SOURCE: Norman Wentworth DeWitt, "A Synoptic View of Epicureanism," in Epicurus and His Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press, 1954, pp. 3-35.

[The following excerpt, arranged according to Epicurus's own principles of education, sketches DeWitt's view of Epicurus, ranging from his life and philosophy to his reputation and historical influence. DeWitt makes it his explicit goal "to create the proper attitude for a sympathetic understanding of the man and his work. "]

This book attempts to present for the first time a fairly complete account of the life and teachings of Epicurus. At the very outset the reader should be prepared to think of him at one and the same time as the most revered and the most reviled of all founders of thought in the Graeco-Roman world.

His was the only creed that attained to the dimensions of a world philosophy. For the space of more than seven centuries, three before Christ and four afterward, it continued to command the devotion of multitudes of men. It flourished among Greeks and barbarians alike, in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Judaea, Egypt, Italy, Roman Africa, and Gaul. The man himself was revered as an ethical father, a savior, and a god. Men wore his image on finger-rings; they displayed painted portraits of him in their living rooms; the more affluent honored him with likenesses in marble. His handbooks of doctrine were carried about like breviaries; his sayings were esteemed as if oracles and committed to memory as if Articles of Faith. His published letters were cherished as if epistles of an apostle. Pledges were taken to live obedient to his precepts. On the twentieth day of every month his followers assembled to perform solemn rites in honor of his memory, a sort of sacrament.

Throughout these same seven centuries no man was more ceaselessly reviled. At his first appearance as a public teacher he was threatened with the fate of Socrates. In Athens he never dared to offer instruction in a public place but confined himself to his own house and garden. His character and his doctrines became the special target of abuse for each successive school and sect, first for Platonists, next for Stoics, and finally for Christians. His name became an abomination to orthodox Jews. The Christians, though by no means blind to the merit of his ethics, abhorred him for his denial of divine providence and immortality.

Throughout this book certain devices of procedure will be employed which were worked out and practiced by Epicurus himself. One of these has been exemplified in the preceding paragraphs. He laid special stress upon the importance of the diathesis or the attitude to be chosen at the beginning. For instance, in the very first of his forty Authorized Doctrines the disciple is informed that the gods are not to be feared, because "the incorruptible being is immune to feelings of anger or gratitude." If only the disciple could maintain this attitude, it was felt that he would be rightly disposed to receive all subsequent instruction about the nature of the gods. On this same principle the hope is here entertained that, if the reader habituates himself from the outset to think of Epicurus as both the most revered and the most reviled of all ancient philosophers, he will be rightly prepared to judge with impartiality the course of his life and the true structure of his doctrine.

Another device consistently practiced by Epicurus was to begin with the synoptic view. He thought of his writings as maps drawn to larger and smaller scales. The process of learning was regarded as a progression from general maps with few details to regional maps, as it were, with a proportionate increase of detail.

The procedure was regularly from the general to the particular. The truths of Physics were reduced to Twelve Elementary Principles. These corresponded to a general map, affording a panoramic view of the nature of things. Of the Twelve Principles the most important was the third: "The universe consists of atoms and void." Since the void is incapable either of delivering or receiving a stimulus, it followed that the soul, which is capable both of stimulating and being stimulated, must be corporeal by nature, composed of atoms. Hence vision and the other sensations must be explained by the impact of matter upon matter. In this way one detail of truth after another was deduced from the general principle.

From the point of view of logic this progression from the general to the particular constituted a sort of chain argument, a device in which Epicurus had great faith. He looked upon truth in terms of the whole and the part, the integer and the details. The details seemed to him so linked with one another that, if only the beginning was rightly made, one truth after another would infallibly reveal itself until perfection of knowledge should be attained. As Lucretius expressed it: "One point will become clear from understanding another; nor will blind night ever rob you of the path and prevent you from peering into the ultimate realities of nature; so surely will understanding of one thing kindle a gleam to illuminate the next."

The first text to be placed in the hands of the beginner was the Little Epitome, which is extant as the letter addressed to Herodotus. This is contained in a mere twenty pages of print and offers what Epicurus called "the condensed view of the integrated survey of the whole." This too corresponds to a general map. Only the main features of the system are sketched in, the atoms and their qualities, the nature of attributes, such as color, the soul, sensation, the evolution of society and culture, heavenly phenomena. At the same time the objective of study is stressed, which is ataraxy, the quiet of mind that arises from faith in the certainty of knowledge. Incidentally, faith was recognized for the first time as a factor in happiness.

When the student had mastered the Little Epitome, which was, as it were, a First Reader, he would progress to the Big Epitome. This Second Reader, though written earlier, served as an amplification of the Little Epitome and is represented for us by the poem of Lucretius On the Nature of Things. The only new topic was the nature of the gods, planned for the seventh book but never written, which leaves the worst gap in our knowledge. The six extant books merely add what seems to us an abundance of detail to the topics already adumbrated in the Little Epitome. This increase of detail, however, is illuminating for the educational procedure involved. The bald outline of doctrine must first be mastered and thereafter the task of the student is "to incorporate all the particulars into it." He might even go on from the Big Epitome to the encyclopedic treatment in the thirty-seven books on Physics but the procedure was always the same, adding details to details until at last perfection of detail should be attained.

In harmony with this method a synoptic view of Epicurus and his philosophy will now be presented in the form of dogmatic general statements. These will be amplified at once by a sparing addition of details in preparation for the yet larger amplification along with footnotes in the chapters that follow. The immediate objectives are two in number. The first has three aspects: to show where Epicurus belongs in the succession of philosophers, how his thought is related to the cultural context in which it arose, and how it survived in the cultural context into which it was finally absorbed. The second objective has two aspects: so to orientate the reader at the outset as to create the proper attitude for a sympathetic understanding of the man and his work; and not less to warn the reader against the disparagement and prejudice that abound in all the secondary literature.

Unhappily this warning will call for frequent emphasis and repetition. All that we possess of the original texts of Epicurus is comprised in a booklet of sixty-nine pages, though supplemented by the poem of Lucretius. The secondary literature, on the contrary, is abundant and for the greater part hostile. If this were received uncritically we should be thinking of the man as a brawling Thersites in the camp of the philosophers, as an ingrate, an ignoramus, a dullard, a scorner of all culture, a sensualist, and an atheist. The ancient critics who originated these slanders were declared by Diogenes Laertius, whose excellent biography of Epicurus is our chief authority, "to be out of their minds." In spite of this fact our modern scholars prefer to hunt with the pack and with lighthearted disdain for the evidences they denounce Epicurus as a quietist, a friend of anarchy, an incoherent thinker, a moral invalid, and an egoistic hedonist, enlarging the vocabulary of detraction from the armories of modern philosophy.

In the case of these false opinions also it will be convenient to follow a practice employed by Epicurus. It was his way to oppose true opinions to false opinions. For example, it was a true opinion to believe the gods immune to feelings of anger or gratitude, a false opinion to fear them as venal and vindictive. Again, it was a true opinion to believe that happiness was to be found in the simple life and retirement, a false opinion to think it lay in wealth, power, or glory. After this same fashion the false opinions concerning Epicurus and his philosophy will here be paired with judgments based upon the evidences. In some instances, it may be mentioned, the mistakes of scholars are not false opinions but examples of oversight; to particularize, they fail to recognize Epicurus as an acute critic of Platonism. For convenience, however, errors of all kinds will be listed under the heading of false opinions.

True Opinions: False Opinions

In the succession of philosophers the place of Epicurus is immediately after Plato and Pyrrho the skeptic. Platonism and skepticism were among his chief abominations. The false opinion is to think him opposed to Stoicism. The traditional order of mention, Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics, is the exact reverse of the chronological succession. The philosophy of Epicurus was an immediate reaction to the skepticism of Pyrrho and it was offered to the public as a fully developed system before Zeno the founder of Stoicism even began to teach.

