various motions required to bring his atoms into those infinite
combinations of which our world is only the most recent. The
conception of matter naturally endowed with capacities for moving in
all directions indifferently was unknown to ancient physics, as was
also that of mutual attraction and repulsion. Democritus supposed
that the atoms all gravitated downward through infinite space, but
with different velocities, so that the lighter were perpetually
overtaken and driven upwards by the heavier, the result of these
collisions and pressures being a vortex whence the world as we see
it has proceeded.[163] While the atomism of Democritus was, as a
theory of matter, the greatest contribution ever made to physical
science by pure speculation, as a theory of motion it was open to
at least three insuperable objections. Passing over the difficulty
of a perpetual movement through space in one direction only, there
remained the self-contradictory assumption that an infinite number
of atoms all moving together in that one direction could find any
unoccupied space to fall into.[164] Secondly, astronomical discoveries,
establishing as they did the sphericity of the earth, had for ever
disproved the crude theory that unsupported bodies fall downward
in parallel straight lines. Even granting that the astronomers, in
the absence of complete empirical verification, could not prove
their whole contention, they could at any rate prove enough of it to
destroy the notion of parallel descent; for the varying elevation of
the pole-star demonstrated the curvature of the earth’s surface so
far as it was accessible to observation, thus showing that, within
the limits of experience, gravitation acted along convergent lines.
Finally, Aristotle had pointed out that the observed differences in
the velocity of falling bodies were due to the atmospheric resistance,
and that, consequently, they would all move at the same rate in such
an absolute vacuum as atomism assumed.[165] Of these objections
Epicurus ignored the first two, except, apparently, to the extent
of refusing to believe in the antipodes. The third he acknowledged,
and set himself to evade it by a hypothesis striking at the root of
all scientific reasoning. The atoms, he tells us, suffer a slight
deflection from the line of perpendicular descent, sufficient to bring
them into collision with one another; and from this collision proceeds
the variety of movement necessary to throw them into all sorts of
accidental combinations. Our own free will, says Lucretius, furnishes
an example of such a deflection whenever we swerve aside from the
direction in which an original impulse is carrying us.[166] That the
irregularity thus introduced into Nature interfered with the law of
universal causation was an additional recommendation of it in the eyes
of Epicurus, who, as we have already mentioned, hated the physical
necessity of the philosophers even more than he hated the watchful
interfering providence of the theologians. But, apparently, neither he
nor his disciples saw that in discarding the invariable sequence of
phenomena, they annulled, to the same extent, the possibility of human
foresight and adaptation of means to ends. There was no reason why the
deflection, having once occurred, should not be repeated infinitely
often, each time producing effects of incalculable extent. And a
further inconsequence of the system is that it afterwards accounts for
human choice by a mechanism which has nothing to do with free-will.[167]
The Epicurean cosmology need not delay us long. It is completely
independent of the atomic theory, which had only been introduced to
explain the indestructibility of matter, and, later on, the mechanism
of sensation. In describing how the world was first formed, Epicurus
falls back on the old Ionian meteorology. He assumes the existence of
matter in different states of diffusion, and segregates fluid from
solid, light from heavy, hot from cold, by the familiar device of a
rapid vortical movement.[168] For the rest, as we have already noticed,
Epicurus gives an impartial welcome to the most conflicting theories
of his predecessors, provided only that they dispense with the aid of
supernatural intervention; as will be seen by the following summary,
which we quote from Zeller:—
Possibly the world may move, and possibly it may be at rest. Possibly
it may be round, or else it may be triangular, or have any other
shape. Possibly the sun and the stars may be extinguished at setting,
and be lighted afresh at their rising: it is, however, equally
possible that they may only disappear under the earth and reappear
again, or that their rising and setting is due to yet other causes.
Possibly the waxing and waning of the moon may be caused by the moon’s
revolving; or it may be due to the atmospheric change, or to an actual
increase or decrease in the moon’s size, or to some other cause.
Possibly the moon may shine with borrowed light, or it may shine with
its own, experience supplying us with instances of bodies which give
their own light, and of others which have their light borrowed. From
these and such like statements it appears that questions of natural
science in themselves have no value for Epicurus. Whilst granting that
only one natural explanation of phenomena is generally possible, yet
in any particular case it is perfectly indifferent which explanation
is adopted.[169]
This was the creed professed by ‘the great scientific school of
antiquity,’ and this was its way of protesting ‘against the contempt of
physics which prevailed’ among the Stoics!
So far as he can be said to have studied science at all, the motive of
Epicurus was hatred for religion far more than love for natural law.
He seems, indeed, to have preserved that aversion for Nature which is
so characteristic of the earlier Greek Humanists. He seems to have
imagined that by refusing to tie himself down to any one explanation
of external phenomena, he could diminish their hold over the mind
of man. For when he departs from his usual attitude of suspense and
reserve, it is to declare dogmatically that the heavenly bodies are
no larger than they appear to our senses, and perhaps smaller than
they sometimes appear.[170] The only arguments adduced on behalf of
this outrageous assertion were that if their superficial extension
was altered by transmission, their colour would be altered to a still
greater degree; and the alleged fact that flames look the same size at
all distances.[171] It is evident that neither Epicurus nor Lucretius,
who, as usual, transcribes him with perfect good faith, could ever
have looked at one lamp-flame through another, or they would have seen
that the laws of linear perspective are not suspended in the case of
self-luminous bodies—a fact which does not tell much for that accurate
observation supposed to have been fostered by their philosophy.[172]
The truth is, that Epicurus disliked the oppressive notion of a sun
several times larger than the earth, and was determined not to tolerate
it, be the consequences to fact and logic what they might.
VI.
The Epicurean philosophy of external Nature was used as an instrument
for destroying the uncomfortable belief in Divine Providence. The
Epicurean philosophy of mind was used to destroy the still more
uncomfortable belief in man’s immortality. As opinions then stood, the
task was a comparatively easy one. In our discussion of Stoicism, we
observed that the spiritualism of Plato and Aristotle was far before
their age, and was not accepted or even understood by their countrymen
for a long time to come. Moreover, Aristotle did not agree with his
master in thinking that the personal eternity of the soul followed
from its immateriality. The belief of the Stoics in a prolongation of
individual existence until the destruction of all created things by
fire, was, even in that very limited form, inconsistent with their
avowed materialism, and had absolutely no influence on their practical
convictions. Thus Plato’s arguments were alone worth considering. For
Epicurus, the whole question was virtually settled by the principle,
which he held in common with the Stoics, that nothing exists but
matter, its attributes, and its relations. He accepted, it is true,
the duality of soul and body, agreeing, in this respect also, with the
Stoics and the earlier physicists; and the familiar antithesis of flesh
and spirit is a survival of his favourite phraseology;[173] but this
very term ‘flesh’ was employed to cover the assumption that the body
to which he applied it differed not in substance but in composition
from its animating principle. The latter, a rather complex aggregate,
consists proximately of four distinct elements, imagined, apparently,
for the purpose of explaining its various functions, and, in the last
analysis, of very fine and mobile atoms.[174] When so much had been
granted, it naturally followed that the soul was only held together by
the body, and was immediately dissolved on being separated from it—a
conclusion still further strengthened by the manifest dependence of
psychic on corporeal activities throughout the period of their joint
existence. Thus all terrors arising from the apprehension of future
torments were summarily dispelled.
