190 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



The 



subjective 

 use of 

 science 

 the chief. 



The chief 

 destroyers 

 of human 

 happiness. 



Them [men] long the tyrant power 

 Of SUPERSTITION swayed, uplifting proud 

 Her head to heaven, and with horrific limbs 

 Brooding o'er earth ; till he, the man of Greece, 

 Auspicious rose, who first the combat dared, 

 And broke in twain the monster's iron rod. 

 * * * * And, hence, we, 

 Triumphant too, o'er Superstition rise, 

 Contemn her terrors, and unfold the heavens. 1 



He even goes so far as to profess his belief that, for delivering 

 mankind from these and other disturbers of the soul, Epicurus has 

 done more for their happiness, and is better entitled to divine honours 

 at their hands, than Ceres and Bacchus who gave them corn and wine, 

 or Hercules who delivered them from so many monsters. 2 



The use of physical theories, then, according to Epicurus, is sub- 

 jective and not objective ; and unless we advert to this at every step, 

 not only will most of his reasonings and opinions appear trifling and 

 ridiculous, but he will often seem to speak nonsense as his com- 

 mentators and translators not seldom make him to do. If we look 

 at his explanations of phenomena from his own point of view, we 

 shall be able to discern " a method in the madness " of even the 

 wildest of them. 



That we are not misrepresenting the view with which Epicurus 

 philosophised, the following passages from his letters will prove : 



" You are striving, you say in your letter, to store up in your 

 memory those opinions and speculations that tend to a happy life. 



" In seeking a knowledge, then, of the phenomena of the heavens 

 and. it is the same with every other science we are to propose no 

 other end than freedom from perturbation of mind and firmness of 

 belief. 



** The leading disturber of men's souls and destroyer of their 

 happiness is the belief that the stars are happy and immortal beings, 

 with whose wills the w r ills and actions of men may not be in accord- 

 ance ; they also torment themselves with looking forward to fabulous 

 eternal evils, and suffer by anticipation the insensibility of death. * ' 

 Tranquillity of mind consists in being delivered from all such myths, 

 and in knowing and remembering the general laws of the world. 



" If no anxious suspicions about the heavenly bodies, or about 

 death troubled us, and if the limits and mode of regulation of the 



1 Good's Translation of Lucretius, i. 62 : 



Humana ante oculos fsede cum vita jaceret 

 In terris oppressa gravi sub religione, 

 Quae caput a cseli regionibus ostendebat 

 Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, 

 Primum Graius homo mortalis tendere contra 

 Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra. 



* # * * * 



Quare religio pedibus subjecta vicissim 

 Opteritur, nos exaequat victoria coelo. 



2 Lucr. v. 14. 



