Uneasy thoughts bred unquiet slumbers; and Theon rose from a restless
couch, before the first blush of Aurora tinged the forehead of the sky.
He trod the paths of the garden, and waited with impatience, for the
first time not unmixed with apprehension, the appearance of the Master.
The assertions of Cleanthes were corroborated by the testimony of the
public; but that testimony he had learned to despise. They were made
after perusal of Epicurus’s writings; with these writings he was still
unacquainted. Had they been misinterpreted? Cleanthes was no Timocrates.
If prejudiced, he was incapable of wilful misrepresentation; and he was
too familiar with the science of philosophy, so grossly to misunderstand
a reasoner, as lucid as appeared to be Epicurus. These musings were soon
interrupted. The morning star still glowed in the kindling east, when he
heard approaching footsteps, and turning from the shades upon a small
open lawn where a crystal fountain flowed from the inverted urn of a
recumbent naiad, he was greeted by the Sage.
“Oh! no,” exclaimed Theon, half audibly, as he gazed on the serene
countenance before him, “this man is not an atheist.”
“What thoughts are with you, my son, this morning?” said the
philosopher, with kind solicitude. “I doubt your plunge in Ilyssus
disturbed your dreams. Did the image of a fair nymph, or of a river god
flit round your couch, and drive sleep from your eyelids?”
“I was in some danger from the first,” said the youth, half smiling,
half blushing, “until a visitant of a different character, and one, I
imagine, more wont to soothe than to disturb the mind, brought to my
imagination a host of doubts and fears, which your presence alone has
dispelled.”
“And who played the part of your incubus?” demanded the Sage.
“Even yourself, most benign and indulgent of men.”
“Truly, I grieve to have acted so ill by thee, my son. It shall be well,
however, if having inflicted the disease, I may be its physician.”
“On leaving you last night,” said Theon, “I encountered Cleanthes. He
came from the perusal of your writings, and brought charges against them
which I was unprepared to answer.”
“Let us hear them, my son; perhaps, until you shall have perused them
yourself, we may assist your difficulty.”
“First, that they deny the existence of the Gods.”
“I see but one other assertion, that could equal that in folly,” said
Epicurus.
“I knew it!” exclaimed Theon, triumphantly; “I knew it was impossible.
But where will not prejudice lead men, when even the upright Cleanthes
is capable of slander?”
“He is utterly incapable of it,” said the Master; “and the inaccuracy,
in this case, I rather suspect to rest with you than with him. To _deny_
the existence of the Gods would indeed be presumption in a philosopher;
a presumption equalled only by that of him who should _assert_ their
existence.”
“How!” exclaimed the youth, with a countenance in which astonishment
seemed to suspend every other expression.
“As I never saw the Gods, my son,” calmly continued the Sage, “I cannot
_assert_ their existence; and, that I never saw them, is no reason for
my _denying_ it.”
“But do we believe nothing except that of which we have ocular
demonstration?”
“Nothing, at least, for which we have not the evidence of one or more of
our senses; that is, when we believe on just grounds, which, I grant,
taking men collectively, is very seldom.”
“But where would this spirit lead us? To impiety!—to Atheism!—to all,
against which I felt confidence in defending the character and
philosophy of Epicurus!”
“We will examine presently, my son, into the meaning of the terms you
have employed. But as respects your defence of my philosophy, I am sorry
that you presumed so much, where you knew so little. Let this serve for
another caution against pronouncing before you examine, and asserting
before you enquire. It is my usual custom,” continued the Master, “with
the youth who frequent my School, to defer the discussion of all
important questions, until they are naturally, in the course of events,
suggested to their own minds. Their curiosity once excited, it is my
endeavor, so far as in me lies, to satisfy it. When you first entered
the Garden, your mind was unfit for the examination of the subject you
have now started: it is no longer so; and we will therefore enter upon
the enquiry, and pursue it in order.”
“Forgive me if I express—if I acknowledge,” said the youth, slightly
recoiling from his instructor, “some reluctance to enter on the
discussion of truths, whose very discussion would seem to argue a
doubt,—and—”
“And what then?”
“That very doubt were a crime.”
“It is there that I wished to lead you; and with the examination of this
point we shall rest, until time and circumstances lead you to push the
investigation farther. I have in me little of the spirit of proselytism.