The simple dread of death, considered as a final annihilation of
our existence, remained to be dealt with. There was no part of his
philosophy on which Epicurus laid so much stress; he regarded it as
setting the seal on those convictions, a firm grasp of which was
essential to the security of human happiness. Nothing else seemed
difficult, if once the worst enemy of our tranquillity had been
overcome. His argument is summed up in the concise formula: when we
are, death is not; when death is, we are not; therefore death is
nothing to us.[175] The pleasures of life will be no loss, for we shall
not feel the want of them. The sorrow of our dearest friends will be
indifferent to us in the absence of all consciousness whatever. To the
consideration that, however calmly we may face our own annihilation,
the loss of those whom we love remains as terrible as ever, Lucretius
replies that we need not mourn for them, since they do not feel any
pain at their own extinction.[176]
There must, one would suppose, be some force in the Epicurean
philosophy of death, for it has been endorsed by no less a thinker
and observer than Shakspeare. To make the great dramatist responsible
for every opinion uttered by one or other of his characters would, of
course, be absurd; but when we find personages so different in other
respects as Claudio, Hamlet, and Macbeth, agreeing in the sentiment
that, apart from the prospect of a future judgment, there is nothing to
appal us in the thought of death, we cannot avoid the inference that he
is here making them the mouthpiece of his own convictions, even, as in
Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, at the expense of every dramatic propriety.
Nevertheless, the answer of humanity to such sophisms will always
be that of Homer’s Achilles, ‘μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα’—‘Talk
me not fair of death!’ A very simple process of reasoning will make
this clear. The love of life necessarily involves a constant use
of precautions against its loss. The certainty of death means the
certainty that these precautions shall one day prove unavailing; the
consciousness of its near approach means the consciousness that they
have actually failed. In both cases the result must be a sense of
baffled or arrested effort, more or less feeble when it is imagined,
more or less acute when it it is realised. But this diversion of the
conscious energies from their accustomed channel, this turning back of
the feelings on themselves, constitutes the essence of all emotion;
and where the object of the arrested energies was to avert a danger,
it constitutes the emotion of fear. Thus, by an inevitable law, the
love of life has for its reverse side the dread of death. Now the love
of life is guaranteed by the survival of the fittest; it must last
as long as the human race, for without it the race could not last
at all. If, as Epicurus urged, the supreme desirability of pleasure
is proved by its being the universal object of pursuit among all
species of animals,[177] the supreme hatefulness of death is proved by
an analogous experience; and we may be sure that, even if pessimism
became the accepted faith, the darkened prospect would lead to no
relaxation of our grasp on life. A similar mode of reasoning applies to
the sorrow and anguish, _mortis comites et funeris atri_, from which
the benevolent Roman poet would fain relieve us. For, among a social
species, the instinct for preserving others is second only to the
instinct of self-preservation, and frequently rises superior to it.
Accordingly, the loss of those whom we love causes, and must always
cause us, a double distress. There is, first, the simple pain due to
the eternal loss of their society, a pain of which Lucretius takes no
account. And, secondly, there is the arrest of all helpful activity on
their behalf, the continual impulse to do something for them, coupled
with the chilling consciousness that it is too late, that nothing more
can be done. So strong, indeed, is this latter feeling that it often
causes the loss of those whose existence was a burden to themselves
and others, to be keenly felt, if only the survivors were accustomed,
as a matter of duty, to care for them and to struggle against the
disease from which they suffered. Philosophy may help to fill up the
blanks thus created, by directing our thoughts to objects of perennial
interest, and she may legitimately discourage the affectation or the
fostering of affliction; but the blanks themselves she cannot explain
away, without forfeiting all claim on our allegiance as the ultimate
and incorruptible arbitress of truth.
We are now in a position to understand how far Epicurus was justified
in regarding the expectation of immortality as a source of dread
rather than of consolation. In this respect also, the survival of
the fittest has determined that human nature shall not look forward
with satisfaction to the termination of its earthly existence. Were
any race of men once persuaded that death is the passage to a happier
world, it would speedily be replaced by competitors holding a belief
better adapted to the conditions of terrestrial duration. Hence,
practically speaking, the effect of religious dogmas has been to make
death rather more dreaded than it would have been without their aid;
and, as already observed, their natural tendency has been powerfully
stimulated by the cupidity of their professional expositors. The hope
of heaven, to exist at all, must be checked by a considerably stronger
apprehension of hell. There is a saying in America that the immortality
of the soul is too good to be true. We suspect that the immortality in
which most religious Americans still believe hardly deserves such a
compliment; but it accurately expresses the incredulity with which a
genuine message of salvation would be received by most men; and this
explains why Universalism, with the few who have accepted it, is but
the transition stage to a total rejection of any life beyond the grave.
No doubt, in the first flush of fanaticism, the assurance of an easy
admission to paradise may do much to win acceptance for the religion
which offers it; but when such a religion ceases to make new conquests,
its followers must either modify their convictions, or die out under
the competition of others by whom mortal life is not held so cheap.
We must add, that while Epicurus was right in regarding the beliefs
entertained about a future life as a source of painful anxiety,
he was only justified in this opinion by the deeper truth, which
he ignored, that they are simply the natural dread of death under
another form.[178] The most appalling pictures of damnation would,
taken by themselves, probably add but little to human misery. The
alarming effect even of earthly punishments is found to depend on
their certainty much more than on their severity; and the certainty
of suffering what nobody has ever experienced must be small indeed.
