V.

EPIKURUS

Our information from Epikurean writers respecting the doctrines of their sect is much less copious than that which we possess from Stoic writers in regard to Stoic opinions. We have no Epikurean writer on philosophy except Lucretius; whereas respecting the Stoical creed under the Roman Empire, the important writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Antoninus, afford most valuable evidence.

The standard of Virtue and Vice is referred by Epikurus to Pleasure and Pain. Pain is the only evil, Pleasure is the only good. Virtue is no end in itself, to be sought; vice is no end in itself, to be avoided. The motive for cultivating virtue and banishing vice arises from the consequences of each, as the means of multiplying pleasures and averting or lessening pains. But to the attainment of this purpose, the complete supremacy of Reason is indispensable; in order that we may take a right comparative measure of the varieties of pleasure and pain, and pursue the course that promises the least amount of suffering.

This theory (taken in its most general sense, and apart from differences in the estimation of particular pleasures and pains), had been proclaimed long before the time of Epikurus. It is one of the various theories of Plato; for in his dialogue called Protagoras (though in other dialogues he reasons differently) we find it explicitly set forth and elaborately vindicated by his principal spokesman, Sokrates, against the Sophist Protagoras. It was also held by Aristippus (companion of Sokrates along with Plato) and by his followers after him, called the Kyrenaics. Lastly, it was maintained by Eudoxus, one of the most estimable philosophers contemporary with Aristotle. Epikurus was thus in no way the originator of the theory; but he had his own way of conceiving it, his own body of doctrine physical, cosmological, and theological, with which it was implicated, and his own comparative valuation of pleasures and pains.

Bodily feeling, in the Epikurean psychology, is prior in order of time to the mental element; the former is primordial, while the latter is derived from it by repeated processes of memory and association. But, though such is the order of sequence and generation, yet when we compare the two as constituents of happiness to the formed man, the mental element much outweighs the bodily, both as pain and as pleasure. Bodily pain or pleasure exists only in the present; when not felt, it is nothing. But mental feelings involve memory and hope, embrace the past as well as the future, endure for a long time, and may be recalled or put out of sight, to a great degree, at our discretion.

This last point is one of the most remarkable features of the Epikurean mental discipline. Epikurus deprecated the general habit of mankind in always hankering after some new satisfaction to come; always discontented with the present, and oblivious of past comforts as if they had never been. These past comforts ought to be treasured up by memory and reflection, so that they might become as it were matter for rumination, and might serve, in trying moments, even to counterbalance extreme physical suffering. The health of Epikurus himself was very bad during the closing years of his life. There remains a fragment of his last letter, to an intimate friend and companion, Idomeneus:— “I write this to you on the last day of my life, which, in spite of the severest internal bodily pains, is still a happy day, because I set against them in the balance all the mental pleasure felt in the recollection of my past conversations with you. Take care of the children left by Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of your demeanour from boyhood towards me and towards philosophy.” Bodily pain might thus be alleviated, when it occurred; it might be greatly lessened in occurrence, by prudent and moderate habits; lastly, even at the worst, if violent, it never lasted long; if not violent, it might be patiently borne, and was at any rate terminated, or terminable at pleasure, by death.

