50 



ON THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, 



him the charge of voluptuous living;, though the most temperate and abstemi- 

 ous Athenian of his day ; that thus, with yet keener malevolence, endeavoured 

 to brand him with the still fouler reproach of the grossest impiety and athe- 

 ism. It is, indeed, scarcely to be believed, if the fact were not concurrently 

 attested by all the writers of antiquity, that the philosopher whose name, 

 from the low and malignant spirit I have just adverted to, has been prover- 

 bialised for general licentiousness and excess, drew the whole of his daily 

 diet from the plainest pottage, intermixed with the herbs and fruits of his 

 pleasant and celebrated garden. " I am perfectly contented," says he, in an 

 epistle to another friend, " with bread and water alone ; but send me a piece 

 of your Cyprian cheese, that I may indulge myself whenever I feel disposed 

 for a luxurious treat." Such, too, was the diet of his disciples. Water, says 

 Diodes, was their common beverage ; and of wine they never allowed them- 

 selves more than a very small cup. And hence, when the city of Athens was 

 besieged by Demetrius, and its inhabitants reduced to the utmost extremity, 

 the scholars of Epicurus bore up under the calamity with less inconvenience 

 than any other class of citizens ; the philosopher supporting them at his own 

 expense, and sharing with them daily a small ration of his beans. The plea- 

 sure of friendship, the pleasure of virtue, the pleasure of tranquillity, the plea- 

 sure of science, the pleasure of gardening, the pleasure of studying the works 

 of nature, and of admiring her in all the picturesque beauty of her evolutions, 

 formed the sole pursuit of his life. This alone, he affirmed, deserves the 

 name of pleasure, and can alone raise the mind above the grovelling and mis- 

 named pleasures of self-indulgence, debauchery, and excess. 



There is something gratifying to an enlarged and liberal spirit in being 

 thus able to rescue from popular, but unfounded obloquy, a sage of trans- 

 cendant genius and almost unrivalled intellect, and in restoring him to the 

 admiration of the virtuous and the excellent. That he did not feel the force of 

 any argument offered by nature in proof of the immortality of the soul, and 

 was in this respect considerably below the standard of Socrates and Cicero, 

 must be equally admitted and lamented ; and should teach us the high value 

 of that full and satisfactory light which was then so much wanted and has 

 since been so gloriously shed upon this momentous subject. But let it at the 

 same time be remembered, that, with a far bolder front than either of the 

 philosophers here adverted to, he dared to expose the grossness and the absur- 

 dities of the popular religion of his day, and in his life and his doctrines gave a 

 perpetual rebuke to vice and immorality of every kind. And hence, indeed, the 

 main ground of the popular calumny with which his character was attacked, 

 and which has too generally accompanied his memory to the present day. 



LECTURE IV. 



ON THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, ESSENTIAL AND PECULIAR. 



In our last lecture I endeavoured to render it probable, that all visible or 

 sensible matter is the result of a combination of various solid, impenetrable, 

 and exquisitely fine particles or units of the same substance, too minute to 

 be detected by any operation of the senses. Of the shape or magnitude of 

 these particles we know nothing: and even their solidity and impenetrability, 

 as I then observed, is rather an assumption for the purpose of avoiding seve- 

 ral striking difficulties and absurdities that follow from a denial of these 

 qualities, than an ascertained and established fact. 



From this unsatisfactory view of it in its elementary and impalpable state, 

 let us now proceed to contemplate it in its manifest and combined forms, and 

 to investigate the more obvious properties they offer, and the general laws 

 by which they are regulated. 