Besides, the class most interested in enlarging on the dark side
of immortality are also interested in showing that its dangers may
be bought off at a comparatively trifling cost. What Epicurus said
about the inexorable fate of the physicists might here be turned
against himself. He removed terrors which there was a possibility of
exorcising, and substituted a prospect of annihilation whence there was
no escape.[179]
It is, after all, very questionable whether human happiness would
be increased by suppressing the thought of death as something to be
feared. George Eliot, in her _Legend of Jubal_, certainly expresses
the contrary opinion.[180] The finest edge of enjoyment would be taken
off if we forgot its essentially transitory character. The free man
may, in Spinoza’s words, think of nothing less than of death; but he
cannot prevent the sunken shadow from throwing all his thoughts of life
into higher and more luminous relief. The ideal enjoyment afforded by
literature would lose much of its zest were we to discard all sympathy
with the fears and sorrows on which our mortal condition has enabled it
so largely to draw—the _lacrimae rerum_, which Lucretius himself has
turned to such admirable account. And the whole treasure of happiness
due to mutual affection must gain by our remembrance that the time
granted for its exercise is always limited, and may at any moment be
brought to an end—or rather, such an effect might be looked for were
this remembrance more constantly present to our minds.
Lucretius dwells much on the dread of death as a source of vice and
crime. He tells us that men plunge into all sorts of mad distractions
or unscrupulous schemes of avarice and ambition in their anxiety to
escape either from its haunting presence, or from the poverty and
disrepute which they have learned to associate with it.[181] Critics
are disposed to think that the poet, in his anxiety to make a point,
is putting a wrong interpretation on the facts. Yet it should be
remembered that Lucretius was a profound observer, and that his
teaching, in this respect, may be heard repeated from London pulpits
at the present day. The truth seems to be, not that he went too far,
but that he did not go far enough. What he decries as a spur to
vicious energy is, in reality, a spur to all energy. Every passion,
good or bad, is compressed and intensified by the contracting limits
of mortality; and the thought of death impels men either to wring the
last drop of enjoyment from their lives, or to take refuge from their
perishing individualities in the relative endurance of collective
enterprises and impersonal aims.
Let none suppose that the foregoing remarks are meant either to express
any sympathy with a cowardly shrinking from death, or to intimate
that the doctrine of evolution tends to reverse the noblest lessons
of ancient wisdom. In holding that death is rightly regarded as an
evil, and that it must always continue to be so regarded, we do not
imply that it is necessarily the greatest of all evils for any given
individual. It is not, as Spinoza has shown, by arguing away our
emotions, but by confronting them with still stronger emotions, that
they are, if necessary, to be overcome.[182] The social feelings may
be trusted to conquer the instinct of self-preservation, and, by a
self-acting adjustment, to work with more intensity in proportion to
the strength of its resistance. The dearer our lives are to us, the
greater will be the glory of renouncing them, that others may be better
secured in the enjoyment of theirs. Aristotle is much truer, as well as
more human, than Epicurus, when he observes that ‘the more completely
virtuous and happy a man is, the more will he be grieved to die; for to
such a one life is worth most, and he will consciously be renouncing
the greatest goods, and that is grievous. Nevertheless, he remains
brave, nay, even the braver for that very reason, because he prefers
the glory of a warrior to every other good.’[183] Nor need we fear that
a race of cowards will be the fittest to survive, when we remember what
an advantage that state has in the struggle for existence, the lives of
whose citizens are most unrestrictedly held at its disposal. But their
devotion would be without merit and without meaning, were not the loss
of existence felt to be an evil, and its prolongation cherished as a
gain.
VII.
Next to its bearing on the question of immortality, the Epicurean
psychology is most interesting as a contribution to the theory of
cognition. Epicurus holds that all our knowledge is derived from
experience, and all our experience, directly or indirectly, from the
presentations of sense. So far he says no more than would be admitted
by the Stoics, by Aristotle, and indeed by every Greek philosopher
except Plato. There is, therefore, no necessary connexion between
his views in this respect and his theory of ethics, since others had
combined the same views with a very different standard of action. It
is in discussing the vexed question of what constitutes the ultimate
criterion of truth that he shows to most disadvantage in comparison
with the more intellectual schools. He seems to have considered that
sensation supplies not only the matter but the form of knowledge; or
rather, he seems to have missed the distinction between matter and
form altogether. What the senses tell us, he says, is always true,
although we may draw erroneous inferences from their statements.[184]
But this only amounts to the identical proposition that we feel what
we feel; for it cannot be pretended that the order of our sensations
invariably corresponds to the actual order of things in themselves.
Even confining ourselves to individual sensations, or single groups of
sensations, there are some that do not always correspond to the same
objective reality, and others that do not correspond to any reality
at all; while, conversely, the same object produces a multitude of
different sensations according to the subjective conditions under which
it affects us. To escape from this difficulty, Epicurus has recourse
to a singularly crude theory of perception, borrowed from Empedocles
and the older atomists. What we are conscious of is, in each instance,
not the object itself, but an image composed of fine atoms thrown off
from the surfaces of bodies and brought into contact with the organs of
sense. Our perception corresponds accurately to an external image, but
the image itself is often very unlike the object whence it originally
proceeded. Sometimes it suffers a considerable change in travelling
through the atmosphere. For instance, when a square tower, seen at a
great distance, produces the impression of roundness, this is because
the sharp angles of its image have been rubbed off on the way to our
eyes. Sometimes the image continues to wander about after its original
has ceased to exist, and that is why the dead seem to revisit us in
our dreams. And sometimes the images of different objects coalesce as
they are floating about, thus producing the appearance of impossible
monsters, such as centaurs and chimaeras.[185]
It was with the help of this theory that Epicurus explained and
defended the current belief in the existence of gods. The divine
inhabitants of the _intermundia_, or empty spaces separating world
from world, are, like all other beings, composed of atoms, and are
continually throwing off fine images, some of which make their
way unaltered to our earth and reveal themselves to the senses,
particularly during sleep, when we are most alive to the subtlest
impressions on our perceptive organs. With the usual irrationality of
a theologian, Epicurus remained blind to the fact that gods who were
constantly throwing off even the very thinnest films could not possibly
survive through all eternity. Neither did he explain how images larger
than the pupil of the eye could pass through its aperture while
preserving their original proportions unaltered.
We have seen how Epicurus erected the senses into ultimate arbiters
of truth. By so doing, however, he only pushed the old difficulty a
step further back. Granting that our perceptions faithfully correspond
to certain external images, how can we be sure that these images are
themselves copies of a solid and permanent reality? And how are we
to determine the validity of general notions representing not some
single object but entire classes of objects? The second question may
be most conveniently answered first. Epicurus holds that perception is
only a finer sort of sensation. General notions are material images
of a very delicate texture formed, apparently, on the principle of
composition-photographs by the coalescence of many individual images
thrown off from objects possessing a greater or less degree of
resemblance to one another.[186] Thought is produced by the contact of
such images with the soul, itself, it will be remembered, a material
substance.
