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Updated: May 1, 2025
Plato and the Stoics, with their Soul of the world and their pervading Providence, are entirely wrong; the disciples of Epicurus alone are right. There are gods; that much, the universal belief of mankind in all ages sufficiently establishes.
By a thousand phenomena they force themselves into the world which surrounds us and our emotional life. Epicurus, who denied their power, saw in them at least immortal beings who possess in stainless perfection everything which in mortals is disfigured by errors, weaknesses, and afflictions.
Pleasures of the body, I imagine, or such as are recollected or imagined on account of the body. Is this all? Do I explain your opinion rightly? for your disciples are used to deny that we understand at all what Epicurus means.
From these, if from no other source, we may learn the secret of a happy life. But first we must settle what this 'chief good' is this end and object of our efforts and not be carried to and fro, like ships without a steersman, by every blast of doctrine. Epicurus's school were known as the philosophers of 'the Garden', from the place where he taught. If Epicurus was wrong in placing Happiness
Ah! could he but do so, and bring with him too the rival of old Epicurus, what would the latter say as to the examples I have narrated? He would say only what I have already said, namely, that in the lower animals natural instinct is sufficient to explain all the wonders I have told: that memory leads the animal to repeat over and over again the actions it has made before and found successful.
The strong wind filled every sail, rowing would have been useless labour, and the light in front seemed to be coming nearer. A wan glimmer was already beginning to brighten the distant east when the Epicurus approached the vessel with the light, but it seemed to wish to avoid the Alexandrian, and turned suddenly towards the northeast.
First of all Thales thought that water was the primordial substance of all things. Democritus and his follower Epicurus thought that it was the atoms, termed by our writers "bodies that cannot be cut up," or, by some, "indivisibles." The school of the Pythagoreans added air and the earthy to the water and fire.
And these are his exact words, so that any one may understand what were the pleasures with which Epicurus was acquainted. Then he speaks thus, a little lower down: "I have often inquired of those who have been called wise men what would be the remaining good if they should exclude from consideration all these pleasures, unless they meant to give us nothing but words.
Between the presses, on pedestals of dark green serpentine, ranged busts of the Greek philosophers: Zeno with his brows knitted, Epicurus bland, Aratus gazing upward, Heraclitus in tears, Democritus laughing. These were attributed to ancient artists, and by all who still cared for such things were much admired.
He laid down the magazine and thought for a while about these diverse men. In the days of his integrity he would have defended his attitude to the last an Epicurus in Nirvana, he would have cried that to struggle was to believe, to believe was to limit.
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