and having original magnitude of such and such
a kind, is a purely arbitrary invention. That interruption, which we
regarded above (p. 288) as the other side to atoms, or as vacuum, is
the principle of movement: for the movement of thought is also like
this and has interruptions. Thought in man is the very same as atoms
and vacuum are in things, namely their inward essence; that is to say,
atoms and vacuum belong to the movement of thought, or exist for this
in the same way as things are in their essential nature. The movement
of thinking is thus the province of the atoms of the soul; so that
there takes place simultaneously therein an interruption of the inward
flow of atoms from without. There is therefore nothing further to be
seen in this than the general principle of the positive and negative,
so that even thought is affected by a negative principle, the moment of
interruption. This principle of the Epicurean system, further applied
to the difference in things, is the most arbitrary and therefore the
most wearisome that can be imagined.
Besides their different figures, atoms have also, as the fundamental
mode in which they are affected, a difference of movement, caused
by their weight; but this movement to some extent deviates from the
straight line in its direction. That is to say, Epicurus ascribes
to atoms a curvilinear movement, in order that they may impinge
on one another and so on.[157] In this way there arise particular
accumulations and configurations; and these are things.
Other physical properties, such as taste and smell, have their basis
again in another arrangement of the molecules. But there is no bridge
from this to that, or what results is simply empty tautology, according
to which the parts are arranged and combined as is requisite in order
that their appearance may be what it is. The transition to bodies
of concrete appearance Epicurus has either not made at all, or what
has been cited from him as far as this matter is concerned, taken by
itself, is extremely meagre.
The opinion that one hears expressed respecting the Epicurean
philosophy is in other respects not unfavourable; and for this reason
some further details must be given regarding it. For since absolute
Being is constituted by atoms scattered and disintegrated, and by
vacuum, it directly follows that Epicurus denies to these atoms any
relationship to one another which implies purpose. All that we call
forms and organisms, or generally speaking, the unity of Nature’s
end, in his way of thinking, belongs to qualities, to an external
connection of the configurations of the atoms, which in this way is
merely an accident, brought about by their chance-directed motion; the
atoms accordingly form a merely superficial unity, and one which is
not essential to them. Or else Epicurus altogether denies that Notion
and the Universal are the essential, and because all originations are
to him chance combinations, for him their resolution is just as much
a matter of chance. The divided is the first and the truly existent,
but at the same time chance or external necessity is the law which
dominates all cohesion. That Epicurus should in this fashion declare
himself against a universal end in the world, against every relation
of purpose—as, for instance, the inherent conformity to purpose of the
organism—and, further, against the teleological representations of the
wisdom of a Creator in the world, his government, &c., is a matter of
course; for he abrogates unity, whatever be the manner in which we
represent it, whether as Nature’s end in itself, or as end which is
in another, but is carried out in Nature. In contrast to this, the
teleological view enters largely into the philosophy of the Stoics,
and is there very fully developed. To show that conformity to an end
is lacking, Epicurus brings forward the most trivial examples; for
instance, that worms and so on are produced by chance from mud through
the warmth of the sun. Taken in their entirety, they may very well be
the work of chance in relation to others; but what is implicit in them,
their Notion and essence is something organic: and the comprehension of
this is what we have now to consider. But Epicurus banishes thought as
implicit, without its occurring to him that his atoms themselves have
this very nature of thought; that is, their existence in time is not
immediate but essentially mediate, and thus negative or universal;—the
first and only inconsistency that we find in Epicurus, and one which
all empiricists are guilty of. The Stoics take the opposite course of
finding essential Being in the object of thought or the universal; and
they fail equally in reaching the content, temporal existence, which,
however, they most inconsistently assume. We have here the metaphysics
of Epicurus; nothing that he says farther on this head is of interest.
3. PHYSICS.