The rules for distinguishing between truth and falsehood are given
in the famous Epicurean Canon. On receiving an image into the mind,
we associate it with similar images formerly impressed on us by some
real object. If the association or anticipation (πρόληψις) is confirmed
or not contradicted by subsequent experience, it is true; false, if
contradicted or not confirmed.[187] The stress laid on absence of
contradictory evidence illustrates the great part played by such
notions as possibility, negation, and freedom in the Epicurean system.
In ethics this class of conceptions is represented by painlessness,
conceived first as the condition, and finally as the essence of
happiness; in physics by the infinite void, the _inane profundum_ of
which Lucretius speaks with almost religious unction; and in logic by
the absence of contradiction considered as a proof of reality. Here,
perhaps, we may detect the Parmenidean absolute under a new form; only,
by a curious reversal, what Parmenides himself strove altogether to
expel from thought has become its supreme object and content.[188]
The Epicurean philosophy of life and mind is completed by a sketch
of human progress from its earliest beginnings to the complete
establishment of civilisation. Here our principal authority is
Lucretius; and no part of his great poem has attracted so much
attention and admiration in recent times as that in which he so vividly
places before us the condition of primitive men with all its miseries,
and the slow steps whereby family life, civil society, religion,
industry, and science arose out of the original chaos and war of all
against each. But it seems likely that here, as elsewhere, Lucretius
did no more than copy and colour the outlines already traced by his
master’s hand.[189] How far Epicurus himself is to be credited with
this brilliant forecast of modern researches into the history of
civilisation, is a more difficult question. When we consider that
the most important parts of his philosophy were compiled from older
systems, and that the additions made by himself do not indicate any
great capacity for original research, we are forced to conclude that,
here also, he is indebted to some authority whose name has not been
preserved. The development of civilisation out of barbarism seems,
indeed, to have been a standing doctrine of Greek Humanism, just as the
opposite doctrine of degeneracy was characteristic of the naturalistic
school. It is implied in the discourse of Protagoras reported by Plato,
and also, although less fully, in the introduction to the History of
Thucydides. Plato and Aristotle trace back the intellectual and social
progress of mankind to very rude beginnings; while both writers assume
that it was effected without any supernatural aid—a point marked to
the exclusive credit of Epicurus by M. Guyau.[190] The old notion of
a golden age, accepted as it was by so powerful a school as Stoicism,
must have been the chief obstacle to a belief in progress; but the
_Prometheus_ of Aeschylus, with its vivid picture of the miseries
suffered by primitive men through their ignorance of the useful
arts, shows that a truer conception had already gained ground quite
independently of philosophic theories. That the primitive state was one
of lawless violence was declared by another dramatic poet, Critias, who
has also much to say about the civilising function of religion;[191]
and shortly before the time of Epicurus the same view was put forward
by Euphorion, in a passage of which, as it will probably be new to many
of our readers, we subjoin a translation:—
There was a time when mortals lived like brutes
In caves and unsunned hollows of the earth,
For neither house nor city flanked with towers
Had then been reared: no ploughshare cut the clod
To make it yield a bounteous harvest, nor
Were the vines ranked and trimmed with pruning-knives,
But fruitless births the sterile earth did bear.
Men on each other fed with mutual slaughter,
For Law was feeble, Violence enthroned,
And to the strong the weaker fell a prey.
But soon as Time that bears and nurtures all
Wrought out another change in human life,—
Whether some rapt Promethean utterance,
Or strong Necessity, or Nature’s teaching
Through long experience, their deliverance brought,—
Holy Dêmêter’s fruit it gave them; the sweet spring
Of Bacchus they discovered, and the earth,
Unsown before, was ploughed with oxen; cities then
They girt with towers and sheltering houses raised,
And turned their savage life to civil ways;
And after that Law bade entomb the dead
And measure out to each his share of dust,
Nor leave unburied and exposed to sight
Ghastly reminders of their former feasts.[192]
The merit of having worked up these loose materials into a connected
sketch was, no doubt, considerable; but, according to Zeller, there is
reason for attributing it to Theophrastus or even to Democritus rather
than to Epicurus.[193] On the other hand, the purely mechanical manner
in which Lucretius supposes every invention to have been suggested by
some accidental occurrence or natural phenomenon, is quite in the style
of Epicurus, and reminds us of the method by which he is known to have
explained every operation of the human mind.[194]
VIII.
We have already repeatedly alluded to the only man of genius whom
Epicureanism ever counted among its disciples. It is time that we
should determine with more precision the actual relation in which
he stood to the master whom, with a touching survival of religious
sentiment, he revered as a saviour and a god.
Lucretius has been called Rome’s only great speculative genius.
This is, of course, absurd. A talent for lucid exposition does not
constitute speculative genius, especially when it is unaccompanied by
any ability to criticise the opinions expounded. The author of the _De
Rerum Naturâ_ probably had a lawyer’s education. He certainly exhibits
great forensic skill in speaking from his brief. But Cicero and Seneca
showed the same skill on a much more extensive scale; and the former
in particular was immensely superior to Lucretius in knowledge and
argumentative power. Besides, the poet, who was certainly not disposed
to hide his light under a bushel, and who exalts his own artistic
excellences in no measured terms, never professes to be anything but a
humble interpreter of truths first revealed to his Greek instructor’s
vivid intellect. It has, indeed, been claimed for Lucretius that
he teaches a higher wisdom than his acknowledged guide.[195] This
assertion is, however, not borne out by a careful comparison between
the two.[196] In both there is the same theory of the universe, of man,
and of the relations connecting them with one another. The idea of
Nature in Lucretius shows no advance over the same idea in Epicurus.