Epicurus was an erudite man and a trained thinker. He made the rounds of the contemporary schools, Platonic, Peripatetic, and Democritean, and he devoted several years to reading and study before offering himself as a teacher. The false opinion is to think him an ignoramus and an enemy of all culture.

Historians persist in judging him only as a philosopher, but to be rightly understood he must be recognized also as a moral reformer. The fallacy consists in damning him as an ingrate and in failing to discern that reformers are rebels and as rebels feel themselves absolved from debts of gratitude.

As a man of science Epicurus returned to the tradition of the Ionian thinkers, which had been interrupted by Socrates and Plato. The chief positive influence on his thinking was Ionian, the chief negative influence Platonic. The error in this instance consists in the failure to recognize Epicurus as an Antiplatonist and a penetrating critic of Platonism.

As a philosopher Epicurus belongs in the class of thinkers who have attempted a synthesis of philosophical thought, and his modern analogues are Herbert Spencer and Auguste Comte. He surveyed the whole field of previous thought and either wrote critiques of his predecessors himself or delegated the task to his colleagues. This aspect of the activity of his school has been completely overlooked.

He was the first to promulgate a dogmatic philosophy, actuated by a passion for certainty and a detestation of skepticism, which he imputed even to Plato. The distinction of being a dogmatist was naturally not denied him, because it was deemed a demerit, the renunciation of inquiry.

He exalted Nature as the norm of truth, revolting against Plato, who regarded Reason as the norm and hypostatized it as a divine existence. The fallacy consists in classifying Epicurus as an empiricist in the modern sense; he never declared sensation to be the source of knowledge; much less did he declare all sensations to be trustworthy.

As an educator Epicurus adopted the procedures of Euclid, parting company with both Plato and the Ionian scientists. The chief mistake in this instance is to foist upon him the method of inductive reasoning; his chief reliance was upon deduction. As for the influence of Euclid, it is regularly overlooked.

Epicureanism was the first missionary philosophy. The mistake is to look upon Epicurus as an effeminate and a moral invalid; by disposition he was combative and by natural gifts a leader, organizer, and campaigner.

Epicureanism was the first world philosophy, being acceptable to both Greek and barbarian. The mistake is to think of Epicurus as an egoistic hedonist, ruled solely by self-interest. He was an altruistic hedonist.

Epicureanism served in the ancient world as a preparation for Christianity, helping to bridge the gap between Greek intellectualism and a religious way of life. It shunted the emphasis from the political to the social virtues and offered what may be called a religion of humanity. The mistake is to overlook the terminology and ideology of Epicureanism in the New Testament and to think of its founder as an enemy of religion.

Epicureanism presented two fronts to the world, the one as repellent as the other was attractive. Its discouragement of the political career was repellent to the ambitious, its denial of divine providence to pious orthodoxy, and its hedonism to timorous respectability. Its candor, charity, courtesy, and friendliness were attractive to multitudes of the honest and unambitious folk.

The influence of Epicureanism, though anonymous, has been persistent in literature, ethics, and politics. In literature and ethics it has survived by amalgamation with Stoicism, chiefly through Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. In politics it fathered the doctrine that the least government is the best government, which was espoused by John Locke and popularized in North America by Thomas Jefferson. All these aspects of influence have been overlooked because of the usual anonymity. It was the fate of Epicurus to be named if condemned, unnamed if approved.

The Cultural Context

Epicurus was born in 341 B.C. This mute fact will take on significance if it be recalled that barely seven years had passed since the death of Plato and only seven were to elapse before Alexander crossed the Hellespont for the conquest of Persia. The childhood and adolescence of the man were destined to be separated from his adult life by the bold dividing line between the introverted world of Greek city-states and the extroverted world of far-flung Macedonian monarchies. Only a few dividing lines in history are so distinctly drawn.

Boyhood and adolescence were passed in the last years of the so-called great age of Greece, which produced philosophy and eloquence as its final fruitage. Platonism was still dominant in the field of higher education and Athens abounded in gifted orators as at no other time. From Platonism and the political career Epicurus turned away with so passionate a revulsion that this became the chief single factor in shaping his tactics as an educator and his thought as a philosopher. At the same time there were other factors in the cultural context which exercised an active influence. These may be associated with the names of Isocrates, Euclid, Diogenes, Aristotle, and writers such as Aristobulus, Nearchus, and the first Ptolemy, who reported the explorations and campaigns of Alexander. This statement calls for immediate, though brief, amplification.

Isocrates, a great teacher, had inaugurated a shift of emphasis from artistic speech for the benefit of listeners to artistic writing for the benefit of readers and his example was followed up by his admirer Praxiphanes, who became the teacher of Epicurus. The young man seems to have fallen under this spell for a time, and his extant letter to Menoeceus is artfully composed in the Isocratean manner. This fashion, however, was subsequently abandoned in favor of the bald style of Euclid, of which the sole merit was clarity. Along with this unadorned style came the adoption of the textbook form and the deductive procedures. Euclid himself, of course, was merely bringing to perfection a technique of book-making which had gradually taken shape in the circle of geometers. His name is here used to stand for a trend which Epicurus manifestly followed. The school textbook was just beginning to emerge as a distinct type.

In the domain of ethics the influence of the men called Cynics is unmistakable. Diogenes, known as the Dog, was still alive when Epicurus arrived in Athens for his required military training; his pupil Crates was a closer contemporary. These Cynics were staging a riotous rebellion against the conventional smugness and hypocrisy and they affected to make absolute honesty their ideal. Epicurus wholeheartedly endorsed the quest of honesty but repudiated their insolence and vulgarity. He insisted that honesty be joined with courtesy and decorum. His criticism of society was sympathetic and urbane and links the school not only with the better exemplars of the contemporary New Comedy, especially Menander, but also with the best tradition of satire as a literary form. Horace, Juvenal, and Petronius were all communicants of the Epicurean fellowship.

In his approach to the problem of knowledge Epicurus plainly owed an unacknowledged debt to the later Aristotle. One of the latter's innovations was to switch attention from inorganic to organic life; he founded the sciences of botany and zoology. This meant the revelation of a new order of Nature, a terrestrial order as opposed to the celestial order, and in the light of this discovery Epicurus rejected the hypostatized Reason of Plato as the norm of truth and looked instead to Nature as furnishing the norm.

This revolution in the approach to knowledge was fortuitously promoted and confirmed by the simultaneous extension of the geographical horizon by the explorations of Alexander. During the youth of Epicurus Greece was deluged by the new wealth of information concerning the geography, the flora and fauna, and the divergent wisdoms of Persia and India. Even the works of Megasthenes, written under Seleucus, Alexander's successor, were available before Epicurus launched his philosophy. It is consequently not surprising that his new canon of truth was based upon earthly rather than heavenly phenomena nor that his social and political outlook transcended even the Panhellenism of Isocrates and took cognizance of Greeks and barbarians alike, however sundered from the motherland of city-states and parochial politics.

While these positive influences are under survey it should still be remembered that the chief negative influences were Platonism and oratory. The characteristic shared in common by Platonism and oratory was the political obsession. The aim of Demosthenes and his party was to preserve the Greek world of citystates: the political teachings of Plato may justly be appraised as a theoretical extension of the political experience represented by the city-state. It was the assumption of philosopher and orator alike that the happiness of the individual was inseparable from his life as a citizen. The truth of this assumption was destined to be tested in the very presence of the young Epicurus; he was in Athens performing his required military service when the orator Hypereides and others were put to death and Demosthenes escaped a like fate by suicide. The futility of the political career and the folly of continuing to marry ethics with politics could hardly have been more objectively demonstrated.

