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3^ ON THE PRINCIPLES OP THINGS. 



regard chance as a God, for he knows that God can never act at random : 

 nor as a contingejjt cause of events ; nor does he conceive, 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 uni- 

 verse were altogether 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 followed as the necessary result of such an arrangement, 

 and not as the immediate superintendence of a perpetually controlling Pro- 

 vidence. For it was the opinion of Epicurus, as well as of Aristotle, that 

 perfect rest and tranquillity 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 phaenomena 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 dis- 

 tinguished 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 him the charge of voluptuous living, though the most tempe- 

 rate and abstemious Athenian of his day, that thus, with yet keener ma- 

 levolence, endeavoured to brand him with the still fouler reproach of the 

 grossest impiety and atheism. 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 proverbiahzed 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. " 1 am per- 

 fectly 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 themselves more than a very 

 small cup. And hence, when the city of Athens was besieged by Deme- 

 trius, 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 pleasure of 

 friendship, the pleasure of virtue, the pleasure of tranquilhty, the pleasure 

 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 evolu- 

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

 .the name of pleasure, and can alone raise the mind above the groveUing 

 and misnamed 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- 

 cendent genius and almost unrivalled intellect, and in restoring him to thc^ 



