Wow what a great introduction! Thank you for taking the time to all that information. The music is great too! I have added those to the music threads here: Epicurean-Friendly Art and Music
Oscar we are always in need of new ways to get the word out. Could you tell us how you came across this forum?
Thanks!
Welcome Oscar! When you get a chance please tell us about your background and interest in Epicurus.
This quote is new to me, but it appears well sourced. I say that because: (1) It is certainly a reasonable thing for an admirer of Lucretius, like Frederick the Great is known to have been, to say. I too am an admirer of Lucretius, and I think the same thing most every day! Further, (2) it comes quoted from what I understand to be a reputable text (Niall Ferguson's "Civilization, the West and the Rest"). If anyone has evidence that indicates that this quote is spurious, please post and I'll retract point (2).
Further, if anyone knows the exact source, please post that too. Obviously this is a translation so it would be good to know the name of the translator too. Presumably from wherever this comes, there is more of interest.
https://books.google.com/books?id=mRO3x…beciles&f=false
For today’s Twentieth, here is confirmation of the importance of the Twentieth to Ancient Epicureans, even through the words of the spiteful Cicero, who did his best to undermine Epicurean philosophy. Cicero’s arguments provide useful information, and the best way to honor Epicurus on the Twentieth is to study the opposing arguments so as to know how to refute them:
"Yes, Torquatus, you people may turn and twist as you like, but you will not find a line in this famous letter of Epicurus that is not inconsistent and incompatible with his teachings. Hence he is his own refutation; his writings are disproved by the uprightness of his character.
That provision for the care of the children, that loyalty to friendship and affection, that observance of these solemn duties with his latest breath, prove that there was innate in the man a disinterested uprightness, not evoked by pleasure nor elicited by prizes and rewards. Seeing so strong a sense of duty in a dying man, what clearer evidence do we want that morality and rectitude are desirable for their own sakes? But while I think that the letter I have just translated almost word for word is most admirable, although entirely inconsistent with the chief tenets of his philosophy, yet I consider his will to be quite out of harmony not only with the dignity of a philosopher but also with his own pronouncement.
For he repeatedly argued at length, and also stated briefly and plainly in the book I have just mentioned, that ‘death does not affect us at all; for a thing that has experienced dissolution must be devoid of sensation; and that which is devoid of sensation cannot affect us in any degree whatsoever.’ The maxim such as it is might have been better and more neatly put. For the phrase, ‘what has experienced dissolution must be devoid of sensation,’ does not make clear what it is that has experienced dissolution. However in spite of this I understand the meaning intended.
What I want to know is this: if all sensation is annihilated by dissolution, that is, by death, and if nothing whatever that can affect us remains, why is it that he makes such precise and careful provision and stipulation ‘that his heirs, Amynomachus and Timocrates, shall after consultation with Hermarchus assign a sufficient sum to celebrate his birthday every year in the month of Gamelion, and also on the twentieth day of every month shall assign a sum for a banquet to his fellow-students in philosophy, in order to keep alive the memory of himself and of Metrodorus’?
That these are the words of as amiable and kindly a man as you like, I cannot deny; but what business has a philosopher, and especially a natural philosopher, which Epicurus claims to be, to think that any day can be anybody’s birthday? Why, can the identical day that has once occurred recur again and again? Assuredly it is impossible. Or can a similar day recur? This too is impossible, except after an interval of many thousands of years, when all the heavenly bodies simultaneously achieve their return to the point from which they started. It follows that there is no such thing as anybody’s birthday. ‘But a certain day is so regarded.’ Much obliged, I am sure, for the information!
But even granting birthdays, is a person’s birthday to be observed when he is dead? And to provide for this by will — is this appropriate for a man who told us in oracular tones that nothing can affect us after death? Such a provision ill became one whose ‘intellect had roamed’ over unnumbered worlds and realms of infinite space, without shores or circumference. Did Democritus do anything of the kind? (To omit others, I cite the case of the philosopher who was Epicurus’s only master.)
And if a special day was to be kept, did he do well to take the day on which he was born, and not rather that on which he became a Wise Man? You will object that he could not have become a Wise Man if he had not first of all been born. You might equally well say, if his grandmother had not been born either. The entire notion of wishing one’s name and memory to be celebrated by a banquet after one’s death is alien to a man of learning. I won’t refer to your mode of keeping these anniversaries, or the shafts of wit you bring upon you from persons with a sense of humour. We do not want to quarrel. I only remark that it was more your business to keep Epicurus’s birthday than his business to provide by will for its celebration."
-------------------------
Seneca recorded the ancient Epicurean saying:
Sic fac omnia tamquam spectet Epicurus!
So do all things as though watching were Epicurus!
Ha! I bet you expect I will object to that Matthaeus!
First, unless I misunderstand what you are saying (possible, as I am reading during a class) you are advocating the stoic model of "nature as deity." I feel sure Epicurus would object to that, because he believed he had established real living intelligent beings with deathlessness and blissfulness, first of all.
Second, I think it is the wrong direction even to discuss "idealized deities" with the emphasis on the "idealized" as the problem. Epicurus was theorizing as to actual attributes of actual beings which are a part of nature, and the term "idealized" is fraught with danger as inconsistent with that approach.
And yep "Basically Providence in this scheme is the observable fact that that we have cosmic order that is conducive to life and self reflection as opposed to undefined molecular chaos swirling in the void" I think Epicurus would object to the word "order" to the extent that that implies that there is an outside force organizing the matter which organizes by its own properties into the life and other bodies that we see and experience.
At risk of being too random I want to paste the following here, because I think it relates directly to this discussion in terms of the causation issues, as it shows how Cicero describes his main objection to Epicurean physics:
"Still, there is a great deal in each of them (Epicurus and Democritus) with which I do not agree, and especially this: in the study of Nature there are two questions to be asked, first, what is the matter out of which each thing is made, second, what is the force by which it is made; now Democritus and Epicurus have discussed the question of matter, but they have not considered the question of force or the efficient cause."