The result for Epicurus was a violent revulsion from the spirit of the past, though it must not be inferred that this was followed quickly by a reasoned adjustment to the challenge of the new world in the process of becoming. There was an interval of several years consumed in study and in brooding. Even if by disposition the individual be inclined toward rebellion, the obstinate factors of a complicated problem refuse to disengage themselves at once from the pattern of the old to rearrange themselves into the pattern of the new. When this process had at length completed itself, however, it was manifest that Epicurus was determined to divorce ethics from politics and prepared to promulgate a philosophy adapted to the new world of Macedonian monarchs and universal rather than parochial Hellenism.

The promulgation of the new philosophy was bound to mean the declaration of war upon the whole program of Platonic education, not only because it was the system then dominant in the schools but also for the reason that more than others it stood for the tight combination of ethics with politics which disqualified philosophy for universal acceptance.

It was this opposition to Platonism that chiefly determined the shape of Epicureanism; more than half of its forty Authorized Doctrines are flat contradictions of Platonism. It is the mistake of historians to oppose Epicurus to Stoics. This is an anachronism; it comes of throwing back into the lifetime of Epicurus a hostility that arose only after his death. The error is chiefly due to the writings of Cicero, who matches Epicureans and Stoics as if rival schools of gladiators.

Already in 311 B.C. Epicurus was offering a neatly integrated body of doctrine to the youth of Mytilene. At that date the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium in Cyprus, was a new arrival in Athens about twentyone years of age. In contrast to the precocious Epicurus he was a late beginner and a slow learner. Many years were to elapse before he began to address himself to the people of Athens in the Painted Porch. The assumption of hostility between the two is unsupported even by a scrap of evidence. It was Chrysippus, the second founder of Stoicism, who began the feud and he was a mere lad of nine years living in his native Soli of Cilicia when Epicurus passed away. Stoicism is consequently to be written off absolutely as an influence in the life of Epicurus.

Epicurus as Man of Erudition

It should not be necessary to defend Epicurus against the charge of being an ignoramus and an enemy of all culture, but the slanders of ancient and modern writers render refutation obligatory.

As a precocious boy and the son of a schoolmaster it is certain that he received the usual elementary education and that too in advance of his years. Even the scant and fragmented tradition preserves the item that as a mere schoolboy he cornered his teacher over the problem of chaos in Hesiod. In an extant work he denounces the pessimism of Theognis. He is said to have quoted Sophocles in proof of the principle that pain is an evil. He cited Homer as authority for the doctrine that pleasure is the telos or goal of living. He is also reported to have declared the teachings of the poets on the subject of morals to be a hodgepodge, which is true. All of this evidence points to the customary training and some of it to the early manifestation of a bold spirit and an inquisitive mind.

It is inconceivable that he escaped the Platonic training in geometry, dialectic, and rhetoric. He is known to have studied with Pamphilus, a Platonist, in the city of Samos, probably for four years. His extant letter to Menoeceus is composed according to the rules of rhythmical prose and certain excerpts from other writings afford hints of his possessing this skill. There is even reason for believing that he gave instruction in rhetoric for a time.

He declared dialectic a superfluity but was able to criticize Plato with great acumen and he wrote against the Megarians, the contemporary experts in logic. He rejected geometry as having no bearing upon problems of conduct but adopted the procedures of Euclid in the composition of his own textbooks. He refuted the assumption of the mathematicians that matter is infinitely divisible, rightly insisting that the result would be zero. This is not the thinking of an ignoramus.

He also exhibits great familiarity with the writings of Plato and he distributed among members of his school the work of refuting or ridiculing his various dialogues. His own classification of the desires is developed from a Platonic hint and he begins to erect his structure of hedonism from the point where this topic was left by Plato. A paragraph is extant in which he warns his disciples against the Platonic view of the universe as described in the Timaeus, and elsewhere he pokes a little satirical fun at that famous opus. More than half of his forty Authorized Doctrines are direct contradictions of Platonic teachings.

The closeness of the relationship between Epicurus and Aristotle may be judged from the fact that two volumes on the subject have been published by the eminent Italian scholar Ettore Bignone. Leaving aside for the moment the undoubted contentions of the two schools, it may be said that common to both founders was the direct analytical approach to problems as opposed to the circuitous analogical approach adopted by Plato. The main difference was that the attitude of Aristotle was analytical while that of Epicurus was analytical and pragmatic at the same time. His injunction "to neglect no opportunity to disseminate the doctrines of the true philosophy" finds no analogue in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. On the other hand there is no better preparation for the ethics of Epicurus than a perusal of that treatise and especially of the sections on Friendship, the Magnanimous Man, and Happiness. Many anticipations of his teachings may there be identified: for example, the possibility of man's attainment to a life that in respect of quality may be called immortal or divine.

The debt of Epicurus to Aristotle the biologist is equally manifest for those who are interested in observing it. The mere fact that he rejected Reason from his Canon of truth and set up Nature as the norm is a tacit recognition of Aristotle's discovery of the order in organic life. In its proper place the suggestion will be made that Aristotle's study of the embryo seems to have given rise to the doctrine of innate ideas or Anticipations, as Epicurus styled them, which forecast adult understanding just as the venous system of the embryo prefigures the adult organism. Another subject of interest to both our philosophers was animal behavior, upon which Epicurus based in large part his theory of pleasure and his definition of justice.

The later schooling of Epicurus was also such as to lay the foundations for a broad erudition. After his exciting cadetship there is good evidence for believing that he studied with the acidulous Praxiphanes in Rhodes, a Peripatetic who shared the partiality of his school for literary criticism, while owning "good writing" for a special interest. It is certain that Epicurus spent a longer time in Teos with the Democritean Nausiphanes, who in spite of his indolence was an able, versatile, and original thinker. He gave his ungrateful pupil a fruitful suggestion about a canon of truth.

After tiring of teachers, to none of whom he afterward acknowledged any debt, Epicurus must have devoted himself to an extensive program of reading and study, because a few years later he planned a series of critiques of all previous thinkers, assigning the sophists, dialecticians, and physicians to his trusted Metrodorus, while Empedocles was turned over to the less agile Hermarchus. He chose himself to write against the physicists, among whom he expressed a preference for Anaxagoras and Archelaus, an example of discriminating judgment. He also reserved to himself, as mentioned above, the task of refuting the disputative Megarians, because this school was active and to combat it was an urgent necessity.

When all these facts are added up, the conclusion must follow that Epicurus was not only a man of comprehensive learning but also an ambitious organizer of knowledge. It is doubtful whether any other philosopher made a more earnest attempt to survey the whole field. It should also be borne in mind that those who would have him an enemy of all culture are sometimes driven to emend the texts in order to save their prejudices.

Epicurus as Moral Reformer

Special abuse has been heaped upon Epicurus because of his alleged ingratitude to teachers. There is some injustice in this charge and a notable lack of discrimination. If he felt no gratitude—and this seems to have been the case—it is unfair to demand the profession of it. The lack of discrimination consists in failing to recognize his double role as philosopher and moral reformer. These two roles may be combined in one person but their respective motivations are quite different and the one role is bound to dominate the other.

Reformers, whether moral or political, feel themselves absolved from debts of gratitude. Epicurus, having become conscious of himself as belonging in this class, denied all obligations to teachers, and this in spite of the fact that he had made the rounds of the schools and acquired the knowledge and skills respectively offered by them. To ascribe this conduct to him as a vice is on a par with vituperating Martin Luther for not proclaiming his gratitude to the Roman Catholic instructors whose skills he had acquired.

The attitude displayed by Epicurus is to a certain degree comparable to that assumed by St. Paul, who declared himself an apostle "not from men neither through man"; he wished the Galatians to know "that the gospel preached by him was not according to man, for he did not receive it from man, neither was he taught it." At this point the similarity ends, and Epicurus and Paul part company as being respectively Greek and Jew. Paul claimed authority by virtue of revelation through Jesus Christ and God the Father, qualifying himself as a prophet, which was a concept familiar to his race. Epicurus declared himself to be "self-taught" and he arrogated to himself the title of Sage or Wise Man, a concept familiar to the Greeks. He could not claim inspiration, because he denied all participation of the gods in human affairs. He was capable, however, of claiming perfection of knowledge, because he had approximated to the life of the gods. Thus to him his wisdom was not a revelation, though it was such to his disciples. Paul's gospel, on the contrary, was a revelation both to himself and to his disciples.

