EPICURUS AND LUCRETIUS
ATOMS NOT INFINITE IN VARIETY
Epicurus (341-270 B. C.) agreed with Democritus in assuming that the
atoms are infinite in number, but he denied that they were infinitely
various in shape, though their variety of form was conceded to be
very great, some smooth and round--like the soul atoms and those of
fire--some rough and pointed, others again branched or hooked. While
the number of forms is limited, there is an unlimited number of each
form. None of these variously formed atoms was ever created, and none
can ever be either created or destroyed. “Out of nothing, nothing
comes.”
MANY INHABITED WORLDS
Since space is infinite in extent and the atoms infinite in number as
well as varied in shape and weights, there must also be innumerable
inhabited worlds (as asserted by Democritus), displaying the greatest
diversity; yet some of them may nevertheless be exactly alike, since
like causes acting upon like bodies or complexes must inevitably
produce like effects.
Metrodorus, of Chios, declared that “a single ear of corn on a
wide-spreading champaign would not be more wonderful than a single
cosmos in the infinitude of space.”
MAN’S GREATEST ENEMY
Study of Democritus convinced Epicurus that the greatest enemy of
mankind is superstition, fear of imaginary gods and of punishment
hereafter, making of man a mental slave. Epicurus was not a lover
of science for science’s sake. He regarded its pursuit as having no
greater justification than that through reasoning and observation it
would free mankind from the fetters of supernaturalism, thus leaving
an open road to peace and happiness. Pleasure is the highest good, and
the highest form of pleasure is derived from cultivation of our mental
faculties.
“Protected as it was by the emperors, the (Epicurean) school destroyed
what remained of the crumbling edifice of polytheism, and at the same
time attacked the new religion and the supernatural Christian.”[23]
ON THE GODS
In supporting his atomic theory of cosmology, biology and ethics, in
refutation of the theological hypotheses of the Platonists and the
Stoics, based, they claimed, upon “a study of nature and the laws
of logic,” Epicurus offered what he regarded as logical evidence
against the doctrine that the world was ever created or that it is the
product of beneficent design. Professor Weber summed up the doctrine
of Epicurus, as derived from the writings of the Poet, Lucretius;
the biographer, Diogenes Laertius; and other authors of lives of the
philosophers of ancient Greece, in the following words (translated
by Dr. Frank Thilly, Professor of Philosophy in the University of
Missouri):
“The absolute creation and absolute destruction of the world are
[according to both Democritus and Epicurus] out of the question.
Creation in the proper sense of the term is impossible. In order to
convince ourselves that the world is not the work of the gods, we have
simply to consider the nature of its alleged creators, on the one
hand, and its imperfections, on the other. Why should such perfect and
supremely happy beings, who are self-sufficient and have no need of
anything, burden themselves with creating the world? Why should they
undertake the difficult task of governing the universe?
“Let us, however, suppose for a moment that the world is their product.
If they have created it, they have created it either eternally or in
time; in the former case, the world is eternal; in the latter we have
two possibilities: either creation is a condition of divine happiness,
and then the gods were not supremely happy for an entire eternity,
inasmuch as they did not create the world until after the lapse of an
eternity of inaction; or, it is not, and in that case, they have acted
contrary to their innermost essence. Moreover, what could have been
their purpose in making it? Did they desire a habitation? That would
be equivalent to saying that they had no dwelling-place for a whole
eternity, or at least, none worthy of them. Did they create it for the
sake of man? If they made it for the few sages whom the world contains,
their work was not worth the trouble; if they did it in order to
create wicked men, then they are cruel beings. Hence it is absolutely
impossible to hold that creation is the work of the gods.