A mere abstract opinion, supposing it not to affect the conduct or
disposition of him who holds it, would be in my eyes of very minor
importance. And it is only in so far as I believe that all our opinions,
however apparently removed from any practical consequences, do always
more or less affect one or the other—our conduct or our
dispositions—that I am at the pains to correct in my scholars, those
which appear to me erroneous. I understand you to say, that to enter
upon the discussion of certain opinions, which you consider as sacred
truths, would appear to argue a doubt of those truths, and that a doubt
would here constitute a crime. Now as I think such a belief inconsistent
with candor and charity—two feelings, indispensable both for the
enjoyment of happiness ourselves, and for its distribution to others, I
shall challenge its investigation. If the doubt of any truth shall
constitute a crime, then the belief of the same truth should constitute
a virtue.”
“Perhaps a duty would rather express it.”
“When you charge the neglect of any duty as a crime, or account its
fulfilment a virtue, you suppose the existence of a power to neglect or
fulfil; and it is the exercise of this power, in the one way or the
other, which constitutes the merit or demerit. Is it not so?”
“Certainly.”
“Does the human mind possess the power to believe or disbelieve, at
pleasure, any truths whatsoever?”
“I am not prepared to answer: but I think it does, since it possesses
always the power of investigation.”
“But, possibly, not the will to exercise the power. Take care lest I
beat you with your own weapons. I thought this very investigation
appeared to you a crime.”
“Your logic is too subtle,” said the youth, “for my inexperience.”
“Say rather, my reasoning too close. Did I bear you down with sounding
words and weighty authorities, and confound your understanding with
hair-drawn distinctions, you would be right to retreat from the
battery.”
“I have nothing to object to the fairness of your deductions,” said
Theon. “But would not the doctrine be dangerous that should establish
our inability to help our belief; and might we not stretch the
principle, until we asserted our inability to help our actions?”
“We might and with reason. But we will not now traverse the ethical
_pons asinorum_ of necessity—the most simple and evident of moral
truths, and the most darkened, tortured, and belabored by moral
teachers. You enquire if the doctrine we have essayed to establish, be
not dangerous. I reply—not, if it be true. Nothing is so dangerous as
error,—nothing so safe as truth. A dangerous truth would be a
contradiction in terms, an anomaly in things.”
“But what is a truth?” said Theon.
“It is pertinently asked. A truth I consider to be an ascertained fact;
which truth would be changed into an error, the moment the fact, on
which it rested, was disproved.”
“I see, then, no fixed basis for truth.”
“It surely has the most fixed of all—the nature of things. And it is
only an imperfect insight into that nature, which occasions all our
erroneous conclusions, whether in physics or morals.”
“But where, if we discard the gods, and their will, as engraven on our
hearts, are our guides in the search after truth?”
“Our senses, and our faculties as developed in and by the exercise of
our senses, are the only guides with which I am acquainted. And I do not
see why, even admitting a belief in the gods, and in a superintending
providence, the senses should not be viewed as the guides, provided by
them, for our direction and instruction. But here is the evil attendant
on an ungrounded belief, whatever be its nature. The moment we take one
thing for granted we take other things for granted: we are started in a
wrong road, and it is seldom we can gain the right one, until we have
trodden back our steps to the starting place. I know of but one thing,
that a philosopher should take for granted; and that only because he is
forced to do it by an irresistible impulse of his nature; and because,
without doing so, neither truth nor falsehood could exist for him. He
must take for granted the evidence of his senses; in other words, he
must believe in the existence of things, as they exist to his senses. I
_know_ of no other existence, and can therefore _believe_ in no other;
although, reasoning from analogy, I may _imagine_ other existences to
be. This, for instance, I do as respects the gods. I see around me in
the world I inhabit an infinite variety in the arrangement of matter;—a
multitude of sentient beings, possessing different kinds, and varying
grades of power and intelligence,—from the worm that crawls in the dust,
to the eagle that soars to the sun, and man who marks to the sun its
course. It is possible, it is moreover probable, that, in the worlds
which I see not,—in the boundless infinitude and eternal duration of
matter, beings may exist, of every countless variety, and varying grades
of intelligence, inferior and superior to our own, until we descend to a
minimum, and rise to a maximum, to which the range of our observation
affords no parallel, and of which our senses are inadequate to the
conception. Thus far, my young friend, I believe in the gods, or in what
you will of existences removed from the sphere of my knowledge. That you
should believe, with positiveness, in one unseen existence or another,
appears to me no crime, although it may appear to me unreasonable: and
so, my doubt of the same should appear to you no moral offence, although
you might account it erroneous. I fear to fatigue your attention, and
will, therefore, dismiss, for the present, these abstruse subjects.
“But we shall both be amply repaid for their discussion, if this truth
remain with you—that an opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a
moral offence, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken;
it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is
an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.”