The presumptuous attitude of Epicurus was not only excusable as befitting a rebel and a reformer; it was also virtually imperative for him as the founder and head of a sect. Self-assuredness and even arrogance is rather demanded of a leader by his disciples than resented, however exasperating it becomes to his rivals. The acrimony of rivals really defeats itself, because their very malice and vociferousness operates as an exciter to keep alive and invigorate the loyalty of disciples. In the fourth century A.D., when the Christians fell to attacking one another instead of Epicureanism, this kindly creed began to fade. It had thriven so long as it was under fire.

Epicurus as Man of Science

While it was in the role of moral reformer that Epicurus felt himself absolved from the duty of reverence for his predecessors, it was in the role of natural scientist that he became the antagonist of Platonism in particular. It was his choice to revive the tradition of Ionian science, which had been interrupted by Socrates and Plato.

A few details will suffice to amplify this statement. Greek philosophy had made its advances in two separate areas and exhibited two general trends; the earlier was confined to cities of the Aegean Sea, the later to cities of southern Italy. The former trend was observational and speculative, the latter mathematical and contemplative. The Aegean Greeks were familiar with all the industrial techniques of the time, such as spinning, felting, fermentation, ceramics, and metallurgy, and they were acute observers of seasons, climates, winds, waters, and storms. Obsessed by the phenomenon of universal change combined with permanence of the whole, they devoted themselves to the task of discovering the unchanging something that underlay all changing things. After propounding and rejecting or improving one solution after another, they finally arrived at the belief that the ultimate existences were invisible and indivisible bodies, which they called atoms. It was this atomic theory that Epicurus espoused and revived.

The Greeks of Italy, on the contrary, were not greatly interested in physical change or in natural processes. They were addicted to the sitting posture. In art they are represented as comfortably seated with a slender rod or radius in the hand, with which they draw figures on a sanded floor. Counters and writing tablets were also at hand. The advances made by them were in the domains of geometry and arithmetic and these advances were so remarkable as to capture the imagination of the contemporary world and to overshadow for a time the progress which had been made by their Ionian brethren. Geometry in particular, though itself a positivistic study, inspired in the minds of men a new movement that was genuinely romantic.

It was the romantic aspect of the new knowledge that captivated Plato, who was no more than up-to-date as a mathematician himself. In geometry he seemed to see absolute reason contemplating absolute truth, perfect precision of concept joined with finality of demonstration.

He began to transfer the precise concepts of geometry to ethics and politics just as modern thinkers transferred the concepts of biological evolution to history and sociology. Especially enticing was the concept which we know as definition. This was a creation of the geometricians; they created it by defining straight lines, equilateral triangles, and other regular figures. If these can be defined, Plato tacitly reasoned, why not also justice, piety, temperance, and other virtues? This is reasoning by analogy, one of the trickiest of logical procedures. It holds good only between sets of true similars. Virtues and triangles are not true similars. It does not follow, therefore, because equilateral triangles can be precisely defined, that justice can be defined in the same way. Modern jurists warn against defining justice; it is what the court says it is from time to time.

The deceptiveness of analogy, however, does not prevent it from flourishing, and Plato committed himself to the use of it unreservedly. In this he was abetted by a happy coincidence. The method of analysis by question and answer, developed by Socrates recently before, commended itself as the very technique that was needed for the quest of definitions in the domain of ethics. By disposition Socrates was a gifted actor, staging semiprivate theatricals before small groups. As for Plato, in an earlier age he might have become a dramatist. Thus it is not astonishing that the fruit of their joint invention was the dramatization of logic which is called dialectic, best exemplified by the Platonic dialogues.

Yet this was only the beginning. One false step invites another. The quest of a definition, of justice, for example, presumes the existence of the thing to be defined. If equilateral triangles did not exist, they certainly could not be defined. Assume that justice can be defined and at once it is assumed that justice exists just as equilateral triangles exist. Hence arose Plato's theory of ideas. The word idea means shape or form and he thought of abstract notions as having an independent existence just as geometrical figures exist, a false analogy.

The theory of ideas was rejected as an absurdity by the young Epicurus, because he was a materialist and denied all existences except atoms and space. The theory once rejected, the instrument became useless; scientists have no use for dramatized logic; they depend chiefly upon their senses.

Plato became guilty of another error upon which the sharp-eyed Epicurus did not fail to place a finger. From Pythagoras was inherited the belief in the repeated rebirth or transmigration of souls. Along with this went the belief that the body was a tomb or prison-house, which blurred the vision of reason and prevented perfection of knowledge. All that the human being perceived was the transient appearance of things as opposed to the eternal ideas. This to Epicurus was virtually skepticism.

This error, moreover, was compounded and also aggravated. Closely allied to geometry was the study of astronomy. The latter, in turn, required the observation of heavenly bodies. Thus Plato was in the position of assuming the validity of sensation in the case of the remoter phenomena and denying it in the case of the nearer terrestrial phenomena. This was a glaring inconsistency.

The aggravation consisted in the belief that circular motion, which was in those days ascribed to heavenly bodies, was the only perfect and eternal motion and identifiable with Reason itself. Reason, in turn, was identified with the divine nature. Therefore the planets were declared to be gods. This seemed both shocking and absurd to Epicurus: shocking because it meant having more gods to fear, absurd because august gods were assumed to become hurtling balls of fire.

These criticisms, plainly explicit or implicit in the writings of Epicurus, were as stinging and penetrating as any to be urged against Platonism in antiquity, and to men of the Academy they seemed nothing short of blasphemy. Violent measures were taken to repress the brash heretic. Learning caution from this painful experience, the chastened Epicurus abandoned as futile the fighting in the streets, withdrew to the security of his own house and garden, and confined himself to the task of disseminating the true philosophy. As a propagandist he soon began to exhibit a marked superiority.

It is remarkable that this man, who exhibited so much acumen in discerning the errors and inconsistencies of Plato, should be denounced today as an incoherent thinker himself. Any thinker, of course, will seem incoherent to a rival of another school; a modern pragmatist seems incoherent to a Thomasite or a logical positivist. Every thinker, however, has a right to be judged within the structure of his own system. If Epicurus be judged within the structure of his Canon, Physics, and Ethics, he will be found to exhibit an admirable coherence of thought.

Epicurus as Philosopher

Of all false opinions concerning Epicurus the most preposterous is that which would dismiss him as a dullard or even as a charlatan. If correctly appraised he will be seen to have attempted a genuine synthesis of philosophy.

He came upon the scene when a great corpus of speculative writings had accumulated, which is precisely the circumstance that invites to a synthesis. A certain progress in this direction had been made by Plato and Aristotle but neither of these was a conscious synthetizer and neither of them was interested in creating an encyclopedic digest of philosophic thought for public use, much less for the amelioration of human life and the increase of happiness. This is precisely what Epicurus attempted. His aim was to survey the whole course of Greek creative thought, to criticize, to cull it, to organize it and make the results available in the form of useful and understandable handbooks.

Insofar as he aspired to become a synthetizer of philosophy his true affinity is with Herbert Spencer or Auguste Comte but more particularly with the latter, and this in spite of their respective contempt and esteem for mathematical studies. The three stages of development recognized by Comte, the theological, metaphysical, and positive, were clearly recognized also by Epicurus, though it was impossible for him so to denominate them. The first stage was represented by the popular religion and mythology, according to which the universe and the destinies of man seemed to be ruled by the gods, by Fate or Necessity, forces external to humanity.