In the view of Epikurus, the chief miseries of life arose, not from bodily pains, but partly from delusions of hope and exaggerated aspirations for wealth, honours, power, &c., in all which the objects appeared most seductive from a 655distance, inciting man to lawless violence and treachery, while in the reality they were always disappointments and generally something worse; partly, and still more, from the delusions of fear. Of this last sort, were the two greatest torments of human existence — fear of Death and of eternal suffering after death, as announced by prophets and poets, and fear of the Gods. Epikurus, who did not believe in the continued existence of the soul separate from the body, declared that there could never be any rational ground for fearing death, since it was simply a permanent extinction of consciousness. Death was nothing to us (he said): when death comes, we are no more, either to suffer or to enjoy. Yet it was the groundless fear of this nothing that poisoned all the tranquillity of life, and held men imprisoned even when existence was a torment. Whoever had surmounted that fear was armed at once against cruel tyranny and against all the gravest misfortunes. Next, the fear of the gods was not less delusive, and hardly less tormenting, than the fear of death. It was a capital error (Epikurus declared) to suppose that the gods employed themselves as agents in working or superintending the march of the Kosmos; or in conferring favour on some men, and administering chastisement to others. The vulgar religious tales, which represented them in this character, were untrue and insulting as regards the gods themselves, and pregnant with perversion and misery as regards the hopes and fears of mankind. Epikurus believed sincerely in the gods; reverenced them as beings at once perfectly happy, immortal, and unchangeable; and took delight in the public religious festivals and ceremonies. But it was inconsistent with these attributes, and repulsive to his feelings of reverence, to conceive them as agents. The idea of agency is derived from human experience: we, as agents, act with a view to supply some want, to fulfil some obligation, to acquire some pleasure, to accomplish some object desired but not yet attained — in short, to fill up one or other of the many gaps in our imperfect happiness: the gods already have all that agents strive to get, and more than agents ever do get; their condition is one not of agency, but of tranquil, self-sustaining, fruition. Accordingly, Epikurus thought (as Aristotle1 had thought before him) that the perfect, eternal, and imperturbable well-being and felicity of the gods excluded the supposition of their being agents. He looked upon them as types of that unmolested safety and unalloyed satisfaction which was what he understood by pleasure or happiness, as objects of reverential envy, whose sympathy he was likely to obtain by assimilating his own temper and condition to theirs as far as human circumstances allowed.

These theological views were placed by Epikurus in the foreground of his ethical philosophy, as the only means of dispelling those fears of the gods that the current fables instilled into every one, and that did so much to destroy human comfort and security. He proclaimed that beings in immortal felicity neither suffered vexation in themselves nor caused vexation to others; neither showed anger nor favour to particular persons. The doctrine that they were the working managers in the affairs of the Kosmos, celestial and terrestrial, human and extra-human, he not only repudiated as incompatible with their attributes, but declared to be impious, considering the disorder, sufferings, and violence, everywhere visible. He disallowed all prophecy, divination, and oracular inspiration, by which the public around him believed that the gods were perpetually communicating special revelations to individuals, and for which Sokrates had felt so peculiarly thankful.

It is remarkable that Stoics and Epikureans, in spite of their marked opposition in dogma or theory, agreed so far in practical results, that both declared these two modes of uneasiness (fear of the gods and fear of death) to be the great torments of human existence, and both strove to remove or counterbalance them.

So far the teaching of Epikurus appears confined to the separate happiness of each individual, as dependent upon his own prudence, sobriety, and correct views of Nature. But this is not the whole of the Epikurean Ethics. The system also considered each man as in companionship with others: the precepts were shaped accordingly, first as to Justice, next as to Friendship. In both, these, the foundation whereon Epikurus built was Reciprocity — not pure sacrifice to others, but partnership with others, beneficial to all. He kept the ideas of self and of others inseparably knit together in one complex 656association: he did not expel or degrade either, in order to give exclusive ascendancy to the other. The dictate of Natural Justice was, that no man should hurt another: each was bound to abstain from doing harm to others; each, on this condition, was entitled to count on security and relief from the fear that others would do harm to him. Such double aspect, or reciprocity, was essential to social companionship: those that could not, or would not, accept this covenant, were unfit for society. If a man does not behave justly towards others, he cannot expect that they will behave justly towards him; to live a life of injustice, and expect that others will not find it out, is idle. The unjust man cannot enjoy a moment of security. Epikurus laid it down explicitly, that just and righteous dealing was the indispensable condition to every one’s comfort, and was the best means of attaining it.

