CLASSICAL NOTES. 



23 



expressly denied by Epicurus, or, to speak more correctly, limited : 

 there are certain bounds beyond which no created thing can pass, but 

 within these bounds it possesses a modified freedom and moves in 

 this direction or in that, developes or degenerates. In the same spirit 

 Mr. Benn* represents the Lucretian system as grasping only the 

 negative side of natural law : Lucretius recognizes " the limiting 

 possibilities of existence " rather than an omnipresent and unbending 

 law : nature possesses only a right of veto, and is no longer the 

 potter moulding passive clay. 



Against all this Mr. Masson argues at length ; he conceives the 

 free-will of the Lucretian atoms to cease altogether in the world of 

 inanimate nature, and also apparently in the brute creation : only in 

 man is this free-will still operative. And Mr. Masson gives reasons 

 why this conception is natural and easy : 



(a) The free wills of the different atoms of matter, he says, would 



counteract each other. 

 (6) The force of gravity from within resists change. 



(c) The pressure from without has the same effect. 



(d) The atoms forming gross matter are in themselves heavier and 



slower of movement than others, and the gross matter they 

 form is therefore of the same character. 



(e) Finally M. Guyau's theory proves too much : it changes Epi- 



curus into a Greek Hans Andersen, in whose creations the 

 impulse of animism is supreme, and sticks and stones are 

 conscious beings. 



It is difficult to reconcile these arguments of Mr. Masson with 

 other parts of his own book, with his quotations from M. Guyau, 

 and with Lucretius. 



Thus his first argument (a) is forcible enough, but it applies 

 equally strongly to the Lucretian conception of free-will in man ; 

 and is no proof, thei'efore, that Lucretius denied free-will to nature. 

 The difficulty seems to be analogous to that presented by the sense 

 of personality : out of the various instincts derived from our com- 

 mon human nature and from our special parents rises yet a sense of 

 a single personality. 



(b) This is true, though in a less degree, of man also ; and it 



*The Greek Philosophers, by Alfred William Benn.— London ; Kegan Paul, 1S!82. 