Same issue, stated another way by Cicero: "The swerving is itself an arbitrary fiction; for Epicurus says the atoms swerve without a cause, — yet this is the capital offense in a natural philosopher, to speak of something taking place uncaused."
And one more major physics objection by Cicero: Irrelevant to us today, or important to refute? "It is also unworthy of a natural philosopher to deny the infinite divisibility of matter; an error that assuredly Epicurus would have avoided, if he had been willing to let his friend Polyaenus teach him geometry instead of making Polyaenus himself unlearn it."
**Visualizing Principal Doctrine 4** Contrary to the common idea that Epicureans flee from pain as the ultimate goal of life, the reverse is clearly documented in the Epicurean texts: Epicurus taught that we should embrace pain when it brings more pleasure than pain. Yes, we also avoid pain when possible, and we also embrace pain when more pain is avoided by the embrace. But in no way is "fleeing from pain" the meaning of life either in the words of Epicurus or in the best-documented illustrations of Epicureans in action, those given by Torquatus in "On Ends."
Consult the original text for the full description, but in short, Torquatus explains the actions of his ancestors in vividly Epicurean terms, holding that it is entirely Epicurean to fight one's enemies in physical combat ("charging an armed enemy;" wrestling the necklet from his foe") and even to treat one's own child "cruelly" ("sentenced his own son to death"), when necessary for the sake of the ultimate balance of emotional and physical pleasure and pain.
But the final balance has another component, and that is the meaning of Principal Doctrine 4: "Continuous bodily pain does not last long; instead, pain, if extreme, is present a very short time, and even that degree of pain which slightly exceeds bodily pleasure does not last for many days at once. Diseases of long duration allow an excess of bodily pleasure over pain."
Nature has not stacked the cards against us so that all human life is "nasty, brutish, and short." As Epicurus explains here, moderate pain allows for a balance of pleasure over pain if we order our lives correctly, and in the unfortunate happenstance that we are unable to avoid excruciating pain, then both our physical nature in not being able to withstand that pain for long, and our own ability to end our lives when necessary to prevent long-term agony, mean that even intense pain has no long-term hold over us. Ending our own lives, while of course the last resort, is known to any Epicurean to be a total escape from pain, because of course there is no afterlife in which to be punished in any way whatsoever.
The final impact of PD4 completes the conclusion that PD3 started: Pleasure is the goal of life, and a balance of pleasure over pain is attainable for most of us, and for most of life. And when (for most of us after many years) pain becomes unbearable, even then we have the ability to control when we depart, which we will not do for so long as we have the expectation that living on brings a net balance of pleasure.
Therefore the graphics attached to this Principal Doctrine do not portray the cowering, retiring, passive picture that many people (Stoics, Platonists, Aristotelians) seek to paint the true Epicurean. The true Epicurean will follow the lead of Torquatus, or, in another valid Roman example, the lead of Mucius Scaevola, who endured the pain of thrusting his right hand into a flame for the sake of saving his country, in which his greatest pleasures were embodied.
The full set of graphics for Principal Doctrine 4 can also be found here: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/wcf/gallery/in…e-list/191-pd4/
Yes I agree Nate --->
so attempting to express the 'Ideal Epicurean Being' as an image is incredibly difficult.
Yes especially since the word "ideal" indicates something that does not exist. We are talking even in Epicurean terms about beings that exist, even as "gods among men" exist. I think our first and maybe best shot is as you indicate, depicting images of people who are outstandingly successful in the important areas of life. For some reason Sean Connery as James Bond kind of exemplifies (in my mind) as the ultimate "spy." I think we're talking about depicting people who are in the process of living this description:
The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration. Let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain: what possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable? One so situated must possess in the first place a strength of mind that is proof against all fear of death or of pain; he will know that death means complete unconsciousness, and that pain is generally light if long and short if strong, so that its intensity is compensated by brief duration and its continuance by diminishing severity. Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power; let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away, but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection, and his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement.
That kind of picture really doesn't require costumes or idealizations at all.
"indicate that Thailand is not a close-knit society beyond local communities." << Is this based on religious or other background differences, or just sort of a "Thailand personality." I see discussion on the internet of the term "high trust" and "low trust" societies, in which homogeneous peoples with very similar backgrounds are considered "high trust" and presumably more open to taking care of each other. I would have thought that Thailand had a fairly homogeneous population, but it sounds like your observation is that they are not particularly close-knit or inclined to take care of each other "beyond local communities."
I would think that "beyond local communities" it would be hard to generate sustained enthusiasm for major income-redistribution plans (other than by force).
New lecture material by Christos Yapijakis posted Here.
Christos Yapijakis: "Mistakes of Cognitive Perception and Epicurean Prudence"
Tonight i updated the"A Few Days In Athens" website to a simpler, more modern design, which should be more responsive and easier to read on any device.
I continue to be impressed at how thoughtfully this work presents Epicurean philosophy. If you haven't read it yet, I urge you to find time.
Should anyone have any problems or suggestions for the new format, please let me know.
Note: I have also added the complete text of the book into the "Frances Wright" forum here, with one thread for each chapter, so people can discuss each chapter separately.
TO THE READER.