The reciprocity of Justice was valid towards all the world; the reciprocity of Friendship went much farther: it involved indefinite and active beneficence, but could reach only to a select few. Epikurus insisted emphatically on the value of friendship, as a means of happiness to both the persons so united. He declared that a good friend was another self, and that friends ought to be prepared, in case of need, to die for each other. Yet he declined to recommend an established community of goods among the members of his fraternity, as prevailed in the Pythagorean brotherhood: for such an institution (he said) implied mistrust. He recommended efforts to please and to serve, and a forwardness to give, for the purpose of gaining and benefiting a friend, and he even declared that there was more pleasure in conferring favours than in receiving them; but he was no less strenuous in inculcating an intelligent gratitude on the receiver. No one except a wise man (he said) knew how to return a favour properly.2

These exhortations to active friendship were not unfruitful. We know, even by the admission of witnesses adverse to the Epikurean doctrines, that the harmony among the members of the sect, with common veneration for the founder, was more marked and more enduring than that exhibited by any of the other philosophical sects. Epikurus himself was a man of amiable personal qualities: his testament, still remaining, shows an affectionate regard both for his surviving friends, and for the permanent attachment of each to the others as well as of all to the school. Diogenes Laertius tells us — nearly 200 years after Christ, and 450 years after the death of Epikurus — that the Epikurean sect still continued its numbers and dignity, having outlasted its contemporaries and rivals. The harmony among the Epikureans may be explained, not merely from the temper of the master, but partly from the doctrines and plan of life that he recommended. Ambition and love of power were discouraged; rivalry among the members for success, either political or rhetorical, was at any rate a rare exception; all were taught to confine themselves to that privacy of life and love of philosophical communion which alike required and nourished the mutual sympathies of the brotherhood. In regard to politics, Epikurus advised quiet submission to established authority, without active meddling beyond what necessity required.

Virtue and happiness, in the theory of Epikurus, were inseparable. A man could not be happy until he had surmounted the fear of death and the fear of gods instilled by the current fables, which disturbed all tranquillity of mind; until he had banished those factitious desires that pushed him into contention for wealth, power, or celebrity; nor unless he behaved with justice to all, and with active devoted friendship towards a few. Such a mental condition, which he thought it was in every man’s power to acquire by appropriate teaching and companionship, constituted virtue; and was the sure as well as the only precursor of genuine happiness. A mind thus undisturbed and purified was sufficient to itself. The mere satisfaction of the wants of life, and the conversation of friends, became then felt pleasures: if more could be had without preponderant mischief, so much the better; but Nature, disburthened of her corruptions and prejudices, required no more to be happy. This at least was as much as the conditions of humanity admitted: a tranquil, undisturbed, innocuous, non-competitive fruition, which approached most nearly to the perfect happiness of the Gods.

When we read the explanations given by Epikurus and Lucretius of what the Epikurean theory really was, and compare them with the numerous attacks upon it made by opponents, we cannot but remark that the title and formula of the theory was ill-chosen, and really a misnomer. What Epikurus meant by Pleasure was not what most people meant by it, but something very different — a tranquil and comfortable state of mind and body; much the same as what Demokritus had expressed before him by the phrase εὐθυμία. This last phrase would have expressed what Epikurus 657aimed at, neither more nor less. It would at least have preserved his theory from much misplaced sarcasm and aggressive rhetoric.

The Physics of Epikurus was borrowed in the main from the atomic theory of Demokritus, but modified by him in a manner subservient and contributory to his ethical scheme. To that scheme it was essential that those celestial, atmospheric, or terrestrial phenomena which the public around him ascribed to agency and purposes of the gods, should be understood as being produced by physical causes. An eclipse, an earthquake, a storm, a shipwreck, unusual rain or drought, a good or a bad harvest — and not merely these, but many other occurrences far smaller and more unimportant, as we may see by the eighteenth chapter of the ‘Characters’ of Theophrastus — were then regarded as visitations of the gods, requiring to be interpreted by recognized prophets, and to be appeased by ceremonial expiations. When once a man became convinced that all these phenomena proceeded from physical agencies, a host of terrors and anxieties would disappear from the mind; and this Epikurus asserted to be the beneficent effect and real recommendation of physical philosophy. He took little or no thought for scientific curiosity as a motive per se, which both Demokritus and Aristotle put so much in the foreground.

