SOURCE: William Wallace, "General Aspect of the System" and "The Chief Good," in Epicureanism, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1880, pp. 85-94, 125-69.

[Wallace, a British scholar who taught at Oxford, published his extensive volume on Epicureanism as the philosopher's reputation was beginning to revive after some centuries of general rejection in England. The excerpt that follows provides, first, a synopsis of Epicureanism in general and, second, a delineation of Epicurus's notion of ethics. Wallace begins with a refutation of myths and misperceptions; he concludes with an image of Epicurus as "modern" in his notion of the individual's relationship to the state.]

General Aspect of the System

The popular conception of an Epicurean has varied at different times, but at no time has it been either very fair or very favourable. To the writers of the Roman classical period the charges against Epicureanism were drawn from its denial of the divine providence, its open proclamation of pleasure as the chief good, its opposition to a merely literary and intellectual culture, its withdrawal of its followers from political interests and occupations, and the grotesque features in some of its physical and physiological speculations. Its unscientific character, and its studied indifference, and even hostility, to the prevailing literary and logical as well as mathematical investigations of that epoch, were probably the chief charges in the count. During the ages of theological supremacy which succeeded the downfall of the Empire, Epicurean became synonymous with atheist and unbeliever; it meant a follower of the lusts of the flesh, with whom there was no fear of God to terrify, no ideal aspirations to ennoble, no belief in immortality to check or cheer. Irreligion, freethinking, scepticism, infidelity, on the side of divine affairs: and on the human side, a selfish devotion to one's own ease and comfort, with no care for country or kindred, were the chief ideas connoted by Epicureanism. If we come down to more modern times, the Epicurean of Hume's essays is "the man of elegance and pleasure." He refuses to be bound by the arbitrary restraints which philosophers impose in seeking to "make us happy by reason and rules of art": he alternates his hours between the "amiable pleasure" and "the gay, the frolic virtue"; "forgetful of the past, secure of the future," he enjoys the present: the sprightly muses are the companions of his cheerful discourses and friendly endearments; and, after a day spent in "all the pleasures of sense, and all the joys of harmony and friendship," the shades of night bring him "mutual joy and rapture," with the charming Celia, the mistress of his wishes.¹

A cloud hangs, and has hung, over Epicureanism; and though we can say with confidence that much of the obloquy is undeserved, there will apparently always be a good deal in its teachings on which certainty, or even intelligence, is unattainable. The unbiassed documentary evidence for exposition which we possess is fragmentary, obscure, and does not extend to every part of the philosophic field. On the other hand, from a variety of causes, misconstruction and misrepresentation have made it their victim. It has been treated as an enemy and an interloper by the statesman, the priest, and the philosopher. It has shared the common fate of every system which attacks either of these great powers, the State, the Church, and the republic of arts and letters, and does so without relying on the support of one member or other of the triumvirate against the others. Science and literature, politics and religion, each and all found themselves assailed by the system of Epicurus. That system came forward as a philosophical system, and yet it turned a hostile front to the customary views of education and of culture, and to the accepted methods and results of the sciences.² Whilst other philosophical doctrines either supported or did not interfere with the claims and projects of the political world, Epicureanism openly preached a cosmopolitan and humanitarian creed, which taught the citizen to stand aloof from patriotic and national obligations, and to live his own life as a human being amongst others, in the realm of nature and not of statecraft.³ As to religion, the case was much the same as it was with the State. The gods, like the government of the State, disappeared at the flat of Epicureanism from their commanding position above nature, to become part and parcel of the great natural process in which they, like all other things, live and move and have their being. Above the intellectual structures of science and art,⁴ above the gods of religious faith, above the laws of political convention, rose man, the real individual man, seeking in voluntary association with his fellow-men to live his own life to the fullest of his capacity and with fullest satisfaction.

Of Epicureanism, as of all philosophy, it may be said, that it aims at emancipation, liberation, freedom. But scarcely anywhere was the emancipation carried to the same length as in Epicureanism. Generally speaking, emancipation has meant and means the substitution of an ideal for a material or sensuous sovereignty. We are freed from the dominion of the passions and the flesh by being handed over as subjects to the spirit and the reason. We are taken out of the bondage of this world by taking upon ourselves the yoke of the other world. The heavenly frees from the earthly, and the intellectual from the sensual. Epicureanism professes to impose no yoke or obligation. It agrees with other philosophies in distinguishing between the intellect and the senses (or what it calls the flesh), and, even in a way, in subordinating the latter to the former. But the man of Epicureanism is no abstraction—a reason struggling in the bonds of an alien flesh, which in Pythagorean, and occasionally in Platonic language, forms its prison. Man was not held to be a merely "rational animal," as he was defined by the Stoics. The reason or understanding in Epicureanism is neither the prisoner de facto, nor the lord de jure of the body or flesh. The flesh, in the view of Epicurus, is our unenlightened, the understanding our enlightened self. The reason is the light which shows us the complete nature which we unwittingly are, and in which we blindly and ignorantly live; which tells us those laws and limits of our existence of which the fleshly nature is unaware, and ignorance whereof breeds vain and inevitably baffled hopes. Naturally, or in our flesh, we are like children stranded in the darkness of night, with no idea of our true position in the world, and inclined to fancy terrors in the gloom which surrounds us.⁵ Hence arises the need of philosophy; which, said Epicurus, is an activity that by doctrine and reasoning prepares the way for the happy life.⁶

The main problems of philosophy are, therefore, two in number; or, Epicureanism falls into two parts. The first is a theory of man and of the universe, explaining his position therein, his constitution, and natural powers. This is the physiology&, or philosophy of nature. The other is the practical application of the knowledge so acquired to the regulation of conduct. This is the practical or ethical part of the system. It is at the same time evident that the two parts cannot be completely separated. The theoretical examination has its course limited by the practical need: it is knowledge, not for the sake of knowledge, but for the sake of action, and the rule of conduct. Scientific investigation is permitted only so far as it lays down the true place and position of man in the world of things.

And this exclusion of extraneous considerations may be presented under another aspect. If there are any sciences which deal with words and ideas rather than things—and the sciences of rhetoric, grammar, and mathematics come in different ways under this description—then application to their study can only be held to be waste of time. They divert attention from the one thing needful. The human soul cannot find nourishment in mere words: it craves for realities. Epicurus, following up certain ideas which Socrates had emphasized, asks of every science, Does it deal with facts? and is it useful to me as a human being? If it does not, it may possibly be the pastime of an idle hour; but it should never claim the devotion of a life, because it makes a man miss his true good. It should never be forgotten, therefore, that the natural philosophy of Epicurus is the foundation of his ethics; its raison d'ätre is, that it renders possible a theory of conduct.

Besides these two parts of the system, however, there is another, which may be styled introductory. It deals with the general principles on which we are entitled to assert anything. This is the Canonic, the doctrine of the canons, or grounds of evidence. But the Canonic can scarcely be said to form an independent part of Epicureanism: it goes little beyond a few general and preliminary remarks on the question, "What right have we to believe or affirm?" It is, in short, a protest against the scepticism which declares that every statement is uncertain, and science only a probability; and which maintains that, in these circumstances, the only thing left for man is to keep himself free and unshackled from all onesided adherence. The Canonic is thus the beginning of a logic, dealing, not with the grounds for inferring one proposition from another, but with the more fundamental question: On what ultimate grounds is a statement of fact based?

The three parts of Epicureanism are, then, Logic, Physics, and Ethics, if we apply to Epicureanism the distinction which had been applied by the Stoics to the doctrines of their own school. But, at the same time, the terms are infinitely misleading when so applied. Of logic, in the sense in which the term was understood by Aristotle and the Stoics, there was none in Epicureanism. Nor was this all. The Epicureans regarded it as folly, as unnecessary trifling with useless questions. Still less, again, is there a distinction between the Epicurean physics and ethics as independent or parallel branches of inquiry.