That I may not obtain credit for more learning than I possess, I beg to acknowledge the assistance I have received in my version of the curious relict of antiquity now offered to the public from the beautiful Italian MS. of the erudite Professor of Greek in the university of ****. I hesitate to designate more clearly the illustrious Hellenist, whose labors have brought to light this curious fragment. Since the establishment of the saintly domination of the Vandals throughout the territories of the rebellious and heterodox Italy, and particularly in consequence of the ordinance of his most orthodox, most legitimate, and most Austrian Majesty, bearing that his dominions being in want of good subjects, his colleges are forbidden to send forth good scholars,{4} it has become necessary for the gownsmen of the classic peninsula to banish all profane learning from their lectures and their libraries, and to evince a holy abhorrence of the sciences and arts which they erst professed. The list of the class-books now employed in the transalpine schools is exceedingly curious; I regret that I have mislaid the one lately supplied to me by an illustrious Italian exile. My memory recalls to me only that in the school of rhetoric, the orations of Cicero are superseded by those of the Marquis of Londonderry, and the philippics of Demosthenes by those of M. de Peyronett; that the professors of history have banished the decades of Livy for the martyrs of Mons. de Chateaubriand; and that the students of Greek, in place of the Odes of Pindar, and the retreat of the ten thousand from Cunaxa, construe the hexameters of the English Laureate, and the advance of Louis the XVIIL upon Ghent. In this state of the Italian world of letters, it is not surprising that the scholar, to whose perseverance, ingenuity, and learning, the public are indebted for the following fragment, should object to lay claim to the honor which is his due.
The original MS. fell into the hands of my erudite correspondent in the autumn of the year 1817. From that period until the commencement of last winter, all his leisure hours were devoted to the arduous task of unrolling the leaves, and deciphering the half-defaced characters. The imperfect condition of the MS. soon obliged him to forego his first intention of transcribing the original Greek; he had recourse, therefore, to an Italian version, supplying the chasms, consisting sometimes of a word, sometimes of a line, and occasionally of a phrase, with a careful and laborious study of the context. While this version was printing in Florence, a MS. copy was transmitted to me in Paris, with a request that I would forthwith see it translated into the English and French languages. The former version I undertook myself, and can assure the reader that it possesses the merit of fidelity. The first erudite translator has not conceived it necessary to encumber the volume with marginal notes; nor have I found either the inclination or the ability to supply them. Those who should wish to refer to the allusions scattered through the whole classics to the characters and systems here treated of, will find much assistance from the marginal authorities of the eloquent and ingenious Bayle.
I have only to add, that the present volume comprises little more than a third of the original MS.; it will be sufficient, however, to enable the public to form an estimate of the probable value of the whole.
CHAPTER XVI.
A MORE than usual crowd attended the instructions of the sage. The gay, and the curious, the learned, and the idle, of all ages, and of either sex, from the restless population of the city; many citizens of note, collected from various parts of Attica; and no inconsiderable portion of strangers from foreign states and countries.
They were assembled on the lawn, surrounding the temple already frequently mentioned. The contracting waters of Ilyssus flowed nearly in their accustomed bed; and earth and air, refreshed by the storm of the preceding night, resisted the rays of the uncurtained sun, now climbing high in the heavens. A crowd of recollections rushed on the young mind of Theon, as he entered the beautiful enclosure, and gazed on the stream which formed one of its boundaries. His thoughts again played truant to philosophy, and his rapid glance sought another and a fairer form than any it found there, when the approach of Epicurus divided the throng, and hushed the loud murmur of tongues into silence. The sage passed on, and it was not till he ascended the marble steps, and turned to address the assembly, that Theon perceived he had been followed by the beautiful being who ruled his fancy. The hues of Hebe now dyed her lips and her cheeks; but the laughing smiles of the preceding evening were changed for the composure of respectful attention. Her eye caught that of Theon. She gave a blush and a smile of recognition. Then, seating herself at the base of a column to the right of her father, her face resumed its composure, and her full dark eyes fastened on the countenance of the sage, in a gaze of mingled admiration and filial love.
"Fellow-citizens, and fellow-men! We purpose, this day, to examine a question of vital importance to human kind: no less a one than the relations we bear to all the existences that surround us; the position we hold in this beautiful material world? the origin, the object, and the end of our being; the source from which we proceed, and the goal to which we tend. — This question embraces many. It embraces all most interesting to our curiosity, and influential over our happiness. Its correct or incorrect solution must ever regulate, as it now regulates, our rule of conduct, our conceptions of right and wrong; must start us on the road of true or false inquiry, and either open our minds to such a knowledge of the wonders working in and around us, as our senses and faculties can attain, or close them for ever with the bands of superstition, leaving us a prey to fear, the slaves of our ungoverned imaginations, wondering and trembling at every occurrence in nature, and making our own existence and destiny sources of dread and mystery."
"Ere we come to this important inquiry, it behooves us to see that we come with willing minds; that we say not, ‘so far will we go and no farther; we will make one step, but not two; we will examine, but only so long as the result of our examination shall confirm our preconceived opinions.' In our search after truth, we must equally discard presumption and fear. We must come with our eyes and our ears, our hearts and our understandings open; anxious, not to find ourselves right, but to discover what is right; asserting nothing which we cannot prove; believing nothing which we have not examined; and examining all things fearlessly, dispassionately, perseveringly."
