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 Another Random Document on
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method. The explanation seems to be that to give some account of
natural phenomena had become, in his time, a necessity for every
one aspiring to found a philosophical system. A brilliant example had
been set by Plato and Aristotle, of whom the former, too, had
apparently yielded to the popular demand rather than followed the
bent of his own genius, in turning aside from ethics to physics; and
Zeno had similarly included the whole of knowledge in his teaching.
The old Greek curiosity respecting the causes of things was still
alive; and a similar curiosity was doubtless awakening among those
populations to whom Greek civilisation had been carried by
colonisation, commerce, and conquest. Now, those scientific
speculations are always the most popular which can be shown to
have some bearing on religious belief, either in the way of
confirmation or of opposition, according as faith or doubt happens to
be most in the ascendent. Fifty years ago, among ourselves, no work
on natural philosophy could hope for a large circulation unless it was
filled with teleological applications. At present, liberal opinions are
gaining ground; and those treatises are most eagerly studied which
tend to prove that everything in Nature can be best explained
through the agency of mechanical causation. At neither period is it
the facts themselves which have excited most attention, but their
possible bearing on our own interests. Among the contemporaries of
Epicurus, the two currents of thought that in more recent times have
enjoyed an alternate triumph, seem to have co-existed as forces of
about equal strength. The old superstitions were rejected by all
thinking men; and the only question was by what new faith they
should be replaced. Poets and philosophers had alike laboured to
bring about a religious reformation by exhibiting the popular
mythology in its grotesque deformity, and by constructing systems in
which pure monotheism was more or less distinctly proclaimed. But
it suited the purpose, perhaps it gratified the vanity of Epicurus to
talk as if the work of deliverance still remained to be done, as if men
were still groaning under the incubus of superstitions which he alone
could teach them to shake off. He seems, indeed, to have
confounded the old and the new faiths under a common
opprobrium, and to have assumed that the popular religion was
mainly supported by Stoic arguments, or that the Stoic optimism was
not less productive of superstitious terrors than the gloomy
polytheism which it was designed to supersede.152
Again, while attacking the belief in human immortality, Epicurus
seems to direct his blows against the metaphysical reasonings of
Plato,153 as well as against the indistinct forebodings of primitive
imagination. The consequences of this two-edged polemic are very
remarkable. In reading Lucretius, we are surprised at the total
absence of criticisms like those brought to bear on Greek mythology
with such formidable effect, first by Plato and, long afterwards, by
Lucian. There is a much more modern tone about his invectives, and
they seem aimed at an enemy familiar to ourselves. One would
suppose that the advent of Catholicism had been revealed in a
prophetic vision to the poet, and that this, rather than the religion of
his own times, was the object of his wrath and dread; or else that
some child of the Renaissance was seeking for a freer utterance of
his own revolt against all theology, under the disguise of a dead
language and of a warfare with long-discredited gods. For this
reason, Christians have always regarded him, with perfect justice, as
a dangerous enemy; while rationalists of the fiercer type have
accepted his splendid denunciations as the appropriate expression of
their own most cherished feelings.
The explanation of this anomaly is, we believe, to be found in the
fact that Catholicism did, to a great extent, actually spring from a
continuation of those widely different tendencies which Epicurus
confounded in a common assault. It had an intellectual basis in the
Platonic and Stoic philosophies, and a popular basis in the revival of
those manifold superstitions which, underlying the brilliant
civilisations of Greece and Rome, were always ready to break out
with renewed violence when their restraining pressure was removed.
The revival of which we speak was powerfully aided from without.
The same movement that was carrying Hellenic culture into Asia was
bringing Oriental delusions by a sort of back current into the
Western world. Nor was this all. The relaxation of all political bonds,
together with the indifference of the educated classes, besides
allowing a rank undergrowth of popular beliefs to spring up
unchecked, surrendered the regulation of those beliefs into the
hands of a profession which it had hitherto been the policy of every
ancient republic to keep under rigid restraint—the accredited or
informal ministers of religion.154 Now, the chief characteristic of a
priestly order has always and everywhere been insatiable avarice.
When forbidden to acquire wealth in their individual capacity, they
grasp at it all the more eagerly in their corporate capacity. And, as
the Epicureans probably perceived, there is no engine which they
can use so effectually for the gratification of this passion as the
belief in a future life. What they have to tell about this is often
described by themselves and their supporters as a message of joy to
the weary and afflicted. But under their treatment it is very far from
being a consolatory belief. Dark shades and lurid lights predominate
considerably in their pictures of the world beyond the grave; and
here, as we shall presently show, they are aided by an irresistible
instinct of human nature. On this subject, also, they can speak with
unlimited confidence; for, while their other statements about the
supernatural are liable to be contradicted by experience, the abode
of souls is a bourne from which no traveller returns to disprove the
accuracy of their statements.
That such a tendency was at work some time before the age of
Epicurus is shown by the following passage from Plato’s Republic:—

