THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 143 



occupation of any kind. Nature pursues her course 

 in accordance with everlasting laws, the gods never in- 

 terfering. 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. 1 



Lange considers the relation of Epicurus to the gods 

 subjective ; the indication, probably, of an ethical re- 

 quirement 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 products of the Understanding alone ; hence physi- 

 cal science cannot cover all the demands of his nature. 

 But the history of the efforts made to satisfy these 

 demands might be broadly described as a history of 

 errors the error, in great part, consisting in ascribing 

 fixity to that which is fluent, which varies as we vary, 

 being gross when we are gross, and becoming, as our 

 capacities 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 per- 

 sonal 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 2 to me once, ' that an Intelligence 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 but more noble by the fact, that it was the need of 



1 Tennyson's 'Lucretius/ ! Carlyle. 



