448 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
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 require- 
ment 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 physical 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 be- 
coming, 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 
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 f 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 ethical harmony 
here, and not the thought of personal happiness hereafter, 
that prompted his observation. 
There are persons, not belonging to the highest intellec- 
tual zone, nor yet to the lowest, to whom perfect clearness 
of exposition suggests want of depth. They find comfort 
and edification in an abstract and learned" phraseology. 
To such people Epicurus, who spared no pains to rid his 
style of every trace of haze and turbidity, appeared, on 
this very account, superficial He had, however, a disciple 
who thought it no unworthy occupation to spend his days 
and nights in the effort to reach the clearness of his master, 
and to whom the Greek philosopher is mainly indebted for 
* Tennyson's "Lucretius." fCarlyle. 
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