"In our preceding discourses, and, for such as have not attended these, in our writings, we have endeavored to explain the real object of philosophical enquiry; we have directed you to the investigation of nature, to all that you see of existences and occurrences around you; and we have shown that, in these existences and occurrences, all that can be known, and all that there is to be known, lies hid. We have exhorted you to use your eyes, and your judgments, never your imagination; to abstain from theory, and rest with facts; and to understand that in the accumulation of facts, as regards the nature and properties of substances, the order of occurrences, and the consequences of actions, lies the whole science of philosophy, physical and moral. We have seen, in the course of our enquiry, that in matter itself exist all causes and effects; that the eternal particles, composing all substances are, so far as we know and can reason, eternal, and in their nature unchangeable; and it is apparently only the different disposition of these eternal and unchangeable atoms that produces all the varieties in the substances constituting the great material whole, of which we form a part. Those particles, whose peculiar agglomeration or arrangement, we call a vegetable to-day, pass into, and form part of an animal to-morrow; and that animal again, by the falling asunder of its constituent atoms, and the different approximation and agglomeration of the same, — or, of the same with other atoms, — is transformed into some other substance presenting a new assemblage of qualities. To this simple exposition of the phenomena of nature (which, you will observe, is not explaining their wonders, for that is impossible, but only observing them,) we are led by the exercise of our senses. In studying the existences which surround us, it is clearly our business to use our eyes, and not our imaginations. To see things as they are, is all we should attempt, and is all that is possible to be done. We have seen, in the course of our inquiry, that in matter itself exist all causes and effects; that the eternal particles, composing all substances, form the first and last links in the chain of occurrences, or of cause and effect, at which we can arrive; that the qualities, inherent in these particles, produce, or are followed by, certain effects; that the changes, in position, of these particles, produce or are followed by certain other qualities and effects; that the sun appears, and that light follows his appearance; that we throw a pearl into vinegar, and that the pearl vanishes from our eyes, to assume the form or forms of more subtle, but not less real substances; that the component particles of a human being fall asunder, and that, instead of a man, we find a variety of other substances or existences, presenting new appearances, and new properties or powers; that a burning coal touches our hand, that the sensation of pain follows the contact, that the desire to end this sensation is the next effect in succession, and that the muscular motion of withdrawing the hand, following the desire, is another. That in all this succession of existences and events, there is nothing but what we see, or what we could see, if we had better eyes; that there is no mystery in nature, but that involved in the very existence of all things; and that things being as they are is no more wonderful than it would be if they were different. That an analogous course of events, or chain of causes and effects, takes place in morals as in physics; that is to say, in examining those qualities, of the matter composing our own bodies, which we call mind, we can only trace a train of occurrences, in like manner as we do in the external world; that our sensations, thoughts, and emotions, are simply effects following causes, a series of consecutive phenomena, mutually producing and produced."
"When we have taken this view of things, observe how all abstruse questions disappear; how all science is simplified; all knowledge rendered easy and familiar to the mind! Once started in this only true road of inquiry, every step we make is one in advance. To whatever science we apply, that is, to whatever part of matter, or to whichever of its qualities, we direct our attention, we shall, in all probability, make important, because true, discoveries. It is the philosophy of nature in general, or any one of those subdivisions of it, which we call the philosophy of Mind, Ethics, Medicine, Astronomy, Geometry, &c., the moment we occupy ourselves in observing and arranging in order the facts, which are discovered in the course of observation, we acquire positive knowledge, and may safely undertake to develop it to others."
"The ascertaining the nature of existences, the order of occurrences, and the consequences of human actions constituting, therefore, the whole of knowledge, what is there to prevent each and all of us from extending our discoveries to the full limits prescribed by the nature of our facilities and duration of our existence? What nobler employment can we invent? What pleasure so pure, so little liable to disappointment? What is there to hold us back? What is there not to spur us forward? Does our ignorance start from the very simplicity of knowledge? Do we fear to open our eyes lest we should see the light? Does the very truth we seek alarm us in its attainment? — How is it that, placed in this world as on a theatre of observation, surrounded by wonders and endowed with faculties wherewith to scan these wonders, we know so little of what is, and imagine so much of what is not? Other animals, to whom man accounts himself superior, exercise the faculties they possess, trust their testimony, follow the impulses of their nature, and enjoy the happiness of which they are capable. Man alone, the most gifted of all known existences, doubts the evidence of his superior senses, perverts the nature and uses of his multiplied faculties, controls his most innocent, as well as his noblest impulses, and to poison all the sources of his happiness. To what are we to trace this fatal error, this cruel self-martyrdom, this perversion of things from their natural bent? In the over-development of one faculty and neglect of another, we must seek the cause. In the imagination, that source of our most beautiful pleasures when under the control of judgment, we find the source of our worst afflictions."
"From an early age, I have made the nature and condition of man my study. I have found him in many countries of the earth, under the influence of all varieties of climate and circumstance; I have found him the savage lord of the forest, clothed in the rough skins of animals less rude than himself, sheltered in the crevices of the mountains and caves of the earth from the blasts of winter and heats of the summer sun; I have found him the slave of masters debased as himself, crouching to the foot that spurns him, and showing no signs of miscalled civilization but its sloth and its sensualities. I have found him the lord over millions, clothed in purple and treading courts of marble; the cruel destroyer of his species, marching through blood and rapine, to thrones of extended dominion; the iron-hearted tyrant, feasting on the agonies of his victims, and wringing his treasure from the hard-earned mite of industry; I have found him the harmless but ignorant tiller of the soil, eating the simple fruits of his labor, sinking to rest only to rise again to toil, toiling to live and living only to die; I have found him the polished courtier, the accomplished scholar, the gifted artist, the creating genius; the fool and the knave; rich and a beggar; spuming and spurned.''
"Under all these forms and varieties of the external and internal man, still, with hardly an exception, I have found him unhappy. With more capacity for enjoyment than any other creature, I have seen him surpassing the rest of existences only in suffering and crime. "Why is this and from whence? A master error, for some there must be, leads to results so fatal — so opposed to the apparent nature and promise of things? Long have I sought this error — this main-spring of human folly and human crime. I have traced, through all their lengthened train of consequents and causes, human practice and human theory; I have threaded the labyrinth to its dark beginning; I have found the first link in the chain of evil; I have found it — in all countries — among all tribes and tongues and nations; I have found it, — fellow-men, I have found it in — RELIGION!"
A low murmur here rose from one part of the assembly. A deep and breathless silence succeeded. The sage turned his gaze slowly around, and with a countenance, pure and serene as the skies which shone above him, proceeded.