The case stands thus: The Epicurean school professes, in the first instance, to be founded on the senses and the feeling, to be based on reality, as popularly understood. It appeals to our immediate perception and feeling, and declares that these must never be recklessly set aside. What we immediately feel and perceive, that is true; what we directly find ourselves to be, that is what we ought to do. Act what thou art is its motto, and sense and feeling tell thee with sufficient distinctness what thou art. But the promise thus held out is certainly not kept to the letter. What we supposed to be our feelings and sensations turn out to be less trustworthy than we had been, up to this point, led to suppose. The greater number of our beliefs and opinions are due to hasty and erroneous inferences. What seemed to be perception was really reasoning. We must, therefore, get back to our original perceptions. We were told originally that we must believe nothing for which we have not the evidence of the senses and the feeling. It becomes apparent that that evidence does not go so far as we had supposed. Our senses and our feelings seem to mislead, and yet, if we reject all sense and feeling, knowledge is made impracticable.

In other words, the world is not as it seems: all our perceptions cannot, without examination or qualification, be relied upon. This, however, is only because in our perceptions there constantly intrudes an element which is not sense. The other element, which is truly sense, is infallible.⁷ All our sensations are witnesses to reality, only liable to be misinterpreted. Above all, there is a great deal which is inaccessible to direct observation altogether. But though it is unknown, the human mind cannot let it alone. Hence arises the need of a canon of inference, which is given as follows:—Everything that is supposed to happen in the sphere beyond knowledge must follow the same laws of operation as what is known to occur within the range of our experience. Whether it happen in what is beneath the range of the senses (i.e., in the microscopic world, and what lies beyond the power of the microscope), or beyond the range of the senses (i.e., in the telescopic world, and what lies beyond the reach of the telescope), it is governed by the same laws as regulate the occurrences visible to unaided sense.

The canonic thus justifies those inferences which go beyond sense. It is right and just to affirm about the unknown, either what is confirmed and witnessed by the known, or what at least is not witnessed against by the known.⁸ But, at the same time, it is well to note in which sense the reason is here said to go beyond the sense. It goes beyond simply quantitatively: it carries us further and deeper, but there is a general likeness between the one case and the other. The atoms, e.g., which are intellectually perceived, have precisely the same qualities as the bodies which are sensibly perceived, when we deduct from the latter all which can be shown to be the effect of a combination of circumstances. The intellect is only a subtler and more farseeing sense, and the sense is a short-sighted and grosser intellect. In Epicurean phraseology, in fact, the particles which constitute the one are said to be finer and more ethereal than those which constitute the other; and for that reason, and that reason only, they are susceptible to minute influences, to which the grosser particles composing the senses are stolidly insensible.⁹

The Epicurean logic, then, if logic it can be called, is in the direction of inductive logic. It lays down the senses as the first, and, we may say, the ultimate court of appeal as a criterion of reality. They never can be mistaken, though the mind may be wrong in the inferences it draws from them. This is the first principle; and the second is, that the unknown is regulated by the same laws as the known: that is to say, the operations in the world invisible to the senses follow on a larger or less scale the same principles as govern the operations of the visible world. We do not, in the intelligible world, find ourselves lifted into a world where new categories and higher conceptions prevail. Thirdly, language in the Epicurean logic is subjected to scrutiny. Every word, if it is to pass muster in argument, must be en rapport with a clear and distinct conception, which again must finally be based upon one clear and distinct perception.¹⁰ These are the three main principles of Canonic: that sensation is the only guarantee of reality, that language must be able to recall distinct images, and that reasoning must employ known and familiar processes to make unknown and mysterious facts explicable….

The Chief Good

We may now pass on to what would, in ordinary parlance, be described as the moral theory or ethical system of Epicurus. On this topic we get little help from Lucretius, whose poem breaks off before it has even completed the theory of natural phenomena. But in Diogenes Laertius, in Cicero and Seneca, there are a number of fragmentary statements, and even of tolerably connected passages, which help us to form in outline at least a conception of the Epicurean Ethics. But we must not expect too much from this title. We shall find no code of duties, no principle of obligation, no abstract standard of morals; and still less any discussion of the moral faculties. In morals we are referred as elsewhere to the guidance of feeling. In feeling, properly interpreted, we have our rule; and we have only to use our intellect to see that we are not led astray from obedience to its voice. Our feeling unequivocally tells us the general character of what we should pursue, viz., pleasure. It is the business of our reason to prevent this object being lost by injudicious pursuit, or by mistaking a less pleasure for a greater. Pleasure always is our aim; the natural aim of every living being, the end or law of nature. It needs some care, however, to discriminate real pleasure from pretended. We are corrupted, we inherit a perverse taste; and it is the office of philosophy to purify our feelings, to make our taste for pleasure true.

As an introduction, we may take a letter of Epicurus in which he presents a summary of his theory of life and conduct; it is given by Diogenes Laertius¹¹:—

EPICURUS to MENŒCEUS.

Be not slack to seek wisdom when thou art young, nor weary in the search thereof when thou art grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And he who says that the season for philosophy has not yet come, and that it is passed and gone, is like one who should say that the season for happiness has not yet come, or that it has passed away. Therefore, both old and young ought to seek wisdom, that so a man as age comes over him may be young in good things, because of the grace of what has been, and while he is young may likewise be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. Exercise thyself, therefore, in the things which bring happiness; for verily, while it is with thee thou wilt have everything, and when it is not, thou wilt do everything if so thou mayest have it.

Those things which without ceasing I have declared unto thee, those do and exercise thyself therein, holding them to be the elements of right life. First, believe that God is a being blessed and immortal, according to the notion of a God commonly held amongst men; and so believing, thou shalt not affirm of him aught that is contrary to immortality or that agrees not with blessedness, but shalt believe about him whatsoever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For verily there are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that men do not uphold steadfastly the notions they currently believe. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious. For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions, but false assumptions; according to which the greatest evils that happen to the wicked, and the blessings which happen to the good, are held to come from the hand of the gods. Seeing that, as they are always most familiar with their own good qualities, they take pleasure in the sight of qualities like their own, and reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.

Accustom thyself in the belief that death is nothing to us, for good and evil are only where they are felt, and death is the absence of all feeling: therefore, a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes enjoyable the mortality of life, not by adding to years an illimitable time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For in life there can be nothing to fear to him who has thoroughly apprehended that there is nothing to cause fear in what time we are not alive. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present causes only a groundless pain by the expectation thereof. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we are, death is not yet, and when death comes, then we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or the dead, for it is not found with the living, and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at one time men seek to escape death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time yearn for it as a rest from the evils in life. The mere absence of life is no object of fear, for to live is not set in view beside it, nor is it regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food, not merely and simply the larger lot, but the most pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant, and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young men to live well, and the old men to make a good end, speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirableness of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were best not to be born, but when once one is born, to pass with greatest speed the gates of Hades. If he, in truth, believes this, why does he not depart from this life? There is nothing to hinder him, if he has truly come to this conclusion. If he speaks only in mockery, his words are meaningless among people who believe in them not.

Thou must remember that the future is neither wholly ours, nor wholly not ours, so that neither may we wholly wait for it as if it were sure to come, nor wholly despair as if it were not to come.