What Comte called the metaphysical stage was for Epicurus represented by Plato and in part by Aristotle. Phenomena were separated from matter and regarded as separate entities. Form was separated from substance and in Plato's theory of ideas was esteemed as the real existence. This meant, as Epicurean ridicule tauntingly insisted, that "horseness" was a real existence but horses were mere apparitions. It seemed less unreasonable, perhaps, to think of justice as existing apart from conduct, public or private. On the physical level the difference between this stage of thought and the next is aptly exemplified in the case of color. Theophrastus believed it to have a separate existence while Epicurus explained it as arising from the arrangement and motions of the atoms comprising the compound, being close to the truth, as so often.

Epicurus was at one with Comte in believing that progress consisted in advancement from the theological and metaphysical stages to the positive. In point of fact he placed these two stages on a par, denominating the first as the age of mythology and the Platonic stage as a new kind of mythology, equally objectionable. Lacking a background of specialized studies such as physics and chemistry, he was unable to formulate a gradation of sciences, but he did subordinate his Ethics to his Physics and in so doing he adumbrated that same direction of logical procedure which prompted Comte to place sociology at the opposite extreme from mathematics and physics. Epicurus was also in accord with Comte in linking human behavior with animal behavior, because he recognized a rudimentary justice of Nature in the organization of certain animal herds.

A third point of agreement between Epicurus and Comte was the recognition that some form of religion was indispensable. In point of fact it is somewhat startling to observe into how many details this agreement extended itself. The new religion of Epicurus, stressing piety and reverence while excluding divine government of the universe, may aptly be described in Comte's terminology as a Religion of Humanity. Both systems exhibited a vigorous distrust of regimentation and political mechanisms; both renounced force in favor of persuasion; and both allowed a generous latitude for the play of human feeling. Finally, they both stressed altruism as opposed to self-love, and neither of them shrank from recognizing at the same time the utilitarian motive or calculus of advantage.

As a last item of similarity it may be mentioned that both men were among the most provoking thinkers who ever lived. In the thought of both there was so much that was exasperating combined with so much that was true and penetrating that no subsequent thinker could ignore them. Total dissent was just as impossible as total agreement. The careers of the two men mark parallel stages in the onward march of philosophic thought, which is an endless progression.

The First Dogmatic Philosophy

Although men contemporary with Epicurus were incapable of recognizing him as a moral reformer, they were quick enough to know him for a dogmatist, which counted for a demerit and a reproach. The modern scholar, however, being long habituated to observe historical processes and laws of development, will easily discern that moral reform and dogmatism are logically related. The moral reformer cannot afford to be a doubter. Epicurus is definitely on record as having said, "The wise man will not be a doubter but will dogmatize," and in this he was implying that the wise man is bound to be more than a speculative thinker. He must make his philosophy useful for the increase of happiness; this, in turn, is impossible without faith, and faith is impossible without certainty. Therefore philosophy must be dogmatic.

If appeal be made to the historical process, it will become clear that skepticism and dogmatism are also related by the logic of cause and effect. The man who denies the possibility of knowledge is challenging others to declare that knowledge is possible. This challenge had never been seriously taken up before the time of Epicurus, because to speculative thinkers skepticism is merely another way of thinking and escapes notice as a menace or a danger. Neither could this aspect of it have presented itself to Epicurus before he became aware of a passion for the increase of human happiness. This passion once awakened, however, he speedily developed a special acumen for discerning even latent skepticism, as in the teachings of his own Democritus, not to omit those of Plato and Aristotle. His later critiques of preceding philosophies stressed this feature.

He was first alerted to this danger by his last teacher, Nausiphanes. This able man had been a pupil of Pyrrho of Elis, who in the company of Anaxarchus, a follower of Democritus, had accompanied Alexander the Great on his eastern campaigns. In the course of these journeys Pyrrho made acquaintance with the wise men of Persia and India, who were not less self-confident than the wise men of Greece. The result for him was the loss of all faith in the certainty of knowledge, reason and sensation seeming alike untrustworthy.

Both Nausiphanes and the young Epicurus admired the placidity of Pyrrho but rebelled against his skepticism. This reaction resulted in the erection of a criterion of truth, which Nausiphanes called his Tripod, obviously so named because capable of standing firmly on its three legs. Subsequently Epicurus quarreled violently with his teacher, seemingly on moral grounds, and feeling himself thereafter absolved from all gratitude he published his own Canon with a threefold basis, Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings. By the Sensations was meant the evidences furnished by the five senses. The Anticipations were innate ideas, such as that of justice, which exist in advance of experience and so anticipate it. The Feelings are pleasure and pain, Nature's educators, her Go and Stop signals.

Insofar as this system was presented as the true and ultimate philosophy Epicurus laid himself open to the charge of discouraging all further inquiry. It must be allowed that he seemed to favor the confinement of research to the discovery of truth that would contribute to human happiness. It must further be admitted that he made it one of his chief objectives to immunize the minds of his disciples against all teachings other than his own. Some justice may even be allowed to the allegation that his disciples read no writings other than those of their own school.

As a clarification of these criticisms it should be recognized that Epicurus, like Plato, entertained a clear distinction between the talented minority of men and the multitude. He knew also that for the multitude dogmatism, which to Plato was "right opinion" as opposed to rational understanding, was sufficient. Unlike Plato, however, he recognized no need of deception. Since his creed was nonpolitical and his society classless there was no call to institute one training for rulers and another for the ruled. He insisted that his teachings were the same for all men, assuming that each would benefit by them to the limit of his capacities and opportunities.

Individual disciples were conscious of no imposed limitations. Each was free to follow his tastes and his talents. Some even became expert mathematicians. Lucretius was none the less a good Epicurean because of the breadth of his reading. One Asclepiades, an Epicurean physician contemporary with him in Rome, made a notable impact upon the theory and practice of medicine. Epicurus himself knew the true joy of the researcher and gave apt expression to it: "In all other activities the joy comes after laborious completion but in philosophy the pleasure keeps pace with understanding, for enjoyment does not come after learning but learning and enjoyment are simultaneous." His system of thought resembled what is called an open-end plan of investment; it was not a closed but an open-end variety of dogmatism.

The New Order of Nature

Especially conspicuous in the Canon of Epicurus is the omission of Reason as a criterion of truth. Only the Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings are recognized as direct contacts between man and his physical and social environment. By virtue of being direct contacts, they acquire a priority over Reason and in effect exalt Nature over Reason as affording a norm of truth.

How this revolution came about may be explained by recalling a few details. The Ionian scientists had studied nature chiefly in her terrestrial aspects, taking reason for granted as a faculty. The Italian Greeks had ignored the terrestrial aspects of nature and exploited the faculty of reason. This procedure led from arithmetic and geometry to astronomy, and by astronomy was revealed the celestial order of nature. This inflexible celestial order captivated the imagination of Plato, who was a romantic, and it was this he was imitating when he proposed in his Republic and his Laws a rigidly regimented polity, of which a travesty now flourishes in Soviet Russia.

After this Platonic interruption the Ionian tradition was revived by the later Aristotle, but he switched the emphasis from inorganic to organic nature. The sciences of zoology and botany were founded by him. In the course of these studies he arrived at the conclusion "that Nature does nothing at random." Of this discovery he did not realize the importance. It signified that organic nature is governed by laws. In reality it marks the discovery of a new order of nature, the terrestrial order, as contrasted with the celestial order of Plato's grandiose cosmogony.

It was the lead of Aristotle that Epicurus chose to follow. He looked to organic nature as furnishing the norm just as Plato had looked to reason. This divergence resulted in two opposing interpretations of the phrase "living according to Nature." To the Stoics, who hitched their wagon to Plato's star, it signified the imitation of the inflexible celestial order by a rigid and unemotional morality. To Epicurus and Epicureans, "living according to Nature," though they never made a slogan of it, signified living according to the laws of our being. Of this being the emotions were recognized as a normal and integral part, undeserving of suspicion or distrust.