Mendicant prophets go to rich men’s doors and persuade

them that they have a power committed to them of making
atonement for their sins or those of their fathers by sacrifices or
charms.... And they produce a host of books ... according to
which they perform their ritual, and persuade not only
individuals but whole cities, that expiations and atonements for
sin may be made by sacrifices and amusements which fill a
vacant hour,155 and are equally at the service of the living and
the dead; the latter sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us
 from the pains of hell, but if we neglect them no one knows
what awaits us.156

Let us now pass over fourteen centuries and see to what results
the doctrine taught by Plato himself led when it had entered into an
alliance with the superstitions which he denounced. Our illustration
shall be taken from a sainted hero of the Catholic Church. In a
sermon preached before Pope Nicholas II. at Arezzo, the famous
Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII., relates the following story:—

In one of the provinces of Germany there died, about ten

years ago, a certain count, who had been rich and powerful,
and, what is astonishing for one of that class, he was, according
to the judgment of man, pure in faith and innocent in his life.
Some time after his death, a holy man descended in spirit to
hell, and beheld the count standing on the topmost rung of a
ladder. He tells us that this ladder stood unconsumed amid the
crackling flames around; and that it had been placed there to
receive the family of the aforesaid count. There was, moreover,
the black and frightful abyss out of which rose the fatal ladder.
It was so ordered that the last comer took his stand at the top
of the ladder, and when the rest of the family arrived he went
down one step, and all below him did likewise.
As the last of the same family who died came and took his
place, age after age, on this ladder, it followed inevitably that
they all successively reached the depth of hell. The holy man
who beheld this thing, asked the reason of this terrible
damnation, and especially how it was that the seigneur whom
he had known and who had lived a life of justice and well-doing
should be thus punished. And he heard a voice saying, ‘It is
because of certain lands belonging to the church of Metz, which
were taken from the blessed Stephen by one of this man’s
ancestors, from whom he was the tenth in descent, and for this
cause all these men have sinned by the same avarice and are
subjected to the same punishment in eternal fire.’157
 In view of such facts as these, we cannot blame the Epicureans if
they regarded the doctrine of future retribution as anything but a
consolatory or ennobling belief, and if they deemed that to extirpate
it was to cut out a mischievous delusion by the roots:—
Et merito: nam si certain finem esse viderent
Aerumnarum homines aliqua ratione valerent
Relligionibus, atque minis obsistere vatum:
Nunc ratio nulla ‘st restandi, nulla facultas,
Aeternas quoniam poenas in morte timendum.’158
And it is no wonder that the words of their great poet should read
like a prophetic exposure of the terrors with which the religious
revival, based on a coalition of philosophy and superstition, was
shortly to overspread the whole horizon of human life.
So strong, however, was the theological reaction against Greek
rationalism that Epicurus himself came under its influence. Instead
of denying the existence of the gods altogether, or leaving it
uncertain like Protagoras, he asserted it in the most emphatic
manner. Their interference with Nature was all that he cared to
dispute. The egoistic character of his whole system comes out once
more in his conception of them as beings too much absorbed in their
own placid enjoyments to be troubled with the work of creation and
providence. He was, indeed, only repeating aloud what had long
been whispered in the free-thinking circles of Athenian society. That
the gods were indifferent to human interests was a heresy
indignantly denounced by Aeschylus,159 maintained by Aristodêmus,
the friend of Socrates, and singled out as a fit subject for
punishment by Plato. Nor was the theology of Aristotle’s Metaphysics
practically distinguishable from such a doctrine. Although essential to
the continued existence of the cosmos, considered as a system of
movements, the Prime Mover communicates the required impulse by
the mere fact of his existence, and apparently without any
consciousness of the effect he is producing. Active beneficence had,
in truth, even less to do with the ideal of Aristotle than with the ideal
of Epicurus, and each philosopher constructed a god after his own
image; the one absorbed in perpetual thought, the other, or more
properly the others, in perpetual enjoyment; for the Epicurean
deities were necessarily conceived as a plurality, that they might not
be without the pleasure of friendly conversation. Nevertheless, the
part assigned by Aristotle to his god permitted him to offer a much
stronger proof of the divine existence and attributes than was
possible to Epicurus, who had nothing better to adduce than the
universal belief of mankind,—an argument obviously proving too
much, since it told, if anything, more powerfully for the interference
than for the bare reality of supernatural agents.
Our philosopher appears to more advantage as a critic than as a
religious dogmatist. He meets the Stoic belief in Providence by
pointing out the undeniable prevalence of evils which omnipotent
benevolence could not be supposed to tolerate; the Stoic optimism,
with its doctrine, still a popular one, that all things were created for
the good of man, by a reference to the glaring defects which, on
that hypothesis, would vitiate the arrangements of Nature; the Stoic
appeal to omens and prophecies by showing the purely accidental
character of their fulfilment.160 But he trusts most of all to a
radically different explanation of the world, an explanation which
everywhere substitutes mechanical causation for design. Only one
among the older systems—the atomism of Democritus—had
consistently carried out such a conception of Nature, and this,
accordingly, Epicurus adopts in its main outlines.