Thou must also keep in mind that of desires some are natural, and some are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some are natural only. And of the necessary desires, some are necessary if we are to be happy, and some if the body is to remain unperturbed, and some if we are even to live. By the clear and certain understanding of these things we learn to make every preference and aversion, so that the body may have health and the soul tranquillity, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear; and when once we have attained this, all the tempest of the soul is laid, seeing that the living creature has not to go to find something that is wanting, or to seek something else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we need pleasure, is, when we are grieved because of the absence of pleasure; but when we feel no pain, then we no longer stand in need of pleasure. Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. From it is the commencement of every choice and every aversion, and to it we come back, and make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.

And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but ofttimes pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And ofttimes we consider pains superior to pleasures, and submit to the pain for a long time, when it is attended for us with a greater pleasure. All pleasure, therefore, because of its kinship with our nature, is a good, but it is not in all cases our choice, even as every pain is an evil, though pain is not always, and in every case, to be shunned. It is, however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, that all these things must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good; and we regard independence of outward goods as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little, if we have not much, being thoroughly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured, and only the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when once the pain due to want is removed; and bread and water confer the highest pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate self, therefore, to plain and inexpensive diet gives all that is needed for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking, and it places us in a better frame when we approach at intervals a costly fare, and renders us fearless of fortune.

When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal, or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood by some who are either ignorant and prejudiced for other views, or inclined to misinterpret our statements. By pleasure, we mean the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking feasts and of revelry, not the pleasures of sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a splendid table, which produce a pleasant life: it is sober reasoning, searching out the reasons for every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Of all this, the beginning, and the greatest good, is prudence. Wherefore, prudence is a more precious thing even than philosophy: from it grow all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot lead a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and justice; nor lead a life of prudence, honour, and justice which is not also a life of pleasure. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them.

Who then is superior, in thy judgment, to such a man? He holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is altogether without fears about death; he has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and has understood how easily the limit of good things can be satisfied and procured, and how either the length or the strength of evils is but slight. He has rejected fate which some have introduced as universal mistress, no less than chance, in respect of what is due to human agency, for he sees that fate destroys responsibility, and that fortune is inconstant; as for our actions, there is no lord and master over them, and it is to them that blame and praise naturally ensue. Better were it, indeed, to believe the legend of the gods, than be in bondage to the destiny taught by the physical philosophers; for the theological myth gives a faint hope of deprecating divine wrath by honouring the gods, while the fate of the philosophers is deaf to all supplications. Nor does he hold chance to be a god, as the world in general does, for in the acts of God there is no disorder, nor to be a cause, though an uncertain one, for he believes that good or evil is not given by it to men so as to make life blessed, though it supplies the starting-point of great good and great evil. He believes that the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that what is well-judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of chance.

Exercise thyself in these and kindred precepts day and night, both by thyself and with him who is like unto thee; and never, either in waking or in dream, wilt thou be disturbed, but wilt live as a god amongst men. For in nothing does he resemble a mortal creature, the man who lives in immortal blessedness.

Thus unequivocally does Epicureanism proclaim pleasure to be the end of nature—the first good, common to the whole race of man. The announcement of such a doctrine naturally gave rise to a chorus of reproving and protesting voices. Even if it be true that we are irresistibly urged towards pleasure by an impulse of our nature, it is our duty, say the objectors, to guard against the temptations thus arising. We have nobler aims to live for then mere pleasure. Honour and duty demand our allegiance: obligations bind us to our family and friends and to our country. Pleasure is of the earth, but virtue calls us to make ourselves worthy of heaven. A mere pleasure-seeker is of all beings the most miserable: his search is hopeless: and the fruits he plucks are but as apples of Sodom and turn into ashes between his teeth. The man of pleasure must inevitably, it is said, cry out, Vanity of vanities: all is vanity. Worse than this: his pleasures will become more and more sensual, degrading, and animal. As life goes on, his jaded sensibilities require more poignant excitements to ward off the attacks of ennui. A life of pleasure hardens the heart, and the sense of enjoyment comes to find a peculiar delight in the sight of others suffering. Domitian at Rome and Catherine the Second of Russia are pointed out as the examples warning against lawless lust for pleasures. That Epicureanism should inculcate a lesson which bears such fruits seems argument enough to condemn it.

In all of this the truth is marred by exaggeration. There is a long interval between the statement that pleasure is the natural law, and the recommendation to pursue pleasures everywhere and above all things. The former can hardly be disputed, when explained; the latter is unwise and, possibly, impracticable advice. To do jus-tice to the doctrine of Epicurus we should never forget that it is to a large extent the reaction and protest of an opposition. Its statements to be understood must be taken in connection with the doctrines to which they are antagonistic. Every thesis loses half its meaning, and almost all its truth, when completely dissevered from its antithesis. The expression of a dogma in such a case is misleading. The author, strong in his sense of a correction to be made, hardly gives full place to the large and important body of doctrine which he accepts without correction. His exposition is fragmentary and unbalanced, and requires to be interpreted with caution. Because something is passed over in silence, we must not infer that it is denied. Every revelation of new truth, every attempt at reform, always and necessarily assumes and tacitly embodies with itself much that was old.

Epicureanism need not be assumed, therefore, to abolish or contradict the old morality altogether, although it proposes to put it upon a new foundation, and denies the especial principles on which the virtues were sometimes said to be founded. In the moral systems of Plato and Aristotle a very subordinate and undignified place was assigned to pleasure. When Aristotle in his "Ethics" attempts to find the characteristic mark of virtue, he sees it in the circumstance that the end or aim of the action is [tò kalòn]² The beautiful—the idea of an objective perfection and symmetry which is to be maintained—the entirely ideal motive of correspondence with an existent law of rectitude,—the desire to reflect a moral beauty in our individual conduct—that is the sunlight which elevates acts out of mechanical obedience into conscious actualization of an ethical world or moral cosmos. The presupposition here, as in Plato, is that of an order which exists before us, of an ideal perfection which we do not make, and can but approximate to. Of the origin and authority of this fundamental idea of his ethical system Aristotle can scarcely be said to render any account. What the "beautiful" is, and how it comes to sway our conduct, is rather removed from his range. Nor can Plato be said to carry more conviction when he asserts, what in its way is true enough, that these conceptions are the very ante-natal dower of the soul—the ideas which mind has been familiar with before it sank into the darkness of this sense-world in which we live. The interesting question still remains how we as human beings come to shake off the confusing influences of nature, and learn to see the idea of goodness in its very truth. But Plato, though he attacks this question, does not answer it. He discusses an analogous question, viz., how the statesman is to be equipped for his duties; and to the statesman thus formed and perfected he entrusts the task of telling the ordinary human being what is to be done and what is not to be done. And a like criticism may be passed on Aristotle. They both had in view an objective order and system which stood above the likes and feelings of men; and a willing conformity to this order was the aim which they assigned to the legislator in his normative action in society. So long as there was a tolerable agreement between this ideal order and the actual constitutions under which men lived, so long their theory might be accepted. But when even the blindest eye could no longer refuse to see in the existing political forms only a tissue of vice, injustice, and baseness, then the ideal order, bereft of its sensuous vicegerent, the State, must collapse or find another support.

The ancient sages before Epicurus had condemned pleasure, and opposed it to virtue. A few of them went so far as to carry out the implication, and to assert the absolute incompatibility of pleasure and virtue. Aristotle had not been so extravagant. In pleasure he recognised the sign that the capacity and tendency to good which habit and discipline had produced had at length become a second nature.¹³ He had spoken of pleasure as the accompaniment of such action as combined the fullest expansion of a natural power in the agent with the most satisfactory condition of the objects in which it found room for its exercise. Pleasure was the concomitant of action when the perfect agent found a perfect medium for his action. But the character of the active power made a profound difference in the estimate to be formed of the pleasure. There were higher pleasures, and there were lower pleasures. This distinction of the worth or worthlessness of different pleasures rests upon the presumption that there is a hierarchical system of ends in life, that some acts or things are intrinsically worth more than others, quite apart from the pleasure which individuals may derive from them. It rests on a belief in ideas and on ideal truth: on the faith that man is only a member of a great order, an everlasting realm of truth and goodness, which receives him when he comes into the world, and which connects him with the past and the future, as well as with his contemporaries in the present.