"We have named the leading error of the human mind, — the bane of human happiness — the perverter of human virtue! It is Religion — that dark coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion — that prisoner of human felicity! It is Religion —that blind guide of human reason. It is Religion — that dethroner of human virtue! -which lies at the root of all the evil and all the misery that pervade the world!"
"Not hastily formed, still less hastily expressed, has been the opinion you hear this day. A long train of reflection led to the discarding of religion as an error, a life of observation to the denouncing it as an evil. In considering it as devoid of truth, I am but one of many. Few have looked deeply and steadily into the nature of things and not called in question belief in existences unseen and causes unknown. But while smiling at the credulity of their fellow-beings, philosophers have thought reason good only for themselves. They have argued that religion, however childish a chimera in itself, was useful in its tendencies: that, if it rested upon nothing, it supported all things; that it was the stay of virtue, and the source of happiness. However opposed to every rule in philosophy, physical and moral; however apparently in contradiction to reason and common sense that a thing untrue could be useful; that a belief in facts disproved or unproved could afford a sustaining prop to a just rule of practice; the assertion came supported by so universal a testimony of mankind, and by individual names of such authority in practical wisdom and virtue, that I hesitated to call it mistaken. And as human happiness appeared to me the great desideratum, and its promotion the only object consistent with the views of a teacher of men, I forbore from all expression of opinion, until I had fully substantiated, to my own conviction, both its truth and its tendency. The truth of my opinion is substantiated, as we have seen, by an examination into the nature of things; that is, into the properties of matter, which are alone sufficient to produce all the chances and changes that we behold. Its tendency is discovered by an examination into the moral condition of man."
"The belief in supernatural existences, and the expectation of a future life, are said to be sources of happiness, and stimuli to virtue. How, and in what way? Is it proved by experience? Look abroad over the earth; everywhere the song of praise, the prayer of supplication, the smoke of incense, the blow of sacrifice, arise from forest, and lawn, from cottage, palace, and temple, to the gods of human idolatry. Religion, is spread over the earth. If she be the parent of virtue and happiness, they too should cover the earth. Do they so? Read the annals of human tradition! Go forth and observe the actions of men! Who shall speak of virtue — who of happiness, that hath eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to feel? No! experience is against the assertion. The world is full of religion, and full of misery and crime."
"Can the assertion be sustained by argument, by any train of reasoning whatsoever? Imagine a Deity under any fashion of existence; how are our dreams concerning him in an imaginary heaven to affect our happiness or our conduct on a tangible earth? Affect it indeed they may for evil, but how for good? The idea of an unseen Being, ever at work around and about us, may afflict the human intellect with idle terrors, but can never guide the human practice to what is rational and consistent with our nature. Grant that, by any possibility, we could ascertain the existence of one god, or of a million of gods: we see them not, we hear them not, we feel them not. Unless they were submitted to our observation, were fashioned like unto us, had similar desires, similar faculties, a similar organization, how could their mode of existence afford a guide for ours? As well should the butterfly take pattern from the lion, or the lion from the eagle, as man from a god. To say nothing of the inconsistency of the attributes, with which all gods are decked, it is enough that none of them are ours. We are men; they are gods. They inhabit other worlds; we inhabit the earth. Let them enjoy their felicity; and let us, my friends, seek ours."
"But it is not that religion is merely useless, it is mischievous. It is mischievous by its idle terrors; it is mischievous by its false morality; it is mischievous by its hypocrisy; by its fanaticism; by its dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its promises. Consider it under its mildest and most amiable form, it is still mischievous, as inspiring false motives of action, as holding the human mind in bondage, and diverting the attention from things useful, to things useless. The essence of religion is fear, as its source is ignorance. In a certain stage of human knowledge, the human mind must of necessity, in its ignorance of the properties of matter, and its dark insight into the chain of phenomena arising out of those properties — must of necessity reason falsely on every occurrence and existence in nature; it must of necessity, in the absence of fact, give the rein to fancy, see a miracle in every uncommon event, and imagine unseen agents as producing all that it beholds. In proportion as the range of our observation is enlarged, and that we learn to connect and arrange the phenomena of nature, we curtail our list of miracles, and the number of our supernatural agents. An eclipse is alarming to the vulgar, as denoting the wrath of offended deities; to the man of science it is a simple occurrence, as easily traced to its cause as any the most familiar to our observation. The knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next. Our superstitions decrease as our attainments multiply; and the fervor of our religion declines as we draw nearer to the conclusion which destroys it entirely. That conclusion, based upon accumulated facts, is as we have seen, that matter alone is at once the thing acting, and the thing acted upon, — eternal in duration, infinitely various and varying in appearance: never diminishing in quantity, and always changing in form. Without some knowledge of what is styled natural philosophy, or physics, no individual can attain this conclusion. And in a certain stage of that knowledge, more or less advanced according to the acuteness of the intellect, it will be impossible for any individual, not mentally obtuse, to shun that conclusion. This truth is one of infinite importance. The moment we consider the hostility directed against what is called Atheism, as the natural result of deficient information, the mind must be diseased which could resent that hostility. And perhaps a simple statement of the truth would best lead to examination of the subject, and to the conversion of mankind.