How the new terrestrial order of nature and the older celestial order operate as points of departure for inferential truth may be illustrated simply in the case of justice. For Epicurus the Feelings are the criterion. Injustice hurts and justice promotes happiness. Therefore human beings make a covenant with one another "not to injure or be injured." Justice is this covenant. It is of Nature. No dialectic is necessary to discover the fact; it is a matter of observation. The sense of justice is innate; it is an Anticipation or Prolepsis existing in advance of experience and anticipating experience. Even certain animals possess it; elephants, for example, the bulls excepted, do not injure one another and they marshal the herd to protect one another against injury from outside.

Plato, on the contrary, taking his departure from the analogy between geometry and ethics and politics, requires a definition; dialectic is invoked as the instrument and the ten books of the Republic are devoted to the quest. In the background are the mathematical notion of ratio and the musical notion of harmony. Thus at long length the conclusion is reached that justice is a harmony of the three constituents of the soul, reason, passion, and desire. Justice in the state is a harmony of the constituent classes.

Plato was complicating philosophy for the few who find self-gratification in complexity. Epicurus was simplifying philosophy for the many who were willing to live by their philosophy. Platonic justice seemed to him a specious pretense. In Vatican Collection 54 he wrote: "We should not pretend to philosophize but philosophize honestly, because it is not the semblance of health we need but real health."

Epicurus analyzed human nature just as the later Aristotle analyzed ethics and politics, like a student of natural science observing the ways of plants and animals. It was this method he was following when he scrutinized human nature in action and reduced the direct contacts between man and his physical and social environment to Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings. It was the same method he followed when he classified human desires as "natural and necessary, natural but not necessary and neither natural nor necessary." After the same fashion he scanned the behavior of man in society and concluded "that the injuries inflicted by men are caused by hatred or by envy or by contempt."

The best evidence of a certain validity in the Canon was the ridicule heaped upon it; ridicule is available when arguments are lacking. A tacit tribute to its validity is the fact that the idea of the Prolepsis or Anticipation, the innate idea, was adopted by the Stoics and appears as an accepted commonplace in Cicero's thought. The Sensations were seized upon as the weakest leg of the canonic tripod and in this instance misrepresentation scored a victory. The fallacy that Epicurus declared all sensations to be true and hence trustworthy still flourishes. This would mean that vision informs us no more correctly about a cow at twenty paces than at half a mile.

Equally fallacious was the allegation that the Canon had been set up as a substitute for logic. To make such a claim is on a par with asking a trial lawyer to criticize a chemist, or, as Epicurus might have said, to ask the ears to pass judgment on the nose; the phenomena of which they are competent judges would not fall in the same class. The function of ancient logic was to score points and make opponents wince but no adversaries or witnesses were needed for the use of the Canon; solitude was sufficient. The modern scientist in his laboratory follows a like method. He depends upon the sensations as Epicurus did. The researcher works on the basis of an hypothesis, which he puts to the test of experiment, that is, of the senses, and these, exactly as Epicurus said, "confirm or fail to confirm" the truth of the proposition. Even the theory of Einstein, that rays of light from distant stars are bent in passing the sun, was tested by photographs taken during an eclipse, and photographs are merely extensions of vision.

Epicurus as an Educator

When Epicurus is considered as an educator—and he took himself very seriously in this role—a double paradox presents itself. Plato, while stressing the study of geometry, rejected the bald style of exposition proper to that branch and employed instead a very artistic prose. Epicurus, on the contrary, while rejecting geometry, adopted and recommended the bald style as employed by Euclid, who happens to have been a contemporary. Plato rejected also the textbook form as developed by the geometricians and favored the dramatic dialogue. Epicurus took over the textbook form along with certain subsidiary features that consorted with it.

In adopting the bald style familiar to us from Euclid, Epicurus was looking to Nature as a teacher. He even went so far as to say that it was she who revealed the true meanings of words and the right kind of style. The physicist, he asserted, should be content to take words as he found them, in their literal meanings; the sole requisite of writing was clarity. To express this differently, he was denying that Nature was either a dialectician or a rhetorician. With equal justice he might have denied that Nature was a poet, because he was no less rejecting the didactic poetry of Empedocles and his kind than the artistic language of Plato. Indeed he is on record as saying "that the wise man would not compose poems, though he would be the best judge of poetry."

Along with the adoption of the bald style and the textbook form was taken over the demand for memorization. The practice of committing poetry to memory had long prevailed among the Greeks, but with the vogue of geometry there was a new and different necessity for memorization. The new necessity was one of logic. The theorems could not be mastered unless the student had memorized the axioms and learned "to handle them smartly," as Epicurus said of his Elementary Principles. It was just as necessary for the beginner in Epicureanism to have at the tip of his tongue the Principle "The universe consists of atoms and void," or the Authorized Doctrine "Justice is a sort of covenant not to injure or be injured," as it was for the beginner in geometry to know by heart "Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another."

The adoption of the Euclidean textbook as a model involved, of course, the procedure by deductive reasoning. The Twelve Elementary Principles were first stated and then demonstrated like theorems. Each theorem, in turn, once demonstrated, became available as a major premise for the deduction of subsidiary theorems. The truth of this subsidiary theorem is then confirmed by the evidence of the Sensations, which operate as criteria. The mistake of believing Epicurus to be an empiricist must be avoided; it is not his teaching that knowledge has its origin in sensation. The status of the Sensations is that of witnesses in court and is limited to confirming or not confirming the truth of a given proposition.

Another innovation demanded by the adoption of the textbook model was the institution of graded texts. For example, the extant Little Epitome is a mere syllabus of selected truths. Next above it stood the Big Epitome, probably in seven rolls, as seems to be indicated by the six of Lucretius and the promised sequel on the gods. Above this in turn stood the famous thirty-seven books on Physics and other special treatises. Similarly, the Authorized Doctrines are to be appraised as a beginner's book in Ethics. From this the disciple would move on to special treatises on Piety, on the Gods, on the End or Telos, and on Justice and the other Virtues, to mention a few. It may be added that an order of procedure was prescribed. For instance, the lore of the gods was placed last in the list and reserved for advanced students.

It deserves to be known also that Epicureans set up their own schools and developed a pedagogical method based upon their own kindly ethics. A good description of their procedures is extant in a Herculanean papyrus containing the treatise of Philodemus entitled On Frankness of Speech. It is better preserved than some others and makes clear the essential rules, among which may be mentioned the requirement that the teacher should conceal his own annoyances and be actuated solely by the good of the instructed.

The First Missionary Philosophy

Epicureanism was the first and only real missionary philosophy produced by the Greeks. So foreign was such a concept to the thought of the earlier philosophers and the sophists that they failed even to found schools in the sense that Plato's Academy became a school; much less did they found sects. As Epicurus rightly discerned, human institutions arise from the evolution of the unintended. Just as Nature, according to him, is the sole creatrix in the physical world, so Nature, working through the joint and cumulative experience of mankind, is the sole creatrix in the social and political spheres. Language for example, was an innovation of Nature; men merely improved upon her beginnings. On this principle, it must be deemed incredible that Plato's conscious purpose was to found a school in perpetuity when he chose the Academy as his place of instruction; no model as yet existed. The lack of a model, according to Epicurus, would even have prevented the gods from creating a universe.

One model the Greeks did possess and this was the city-state, itself an exquisite specimen of the evolution of the unintended, and by this model their minds were obsessed. It was a city-state that Pythagoras essayed to found upon philosophical principles. The project failed and a scattering of his followers survived like displaced persons. Their creed was exclusive and incapable of evangelism.