Such an order Epicureanism ignores. It isolates a man from his membership of the body politic; it cuts him off from anything beyond this life by the doctrine of man's absolute mortality. For Epicureanism man is a sentient being, capable of pleasure and pain, and possessed of an intelligence which enables him to take forethought for both. Around him are other sentient beings similarly circumstanced, with whom it is often necessary, and sometimes convenient, that he should come into contact and relationship. But these connections are lax, accidental, and temporary; the unions so formed are transient, and owe their existence and maintenance to the convenience of individuals. They have no subsistence in themselves, no rights as against individuals, no powers to enforce obligations or require duties. The individual being, susceptible to pains and pleasures, is the starting-point and the standard. Nothing exists outside him which should thwart and check the claims of his person to enjoyment, nothing of an ideal kind, at any rate. To some extent, however, the bond which is thus taken off is reimposed as the easier and lighter yoke of friendship.

Antiquity is almost unanimous in the praises it bestows upon the friendly affection which prevailed in the communities of Epicureans.¹⁴ Friendship enhances the charm of life; it helps to lighten sorrows and to heighten joys by fellowship. In itself, the fact of friendship bears witness to something beyond the mere individual, perhaps—but it speaks only imperfectly and indistinctly. Reflection seems to show that all friendship has a selfish basis, and is built upon utility. In every union of affection the cynical observer is able to point to something which may be interpreted into the presence of an earthly element, a self-regarding consideration. Nor is the cynical observer to be pronounced in error. The self-regarding cannot be entirely absent from anything human; the absolutely and wholly unselfish is the divine. But the cynical observer is wrong in emphasizing this fact to the exclusion of another side. The prophet and the reformer are not to be regarded as hypocrites because even in their holiest fervours and their purest counsels the absence of self is never perfect and undisputed. Rather were it well to note the different contents and structure of the self which is operative in different individuals. There is a wide interval between the self which excludes all others in antagonism and the self which includes them in love.

Yet for an ordinary world, the cynicism which reminds us that utility is the creator of law and morality is not altogether without its value. Harsh as it may sound against more ideal or more sentimental principles, the assertion of utilitarianism has at least the advantage of fighting against an unreasoning conservatism adhering to the past with blind tenacity. Even if utility be not an adequate formula to account for the existence of the organization of human society on its present basis, it at least affords a mark for the reformer, and suggests ameliorations. In the great words in which Plato proclaimed the rights of reason against authority and tradition,¹⁵ there is not and never will be finer phrase than this:—Only the useful is truly beautiful and noble, only the harmful truly unsightly and bad.

But the basis of utilitarianism may be different, as the doctrine itself varies. It may rest on a philanthropic sentiment, a humanitarian feeling. Such a foundation must to Epicurus have seemed vague and uncertain; and he builds his creed accordingly on a more solid foundation; more solid, that is, if we compare sentiment with sentiment. He bases it on the natural feeling of pleasure, and on the general gravitation of all human kind towards pleasure. No more than other writers is Epicurus able to give a definition of pleasure. To know what is meant by being pleased we must go to consciousness, to feeling. "The state of pleasure," says Professor Bain, "is an ultimate, indefinable experience of the mind. The fact itself is known to each person's consciousness: the modes, varieties, degrees, collaterals, and effects of it, may be stated in propositions."¹⁶ In a sense, it is quite true that every one does understand what is meant by pleasure. Unfortunately, however, the word pleasure, like all words of this 'abstract' description, easily becomes ambiguous. It denotes not merely the abstract and general relation in virtue of which an act or object is termed pleasant, but also the particular objects or acts themselves which give pleasure to some, or perhaps to the majority of mankind. Like other abstract terms, it is interpreted and defined by the habits and experience of each individual. It is specified into various concrete pleasures, and identified with certain things which produce pleasure. Every man has pleasures of his own, and the cases are rare where the same thing gives pleasure to everybody.

The phrase "pursue pleasure," is therefore somewhat elliptical. Strictly speaking, we do not and cannot pursue pleasure; which is as great an abstraction as the pursuit of truth, perhaps even a greater; for the latter, at least, is in some degree objective and abiding, whereas pleasure is transient and subjective. What we pursue are certain objects of desire, the attainment of which causes pleasure. Pleasure in itself, if we may use such an expression, is neither one thing nor another: what it is depends entirely on the nature of the person, and the character of the object. No so-called pleasure has the power of producing pleasure, inevitably and in all circumstances. Yet for this reason, it may be said what we desire is not a thing, but rather an action. It is the eating, and not the food, which gives pleasure to the hungry.

There is a controversy, in some respects verbal, raised on this point. It may be said, that the object of a desire is not pleasure, but some special thing or act. "All particular appetites and passions," says Bishop Butler,¹⁷ "are towards external things themselves, distinct from the pleasure arising from them." Action, which should have in view no particular object but only the general end of pleasure, would be so indefinite and vague as to be unreal. The actual appetites of the actual human being go straight at their specific ends. It is only with reflection and thought that the voluptuary who pursues pleasure for pleasure's sake becomes in any degree possible. A mere liking for pleasant things does not make a voluptuary, or few would escape the name. To become a voluptuary, a human being must care for and desire nothing in these pleasant things but the pleasure which they bring to his individual self. Every concrete reality fades away into nothingness in his eyes except his own consciousness, and the honey which can be extracted by him from the vast world, for whose intrinsic existence and fortunes he has no interest whatever. To such a person, if he can be said anywhere to exist in full-fledged reality, the doctrine that pleasure is the sole object of desires may be applied.

No such assertion does Epicurus, however, make. The end of nature, he says, is pleasure. Pleasure, and not pain, is the end towards which all things in the world tend as their natural and normal condition. But what are pleasure and pain? It is necessary to look at them together. No doubt it may be said that there is a third or neutral state, which is neither pleasure nor pain. There are certainly many states of consciousness, which we should not in ordinary language describe as either pleasant or painful. But whether that gives a ground for asserting that these states are absolutely without such quality, are wholly indifferent, is a question which seems difficult to answer in the affirmative. It may, however, be convenient to assume the existence of some such point of transition and indifference as a terminus from which we ordinarily measure the degree of pleasure or of pain, or as an average level of no very definable character, and liable to divergence on two sides.

According to Plato, however, there are two categories of pleasures ordinarily so called.¹⁸ There are pleasures which rest, to some extent, upon an illusion; they seem pleasant, that is, when set in contrast with a background of pain. In themselves they are nothing positive: they are no more than the absence or the removal of uneasiness. They presuppose an antecedent pain: they are the satisfaction of a want. Of this kind, for example, is the pleasure derived from eating by the hungry man. These pleasures are unreal and untrue. On the other hand, there are pleasures,—as an instance, Plato gives the pleasures of smell,—which are preceded by no pain. They accompany certain exertions of activity or certain states of susceptibility: they come unsought, and leave no sense of want behind them. Such pleasures are positive and real.