He composed a treatise called ‘Kanonicon’ (now lost), which seems to have been a sort of Logic of Physics — a summary of the principles of evidence. In his system, Psychology was to a great extent a branch — though a peculiar and distinct branch — of Physics, since the soul was regarded as a subtle but energetic material compound (air, vapour, heat, and another nameless ingredient), with its best parts concentrated in the chest, yet pervading and sustaining the whole body — still, however, depending for its support on the body, and incapable of separate or disembodied continuance.

Epikurus recognized, as the primordial basis of the universe, Atoms, Vacuum, and Motion. The atoms were material solid minima, each too small to be apprehended separately by sense; they had figure, magnitude, and gravity, but no other qualities. They were infinite in number, and ever moving in an infinite vacuum. Their motions brought them into various coalitions and compounds, resulting in the perceptible bodies of nature; each of which in its combined state acquired new, specific, different qualities. In regard to the primordial movements of the atoms, out of which these endowed compounds grew, Epikurus differed from Demokritus who supposed the atoms originally to move with an indefinite variety of directions and velocities, rotatory as well as rectilineal; whereas Epikurus maintained that the only original movement common to all atoms was one and the same — in the direction of gravity straight down, and all with equal velocity in the infinite void. But it occurred to him that, upon this hypothesis only, there could never occur any collisions or combinations of the atoms — nothing but continued and unchangeable parallel lines. Accordingly he modified it by saying that the line of descent was not strictly rectilinear, but that each atom deflected a little from the straight line, each in its own direction and degree; so that it became possible to assume collisions, resiliences, adhesions, combinations, among them, as it had been possible under the variety of original movements ascribed to them by Demokritus. The opponents of Epikurus derided this auxiliary hypothesis, affirming that he invented the individual deflection of each atom without assigning any cause, and only because he was perplexed by the mystery of man’s freewill. But Epikurus was not more open to attack on this ground than other physical philosophers. Most of them (except perhaps the most consistent of the Stoic fatalists) believed that some among the phenomena of the universe occurred in regular and predictable sequence, while others were essentially irregular and unpredictable: each philosopher devised his hypothesis, and recognized some fundamental principle, to explain the latter class of phenomena as well as the former; thus, Plato admitted an invincible erratic necessity, Aristotle introduced Chance and Spontaneity, Demokritus multiplied indefinitely the varieties of atomic movements. The hypothetical deflection alleged by Epikurus was his way, not more unwarranted than the others, of providing a fundamental principle for the unpredictable phenomena of the universe. Among these are the volitional manifestations of men and animals; but there are many others besides, and there is no ground for believing that what is called the mystery of Free-Will (i. e., the question whether volition is governed by motives, acting upon a given state of the mind and body) was at all peculiarly present to his mind. Whatever theory may be adopted on this point, it is certain that the movements of an individual man or animal are not exclusively determined by the general law of gravitation, or by another cause extrinsic to himself; but 658to a great degree by his own separate volition, which is often imperfectly knowable beforehand and therefore not predictable. For these and many other phenomena, Epikurus provided a fundamental principle in his supplementary hypothesis of atomic deflection; and indeed not for these only, but also for the questions of opponents, how there could ever be any coalition between the atoms, if all followed only one single law of movement — rectilineal descent with equal velocity. Epikurus rejected the inexorable and all-comprehensive fatalism contained in the theories of some Stoics, though seemingly not construed in its full application even by them. He admitted a limited range of empire to Chance, or phenomena essentially irregular. But he maintained that the will, far from being among the phenomena essentially irregular, is under the influence of motives; for no man can insist more strenuously than he does (see the letter to Menœkeus) on the complete power of philosophy — if the student could be made to feel its necessity and desire the attainment of it, so as to meditate and engrain within himself sound views about the gods, death, and human life generally — to mould our volitions and character in a manner conformable to the exigencies of virtue and happiness.