To each it expresses, not, as with the Stoics, a unifying power, a
design by which all things work together for the best, but simply the
conditions of a permanent mechanical aggregation. When Lucretius speaks
of _foedera Naturai_, he means, not what we understand by laws of
nature, that is, uniformities of causation underlying all phenomenal
differences, to understand which is an exaltation of human dignity
through the added power of prevision and control which it bestows,
but rather the limiting possibilities of existence, the barriers
against which human hopes and aspirations dash themselves in vain—an
objective logic which guards us against fallacies instead of enabling
us to arrive at positive conclusions. We have here the pervadingly
negative character of Epicureanism, though probably presented with
something of Roman solemnity and sternness. The idea of individuality,
with which Lucretius has also been credited, occupies but a small
place in his exposition, and seems to have interested him only as a
particular aspect of the atomic theory. The ultimate particles of
matter must be divided into unlike groups of units, for otherwise we
could not explain the unlikenesses exhibited by sensible objects. This
is neither the original Greek idea, that every man has his own life to
lead, irrespective of public opinion or arbitrary convention; nor is
it the modern delight in Nature’s inexhaustible variety as opposed to
the poverty of human invention, or to the restrictions of fashionable
taste. Nor can we admit that Lucretius developed Epicurean philosophy
in the direction of increased attention to the external world. The poet
was, no doubt, a consummate observer, and he used his observations
with wonderful felicity for the elucidation and enforcement of his
philosophical reasoning; but in this respect he has been equalled
or surpassed by other poets who either knew nothing of systematic
philosophy, or, like Dante, were educated in a system as unlike as
possible to that of Epicurus. There is, therefore, every reason for
assuming that he saw and described phenomena not by virtue of his
scientific training, but by virtue of his artistic endowment. And the
same may be said of the other points in which he is credited with
improvements on his master’s doctrine. There is, no doubt, a strong
consciousness of unity, of individuality, and of law running through
his poem. But it is under the form of intuitions or contemplations, not
under the form of speculative ideas that they are to be found. And,
as will be presently shown, it is not as attributes of Nature but as
attributes of life that they present themselves to his imagination.
In ethics, the dependence of Lucretius on his master is not less
close than in physics. There is the same inconsistent presentation
of pleasure conceived under its intensest aspect, and then of mere
relief from pain, as the highest good;[197] the same dissuasion from
sensuality, not as in itself degrading, but as involving disagreeable
consequences;[198] the same inculcation of frugal and simple living as
a source of happiness; the same association of justice with the dread
of detection and punishment;[199] the same preference—particularly
surprising in a Roman—of quiet obedience to political power;[200]
finally, the same rejection, for the same reason, of divine providence
and of human immortality, along with the same attempt to prove that
death is a matter of indifference to us, enforced with greater passion
and wealth of illustration, but with no real addition to the philosophy
of the subject.[201]
Nevertheless, after all has been said, we are conscious of a great
change in passing from the Greek moralist to the Roman poet. We seem
to be breathing a new atmosphere, to find the old ideas informed with
an unwonted life, to feel ourselves in the presence of one who has a
power of stamping his convictions on us not ordinarily possessed by
the mere imitative disciple. The explanation of this difference, we
think, lies in the fact that Lucretius has so manipulated the Epicurean
doctrines as to convert them from a system into a picture; and that he
has saturated this picture with an emotional tone entirely wanting to
the spirit of Epicureanism as it was originally designed. It is with
the latter element that we may most conveniently begin.
Attention has already been called to the fact that Epicurus, although
himself indifferent to physical science, was obliged, by the demands of
the age, to give it a place, and a very large place, in his philosophy.
Now it was to this very side of Epicureanism that the fresh intellect
of Rome most eagerly attached itself. It is a great mistake to suppose
that the Romans, or rather the ancient Italians, were indifferent to
speculations about the nature of things. No one has given more eloquent
expression to the enthusiasm excited by such enquiries than Virgil.
Seneca devoted a volume to physical questions, and regretted that
worldly distractions should prevent them from being studied with the
assiduity they deserved. The elder Pliny lost his life in observing
the eruption of Vesuvius. It was probably the imperial despotism,
with its repeated persecutions of the ‘Mathematicians,’ which alone
prevented Italy from entering on the great scientific career for which
she was predestined in after ages. At any rate, a spirit of active
curiosity was displaying itself during the last days of the republic,
and we are told that nearly all the Roman Epicureans applied themselves
particularly to the physical side of their master’s doctrine.[202] Most
of all was Lucretius distinguished by a veritable passion for science,
which haunted him even in his dreams.[203] Hence, while Epicurus
regarded the knowledge of Nature simply as a means for overthrowing
religion, with his disciple the speculative interest seems to precede
every other consideration, and religion is only introduced afterwards
as an obstacle to be removed from the enquirer’s path. How far his
natural genius might have carried the poet in this direction, had he
fallen into better hands, we cannot tell. As it was, the gift of what
seemed a complete and infallible interpretation of physical phenomena
relieved him from the necessity of independent investigation, and
induced him to accept the most preposterous conclusions as demonstrated
truths. But we can see how he is drawn by an elective affinity to that
early Greek thought whence Epicurus derived whatever was of any real
value in his philosophy.
It has been doubted, we think with insufficient reason, that Lucretius
was acquainted at first hand with Empedocles.[204] But, by whatever
channel it reached him, the enthusiasm of Empedocles and the Eleates
lives in his verse no less truly than the inspiration of Aeolian music
in the song of his younger contemporary, Catullus. The atomic theory,
with its wonderful revelations of invisible activity and unbroken
continuity underlying the abrupt revolutions of phenomenal existence,
had been the direct product of those earliest struggles towards a
deeper vision into the mysteries of cosmic life; and so Lucretius was
enabled through his grasp of the theory itself to recover the very
spirit and passion from which it sprang.[205]
But the enthusiasm for science, however noble in itself, would not
alone have sufficed to mould the Epicurean philosophy into a true work
of art. The _De Rerum Naturâ_ is the greatest of all didactic poems,
because it is something more than didactic. Far more truly than any
of its Latin successors, it may claim comparison with the epic and
dramatic masterpieces of Greece and Christian Europe; and that too not
by virtue of any detached passages, however splendid, but by virtue
of its composition as a whole. The explanation of this extraordinary
success is to be sought in the circumstance that the central interest
whence Lucretius works out in all directions is vital rather than
merely scientific. The true heroine of his epic is not Nature but
universal life—human life in the first instance, then the life of all
the lower animals, and even of plants as well. Not only does he bring
before us every stage of man’s existence from its first to its last
hour with a comprehensiveness, a fidelity, and a daring unparalleled
in literature; but he exhibits with equal power of portrayal the
towered elephants carrying confusion into the ranks of war, or girdling
their own native India with a rampart of ivory tusks; the horse with an
eagerness for the race that outruns even the impulse of his own swift
limbs, or fiercely neighing with distended nostrils on the battlefield;
the dog snuffing an imaginary scent, or barking at strange faces in
his dreams; the cow sorrowing after her lost heifer; the placid and
laborious ox; the flock of pasturing sheep seen far off, like a white
spot on some green hill; the tremulous kids and sportive lambs; the
new-fledged birds filling all the grove with their fresh songs; the
dove with her neck-feathers shifting from ruby-red to sky-blue and
emerald-green; the rookery clamouring for wind or rain; the sea birds
screaming over the salt waves in search of prey; the snake sloughing
its skin; the scaly fishes cleaving their way through the yielding
stream; the bee winging its flight from flower to flower; the gnat
whose light touch on our faces passes unperceived; the grass refreshed
with dew; the trees bursting into sudden life from the young earth, or
growing, flourishing, and covering themselves with fruit, dependent,
like animals, on heat and moisture for their increase, and glad
like them:—all these helping to illustrate with unequalled variety,
movement, and picturesqueness the central idea which Lucretius carries
always in his mind.