It may be doubted if this distinction rests on wholly satisfactory ground. The sense of want or desire which accompanies certain pleasures as their condition, is probably to be explained by their close connection with our nature and character, whether original or acquired. The pleasures of smell, to take Plato's instance, excite no previous desires in most cases, because they have little connection with our well-being; and the pleasure they do produce may, perhaps, be due directly or indirectly to an association with life-giving and beneficial function. Perhaps, too, the facility with which certain pleasures may be represented by imagination in the objects which habitually cause them, has something to do with the feeling of uneasiness which Plato alludes to. At any rate, all pleasures seem to be, at least in the case of those who feel them most acutely, attended by the sense of want. But, of course, there is a difference of another origin which has a bearing upon the point. The pleasures of the sensualist are much less within his own power than those of the intellectualist. The former is in a large degree dependent on the favour of external circumstances, and thus inevitably he must occasionally be deprived of a favourite gratification, must suffer want and pain. The intellect carries its own resources, at least, to a large extent, and is less dependent on external help. But even in the case of intellectual delights, the absence of intellectual exercise would be felt as a pain and loss, and a man would put himself to pain and trouble to recover his mental ease and freedom. The various conditions under which pleasure is experienced seem to point in the direction of the relativity of pleasure and pain. Whether as the removal of an obstruction, the conquest of a difficulty, the replenishment of a void, the satisfaction of an uneasiness, the re-establishment of an equilibrium, the enlargement of an imprisoned force, pleasure presupposes something of its opposite.

It is in this sense that Epicurus defines pleasure: "When once the pain arising from deficiency has been removed, the pleasure in the flesh admits of no further augmentation, but only of variation: and similarly the limit of the pleasure of the mind is reached, when the causes of our principal mental fears have been removed."¹⁹ The limit of pleasure, according to the stock phrase, was the eradication of everything painful. When so much has been gained, no further increase in the amount of the pleasure is possible. Subsequently, of course, variety may be introduced by more costly appliances, but the net result will be the same as that gained by simpler methods. And for that reason it is a wise precaution to find out experimentally the simplest and least expensive mode of gratifying our wants, not with any ascetic intention, but simply to prepare for a state of affairs when the more costly means is not at our command. If it be said that the variety and vicissitude of luxuries also satisfies what is to many a real want, Epicurus replies by instituting a distinction between our wants. Of the desires, some are pronounced to be natural and necessary; others to be natural, but not necessary; a third class includes desires which are neither natural nor necessary, but due merely to fancy and fashion. This division of desires and pleasures into the natural and the artificial comes from older sources: it is laid down, for example, by the Cynics. But it is in the application of the distinction to hedonism that the important point lies for Epicureanism. Epicurus, like the Stoics in his own time, and like Rousseau and his adherents in the last century, tries to find in nature a help against fashion and civilization. It is nothing to have cast away the rags of superstition, if we still retain the artificial vestments of human culture. Avoid all culture, was the advice of Epicurus.²⁰ He is at war with the artificialities of life. Nature had made man upright, but he had sought out many inventions. An exclusive literary training was leading men away from the perception of the truth of life, to spend their days in a hollow world of unreality, filled with esthetic vanities, with political pomps, with religious anxieties. To the doctrine that poetry and art had a useful end, the Epicureans opposed a denial; poetry might be justified on some grounds, but certainly not for its utility.²¹ If the hard-worked statesman, said Epicurus in his work on Kingdom,²² desires relaxation, let him seek it in the tales of war, or even in rough common jesting, but not in aesthetic discussions, on topics of music and poetry; let him seek his amusement in spectacles and pageants, in the drama and the concert, but not in critical or philological investigations of the principles of art. Epicurus is impatient of the nebulous regions which only exist, according to him, for highly sensitive and sentimental souls.

In this way Epicureanism seems to approach to a point of view at the opposite pole of opinion, viz. Cynicism or Stoicism. "Man needs but little here," is its assertion. "Riches, according to nature, are of limited extent, and can easily be procured; but the wealth craved after by vain fancies knows neither end nor limit." "He who has understood the limits of life, knows how easy to get is all that takes away the pain of want, and all that is required to make our life perfect at every point. In this way he has no need of anything which implies a contest."²³ Thus Epicurus can scarcely be identified with the ordinary advocates of pleasure. His hedonism is of a sober and reflective kind. It rests on the assumption that pleasure is the end or natural aim, but, it adds, that the business of philosophy is to show within what limits that end is attainable. Thus, if, on one hand, it declares against the philosophers that pleasure is the law of nature, and that ideal ends ought to promote the welfare of humanity, it declares on the other against the multitude that the ordinary pursuit of pleasure, and the common ideas of its possibilities, are erroneous. To the ordinary vision the search for pleasure is endless: one beckons after another: illimitable vistas of new delights seem to extend before the ravished eyes. All this is a delusion, says Epicurus. True pleasure is satisfaction, and not a yearning, which, though momentarily stilled, bursts forth again.

It would almost seem a misnomer to call this pleasure. As true politeness, so-called, often differs widely with what is usually understood by politeness, so true pleasure seems far apart from pleasure in its vulgar meaning. A body free from pain, and a mind released from perturbations, is the ideal of Epicurean life. The prominent point, in short, is not the doctrine that pleasure is the natural end. That Epicurus asserts as a universal law of animated existence. But what he emphasizes is rather the conditions under which this end is possible for man. He seems, at first sight, to describe pleasure, as Schopenhauer, as a merely negative state, as the absence of pain. It would, however, be a grave mistake were we to suppose that because this condition is negatively described, it was a mere abstraction or negation. The imperturbability of the Epicurean was not an ascetic or an insensate withdrawal from all life and action. But it certainly introduced a rational and reflective aspect into the doctrine of hedonism, as it had been practised or taught by Aristippus of Cyrene. The Cyrenaic preached enjoyment of the present moment: he took pleasure as he found it scattered all over the earth. He did not balance pleasure against pleasure. His theory was, that as pleasure is the one thing desirable, the main aim of education should be to fit men to enjoy with all their heart, to give them that strength of mind and body, which enables them to take pleasure in anything. He said, Learn to enjoy: at each moment the absolute good of life is before you, and you ought to attain it. You need not wait for the lapse of time, so as to see how it has turned out upon the whole. Comparison and reflection are the foe of pleasure. You must be able to throw yourself wholly into what this moment presents, as if this moment were eternity with no before or after. When another moment comes, you treat it in like manner. Thus, while you enjoy each in its turn to the full, you remain detached from its control, you are still your own master, your action creates no obligation, you are equally free to enjoy what comes next.

To all of this the reply of the Epicurean is that such a doctrine, if practicable at all, is only possible under exceptional circumstances. To carry it out implies a previous training and reflection on life as a whole, on its capacities and its needs, on the laws of nature, and the relations of men to one another. A happy tact, a natural taste, may, in peculiarly gifted natures, and in favourable circumstances, enable a man to enjoy, without running upon the shoals and quicksands which beset the course of the pleasure-seeker. But in the vast majority of cases, where no æsthetic instincts guide the decision, the search for pleasure proves a chase after a phantom, which allures only to deceive. For "the flesh takes the limits of pleasure to be endless, and an endless time would be needed to provide it; but the mind, having learned the limit and the end of the flesh, and having cast away fears about the distant future, has made for us life perfect and adequate, and we no longer need infinite time. And yet it has not been an exile from pleasure, and when the time comes to depart from life, it closes with no sense of having fallen short of felicity."²⁴ In other words, if we really and truly enjoy the moment, we can only do so by having taken, some time or other, a view beyond the moment, and having learned to see each moment in the light of the whole life, of our nature as a whole. We must refer each action to the end and aim of nature, and not throw ourselves blindly into what promises pleasure.

