PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 



49 



footingf we have actually obtained upon many essential points—a footing not 

 to be disturbed by any future change of system, or novelty of discovery — 

 and the ascertainment of a multitude of recondite facts, and their application 

 to some of our most extensive and valuable arts, sufficiently prove that phi- 

 losophy has neither lived nor laboured in vain. Although we have not been 

 able to break through the spell completely — to follow up the Proteus-form of 

 matter into its deepest recesses, and fix it in its last shape and character — 

 we have succeeded in developing many of its most important laws, as it will 

 be the object of the ensuing lecture to point out, and to apply them to a solu- 

 tion of many of its most important phenomena. Whatever is sure and 

 trusty has remained to us, and whatever has given way has been mere chi- 

 mera and shadow : we have chiefly, perhaps only, failed where we have 

 either been too curious, or have suffered imagination to become our charioteer 

 in the slow and sober journey of analysis. 



Before we quit this subject, let us, in the candid spirit of genuine philoso- 

 phy, do the same justice to Epicurus as we attempted in our last lecture to 

 Pythagoras and Plato. It has been very generally said and very generally 

 believed, principally because it has been very generally said, that the great 

 and mighty cause of this beautiful and harmonious formation of worlds, and 

 systems of worlds, in the opinion of Epicurus, was mere chance, or fortune. 

 There is nothing, however, in those fragments of his works which have de- 

 scended to us, that can in any way countenance so opprobrious an opinion, but 

 various passages that distinctly controvert it, — passages in which he perempto- 

 rily denies the existence of chance or fortune, either as a deity or a cause of 

 action ; and unequivocally refers the whole of those complex series of percus- 

 sions and repercussions, interchanges and combinations, exhibited by the ele- 

 mentary seeds or atoms of matter during the creative process, to a chain of immu- 

 table laws which they received from the Almighty Architect at the beginning, 

 and which they still punctually obey, and will for ever obey, till the universe 

 shall at length cease to exist.* " Wliom," says Epicurus, in a letter to his dis- 

 ciple Menaeceus, that has yet survived the preying tooth of time, and will be 

 found in Diogenes Laertius, " do you believe to be more excellent than he who 

 piously reveres the gods, who feels no dread of death, and rightly estimates 

 the design of nature? Such a man does not, with the multitude, regard 

 CHANCE as a god, for he knows that God can never act at random; nor as a 

 CONTINGENT CAUSE OF EVENTS ; uor docs hc couceivc, that from any such 

 power flows the good or the evil that measures the real happiness of human 

 life." He held, however, that the laws which govern the universe were alto- 

 gether arranged and imposed upon it by the Creator at its first formation, and 

 that the successive train of events to which they have given rise, have fol- 

 lowed as the necessary result of such an arrangement, and not as the imme- 

 diate superintendence of a perpetually controlling Providence. For it was 

 the opinion of Epicurus, as well as of Aristotle, that perfect rest and tran- 

 quillity are essential to the perfect happiness even of Him, who, to adopt his 

 own language in another place, possesses all immortality and beatitude. 

 " Think not," says he, " that the different motions and revolutions of the 

 heavens, the rising, setting, eclipses, and other phenomena of the planets, 

 are produced by the immediate control, superintendence, or ministration of 

 Him who possesses all immortality and beatitude ; it is from the immutable 

 laws which they received at the beginning, in the creation of the universe, 

 that they punctually fulfil their several circuits." 



The origin of this calumny upon the character of Epicurus it is by no 

 means difficult to trace, and it has been sufficiently traced, and sufficiently 

 exposed, by Diogenes Laertius, Gassendi, Du Rondelle, and other distin- 

 guished writers, who have done ample justice to his memory; and upon the 

 confessions of Plutarch, Cicero, and Seneca, abundantly proved, that it was 

 the same rancorous spirit of envy among many of his competitors for public 

 fame, and especially among the Stoic philosophers, which strove to fix upon 



* For a more extensive inquiry into this subject, tlie reader is referred to the autlior's Prolegomeiia tP 

 his translation of " Tlie Nature of Things," from which thw tiuuimary is drawn. 



