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 humau 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. 



