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fundamental properties; but the idea once gained was never lost 
sight of. That Democritus introduced an atheistical theory 
m connection with it was a backward step, as is clearly shown 
by Cudworth; and that this view was afterwards retained and 
expanded by Lucretius with much misapplied ability and in 
excellent verse, may perhaps be accounted for by the corrup- 
tion of Roman morals and the debased state of religious 
belief at that time. In fact the whole subject has become at 
the present day rather literary than scientific; the modern 
doctrine is not built upon the ancient theories, nor in the 
slightest degree indebted to them ; and the chief interest 
which can be felt in the study is of the same kind as that 
arising from any other branch of ancient philosophy. 
In the time of Cicero, a Roman nobleman, C. Memmius. 
restored the Grarden of Epicurus, and, it is said, intended to 
raise a public building for the advancement of Epicurism. 
Some celebrated men followed him, among whom was Vel- 
leius, one of the interlocutors in Cicero's Be Nairn Neorum. 
To this person (Memmius) Lucretius dedicates his book and 
seems to be chiefly anxious, throughout the poem, to impress 
upon him the necessity of imbibing perfectly the atheistical 
principles of it. 
Of Lucretius himself very little is known, and that little is 
not to his advantage, though it appears that his family was a 
good one. It is supposed that he went to Athens to be 
educated, and that he listened to the Epicurean philosophy of 
Zeno and Phaedrus. It is said that he was dissipated, but I 
do not think there is any direct testimony for this, and the 
fact is probably assumed from the tenor of his poem and his 
Epicurean tenets. According to Eusebius, he committed 
suicide in the forty-fourth year of his age, in consequence of 
the fits of madness to which he was subject from the effects 
of a philtre or love-potion administered to him by his mistress 
Lucilla. J 
Tradition also says, thongh I do not know any confirmation 
pf it, that his wonderful poem was composed during the 
intervals of his frenzy. 
This is enough to know about Lucretius, and, for his phi- 
losophy, I cannot sum it up better than in the epigrammatic 
sentence of a French biographer: “Cesysteme (d'Epicure) 
dans lesvers du pobte parait, il faut l'avouer, tres-logiquement 
absurde, en meme temps qu'il est fonde sur la physique Is 
plus ignorante et la plus fausse.” 
Why the author of the Address should have chosen this 
subject and brought it in its most absurd (that is the religious) 