All true belief, according to Epikurus, rested ultimately upon the impressions of sense, upon our internal feelings, and upon our correct apprehension of the meaning of terms. He did not suppose the significance of language to come by convention, but to be an inspiration of Nature, different among different people. The facts of sense were in themselves beyond all question. But truth, though founded upon these evidences, included various inferences, more than sense could directly testify. Even the two capital points of the Epikurean physical philosophy — Atoms and Void — were inferences from sense, and not capable of direct attestation. It was in these inferences, and in the superstructure built upon sense, that error was so frequently imposed upon us. We ought to test all affirmations or dogmas by the evidence of sensible phenomena; looking therein, if possible, for some positive grounds in support of them, but at any rate assuring ourselves that there were no grounds in contradiction of them, or, if there were such, rejecting the dogmas at once. Out of the particular impressions of sense, when often repeated, remembered, and compared, there grew certain general notions or anticipations (προλήψεις), which were applied to interpret or illustrate any new case when it arose. These general notions were not inborn or intuitive, but gradually formed (as Aristotle and the Stoics also conceived them) out of frequent remembrances and association.

Besides those conclusions which could be fully proved by the evidentiary data just enumerated, Epikurus recognized admissible hypotheses, which awaited farther evidence confirmative or refutative (τὸ πρόσμενον), and also other matters occult or as yet unexplained (τὰ ἄδηλα). Along with the intermediate or half-explained class, he reckoned those in which plurality of causes was to be invoked. A given effect might result from any one out of two, three, or more different causes, and there was often no counter-evidence of sense to exclude either of them in any particular case. This plural explanation (τὸ πλεοναχῶς) was not so complete or satisfactory as the singular (τὸ μοναχῶς); but it was often the best that we could obtain, and was quite sufficient, by showing a possible physical agency, to rescue the mind from those terrors of ignorance, which drove men to imagine visitations of the gods.

Epikurus agreed with Demokritus in believing that external objects produced their impressions on our senses by projecting thin images, outlines of their own shapes. He thought that the air was peopled with such images, which passed through it and still more through the infinite vacuum beyond it with prodigious velocity. Many of them became commingled, dissipated, recombined, during the transit, so that, when they reached us, the impressions produced were not conformable to any real object; hence the phenomena of dreams, madness, and the various delusions of waking men.

In setting forth the criterion of truth, Epikurus insisted chiefly upon the fundamental groundwork — particular facts of sense, as the data for proving or disproving general affirmations; and he had the merit of calling attention to refutative data as well as to probative. But, respecting the process of passing from these particulars to true generalities and avoiding the untrue, we can make out no clear idea from his writings that remain: his great work on Physical Philosophy is lost. It is certain that he disregarded the logical part of the process — the systematic study of propositions, and their relations of consistency with one another — which had made so prodigious a stride during his early years under Aristotle and Theophrastus. We can, indeed, detect in his remaining sentences one or two of those terms which Aristotle had stamped as technical in Logic; but he discouraged as useless all the verbal teaching and discussion of his day — all grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, beyond the lowest minimum. He disapproved of the poets as promulgators of mischievous fables and prejudices, the rhetoricians as furnishing weapons for the misleading career of political ambition, the dialecticians as wasting their time in useless puzzles. None of them were serviceable in promoting either the tranquillity of the mind, or the happiness of life, or the acquisition of truth. He himself composed a great number of treatises and epistles, on subjects of ethics and philosophy; but he is said to have written in haste, without taking time or trouble to correct his compositions. By the Alexandrine critic, Aristophanes of Byzantium, his style was censured as unpolished; yet it is declared to have been simple, unaffected, and easily understood. This last predicate is hardly applicable to the three epistles which alone remain from his pen; but those epistles are intended as brief abstracts of doctrine, on topics which he had already treated at length in formal works; and it is not easy to combine clearness with brevity.

[END OF APPENDIX V]

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