296 on Epicurus. Oct. 23. 
adopt the superstition of India and Egypt, which 
had gradually become so popular in Greece, I en- 
tered as it were into the recefses of my own unso- 
phisticated understanding, and applied the rules of 
common reason and sense to the pedantry of the . 
schools and the snpetstition of the people. 
When I taught tnat superstition had its origin in 
fear, I taught nothing that has not been evinced by 
the everlasting experience of mankind. When I re- 
ee the universe as infinite and eternal, I fhow- 
ed it in no other light than it must be Jooked upon 
for ever by those who consider the infinite power 
and duration of the spirit by which it is animated 
and directed. If I held the tendency of matter to be e- 
qual in all directions, and finally convergent no where, 
I taught only what must necefsarily follow from 
the infinity of worlds. If that nothing im the uni- 
verse was quiescent, on similar principles founded 
on the infinite activity of the spirit wherewith 
matter is universally pervaded and actuated. When I 
sportively yielded to the doctrines of Moschus, of 
Leucippus, and Democritus, that all nature was ina 
constant state of deperition and renovation, but final- 
ly inexterminable in its principles, I taught that 
which seemed at the same time to be most conforms 
able to wisdom and the eternal spirit of the uni- 
verse. . 
I did not consider the world and worlds as mae 
chines that required to be mended and renewed in 
their primary, or inferior and secondary movements, 
but 4s an infinite whole without error, emanating 
and acting uniformly from and with and around qn 