“Let us examine the matter from the stand-point of the world. How can
we assume that a world full of evils is the creation of the gods? What
have we? Barren deserts, arid mountains, deadly marshes, uninhabitable
arctic zones, regions scorched by the southern sun, briars and thorns,
tempests, hailstones and hurricanes, ferocious beasts, diseases,
premature deaths; do they not all prove that the Deity has no hand
in the government of things? Empty space, atoms and weight, in short,
mechanical causes, suffice to explain the world; and it is not
necessary for metaphysics to have recourse to the theory of final
causes.”[24]
Just as astrologists blame the stars for the individual’s
short-comings--while at the same time holding on to the doctrine
of free will, by assuring us that “the stars incline but do not
compel”--and credit the astral bodies for his good traits and
successes, exactly so the ancient Greeks placed responsibility
for man’s derelictions and misfortunes--as well as for his happy
achievements--on the gods. Minerva’s influence endowed the individual
with intelligence; Venus infused the passion of love; Apollo
dispersed manly beauty, health and happiness; Mars involved peoples
in wars; while Mercury was the god of mathematics, inventions,
business transactions, etc. Without denying the existence of the
gods, Epicurus, as we have seen, did seek to show that the Olympian
divinities were not in any way concerned with terrestrial affairs.[25]
Though the gods are dead, we cannot yet say, with Henley,
I am the captain of my soul,
I am the master of my fate.
For modern man has within his own physiological “world” real
substitutes for the imaginary gods of Olympus, which really “incline”
if they “do not compel,” “behavior.” While the gods have been all
but forgotten, and the “fateful” stars have been reduced to vast
incandescent masses of helium, hydrogen, calcium, iron, etc., the
endocrine (ductless) glands still largely control or alter personality;
though these bodies are but constellations of atomic systems, with
electrons for sun and planets, each revolving in an all but inscrutable
cosmos of its own.
These still mysterious glands are today the real “astral
influences”--acting under “necessity”--which confer upon us manly
beauty and intelligence, or, perhaps, a dwarfed body and an imbecilic
brain. The pituitary body, originating tens of millions of years ago
in the roof of the mouth of some lowly chordate (lancelet stage),
in Cambrian times, and now attached to the base of man’s brain, has
taken the place of Minerva and Apollo; the gonads and the thymus
have absorbed the functions of Venus; the adrenals, the combative
“influence” of Mars; while the thyroid makes of us--or “inclines” us to
become--poets, radicals, “up-lifters,”--or maybe, mere lovers of the
lime light![26]
Surely this character-building “by necessity” would have delighted the
soul of Democritus and brought joy to the heart of his great disciple
Epicurus, who introduced an element of chance into Atomism only to
bridge what was to him an impassable gulf between the laws of mechanics
and observed phenomena.
This insistence of the ancient Atomists on the necessity of attempting
to account for all natural phenomena as the result of uniform,
immutable, universal “necessity” or law is one of the greatest
conceptions handed down to us from antiquity--a monument to the
human mind equalled only by the attempt to correlate all qualitative
differences of substances (atoms) with differences of size, shape and
position in space (with relation to one another) and with movement.
Gompertz does not hesitate to declare that this grand work of the
ancient Atomists “is destined to survive all changes of opinion and
thought.” Furthermore, all exact knowledge of nature “rests entirely
on this attempt to reduce qualities to quantities, or, to speak more
precisely, to establish fixed relations between the two. Mathematical
physics was contained there as in a germ, and modern research took
its starting-point thence. Galileo, Descartes, Huygens,--they all
followed the same path. ‘I do not believe,’ declared Galileo, ‘that
anything else is required than magnitudes, shapes, quantities, and slow
movements or swift, to produce in us tastes, smell, sounds.’”[27]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 23: Weber, Alfred, “History of Philosophy,” Page 139.]
[Footnote 24: Weber, _Op. Cit._, Pages 136-137. Epicurus was the
author of about three hundred writings, according to Diogenes Laertius,
but only his Letters, preserved by this historian, and fragments of a
work discovered at Herculaneum remain. For the rest we are dependent
on the _resume_ presented by Lucretius and the quotations found
in Greek authors. As Weber remarks (Page 135), “neither polytheism nor
Christianity had any interest in preserving his numerous writings.”]
[Footnote 25: Lange expressed the opinion that Epicurus really believed
in the existence of the gods, reverenced them for their perfection:
“these careless and painless gods did in fact represent, as it were,
an incarnated ideal of his philosophy” (_Op. Cit._, Vol. I, Page
101.)]
[Footnote 26: See Berman, Dr. Louis, “The Glands Regulating
Personality,” New York, 1922; Cunningham, J. T., “Hormones and
Heredity,” London. 1922.]
[Footnote 27: Gompertz, _Op. cit._, Page 349.]