The keynote of the whole poem is struck in its opening lines. When
Venus is addressed as Nature’s sole guide and ruler, this, from the
poet’s own point of view, is not true of Nature as a whole, but it is
eminently true of life, whether we identify Venus with the passion
through which living things are continually regenerated, or with the
pleasure which is their perpetual motive and their only good. And it
is equally appropriate, equally characteristic of a consummate artist,
that the interest of the work should culminate in a description of
this same passion, no longer as the source of life, but as its last
outcome and full flower, yet also, when pushed to excess, the illusion
by which it is most utterly disappointed and undone; and that the whole
should conclude with a description of death, not as exemplified in any
individual tragedy, but in such havoc as was wrought by the famous
plague at Athens on man and beast alike. Again, it is by the orderly
sequence of vital phenomena that Lucretius proves his first great
principle, the everlasting duration and changelessness of matter. If
something can come out of nothing, he asks us, why is the production of
all living things attached to certain conditions of place and season
and parentage, according to their several kinds? Or if a decrease in
the total sum of existence be possible, whence comes the inexhaustible
supply of materials needed for the continual regeneration, growth, and
nourishment of animal life? It is because our senses cannot detect
the particles of matter by whose withdrawal visible objects gradually
waste away that the existence of extremely minute atoms is assumed;
and, so far, there is also a reference to inorganic bodies; but the
porosity of matter is proved by the interstitial absorption of food
and the searching penetration of cold; while the necessity of a vacuum
is established by the ability of fish to move through the opposing
stream. The generic differences supposed to exist among the atoms are
inferred from the distinctions separating not only one animal species
from another, but each individual from all others of the same species.
The deflection of the atoms from the line of perpendicular descent is
established by the existence of human free-will. So also, the analysis
which distinguishes three determinate elements in the composition
of the soul finds its justification in the diverse characters of
animals—the fierceness of the lion, the placidity of the ox, and the
timorousness of the deer—qualities arising from the preponderance of a
fiery, an aërial, and a windy ingredient in the animating principle of
each respectively. Finally, by another organic illustration, the atoms
in general are spoken of as _semina rerum_—seeds of things.
At the same time Lucretius is resolved that no false analogy shall
obscure the distinction between life and the conditions of life. It is
for attempting, as he supposes, to efface this distinction that he so
sharply criticises the earlier Greek thinkers. He scoffs at Heracleitus
for imagining that all forms of existence can be deduced from the
single element of fire. The idea of evolution and transformation seems,
under some of its aspects, utterly alien to our poet. His intimacy with
the world of living forms had accustomed him to view Nature as a vast
assemblage of fixed types which might be broken up and reconstructed,
but which by no possibility could pass into one another. Yet this rigid
retention of characteristic differences in form permits a certain play
and variety of movement, an individual spontaneity for which no law can
be prescribed. The _foedera Naturai_, as Prof. Sellar aptly observes,
are opposed to the _foedera fati_.[206] And this is just what might
be expected from a philosophy based on the contemplation of life. For,
while there is no capriciousness at all about the structure of animals,
there is apparently a great deal of capriciousness about their actions.
On the other hand, the Stoics, who derived their physics in great part
from Heracleitus, came nearer than Lucretius to the standpoint of
modern science. With them, as with the most advanced thinkers now, it
is the _foedera Naturai_—the uniformities of co-existence—which are
liable to exception and modification, while the _foedera fati_—the laws
of causation—are necessary and absolute.
In like manner, Lucretius rejects the theory that living bodies
are made up of the four elements, much as he admires its author,
Empedocles. It seemed to him a blind confusion of the inorganic with
the organic, the complex harmonies of life needing a much more subtle
explanation than was afforded by such a crude intermixture of warring
principles. If the theory of Anaxagoras fares no better in his hands,
it is for the converse reason. He looks on it as an attempt to carry
back purely vital phenomena into the inorganic world, to read into the
ultimate molecules of matter what no analysis can make them yield—that
is, something with properties like those of the tissues out of which
animal bodies are composed.
Thus, while the atomic theory enables Lucretius to account for the
dependent and perishable nature of life, the same theory enables him to
bring out by contrast its positive and distinguishing characteristics.
The bulk, the flexibility, the complexity, and the sensibility of
animal bodies are opposed to the extreme minuteness, the absolute
hardness, the simplicity, and the unconsciousness of the primordial
substances which build them up.
On passing from the ultimate elements of matter to those immense
aggregates which surpass man in size and complexity as much as the
atoms fall below him, but on whose energies his dependence is no less
helpless and complete—the infinite worlds typified for us by this one
system wherein we dwell, with its solid earthly nucleus surrounded by
rolling orbs of light—Lucretius still carries with him the analogies
of life; but in proportion to the magnitude and remoteness of the
objects examined, his grasp seems to grow less firm and his touch
less sure. In marked contrast to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, he
argues passionately against the ascription of a beneficent purpose to
the constitution of the world; but his reasonings are based solely on
its imperfect adaptation to the necessities of human existence. With
equal vigour he maintains, apparently against Aristotle, that the
present system has had a beginning; against both Aristotle and Plato
that, in common with all systems, it will have an end—a perfectly
true conclusion, but evidently based on nothing stronger than the
analogies of vital phenomena. And everywhere the subjective standpoint,
making man the universal measure, is equally marked. Because our
knowledge of history does not go far back, we cannot be far removed
from its absolute beginning; and the history of the human race must
measure the duration of the visible world. The earth is conceived as
a mother bringing forth every species of living creature from her
teeming bosom; and not only that, but a nursing mother feeding her
young offspring with abundant streams of milk—an unexpected adaptation
from the myth of a golden age. If we no longer witness such wonderful
displays of fertility, the same elastic method is invoked to explain
their cessation. The world, like other animals, is growing old and
effete. The exhaustion of Italian agriculture is adduced as a sign of
the world’s decrepitude with no less confidence than the freshness
of Italian poetry as a sign of its youth. The vast process of cosmic
change, with its infinite cycles of aggregation and dissolution, does
but repeat on an overwhelming scale the familiar sequences of birth and
death in animal species. Even the rising and setting of the heavenly
bodies and the phases of the moon may, it is argued, result from a
similar succession of perishing individuals, although we take them for
different appearances of a single unalterable sphere.[207]
A similar vein of thought runs through the moral and religious
philosophy of Lucretius. If we look on him as a reformer, we shall
say that his object was to free life from the delusions with which it
had been disfigured by ignorance and passion. If we look on him as an
artist, we shall say that he instinctively sought to represent life in
the pure and perfect beauty of its naked form. If we look on him as a
poet, we shall say that he exhibits all the objects of false belief no
longer in the independence of their fancied reality, but in their place
among other vital phenomena, and in due subordination to the human
consciousness whose power, even when it is bound by them, they reveal.
