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Updated: June 1, 2025
But what if I should advance farther, and assert, that if Epicurus had been accused before the people, by any of the sycophants or informers of those days, he could easily have defended his cause, and proved his principles of philosophy to be as salutary as those of his adversaries, who endeavoured, with such zeal, to expose him to the public hatred and jealousy?
We will not be so illiberal as to say that Art lies only on one side of this line; to do so were to shut out works which have given us exceeding delight; so neither could we exclude Epicurus and his philosophy from the company of doers of good; but the distinction is as inexorable as the line Christ drew between his and those not his; it lies not in the product, which may be mixed good and evil, but in the motive, which is indivisible.
"Your father and brother have doubtless made you familiar with the precepts of the Stoa; yet you have certainly heard that Epicurus spent the latter part of his life with his friends and pupils in quiet meditation and instructive conversation in his garden at Athens. We, too according to Cleopatra's wish were to live thus and call ourselves 'disciples of Epicurus.
Approaching old age, however, he recanted, so he says, being willing to permit nature to gently guide him, and teach him how to die. M. Bernier, the great partisan of Epicurus, avows to-day, that "After philosophizing for fifty years, I doubt things of which I was once most assured."
XLIII. Even that great man Democritus, from whose fountains Epicurus watered his little garden, seems to me to be very inferior to his usual acuteness when speaking about the nature of the Gods.
He likewise used to quote many, which were more gross, from Metrodorus, the sage colleague of Epicurus, who blamed his brother Timocrates because he would not allow that everything which had any reference to a happy life was to be measured by the belly; nor has he said this once only, but often. You grant what I say, I perceive; for you know it to be true.
The system of Epicurus, which converts the universe into a great vortex of atoms and undertakes to explain the origin and end of the world as well as all the problems of nature and of life in a purely mechanical way, was doubtless somewhat less silly than the conversion of myths into history which was attempted by Euhemerus and after him by Ennius; but it was not an ingenious or a fresh system, and the task of poetically unfolding this mechanical view of the world was of such a nature that never probably did poet expend life and art on a more ungrateful theme.
It could not, of course, have any practical aim, but it was justified as an expression of the respect man owed to beings whose existence expressed the human ideal. The reasons why Epicurus assumed this attitude towards popular belief are simple enough. And in the popular ideas of the bliss of the gods he found his ethical ideal directly confirmed.
"You are a little Epicurean," he said at last, "and presently we shall read about Epicurus' great principles and his garden where he taught and lived." John Derringham had been at the orchard house for three or four days before there was any sign of Halcyone. She had kept away on purpose and was doing her best to repress the sense of resentment the thought of the presence of a stranger caused. Mr.
Secondly, there are those needs which, though natural, are not necessary, such as the gratification of certain of the senses. I may add, however, that in the report given by Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus does not mention which of the senses he means; so that on this point my account of his doctrine is somewhat more definite and exact than the original.
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