were agreed that these parts of Philosophy were only useful in so far as they enabled mankind to lead a virtuous life; a life in harmony with nature and its laws; a life which placed them above the domination of "Fear and hope and phantasy and awe, And wistful yearning and unsated loves, That strain beyond the limits of this life."[1] The Epicureans repudiated Dialectic,[2] and, as already stated, studied Physics with a view only to freeing the mind of man from those supernatural fears which hampered him in his attainment of terrestrial virtue and happiness:—
"Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia cæcis
In tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus
Interdum nilo quæ sunt metuenda magis quam
Quæ pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura.
Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est
Non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
Discutiant, sed naturæ species ratioque."
Lucretius, whose great poem is devoted to an exposition of the physical side of Epicureanism, i.e. of the Atomic Philosophy of Democritus,[3] is only on the same ground with Epicurus himself when he makes it clear, not merely by the general complexion of his argument, but by a large number of particular passages, and those, too, the most strikingly beautiful in the poem, that the
- ↑ A Voice from the Nile, by James Thomson. An Epicurean would have heartily responded to the verse following those quoted in the text from this fine poem—"And therefore Gods and Demons, Heaven and Hell."
- ↑ Diogenes Laertius (Ritter and Preller, 380. Cf. Cic.: De Finibus, i. 7).
- ↑ Cf. Pseudo-Plutarch: De Placitis Philosophorum. 877 D.