Epicurus was not the first to escape the political obsession. The Cynics had preceded him in this, and Diogenes was dubbed the Dog because he advocated a life of vagrancy, absolved from all social and political decencies and ties. This excess, like others of the blatant school, repelled the decorous Epicurus. He knew that a certain modicum of governmental control was a necessity but he rejected utterly the doctrine of Protagoras, Plato, and Aristotle that the state was in the place of a parent and that the laws were educators.

If any model whatever was in his mind when he took up residence in Athens, this is more likely to have been the school of Aristotle, which from the first exhibited the aspect of a research institution and was less a one-man enterprise than Plato's Academy. It must be remembered that Epicurus brought with him three colleagues who were conceded almost equal rank with himself and that even members who remained behind in Lampsacus continued to cooperate in the business of writing under his aegis.

It is, however, to the Hippocratic medical fraternity that we must look for the undoubted model. As a zealot for the increase of human happiness Epicurus was bound to make a pragmatic interpretation of the analogy between philosophy and medicine, which had long flourished as an idle and unctuous figure of thought. If philosophy was to heal the maladies of the soul, the necessity for its involvement with politics was nonexistent. If all human beings stood in need of health of soul as of health of body, then the healing philosophy must be framed for all mankind and offered to all mankind. It was his resolve "to issue the kind of oracle that would benefit all men, even if not a soul should understand him."

The motive that sparked his missionary zeal was likewise of Hippocratic origin: "Where there is love of mankind there will be love of healing." It is true that the power of love or friendship had long been exploited in Greek institutions. Pythagoras had thought of his ideal state as a unit bound together by friendship along with a mandatory pooling of resources, but this friendship was confined to members of the community. Epaminondas had utilized friendship to build up a spirited military force, but this too was a local and limited phenomenon, love of Thebans for Thebans. It was Epicurus who first extended brotherly love to embrace mankind and exalted it as the impelling motive for revealing to men the way to happiness.

As a missionary enterprise the activity of Epicureanism was not confined to the school premises. Every convert everywhere became a missionary. In the view of Epicurus philosophy should begin at home and be disseminated from the home. It was his injunction to his disciples "to apply it in their own households, to take advantage of all other intimacies and under no circumstances to slacken in proclaiming the sayings of the true philosophy." This feature of the creed possessed the advantage of rendering it independent of schools and tutors; it was able to infiltrate itself into small towns and villages where no schools existed and even into rural areas. It was capable also of winning adherents in social groups untouched by more strictly intellectual systems.

In ancient times Epicurus was denounced as effeminate, and in modern times this reproach has been phrased as moral invalidism. Neither can it be denied that a certain plausibility attaches to the imputation in view of his ill health, the espousal of pleasure as the goal of living, his retired life, and his discouragement of the political career. In reality, however, the accusation is a shallow one. Many a spirited enterprise has been directed from a sickbed. Caesar Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire, was the least robust of the men of his court and plagued by recurrent illnesses. Ill health is even capable of intensifying the tenacity of the invalid. It was so with Epicurus. In his own circle he was a master mind and alone of all the founders of schools he built up and dominated an organization for the dissemination of his creed. As Seneca said, "In that famous fellowship every word that was spoken was uttered under the guidance and auspices of a single individual." The battle is not always to the strong. Inherent in Epicureanism was a quiet crusading spirit which quickly extended it over the contemporary world and endowed it with a tenacity unequaled by rival creeds; it flourished for almost seven centuries. The vogue of Stoicism as a militant creed lasted a mere two centuries.

The First World Philosophy

It is no more inevitable that a missionary philosophy should be a world philosophy than it is that a missionary religion should be a world religion. Christianity was first intended for the Jews alone. In the case of Epicureanism it is possible that a similar limitation was followed by a similar extension. From the first, however, it was nonpolitical. Unlike the philosophy of Plato, it was not restricted to adolescent youth nor to males nor even to citizens. By virtue of the analogy between the healing of the soul and the healing of the body the new creed became applicable to women as well as to men and to human beings of all ages, whether slave or free. The political contract was superseded by the social contract. It is significant that in the writings of Epicurus the word neighbor is almost as frequent as in the Gospels.

When Epicurus established himself in Athens it was no part of his plan to offer education to the Athenian youth. To forestall persecution he took the precaution of confining his instruction to the house and garden registered in title deeds in his own name. His chief reason for taking up residence there was the renown of the city as the cultural capital of the contemporary world. He wished to have the prestige of the city as a recommendation for the merit of the new philosophy being offered to the public at large.

The time as well as the location was advantageous. His philosophy was being launched just as the whole Orient was thrown open for Greek exploitation by the conquests of Alexander the Great. The migrations that ensued while new cities were being founded all the way from Egypt and Syria to distant Bactria attained the dimensions of a diaspora. His philosophy rode this tide. It had reached Alexandria even before his arrival in Athens. By the second century it was flourishing in Antioch and Tarsus, had invaded Judaea, and was known in Babylon. Word of it had reached Rome while Epicurus was still living, and in the last century B.C. it swept over Italy. Both Greeks and barbarians were becoming Epicureans.

For this ambitious program of expansion the school was prepared as no Greek school had ever been or ever would be. Not only was every convert obligated to become a missionary; he was also a colporteur who had available a pamphlet for every need. "Are you bloated with love of praise? There are infallible rites," wrote Horace, "which can restore your health if only you will read a pamphlet three times with open mind." "Send him a pamphlet," cried Cicero in the senate-house, taunting the Epicurean Piso about the ambition of his son-in-law Julius Caesar. Could better evidence be cited to prove that Epicureans were pamphleteers?

The system of handbooks was carefully planned and diligently maintained. Not only was Epicurus an industrious writer himself; his three colleagues and other members of the school were encouraged to emulate his example. Nor was this activity confined to the parent school; the new schools in Antioch and Tarsus adapted the writings to meet the needs of the changing times. In Rome the pen of Philodemus was busy interpreting the creed afresh for the age in which he lived. For those whose tongue was Latin a certain Amafinius had made translations, and his services were supplemented by those of Catius, an abler man. The evangelical zeal of Lucretius was characteristic of the sect and exceptional only because of its surpassing fervor. The objective was to awaken men to the blessedness of the Epicurean way of life.

As a design for living Epicureanism is patently suggestive of modern hominism or humanism or pragmatism. It was centered in man and not in the state or in theology. The breadth of its humanity is well expressed by one of its later devotees, who wrote "that the whole earth is just one country, the native land of all, and the whole world is just one household." The most potent single sentiment in the development of modern social theory is Epicurean as well as Menandrian: Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. This sentence has suffered a variety of English translations, but the substance is, "I am a man; I deem nothing that concerns mankind to be a matter of indifference to me."

In the light of this manifesto it is astonishing to find Epicurus coldly classified in modern times as an "egoistic hedonist." This mistaken judgment can be traced to the total honesty of Epicurus. It was because of this honesty that he did not shrink from choosing the suspected name of pleasure as the designation of the goal of life. Because of this same forthright honesty he dared to base friendship upon advantage. He knew that human motives are mixed and he possessed the courage to face the fact. This outspokenness laid him open to the charge of basing conduct upon expediency or self-interest, even though he declared "that, if need be, a friend will die for a friend." Consequently, when in the nineteenth century a distinction was made between egoistic and universalistic hedonism, the pleasure of tagging hinj as an egoistic hedonist was too tempting to be resisted.

This imputation can be disproved by the doctrines, but recourse to them is superfluous. A point of logic will serve the same purpose. When a philosopher chooses the role of missionary and launches a campaign "to awake the world to the blessedness of the happy life," he may still be a hedonist, but he ceases to be egoistic. If correctly described, he must be seen as an altruistic hedonist. This is not a contradiction in terms, but a higher hedonism.

Preparation for Christianity

By virtue of its spirit, its procedures, and certain of its doctrines Epicureanism served as a preparation for Christianity in the Graeco-Roman world. The similarity between the one and the other has long been evident to friend and foe. To the scornful Nietzsche the teaching of Epicurus seemed to be "a pre-existing Christianity," because in his judgment both creeds had been framed for the weak and timorous. To a sympathetic scholar it seemed "like the twilight between the beliefs that were passing away and that which rose on the world after his time."