"No pleasure is evil in itself, but the objects productive of certain pleasures may lead to annoyances many times greater than the pleasure."²⁵ Hence the place of prudence or reflection in the Epicurean system, as the chief of the virtues. But it must not be supposed that the function of φραυησιs is in Epicurus any more than in Aristotle, merely to weigh pleasure against pleasure, so as to choose the heavier. Prudence, here as there, means the intelligent conception of human nature, as a whole, in its limits and its powers. It is not a fitful and casual agent, interfering with the natural bent towards pleasure, and exhorting it to hear reason, but a deep-settled and permanent character—the second nature of the Epicurean sage—which acts like an instinct to preserve from extravagance and excess. If reflection, indeed, were employed to choose amongst pleasures with a conscious reasoning at every moment, such a process would certainly be a kill-joy. But this is only the case with the learner, who is endeavouring to correct his natural errors. As he advances in the path of perfection, the feeling of opposition between the habitual tendency fostered by evil influences and the rational law of nature grows fainter, till at last, in the character of the ideal sage, it disappears altogether. Once for all, the wise man has counted the cost, and learnt the real worth, of various enjoyments; he has learned to discriminate apparent from real pleasures, and can turn away without a single sigh of regret from many entertainments which the world esteems highly.

This, then, is one point of contrast between pleasure, as understood by the Cyrenaics and Epicureans. With the former it was the pleasure of the moment, of action and excitement: life, as a whole, did not enter into the account—it was taken as a series of moments, and each moment deemed an eternity. With the latter it was the pleasure of a life, in which the pleasures of the several moments took their place in a system and modified each other. The pleasure of the Cyrenaics was a keen sensation—in motion, κίνησις, as the technical phrase described it: that of the Epicureans was more tranquil and sedate—an habitual and permanent rather With the than a changeful the temporary enjoyment.²⁶ With the Cyrenaic it was the pleasure of the healthy and vigorous natural man; with the Epicurean, of the philosopher, and, perhaps, to some extent, of the weakly valetudinarian. Epicureanism could thus appeal to the many, whilst Cyrenaic theories could only find an echo in specially-endowed personalities. Few in any age can stand for a portrait like that drawn by Cicero,²⁷ of M. Thorius Balbus. "This man was a citizen of Lanuvium. He lived in such a way as to miss none of the finest pleasures; for in all kinds of pleasure he was an amateur, connoisseur, and adept. So free was he from superstition that he treated with scorn many of the sacred places and religious rites of his country: and yet so fearless of death that he fell on the battle-field fighting for his fatherland. He limited his desires, not at the point fixed by Epicurus, but by his own satiety: yet never so as to injure his health. His exercise was arranged so as to make him come hungry and thirsty to dinner; his food was at once calculated to please the palate and promote digestion, and his wine was selected of such quality as to give pleasure and produce no injury. As for the other enjoyments which Epicurus declares to be an essential part of the conception of happiness, he tasted them, too. He did not suffer from pain; yet when it did come he bore it manfully, trusting perhaps more to a physician than a philosopher. He had a splendid colour, sound health, great popularity; in a word, his life was brimful of every variety of pleasure." But people with all these advantages are on the whole rare, and a gospel for their benefit is scarcely needed. Epicureanism addressed itself to a frailer and humbler multitude, who neither in circumstances nor in personal endowments were equal to making the world comport itself to their demands. It proposed to enable them, by discipline, to gain all that the others acquired by wealth, position, and innate force. It preached that pleasure was not restricted to the rich or to the mighty, but was equally attainable by the poor and the lowly. It levelled all ranks and equalized men, by showing that it is the variety and superficial glitter of pleasure and not its essence which imposed upon the powerful and their admirers. Epicurus thus took from Cynicism its representation of the difference between artificial and natural pleasures and desires; but he employed the distinction for different purposes, and with other presuppositions. He did not, like them, allow the means to become an end.

It is sometimes put as another difference between Epicurus and his Cyrenaic predecessors, that while the latter put the bodily pleasures highest, the former gave preference to the pleasures of the mind. It may, of course, be said that as the mind, whether as animus or as anima (to adopt a Lucretian distinction²⁸), is, according to Epicurus, only a species of body or matter, any distinction between the mental and bodily in such a system can be of little importance. This, however, would be to confuse the explanation of a difference with the difference itself. To the Epicureans, as to everybody else, the distinction between body and mind was an important one, however it was accounted for in terms of their especial creed. But the ground on which the mental is put higher than the corporeal in its capacity for enjoyment or misery is not based on abstruse considerations, but simply on the fact that while the flesh simply felt in the moment, and for the moment, the mind could be under the combined influence of past, present, and future. The flesh, σάρξ, as Epicurus terms the blind, natural, and unconscious self in us, looks neither before nor after; it pines for nothing, and has no prospects of coming joy. It is buried in itself. The mind, on the contrary, the intelligent self, has a larger range, both in its pleasures and its pains. Yet it might be urged that this consideration tells both ways: the mind can relieve its pain by the prospect of deliverance, and can damp a joy by the reflection on future or contemporaneous pains.

Yet it would be a foolish mistake to suppose that when Epicurus thus advocates the primacy for mind, he is doing more than asserting that the pains and pleasures of the intelligent man have an intensity and vigour exceeding those of the mere boor. He has no idea of pleasures which exclude the body from all share. On this point we have a sentence which his adversaries have quoted and misconstructed to their own delight. "I am unable," he says, "to form any conception of good, from which have been eliminated the pleasures of eating and drinking, the pleasures of sexual love, the pleasures of music and eloquence, and the pleasures of shape and pleasant movements."²⁹ Of course this does not mean that pleasure merely lies in these things. But it does assert that a pleasure from which they have all been excluded as unreal and incompat ible, is to Epicurus an impossible and fanciful conception—a mere dream of the idealist. And it is to be looked at in that light, as a protest against a school of ethics which regarded bodily pleasure as something unworthy and degrading, and held that the true and real pleasure was intellectual or mental. It is here that Epicurus is directing his remarks against the idealist philosophers, who made their heaven a life of intellectual vision of truth. Such a one-sided view of human nature as a mere spirit or reason is what Epicureanism constantly and rightly denies. But, as we have seen, it equally on the other hand refuses to acknowledge the supremacy of the mere flesh. It never flinches from the difficult task of emphasizing the complete constitution of human nature—as flesh and spirit.

In the same way we have this double edge of Epicureanism presented in the statement that, "It is impos sible to live pleasantly without living wisely, and well, and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well, and justly, without living pleasantly."³⁰ The path of virtue and the path of pleasure coincide. "It is my belief," says Seneca, "however much my fellow-Stoics may disagree with me, that the teaching of Epicurus is holy and right; pleasure with him is reduced to something small and slender, and the very law which we impose on virtue he lays down for pleasure: he bids it obey nature. And, therefore, I shall not say, like many of the Stoics, that the sect of Epicurus is a guide to vice; but this I say, it has a bad name, an ill-repute, and that undeservedly. Its countenance gives room for such stories, and suggests wrong expectations. It is like a brave man dressed as a woman."³¹ But Epicurus was denied the credit, and even the right, of making this identification between true virtue and true happiness. Words of his were quoted to the effect that "we should honour virtue and goodness and the like, if they produce pleasure, but not otherwise;" or that "he scorned virtue and its foolish admirers when it produced no pleasure."³² To understand these statements and give them no exaggerated sense, it is well to recollect against whom they are directed. They are no abstract enunciations, but polemical remarks directed against exaggeration on the opposite side. And that exaggeration is found in certain forms of Stoical and Cynical doctrine, which make virtue an end in itself, not merely irrespective of the amount of pleasure it may bring to the individual on a special occasion, but without any consideration of its utility to mankind at large. These enthusiastic friends of virtue have confounded its accidental divergence from pleasure, in the lower sense, when it takes its colour from sensuality, with a divergence from pleasure in its higher sense, when pleasure means the blissful feeling of wellbeing. The whole character of the dispute reminds us vividly of Bentham's assaults upon the ascetic moralists—as those who "have gone so far as to make it a matter of merit and of duty to court pain."³³ Of course, Epicureanism is a great deal more than utilitarianism. It is a theory of life and nature as a whole, and not a mere hypothesis to explain the existence of moral distinctions. Epicureanism is an attempt to afford human souls a guide amid the perplexities of life: it is as much a religion as a scientific theory. Its end is practice, and not mere doctrine. It speaks for the benefit of the individual man as a being for whom life is pregnant with possibilities of pain and pleasure, while utilitarianism is mainly engaged with a speculative problem. Yet, in some ways the drift of Epicureanism would be made clear if it were described as an assertion of the "principle of utility." When Bentham says that "A man may be said to be a partizan of the principle of utility when the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any action or to any measure is determined by and proportioned to the tendency which he conceives it to have to augment or to diminish the happiness of the community," he at least expresses one side of Epicureanism. But he does not afford equally adequate expression to the personal, practical, and inward aspects. The ethics of the individual, according to Epicurus are not merely and wholly determined by the interests of the community. Man has a right and a law of his own, the right to enjoy existence, and the duty to secure his own full and free development. The rights of society over the individual, the subordination of the individual to the laws and institutions of the State, are in this theory supplementary and derivative.