But while the first alternative leaves him in the position of a mere
imitator or expositor who brings home no lessons that Epicurus had not
already enforced with far greater success, the other two, and above
all the last, restore him to the position of an original genius, who,
instead of deriving his intuitions from the Epicurean system, adopts
just so much of that system as is necessary to give them coherence
and shape. It may, no doubt, be urged, that were life reduced to the
simple expression, the state of almost vegetative repose, demanded
by Lucretius, denuded of love, of ambition, of artistic luxury, of
that aspiration towards belief in and union with some central soul of
things, which all religions, more or less distinctly embody, its value
for imaginative purposes would be destroyed; and that the deepest
lesson taught by his poem would not be how to enjoy existence with the
greatest intensity, but how to abandon it with the least regret. Now
it is just here that the wonderful power of poetry comes in, and does
for once, under the form of a general exposition, what it has to do
again and again under the easier conditions of individual presentation.
For poetry is essentially tragic, and almost always excites the
activity of our imagination, not by giving it the assured possession
of realities, but by the strain resulting from their actual or their
expected eclipse. If Homer and the Attic tragedians show us what is
life, and what are the goods of life, it is not through experience
of the things themselves, but through the form of the void and the
outline of the shadow which their removal or obscuration has produced.
So also in the universal tragedy of the Roman poet, where the actors
are not persons, but ideas. Every belief is felt with more poignant
intensity at the moment of its overthrow, and the world of illusion is
compensated for intellectual extinction by imaginative persistence as
a conscious creation, a memory, or a dream. There is no mythological
picture so splendidly painted as those in which Lucretius has shown
us Mavors pillowed on the lap of Venus, or led before us the Idaean
mother in her triumphal car. No redeemer, credited with supernatural
powers, has ever enjoyed such an apotheosis as that bestowed by his
worshipper on the apostle of unbelief. Nowhere have the terrible and
mysterious suggestions of mortality been marshalled with such effect as
in the argument showing that death no more admits of experience than
of escape. What love-inspired poet has ever followed the storm and
stress of passion with such tenderness of sympathy or such audacity of
disclosure, as he to whom its objects were disrobed of their divinity,
for whom its fancied satisfaction was but the kindling to insaner
effort of a fatally unquenchable desire? Instead of being ‘compelled to
teach a truth he would not learn,’ Lucretius was enabled by the spirit
of his own incomparable art to seize and fix for ever, in bold reversal
of light and shade, those visions on which the killing light of truth
had long before him already dawned.
The _De Rerum Naturâ_ is the greatest of Roman poems, because it
is just the one work where the abstract genius of Rome met with a
subject combining an abstract form with the interest and inspiration
of concrete reality; where negation works with a greater power
than assertion; where the satire is directed against follies more
wide-spread and enduring than any others; where the teaching in some
most essential points can never be superseded; and where dependence
on a Greek model left the poet free to contribute from his own
imagination those elements to which the poetic value of his work is
entirely due. By a curious coincidence, the great poet of mediaeval
Italy attained success by the employment of a somewhat similar method.
Dante represented, it is true, in their victorious combination,
three influences against which Lucretius waged an unrelenting
warfare—religion, the idealising love of woman, and the spiritualistic
philosophy of Greece. Nevertheless, they resemble each other in this
important particular, that both have taken an abstract theory of the
world as the mould into which the burning metal of their imaginative
conceptions is poured. Dante, however, had a power of individual
presentation which Lucretius either lacked or had no opportunity
of exercising; and therefore he approaches nearer to that supreme
creativeness which only two races, the Greek and the English, have
hitherto displayed on a very extended scale.
IX.
Returning once more to Epicurus, we have now to sum up the
characteristic excellences and defects of his philosophy. The revival
of the atomic theory showed unquestionable courage and insight. Outside
the school of Democritus, it was, so far as we know, accepted by no
other thinker. Plato never mentions it. Aristotle examined and rejected
it. The opponents of Epicurus himself treated it as a self-evident
absurdity.[208] Only Marcus Aurelius seems to have contemplated the
possibility of its truth.[209]. But while to have maintained the right
theory in the face of such universal opposition was a proof of no
common discernment, we must remember that appropriating the discoveries
of others, even when those discoveries are in danger of being lost
through neglect, is a very different thing from making discoveries for
one’s self. No portion of the glory due to Leucippus and Democritus
should be diverted to their arrogant successor. And it must also be
remembered that the Athenian philosopher, by his theory of deflection,
not only spoiled the original hypothesis, but even made it a little
ridiculous.
The second service of Epicurus was entirely to banish the idea of
supernatural interference from the study of natural phenomena. This
also was a difficult enterprise in the face of that overwhelming
theological reaction begun by Socrates, continued by Plato, and carried
to grotesque consequences by the Stoics; but, here again, there can
be no question of attributing any originality to the philosopher of
the Garden. That there either were no gods at all, or that if there
were they never meddled with the world, was a common enough opinion in
Plato’s time; and even Aristotle’s doctrine of a Prime Mover excludes
the notion of creation, providence, and miracles altogether. On the
other hand, the Epicurean theory of idle gods was irrational in itself,
and kept the door open for a return of superstitious beliefs.
The next and perhaps the most important point in favour of Epicureanism
is its theory of pleasure as the end of action. Plato had left his idea
of the good undefined; Aristotle had defined his in such a manner as
to shut out the vast majority of mankind from its pursuit; the Stoics
had revolted every instinct by altogether discarding pleasure as an
end, and putting a purely formal and hollow perfection in its place.
It must further be admitted that Epicurus, in tracing back justice to
the two ideas of interest and contract, had hold of a true and fertile
principle. Nevertheless, although ethics is his strongest ground, his
usual ill-luck pursues him even here. It is where he is most original
that he goes most astray. By reducing pleasure, as an end of action,
to the mere removal of pain, he alters earlier systems of hedonism for
the worse; and plays the game of pessimism by making it appear that, on
the whole, death must be preferable to life, since it is what life can
never be—a state of absolute repose. And by making self-interest, in
the sense of seeking nothing but one’s own pleasure or the means to it,
the only rule of action, he endangers the very foundations of society.