The first missionary philosophy was a natural preparation for the first missionary religion. The one had been detached from Greek politics and the other was to be detached from Jewish politics. Both creeds were framed for men of peace, militant only for the increase of human happiness. Both offered healing and comforting beliefs for both sexes and all ages of men. Both based their ethics on love and friendliness. The fellowship cultivated by the Epicureans was comparable to the communion of saints as fostered by the Christians. Both stressed the social virtues, mutual helpfulness, forbearance, and forgiveness.

Epicurus distinguished clearly between the inner life and the external life of circumstance; these corresponded to the spiritual life and the worldly life in Christian thought. Both creeds spoke of ignorance as darkness and knowledge as light. Both essayed to deprive death of its sting. Both spoke of the narrow way and warned of the deceitfulness of wealth, power, and glory.

The two sects were singular in taking their names from their leaders and in pledging loyalty to those leaders; both spoke of following in the steps of those leaders. Both rejected the conventional education and founded their own schools, providing new textbooks. The texts provided by the Epicureans anticipated the texts composed by the Christians. The biographies of the beloved Epicurus, whose life "compared with that of other men would be considered a myth," corresponded to the Gospels; he was revered as nothing short of a god; he was called savior. The affectionate memoirs of his colleagues were comparable to the Acts of the Apostles. The letters of Epicurus to various communities of friends were like the Epistles. Even in their style of writing the two literatures resembled each other, aiming only at clarity.

It should also be carried in mind that the adherents of both sects belonged to the lower and middle classes of society; they practiced in common a voluntary sharing of goods; they were alike in holding their meetings in private houses and in having common meals at regular intervals; in the will of Epicurus provision was made for certain rites to be performed in memory of himself, which reminds us of the Eucharist. It would have been singularly easy for an Epicurean to become a Christian.

As a last word on this topic it may be mentioned that the custom prevailed among Epicureans of carrying about with them small images of their founder; they also had likenesses done in marble or painted on wooden panels to adorn their homes or lodgings. His features are well known to this day from surviving portrait busts and exhibit an expression singularly Christlike. In this connection it is remarkable that the beardless Christ so often seen on Christian sarcophagi down to the fourth century gave way to the bearded form which is now traditional. Since the two sects lived side by side for three centuries, it is by no means impossible that in this particular the practice of the one was a preparation for the practice of the other.

The Two Fronts

Epicureanism presented two fronts to the world, the one repellent, the other attractive. Both the repulsion and the attraction were keenly experienced by St. Augustine, who declared that he would have awarded it the palm had it not been for the denial of immortality and judgment after death. It was chiefly the ethical creed that attracted men, based upon love or friendship and all the kindly social virtues that make for peace and good companionship. It was chiefly the eschatology that offended, arousing in succession the hostility of Platonists, Stoics, and Christians.

Another repellent aspect of the creed was its hedonism. The very name of pleasure is quick to accumulate a semantic load of disapproval. This was well expressed by Cicero when he declared that no one dare proclaim the creed "in the senate, in the forum or in the camp." It is not this name of pleasure, however, that alone divorced the sect from the political life; Epicurus discouraged the political career as a surrender of the happiness of the individual to the whim of mobs and monarchs. For two reasons, therefore, the creed became abhorrent to that minority of mankind which is ruled by worldly ambition and in particular to those breeds who, like Cicero, set their hearts upon high office under democracies or, like Platonists and Stoics, prized court appointments under monarchies or patronage under aristocracies. By the same tokens the unambitious creed made itself attractive to the innumerable majority of men who could never aspire to the seats of the mighty or to move in the public eye.

The effect of these opposing aspects of Epicureanism was to win for it the most numerous, the most ubiquitous, and most enduring of all followings among ancient philosophies and to have adverse to it at all times a rancorous and vociferous minority. The written tradition is hostile for the greater part and sometimes malicious, with which the modern scholar too often concurs. Against this tendency to malign and misrepresent it is well that the unsuspecting layman and the candid inquirer should be warned repeatedly.

Survival

It is hardly possible for a philosophy to perish utterly so long as the continutiy of its cultural context remains unbroken. Each philosophy rises to its peak of popularity, fulfills its appointed role in the historical process, and yields place to its successor. Yet certain strands of it will weave their way into the succeeding pattern of the continuous context. Philosophies are not exempt from the law declared by Lucretius: "One thing will never cease to be born from another and life is given to none in fee simple but only in usufruct." Epicureanism in particular, because of its repellent front, has been especially susceptible to this anonymous absorption. It survives anonymously to this day in literature sacred and profane.

When Christian people assemble for the last tribute of affection to a departed friend and the preacher reads, "The dead shall be raised incorruptible" and "O death, where is thy sting?" and "The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law," only the word sin and the idea of the resurrection are here strange to the language and thought of Epicurus. These two new ideas were being presented in a context of Epicurean terminology and ideology so as to make them acceptable to Epicurean listeners. Epicurus had taught that the bodies of the gods were incorruptible. Paul is holding out to the convert the hope of being raised in this very incorruption. Epicurus had essayed to deprive death of its sting by reconciling men to mortality; Paul would deprive death of its sting by holding out the assurance of immortality. Epicureanism was the prevailing creed among the Greek populations to which Paul addressed himself and, in harmony with his avowed practice of making himself all things to all men that he might save some, he here makes himself an Epicurean to Epicureans. He is shuffling the familiar components of that creed so as to erect a new matrix of meanings. It is just as if the older monument were being demolished in order to yield stones for the wall of the new edifice.

In rabbinical literature the name of Epicurus became a synonym for unbeliever and survives in this meaning. In both ancient and medieval art he was depicted as a type of sensualist, sometimes along with Sardanapalus, a notorious oriental voluptuary. In Dante's Inferno a whole section was set aside for a unique punishment for men of his creed. In the seventeenth century his doctrines experienced a tardy renaissance in France and were carried to England in the period of the Restoration, where they enjoyed a high but fleeting vogue, only to be driven once more into anonymity by paritan condemnation. In the nineteenth century the revival of the study of Greek philosophy in learned circles was too exclusively concerned with Plato and Aristotle to accord him more than grudging consideration, subject to an actual exaggeration of ancient prejudices.

As for political teachings, those of Plato have enjoyed the greatest notoriety and those of Epicurus have been steadily despised or ignored. Yet the latter have affected the direction of political thought in the Western world for three hundred years. Epicurus rebelled against the highly regimented polity of Plato's Republic and the Laws and advocated instead a minimum of government. The function of government, he believed, was to guarantee the safety of the individual. This doctrine was anonymously revived by John Locke and espoused by Thomas Jefferson, who was an avowed Epicurean. It is consequently not surprising that Safety and Happiness, catchwords of Epicurus, should be named in the Declaration of Independence as the ends of government. Neither is it surprising that the same document should mention Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; these concepts also are Epicurean.…

Since classical scholarship, until recent years, has accorded to Epicurus only condescending and prejudiced notice, it is not astonishing that in other circles the neglect has been almost total. This oversight is but natural; nothing else could be expected in view of the anonymity to which the man's acceptable teachings have been condemned because of his unacceptable doctrines. The hidden tradition has been continuous nevertheless. In the main stream of prose and poetry it often survives under Stoic labels. In the terminology and thought of religion it survives in spite of the obliviousness of New Testament scholars. In politics it has been a dominant, though nameless, influence ever since the succession of modern philosophers was started by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke during the brief vogue of Epicureanism in the Restoration period. In North America the Epicurean doctrine that the least government is the best government was virtually made to order for the circumstances of the Revolution, even if not a single Jeffersonian democrat was ever aware of its origin.