It is in its remarks on justice and the political virtues that Epicureanism comes nearest to the standpoint of English utilitarianism. "It was not because sovereignty and dominion were intrinsically good that men sought for fame and glory in society, but in order to fence themselves round from their fellowmen."³⁴ Political life is a pis aller, or at any rate the current forms and institutions of political life have only a relative and subsidiary value. The school of political philosophy to which Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume, and Rousseau in very different ways belong, insists upon an original compact between the individual members of society as the origin of its establishment. It is probably possible at the present day to acknowledge the amount of truth contained in this doctrine without committing one's self to its absurdities. It is no doubt true that society as it exists upon the face of the earth is largely due to the operation of natural causes, with which purpose or deliberation has exceedingly little to do. The necessities of procuring the means of subsistence, the exigencies of the sexual passion, and the natural force of kindred in the human race, will always and inevitably form societies of differing character and extent. But it is a long way from such animal and natural unions to the mature forms of family and civic life. The operations of instinct only go a small way to explain the rise of domesticity and political associations. The influence of the family instinct, if unaided, seldom goes beyond a narrow circle; and, if the world had to depend on that alone, the race of men would be broken up into an endless number of miniature societies. But other agencies step in to complete the work, and to resist the disintegrating tendencies of selfishness. On one hand tradition—the reverence for what is, the might of the existent to maintain itself,—prevents change, and keeps up old unities. Thus even children's children bow to the supremacy of the family chief. And on another hand the necessities of selfdefence and the pressure of war check the separatist forces of individualism.

In what sense, then, it may be asked, are the family and the State due to a contract? Their comparative indissolubility seems to put a great separation between them and other contracts. They are not, as Kant in one instance supposed,³⁵ mere partial contracts for a special purpose and a special function. Their will and tendency are to claim the whole human being, to demand an undivided and a perpetual allegiance. It is against such a sweeping universal claim that the theory of contract has a certain relative justification. It is thereby declared that the rights of the individual, though for the time they may be put in abeyance, are not wholly annihilated. The rights of the individual are in a sense paramount over those of the community. Such, at least, is the assertion of Epicureanism, and such seems to be the direction in which, even in many modern communistic schemes, the thought of the world is moving. The old Greek theory of an omnipotent State and the Catholic dogma of indissoluble wedlock are set aside. In their stead modern legislation tends more and more to emancipate the members of the family from the bonds of status; and modern politics tend more and more to found Government on a constitutional compact between the rulers and the subjects. Here as in many other places Epicurus is practical, realistic, and modern.

Undoubtedly, neither side of the relationship can be ignored. To sacrifice the interests of the individual bars the way to reform. To put these interests forward in a one-sided way is to banish the very possibility of order and permanence. And, unquestionably, Epicurus was in harmony with the general feeling and opinion of his time. Man the individual, is the only real unit of social life: all other unities are so far ideal and fictitious, and are due to the combined effort of individual wills. They are entered upon with certain presuppositions; should they continue, when these presuppositions are no longer fulfilled? At any rate, when the State and the family cease to be mere natural unions, due solely to the instincts of sex and of self-defence, steadied and perpetuated by the influence of imitation and authority, there must be some sort of understanding or compact, tacit or formal, in the shape of a common law or customary right, accepted by the members of a community as binding upon them all. Not that such a compact is an arbitrary act, depending entirely on the will either of the majority or of a natural aristocracy. The customary law is an attempt to give expression to the principles which are required in order to make human society possible; to state, so far as individual bias or prejudice on the part of the expositors will allow, the conditions and relations which must be maintained if a society is to flourish and its several members reap the full advantage of its constitution. Such is the profession made by law; unfortunately, law, in its actual shape, represents seldom the relations of the community regarded as an organic whole, but more frequently the relations imposed upon a community from the point of view afforded by the privileged position of some one class or caste of men in the body politic.

The point especially emphasized by Epicurus is, that law was made for man, and not man for law. Law has no intrinsic or abstract claim on the obedience of men except in so far as its precepts and its sanctions have the welfare of humanity for their aim. It is not, in short, because it has been legislatively declared and enacted that a law has obligatory force, but because it is right and expedient. Epicurus is at one with Hume, who says that, "Public utility is the sole origin of justice, and reflections on the beneficial consequences of this virtue are the sole foundation of its merit."³⁶ "Natural justice," says the former,³⁷ "is a contract of expediency, so as to prevent one man doing harm to another. Those animals which were incapable of forming an agreement to the end that they neither might injure nor be injured are without either justice or injustice. Similarly, those tribes which could not or would not form a covenant to the same end are in a like predicament. There is no such thing as an intrinsic or abstract justice."

So far there is not, perhaps, much practical objection to be taken to the theory. The case seems different when we hear that, "Injustice is not in itself a bad thing: but only in the fear arising from anxiety on the part of the wrong-doer that he will not always escape punishment."³⁸ This anxiety, according to Epicurus, inasmuch as it never can be annihilated, but always lingers on in an evil conscience, is a sufficient deterrent from criminal actions. If we interpret this doctrine, after the example of some of the ancients, to mean that any wrong-doing would be innocent and good, supposing it escaped detection, we shall probably be misconstruing Epicurus. What he seems to allude to is rather the case of strictly legal enactments, where previously to law the action need not have been particularly moral or immoral: where, in fact, the common agreement has established a rule which is not completely in harmony with "the justice of nature." In short, Epicurus is protesting against the conception of injustice which makes it consist in disobedience to political and social rules, imposed and enforced by public and authoritative sanctions. He is protesting, in other words, against the claim of the State upon the citizens for their complete obedience; against the old ideas of the divine sanctity and majesty of law as law; against theories like that maintained by contemporaries of Socrates, that there could be no such thing as an unjust law.³⁹

The Epicurean accepts the existence of an orderly society as a condition of a satisfactory life, but he does not admit that it has a right to demand his services. "When safety on the side of man has been tolerably secured, it is by quiet and by withdrawing from the multitude that the most complete tranquillity is to be found." "A wise man will not enter upon political life unless something extraordinary should occur." "The free man," says Metrodôrus, "will laugh his free laugh over those who are fain to be reckoned in the list with Lycurgus and Solon."⁴⁰ A man ought not to make it his aim to save his country, or to win a crown from them for his abilities. Political life, which in all ages has been impossible for those who had not wealth, and who were unwilling to mix themselves with vile and impure associates, was not to the mind of Epicurus. If he be condemned for this, there are many nobler and deeper natures in the records of humanity who must be condemned on the same account. But it is hard to see why he should be charged with that as a fault which is the common practice of mankind, and which in a period of despotism, of absolute monarchy, is the course of obvious wisdom. And, above all, it is not the duty of a philosopher to become a political partisan, and spend his life in the atmosphere of avaricious and malignant passions.