"Imagine this conversion, my friends! Imagine the creature man in the full exercise of all his faculties; not shrinking from knowledge, but eager in its pursuit; not bending the knee of adulation to visionary beings armed by fear for his destruction, but standing erect in calm contemplation of the beautiful face of nature; discarding prejudice, and admitting truth without fear of consequences; acknowledging no judge but reason, no censor but that in his own breast! Thus considered, he is transformed into the god of his present idolatry, or rather into a far nobler being, possessing all the attributes consistent with virtue and reason, and none opposed to either. How great a contrast with his actual state! His best faculties dormant; his judgment unawakened within him; his very senses misemployed; all his energies misdirected; trembling before the coinage of his own idle fancy; seeing over all creation a hand of tyranny extended; and instead of following virtue, worshiping power! Monstrous creation of ignorance! monstrous degradation of the noblest of known existences! Man, boasting of superior reason, of moral discrimination, imagines a being at once unjust, cruel, and inconsistent; then, kissing the dust, calls himself its slave! ''This world is," says the theist, "therefore it was made." — By whom? — "By a being more powerful than I." Grant this infantine reasoning, what follows as the conclusion? "That we must fear him," says the theist. — And why? Is his power directed against our happiness? Does your god amuse himself by awakening the terrors of more helpless beings? Fear him then indeed we may; and, let our conduct be what it will, fear him we must. "He is good as well as powerful," says the theist; "therefore the object of love," — How do we ascertain his goodness? I see indeed a beautiful and curious world; but I see it full of moral evils, and presenting many physical imperfections. Is he all-powerful? perfect good or perfect evil might exist. Is he all-powerful and all-good? perfect good must exist. Of the sentient beings comprised in the infinity of matter I know but those which I behold. I set no limits to the number of those which I behold not; no bounds to their power. One or many may have given directions to the elementary atoms, and may have fashioned this earth as the potter fashions its clay. Beings possessing such power may exist, and may have exercised it. All-powerful still they are not, or being so they are wicked: evil exists. I know not what may be — but this my moral sense tells me cannot be — a fashioner of the world I inhabit, in his nature all-good and all-powerful. I see yet another impossibility; a fashioner of this world in his nature all-good and fore-knowing. Granting the possibility of the attributes, their united existence were an impossible supposition in the architect of our earth."
"Let us accord his goodness the most pleasing and valuable attribute. Your god is then the object of our love, and of our pity. Of our love, because being benevolent in his own nature, he must have intended to produce happiness in forming ours; of our pity, because we see that he has failed in his intention. I cannot conceive a condition more unfortunate than that of a deity contemplating this world of his creation. Is he the author of some — say, of much happiness? of what untold misery is he not equally the author? I cannot conceive a being more desperately — more hopelessly wretched than that we have now pictured. The worst of human miseries shrink into comparative insignificancy before those of their author. How must every sigh drawn from the bosom of man rend the heart of his god! How must every violence committed on earth convulse the peace of heaven! unable to alter what he had fashioned, how must he equally curse his power and his impotence! And in bewailing our existence, how must he burn to annihilate his own!"
"We will now suppose his power without limit; and his knowledge extending to the future, as to the past. How monstrous the conception! What demon drawn from the fevered brain of insanity ever surpassed this deity in malignity! Able to make perfection, he hath sown through all nature the seed of evil. The lion pursues the lamb; the vulture, in his rage, tears the dove from her nest. Man, the universal enemy, triumphs even in the sufferings of his fellow-beings; in their pain finds his own joy; in their loss, his gain; in the frenzy of his violence, working out his own destruction; in the folly of his ignorance, cursing his own race, and blessing its cruel author! Your deity is the author of evil, and you call him good; the inventor of misery, and you call him happy! What virtuous mind shall yield homage to such a Being? Who shall say that homage, if tendered, degrades not the worshiper? Or, who shall say that homage, when rendered, shall pacify the idol? Will abjectness in the slave ensure mercy in the tyrant? Or, if it should, my friends, which of us would be the abject? Are men found bold to resist earthly oppression, and shall they bow before injustice because she speak from heaven? Does the name of Harmodius inspire our songs? Do crowns of laurel bind the temples of Aristogiton? Let our courage rise higher than theirs, my friends; and, if worthy of ambition, our fame! Dethrone, not the tyrant of Athens, but the tyrant of the earth! — not the oppressor of Athenians but the oppressor of mankind! Stand forth! Stand erect! Say to this god, 'if you made us in malice, we will not worship you in fear. We will judge of you by your works: and judge your works with our reason. If evil pervade them, you are chargeable with it as their author. We care not to conciliate your injustice, any more than to strive with your power. We judge of the future from the past. And as you have disposed of us in this world, so, if it please you to continue our being must you dispose of us in another. It would be idle to strive with Omnipotence, or to provide against the decrees of Omniscience. We will not torment ourselves by imagining your intentions; nor debase ourselves by expostulations. Should you punish, in us, the evil you have made, you will punish it as unjustly as you made it maliciously. Should you reward in us the good, you will reward it absurdly, as it was equally your work, and not ours.' "
"Let us now concede in argument the union of all the enumerated attributes. Let us accord the existence of a being perfect in goodness, wisdom, and power, who shall have made all things by his volition, and decreed all occurrences in his wisdom. Such a being must command our admiration and approval: he can command no more. As he is good and wise, he is superior to all praise; as he is great and happy, he is independent of all praise. As he is the author of our happiness, he has ensured our love; but as he is our creator, he may command from us no duties. Supposing a god, all duties rest with him. If he has made us, he is bound to make us happy; and failing in the duty, he must be an object of just abhorrence to all his sentient creation. Kindness received must necessarily inspire affection. This kindness, in a divine creator, as in an earthly parent, is a solemn duty, — a sacred obligation, — the nonperformance of which were the most atrocious of crimes. When performed, love from the creature, as from the child, is a necessary consequence, and an all-sufficient reward."
"Allowing then to the theist his god, we stand to him in no relation that can inspire fear, or involve duty. He can give us no happiness that he was not bound to bestow: he can cherish us with no tenderness, that he was not bound to yield. It is for him to gratify all our desires, — or, if they be erroneous, to correct them. It is for us to demand every good in his power to grant, or in ours to enjoy. Let then, the theologist banish fear and duty from his creed. It is love — love alone that can be claimed by gods or yielded by men."
"Have we said enough? Surely the absurdity of all the doctrines of religion, and the iniquity of many, are sufficiently evident. To fear a being on account of his power, is degrading; to fear him if he be good, ridiculous. Prove to us his existence, and prove to us his perfections; prove to us his parental care; love springs up in our bosoms, and repays his bounty. If he care not to show us his existence, he desires not the payment of our love, and finds in the contemplation of his own works their reward."
