PROFESSOR TYNDALVS ADDRESS. 655 



Epicurus,* said to be the son of a poor school-master at Samos, is 

 the next dominant figure in the history of the!*atomic philosophy. He 

 mastered the writings of Democritus, heard lectures in Athens, re- 

 turned to Samos, and subsequently wandered through various coun- 

 tries. He finally returned to Athens, where he bought a garden, and 

 surrounded himself by pupils, in the midst of whom he lived a pure 

 and serene life, and died a peaceful death. His philosophy was almost 

 identical with that of Democritus ; but he never quoted either friend 

 or foe. One main object of Epicurus was to free the world from su- 

 perstition and the fear of death. Death he treated with indifference. 

 It merely robs us of sensation. As long as we are, death is not ; and 

 when death is, we are not. Life has no more evil for him who has 

 made up his mind that it is no evil not to live. He adored the gods, 

 but not in the ordinary fashion. The idea of divine power, properly 

 purified, he thought an elevating one. Still he taught, " Not he is 

 godless who rejects the gods of the crowd, but rather he who accepts 

 them." The gods were to him eternal and immortal beings, whose 

 .blessedness excluded every thought of care or occupation of any kind. 

 Nature pursues her course in accordance with everlasting laws, the 

 gods never interfering. They haunt 



" The lucid interspace of world and world 

 Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind, 

 Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 

 Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 

 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 

 Their sacred everlasting calm." "^ 



Lange considers the relation of Epicurus to the gods subjective ; 

 the indication probably of an ethical requirement of his own nature. 

 We cannot read history with open eyes, or study human nature to its 

 depths, and fail to discern such a requirement. Man never has been, 

 and he never will be satisfied with the operations and 2:)roducts of the 

 understanding alone ; hence physical science cannot cover all the de- 

 mands of his nature. But the history of the efibrts made to satisfy 

 these demands might be broadly described as a history of errors — the 

 error consisting in ascribing fixity to that which is fluent, which varies 

 as we vary, being gross when we are gross, and becoming, as our ca- 

 pacities widen, more abstract and sublime. On one great point the 

 mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither sought nor expected, here 

 or hereafter, any personal profit from his relation to the gods. And 

 it is assuredly a fact that loftiness and serenity of thought may be 

 promoted by conceptions which involve no idea of profit of this kind. 

 " Did I not believe," said a great man to me once, " that an Intelli- 

 gence is at the heart of things, my life on earth would be intolerable." 

 The utterer of these words is not, in my opinion, rendered less noble 

 but more noble, by the fact that it was the need of ethical harmony 

 ^ Bom 342 B. c. ^ Tennyson's " Lucretius." 