At best, the selfish system, as Coleridge has beautifully observed,
‘stands in a similar relation to the law of conscience or universal
selfless reason, as the dial to the sun which indicates its path by
intercepting its radiance.’[210] Nor is the indication so certain as
Coleridge admitted. A time may come when self-sacrifice shall be
unnecessary for the public welfare, but we are not within a measurable
distance of it as yet.
No word of commendation can be pronounced on the Epicurean psychology
and logic. They are both bad in themselves, and inconsistent
with the rest of the system. Were all knowledge derived from
sense-impressions—especially if those impressions were what Epicurus
imagined them to be—the atomic theory could never have been discovered
or even conceived, nor could an ideal of happiness have been thought
out. In its theory of human progress, Epicureanism once more shows to
advantage; although in denying all inventiveness to man, and making him
the passive recipient of external impressions, it differs widely from
the modern school which it is commonly supposed to have anticipated.
And we may reasonably suspect that, here as elsewhere, earlier systems
embodied sounder views on the same subject.
The qualities which enabled Epicurus to compete successfully with much
greater thinkers than himself as the founder of a lasting sect, were
practical rather than theoretical. Others before him had taught that
happiness was the end of life; none, like him, had cultivated the
art of happiness, and pointed out the fittest methods for attaining
it. The idea of such an art was a real and important addition to the
resources of civilisation. No mistake is greater than to suppose that
pleasure is lost by being made an object of pursuit. To single out the
most agreeable course among many alternatives, and, when once found,
steadily to pursue it, is an aptitude like any other, and is capable of
being brought to a high degree of perfection by assiduous attention and
self-discipline.[211] No doubt the capacity for enjoyment is impaired
by excessive self-consciousness, but the same is true of every other
accomplishment during the earlier stages of its acquisition. It is only
the beginner who is troubled by taking too much thought about his own
proficiency; when practice has become a second nature, the professor
of hedonism reaps his harvest of delight without wasting a thought on
his own efforts, or allowing the phantom of pleasure in the abstract
to allure him away from its particular and present realisation. And,
granting that happiness as such can be made an object of cultivation,
Epicurus was perfectly right in teaching that the removal of pain is
its most essential condition, faulty as was (from a speculative point
of view) his confusion of the condition with the thing itself. If
the professed pleasure-seekers of modern society often fail in the
business of their lives, it is from neglecting this salutary principle,
especially where it takes the form of attention to the requirements of
health. In assigning a high importance to friendship, he was equally
well inspired. Congenial society is not only the most satisfying of
enjoyments in itself, but also that which can be most easily combined
with every other enjoyment. It is also true, although a truth felt
rather than perceived by our philosopher, that speculative agreement,
especially when speculation takes the form of dissent from received
opinions, greatly increases the affection of friends for one another.
And as theology is the subject on which unforced agreement seems most
difficult, to eliminate its influence altogether was a valuable though
purely negative contribution to unanimity of thought and feeling in the
hedonistic sect.
An attempt has recently been made by M. Guyau to trace the influence
of Epicurus on modern philosophy. We cannot but think the method of
this able and lucid writer a thoroughly mistaken one. Assuming the
recognition of self-interest as the sole or paramount instinct in
human nature, to be the essence of what Epicurus taught, M. Guyau,
without more ado, sets down every modern thinker who agrees with him
on this one point as his disciple, and then adds to the number all
who hold that pleasure is the end of action; thus making out a pretty
long list of famous names among the more recent continuators of his
tradition. A more extended study of ancient philosophy would have
shown the French critic that moralists who, in other respects, were
most opposed to Epicurus, agreed with him in holding that every man
naturally and necessarily makes his own interest the supreme test
of right conduct; and that only with the definition of welfare did
their divergence begin. On the other hand, the selfish systems of
modern times differ entirely from Epicureanism in their conception
of happiness. With Hobbes, for instance, whom M. Guyau classes as an
Epicurean, the ideal is not painlessness but power; the desires are,
according to his view, naturally infinite, and are held in check, not
by philosophical precepts but by mutual restraint; while, in deducing
the special virtues, his standard is not the good of each individual,
but the good of the whole—in other words, he is, to that extent, a
Stoic rather than an Epicurean. La Rochefoucauld, who is offered as
another example of the same tendency, was not a moralist at all; and as
a psychologist he differs essentially from Epicurus in regarding vanity
as always and everywhere the great motive to virtue. Had the Athenian
sage believed this he would have despaired of making men happy; for
disregard of public opinion, within the limits of personal safety, was,
with him, one of the first conditions of a tranquil existence. Nor
would he have been less averse from the system of Helvétius, another
of his supposed disciples. The principal originality of Helvétius
was to insist that the passions, instead of being discouraged—as all
previous moralists, Epicurus among the number, had advised—should be
deliberately stimulated by the promise of unlimited indulgence to
those who distinguished themselves by important public services. Of
Spinoza we need say nothing, for M. Guyau admits that he was quite as
much inspired by Stoic as by Epicurean ideas. At the same time, the
combination of these two ethical systems would have been much better
illustrated by modern English utilitarianism, which M. Guyau regards
as a development of Epicureanism alone. The greatest happiness of
the greatest number is not an individual or self-interested, but a
universal end, having, as Mill has shown, for its ultimate sanction the
love of humanity as a whole, which is an essentially Stoic sentiment.
It may be added that utilitarianism has no sympathy with the particular
theory of pleasure, whether sensual or negative, adopted by Epicurus.
In giving a high, or even the highest place to intellectual enjoyments,
it agrees with the estimate of Plato and Aristotle, to which he was so
steadily opposed. And in duly appreciating the positive side of all
enjoyments, it returns to the earlier hedonism from which he stood so
far apart.
The distinctive features of Epicureanism have, in truth, never been
copied, nor are they ever likely to be copied, by any modern system.
It arose, as we have seen, from a combination of circumstances which
will hardly be repeated in the future history of thought. As the heat
and pressure of molten granite turn sandstone into slate, so also the
mighty systems of Plato and Aristotle, coming into contact with the
irreligious, sensual, empirical, and sceptical side of Attic thought,
forced it to assume that sort of laminated texture which characterises
the theoretical philosophy of Epicurus. And, at the very same moment,
the disappearance of all patriotism and public spirit from Athenian
life allowed the older elements of Athenian character, its amiable
egoism, its love of frugal gratifications, its aversion from purely
speculative interests, to create a new and looser bond of social union
among those who were indifferent to the vulgar objects of ambition, but
whom the austerer doctrines of Stoicism had failed to attract.