"But, says the theist, his existence is evident — and, not to acknowledge it a crime. It is not so to me, my friends. I see no sufficient evidence of his existence: and to reason of its possibility, I hold to be an idle speculation. To doubt that which is evident is not in our power. To believe that which is not evident, is equally impossible to us. Theist! thou makest of thy god a being more weak, more silly, than thyself. He punisheth as a crime the doubt of his existence! Why, then, let him declare his existence, and we doubt no more. Should the wandering tribes of Scythia doubt the existence of Epicurus, should Epicurus be angry? What vanity — what absurdity — what silliness, O theists! do ye not suppose in your God! Let him exist, this god, in all the perfection of a poet's imagery; I lift to him a forehead assured and serene. I see thee, O God! in thy power, and admire thee: I see thee in thy goodness, and approve thee. Such homage only is worthy of thee to receive, or of me to render.' And what does he reply? 'Thou art right, creature of my fashioning! Thou canst not add to, nor take away from the sum of my felicity. I made thee to enjoy thy own, not to wonder at mine. I have placed thee amid objects of desire, I have given thee means of enjoyment. Enjoy, then! Be happy! It was for that I made thee.'"
"Hearken, then, my children! hearken to your teacher! Let it be a god or a philosopher who speaks, the injunction is the same: Enjoy, and be happy! Is life short? It is an evil: but render life happy, its shortness is the only evil. I call to you, as, if he exist, God must call to you from heaven: Enjoy, and be happy! Do you doubt the way? Let Epicurus be your guide. The source of every enjoyment is within yourselves. Good and evil lie before you. The good is — all which can yield you pleasure: the evil — what must bring you pain. Here is no paradox, no dark saying, no moral hid in tables."
"We have considered the unsound fabric of religion. It remains to consider that, equally unsound, of morals. The virtue of man is false as his faith. What folly invented, knavery supports. Let us arise in our strength, examine, judge, and be free!"
The teacher here paused. The crowd stood, as if yet listening.
"At a convenient season, my children, we will examine farther into the nature of man, and the science of life."
FINIS.
CHAPTER XV.
Theon remained transfixed to the same spot of earth on which the sage left him. A confused train of thoughts traveled through his brain, which his reason sought in vain to arrest, or to analyze. At one moment it seemed as if a ray of light had dawned upon his mind, opening to it a world of discovery as interesting as it was novel. Then suddenly he started as from the brink of a precipice, whose depths were concealed in darkness." "Cleanthes then had justly expounded the doctrines of the garden. — But did these doctrines involve the delinquency which he had hitherto supposed? Were they inconsistent with reason, and irreconcilable with virtue? If so, I shall be able to detect their fallacy," said the youth, pursuing his soliloquy aloud. "It were a poor compliment to the truths I have hitherto worshiped, did I shrink from their investigation. And yet, to question the power of the gods! To question their very existence! To refuse the knee of homage to that great first cause of all things, that speaks, and breathes, and shines resplendent throughout all animated nature! To dispute I know not what — of truths, as self-evident as they are sacred; which speak to our eyes and to our ears: to those very senses whose testimony alone is without appeal in the garden!"
"Do you object to the testimony, young Corinthian?" said a voice, which Theon recognized as that of Metrodorus.
"You arrive opportunely," said Theon, "that is, if you will listen to the questions of my doubting and embarrassed mind."
"Say rather, if I can answer them."
"I attribute to you the ability," said Theon, “since I have heard you quoted as an able expounder of the philosophy of the garden."
"In the absence of our Zeno," said the scholar with a smile, "I sometimes play the part of his Cleanthes. And though you may find me less eloquent than my brother of the porch, I will promise equal fidelity to the text of my original. But here is one, who can expound the doctrine in the letter and the spirit; and, with such an assistant, I should not fear to engage all the scholars and all the masters in Athens."
"Nay, boast rather of thy cause than of thy assistant," said Leontium, approaching, and playfully tapping the shoulder of Metrodorus: "nor yet belie thy own talents, my brother. The Corinthian will smile at thy false modesty, when he shall have studied thy writings, and listened to thy logical discourses. I imagine," she continued, turning her placid gaze on the youth, "that you have hitherto listened to more declamation than reasoning. I might also say, to more sophistry, seeing that you have walked and talked in the Lyceum."
"Say rather, walked and listened."
"In truth and I believe it," she returned with a smile, "and would that your good sense in this, were more common; and that men would rest content with straining their ears, and forbear from submitting their understandings, or torturing those of their neighbors."
"It might seem strange," said Metrodorus, "that the pedantry of Aristotle should find so many imitators, and his dark sayings so many believers, in a city, too, now graced and enlightened by the simple language, and simple doctrines of an Epicurus. — But the language of truth is too simple for inexperienced ears. We start in search of knowledge, like the demigods of old in search of adventure, prepared to encounter giants, to scale mountains, to pierce into Tartarean gulfs, and to carry off our prize from the grip of some dark enchanter, invulnerable to all save to charmed weapons and deity-gifted assailants. To find none of all these things, but, in their stead, a smooth road through a pleasant country, with a familiar guide to direct our curiosity, and point out the beauties of the landscape, disappoints us of all exploit and all notoriety; and our vanity turns but too often from the fair and open champaigne, into error's dark labyrinths, where we mistake mystery for wisdom, pedantry for knowledge, and prejudice for virtue."
"I admit the truth of the metaphor," said Theon. "But may we not simplify too much as well as too little? May we not push investigation beyond the limits assigned to human reason, and, with a boldness approaching to profanity, tear, without removing, the veil which enwraps the mysteries of creation from our scrutiny?"