V.
It is generally assumed by the German critics that the atomic
theory was peculiarly fitted to serve as a basis for the individualistic
ethics of Epicureanism. To this we can hardly agree. The
insignificance and powerlessness of the atoms, except when
aggregated together in enormous numbers, would seem to be
naturally more favourable to a system where the community went
for everything and the individual for nothing; nor does the general
acceptance of atomism by modern science seem to be accompanied
by any relaxation of the social sentiment in its professors. Had the
Stoics followed Democritus and Epicurus Heracleitus—at least a
conceivable hypothesis—some equally cogent reason would
doubtless have been forthcoming to indicate the appropriateness of
their choice.161 As it is, we have no evidence that Epicurus saw
anything more in the atomic theory than a convenient explanation of
the world on purely mechanical principles.
The division of matter into minute and indestructible particles
served admirably to account for the gradual formation and
disappearance of bodies without necessitating the help of a creator.
But the infinities assumed as a condition of atomism were of even
greater importance. Where time and space are unlimited, the
quantity of matter must be equally unlimited, otherwise, being
composed of loose particles, it would long since have been
dissipated and lost in the surrounding void. Now, given infinite time
and space, and infinite atoms capable of combining with one another
in various ways, all possible combinations must already have been
tried, not once or twice, but infinitely often. Of such combinations,
that which best fulfils the conditions of mechanical stability will last
the longest, and, without being designed, will present all the
characters of design. And this, according to Epicurus, is how the
actual frame of things comes to be what it is. Nor was it only the
world as a whole that he explained by the theory of a single happy
accident occurring after a multitude of fortuitous experiments. The
same process repeats itself on a smaller scale in the production of
particular compounds. All sorts of living bodies were originally throw
up from the earth’s bosom, but many of them instantly perished, not
being provided with the means of nutrition, propagation, or self-
defence. In like manner we are enabled to recall a particular thought
at pleasure, because innumerable images are continually passing
through the mind, none of which comes into the foreground of
consciousness until attention is fixed on it; though how we come to
distinguish it from the rest is not explained. So also, only those
societies survived and became civilised where contracts were
faithfully observed. All kinds of wild beasts have at different times
been employed in war, just as horses and elephants are now, but on
trial were found unmanageable and given up.162
It will be seen that what has been singled out as an anticipation of
the Darwinian theory was only one application of a very
comprehensive method for eliminating design from the universe. But
of what is most original and essential in Darwinism, that is, the
modifiability of specific forms by the summing up of spontaneous
variations in a given direction, the Epicureans had not the slightest
suspicion. And wherever they or their master have, in other
respects, made some approach to the truths of modern science, it
may fairly be explained on their own principle as a single lucky guess
out of many false guesses.
The modern doctrine of evolution, while relying largely on the
fertility of multiplied chances, is not obliged to assume such an
enormous number of simultaneous coincidences as Epicurus. The
ascription of certain definite attractions and repulsions to the
ultimate particles of matter would alone restrict their possible modes
of aggregation within comparatively narrow limits. Then, again, the
world seems to have been built up by successive stages, at each of
which some new force or combination of forces came into play, a
firm basis having been already secured for whatever variations they
were capable of producing. Thus the solar system is a state of
equilibrium resulting from the action of two very simple forces,
gravitation and heat. On the surface of the earth, cohesion and
chemical affinity have been superadded. When a fresh equilibrium
had resulted from their joint energy, the more complex conditions of
life found free scope for their exercise. The transformations of living
species were similarly effected by variation on variation. And, finally,
in one species, the satisfaction of its animal wants set free those
more refined impulses by which, after many experiments, civilisation
has been built up. Obviously the total sum of adaptations necessary
to constitute our actual world will have the probabilities of its
occurrence enormously increased if we suppose the more general
conditions to be established prior to, and in complete independence
of, the less general, instead of limiting ourselves, like the ancient
atomists, to one vast simultaneous shuffle of all the material and
dynamical elements involved.
Returning to Epicurus, we have next to consider how he obtained
the 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
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