For politics, Epicurus substituted friendship. "Of all the things which wisdom procures for the happiness of life as a whole, by far the greatest is the acquisition of friendship."⁴¹ We have already spoken of the friendship of the Epicureans: a characteristic which did not disappear down to the latest times of the sect. But here, too, Epicurus is true to his realistic and non-mystical creed. Friendship is based upon utility mutually enjoyed: only some one must begin the career of service-rendering, just as we must sow the ground in hopes of a future harvest. Or, as Professor Bain puts it⁴²:—"The giver should not expect compensation, and should, nevertheless, obtain it." The same realistic tone is apparent in Epicurus's views on sexual love: where he rejects altogether what in modern times has received the somewhat misleading conventional name of Platonic love.⁴³ Love, as he remarks, and as Cicero approves, is in the strict sense of the term, not accidentally, but essentially different from affection or friendship. The former is a passion or instinct. The latter is a rational and reflective relation of one human being to another. It is in friendship, freely formed and imposing no inalienable obligation, no binding impersonal law, that man, according to Epicurus, finds his true home. The only duties which he recognises are those voluntarily accepted on reasonable grounds, and not from natural instincts or through the compulsion of circumstances. The family and the State impose permanent checks and obligations which to him seemed to diminish the independence of man, and to make him a slave of external powers. Thus, the principle of community, rejected in its more stable forms, is accepted in its laxest and most flexible shape, where it is maintained solely by participation in pleasures in common. To leave it to such attraction alone seems to expose the communion of man and man too much to chance: it seems to provide too weak a safeguard against the inconstancy and inequality so characteristic of most human feelings. Yet, on the other hand, to maintain an association when it is only a form or bond, and not the genuine birth of a free spirit, seems to be dangerous and immoral. And perhaps Epicurus is right in holding that the best security of permanence in attachment is given not by imposing a yoke on unwilling or at least varying tempers, but by so unifying all the nature of man that his choices and appetencies will not change from day to day, but maintain a uniform tenor through all varieties of circumstance.

In the ethics of the post-Aristotelian schools the sage or wise man plays a prominent part. In his full perfection he is the property of the Stoics, and represents their ideal of what the perfect man ought to be. The Epicureans, however, seem to have followed their example and drawn up an ideal picture, in which the main features exhibit an intentional contrast to the demands of the opposite sect. The wise man, they said, cannot arise in any race whatever, and must possess a well-ordered constitution, for virtue is not enough without certain natural endowments. Once he has attained that rank, he never loses it: once wise, he is wise for ever. But there are various degrees of wisdom, and not one hard-and-fast line of distinction between wise and unwise. The sage is not inaccessible to feelings: he will feel pain, and will cherish compassion. But though pain affects him, it will not deprive him of his happiness: he will moan when put to torture, but still retain his superiority to fate and circumstance. When his dependents misbehave, he will chastise, yet not as if without pity. All sins are not in his eyes of like magnitude: there are degrees in vice, as in virtue. He will not be over-anxious to figure in the public eye even in his own special department as a philosophic teacher. Though he set up a school, he will not care to draw crowds of pupils: it will only be by constraint that he will read in public, and he will rather leave what he has to teach, in his writings, than try to proclaim it in places of general resort. He will not be indifferent to secure for himself a capital for his subsistence, but will keep aloof from commerce, except when in poverty he may be able to earn something by his teaching. The wise man will never fall in love with women, for such love is not heaven-sent. He will neither take a wife nor become the father of a family, except in very special circumstances; nor will he take part in the business of the State, nor seek for fame, except to avoid contempt.

But we need not complete the list of what the sage will or will not do—a list which is full of confusion as it stands, and largely unintelligible. Its last words are:—"He will dogmatize, and not merely raise difficulties. He will be like himself in sleep, and a time may come when he will die for a friend." This incongruous assortment is a specimen of the system and manner with which Diogenes Laertius tells his tale.⁴⁴

We may conclude the remarks on the Ethics of Epicurus by quoting a few of his sayings, mainly taken from Seneca:—

Notes

¹ Hume's Essays: "The Epicurean."

² Cicero, De Fin., 1.7, 26; Plutarch, 1094 E.; Athenasus, XIII. 588.

³ Seneca, Epist., 90, 35; Plutarch, 1125 C.-1127; Epictetus, Dissertat., II, 20, 20; III. 7, 19.

⁴ Seneca, De Benefic, IV. 19.

⁵ Lucretius, 11.55.

⁶ Sext. Emp. adv. Ethic, 169.

⁷ Cicero, De Finibus, I. 7, 22; Acad., II. 29; Diogenes, X. 31.

⁸ Diogenes Laertius, X. 24, 51; Ibid., 25, 88.

⁹ Lucretius, III, 180.

¹⁰ Diogenes Laertius, X. 24, 38; Lucretius, IV. 478.

¹¹ Diogenes Laertius, X. 122-135.

¹² Arist., Ethics, IV. 2, &C.

¹³ Arist., Ethics, II. 2.

¹⁴ Cicero, Acad. Pr., II. 115; De Fin., I. 20 65.

¹⁵ Plato, Republic, V. 457.

¹⁶ "The Emotions and the Will," p. 12.

¹⁷ Sermon XI. (On the Love of our Neighbour.)

¹⁸ Plato, Republic, IX. 584.

¹⁹ Diogenes Laertius, X. 144….

²⁰ Diogenes Laertius, X. 6; Plutarch, Non posse suav., XIII. 1.

²¹ Sextus Empir., Adv. Musicos, c. 27.

²² Plutarch, Non posse suav., XIII. 1.

²³ Diogenes Laertius, X. 144, 146.

²⁴ Diogenes, X. 145.

²⁵ Diogenes, X. 141.

²⁶ Diogenes Laertius, X. 136.

²⁷ Cicero, De Fin., II. 20, 63.

²⁸ The animus (Lucret. III. 136 seq.) or mens is the reason or intellect; it is superior, and seated in the breast: the anima, or sentient soul, is dispersed throughout the body. Both are atomic and corporeal.

²⁹ Athenasus, VII. 279; Cicero, De Fin., II. 10, 29.

³⁰ Diogenes, X. 140.

³¹ Seneca, Dialog., VII. 12-13.

³² Athenjeus, XII. 546.

³³ "Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," ch. II. sec. 6.

³⁴ Diogenes Laertius, X. 140.

³⁵ "Rechtslehre," 24.

³⁶Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, III. 1.

³⁷ Diogenes Laertius, X. 150.

³⁸ Ibid., X. 151; Plutarch, Non posse suav., XXV. 33.

³⁹ Cf. Plato, Crito.; Xenophon, Memorab., IV. 4.

⁴⁰ Plutarch, Adv. Colot., XXXIII. 8.

⁴¹ Diogenes Laertius, X. 148.

⁴²The Emotions and the Will, p. 299.

⁴³Tuscul, Disp., IV. 70.

⁴⁴ Diogenes Laertius, X. 117-121.

⁴⁵ Seneca, Ep. 16, 7; 2, 5; 4, 10; 7, 11; 8, 7; 9, 20; 11, 8; 12, 10; 13, 16; 14, 17; 15, 10; 17, 11; 19, 10; 20, 9; 22, 14; 23, 9; 24, 22; 25, 5; 25, 6; 26, 8; 28, 9; 29, 10.

⁴⁶ Stobœus, Florilegium: De Parsimon., 28; De Contint., 24.

⁴⁷ Plutarch, De Tranquil. Anim., 16.