EPICURUS. 199 



way for his moral teaching : they furnish the negative conditions of 

 happiness, by enabling him to allay all vain terrors and perturbations. 

 The chief source of those terrors is the belief in supernatural agents. 

 Epicuras's cosmogony and natural philosophy enable him to dispense 

 with all such agency in the physical world as unnecessary ; and he 

 considers this as the starting point in proceeding to lay down the rules 

 of life. 



Epicurus does not deny that there are gods. The fact that we have The gods, 

 a notion of such beings proves to him their existence. He believes l^exS 1 

 that the visions of sleep have real objects corresponding to them, being 

 produced by images of those objects floating about in the air. In a 

 similar way we come by our ideas of the gods. Images or emanations 

 thrown off from them flow in upon us, accompanied with the most 

 pleasurable feelings, and thus give us a conception of what a perfectly 

 happy and incorruptible being is. 1 The perfect happiness and un- Their perfect 

 changeableness of the gods he assumes as an indisputable fact, and JjJJ^J[J^ 

 makes it the foundation of his reasoning respecting them. Hence his ruptibiiity. 

 famous maxim : " A happy and imperishable being neither has trouble 

 itself, nor causes trouble to any other being." He had in his physics 

 obviated the necessity of employing the gods in creating or moving 

 the machinery of the world, and he now deprecates the very thought 

 as impious. 



" First of all, believe that God is a being imperishable and happy, Their 

 as the common conception of God dictates ; and attach to that con- JlSi f n? 

 ception nothing incompatible with incorruptibility and happiness. * * ail emotion. 

 Beware of attributing the revolutions of the heaven, and eclipses, and 

 the rising and setting of stars, either to the original contrivance or 

 continued regulation of such a being. For business, and cares, and 

 anger, and benevolence, are not accordant with happiness, but arise 

 from weakness, and fear, and dependence upon others. Nor must we 

 imagine that these fiery globes are themselves happy beings, moving 

 by their own volition. But we must observe reverence in all that we 

 utter on such subjects. 



" There are gods ; for our knowledge of them is direct and certain. Popular 

 But they are not in all respects as the multitude think of them; for of^he^ods 

 most of the actions and functions commonly attributed to the gods, impious, 

 violate the fundamental notion of these happy existences. So that 

 the impious man is not he that denies the gods of the multitude, but 



1 Epicurus has been less explicit upon this point in his letters than we could have 

 wished. The above account of his theory is derived from Cicero's report of it (De 

 Nat. Deo. i. 19). " Epicurus autem, qui res occultas et penitus abditas non modo 

 viderit animo, sed etiam sic tractet, ut manu nos ducat, docet eum esse vim ot 

 naturam deorum, ut primum uon sensu. sed mente cernatur, nee soliditate quadam, 

 nee ad numerum ; ut ea, quae ille propter firmitatem (rrepe^j/to appellat, sed ima- 

 ginibus similitudine et transitione perceptis : deinde cum infinita simillimarum 

 imaginum species ex innumerabilibus individuis exsistat et ad nos affluat cum 

 maximis voluptatibus, in eas imagines mentem intentam infixamque nostram intelli- 

 gentiam capere, quse sit et beata natura et aeterna." 