"Without challenging the meaning of the terms you have employed," said Metrodorus, "I would observe, that there is little danger of our pushing investigation too far. Unhappily the limits prescribed to us by our few and imperfect senses must ever cramp the sphere of our observation, as compared to the boundless range of things; and that even when we shall have strained and improved our senses to the uttermost. We trace an effect to a cause, and that cause to another cause, and so on, till we hold some few links of a chain, whose extent like the charmed circle, is without beginning as without end."
"I apprehend the difficulties," observed Leontium, "which embarrass the mind of our young friend. Like most aspirants after knowledge, he has a vague and incorrect idea of what he is pursuing, and still more, of what may be attained. In the schools you have hitherto frequented," she continued, addressing the youth, "certain images of virtue, vice, truth, knowledge, are presented to the imagination, and these abstract qualities, or we may call them, figurative beings, are made at once the objects of speculation and adoration. A law is laid down, and the feelings and opinions of men are predicated upon it; a theory is built, and all animate and inanimate nature is made to speak in its support; an hypothesis is advanced, and all the mysteries of nature are treated as explained. You have heard of, and studied various systems of philosophy; but real philosophy is opposed to all systems. Her whole business is observation; and the results of that observation constitute all her knowledge. She receives no truths, until she has tested them by experience; she advances no opinions, unsupported by the testimony of facts; she acknowledges no virtue, but that involved in beneficial actions; no vice, but that involved in actions hurtful to ourselves or to others. Above all, she advances no dogmas, — is slow to assert what is, — and calls nothing impossible. The science of philosophy is simply a science of observation, both as regards the world without us, and the world within; and, to advance in it, are requisite only sound senses, well developed and exercised faculties, and a mind free of prejudice. The objects she has in view, as regards the external world, are, first, to see things as they are, and secondly, to examine their structure, to ascertain their properties, and to observe their relations one to the other. — As respects the world within, or the philosophy of mind, she has in view, first, to examine our sensations, or the impressions of external things on our senses; which operation involves, and is involved in, the examination of those external things themselves: secondly, to trace back to our sensations, the first development of all our faculties; and again, from these sensations, and the exercise of our different faculties as developed by them, to trace the gradual formation of our moral feelings, and of all our other emotions: thirdly, to analyze all these our sensations, thoughts, and emotions, — that is, to examine the qualities of our own internal, sentient matter, with the same, and yet more, closeness of scrutiny, than we have applied to the examination of the matter that is without us finally, to investigate the justness of our moral feelings, and to weigh the merit and demerit of human actions; which is, in other words, to judge of their tendency to produce good or evil, — to excite pleasurable or painful feelings in ourselves or others. You will observe, therefore, that, both as regards the philosophy of physics, and the philosophy of mind, all is simply a process of investigation. It is a journey of discovery, in which, in the one case, we commission our senses to examine the qualities of that matter, which is around us, and, in the other, endeavor, by attention to the varieties of our consciousness, to gain a knowledge of those qualities of matter which constitute our susceptibilities of thought and feeling."
"This explanation is new to me," observed Theon, "and I will confess, startling to my imagination. It is pure materialism!"
"You may so call it," rejoined Leontiurn, "But when you have so called it — what then? The question remains: is it true? or is it false?"
"I should be disposed to say — false, since it confounds all my preconceived notions of truth and error, of right and wrong."
"Of truth and error, of right and wrong, in the sense of correct or incorrect is, I presume, your meaning," said Leontium. "You do not involve moral rectitude or the contrary in a matter of opinion?"
"If the opinion have a moral or immoral tendency I do," said the youth.
"A simple matter of fact can have no such tendency or ought not, if we are rational creatures."
"And would not, if we were always reasoning beings," said Metrodorus; "but as the ignorance and superstition which surround our infancy and youth, favor the development of the imagination at the expense of the judgment, we are ever employed in the coining of chimeras, rather than in the discovery of truths; and if ever the poor judgment make an effort to dispel these fancies of the brain, she is repulsed, like a sacrilegious intruder into religious mysteries."
"Until our opinions are made to rest on facts," said Leontium, "the error of our young friend — the most dangerous of all errors, being one of principle and involving many — must ever pervade the world. And it was because I suspected this leading misconception of the very nature — of the very end and aim of the science he is pursuing, that I attempted an explanation of what should be sought, and of what can alone be attained. In philosophy — that is, in knowledge — inquiry is everything; theory and hypothesis are worse than nothing. Truth is but approved facts. Truth, then, is one with the knowledge of these facts. To shrink from inquiry, is to shrink from knowledge. And to prejudge an opinion as true or false, because it interferes with some preconceived abstraction we call vice or virtue, is as if we were to draw the picture of a man we had never seen, and then, upon seeing him, were to dispute his being the man in question, because unlike our picture."
"But if this opinion interfered with another, of whose truth we imagined ourselves certain."
"Then clearly, in one or the other, we are mistaken; and the only way to settle the difficulty is to examine and compare the evidences of both."
"But are there not some truths self-evident?"
"There are a few which we may so call. That is to say, there are some facts, which we admit upon the evidence of a simple sensation; as, for instance, that a whole is greater than its part; that two are more than one; which we receive immediately upon the testimony of our sense of sight or of touch."
"But are there no moral truths of the same nature?"
"I am not aware of any. Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning."
"What call you, then, a belief in a presiding providence, and a great first cause?"
"A belief resting upon testimony; which belief will be true or false, according to the correctness or incorrectness of that testimony."
"Is it not rather a self-evident moral truth?"
"In my answer, I shall have to divide your question into two. First, it cannot be a moral truth, since it is not deduced from the consequences of human action. It can be simply a truth, that is, a fact. Secondly, it is not a self-evident truth, since it is not evident to all minds, and frequently becomes less and less evident, the more it is examined."
"But is not the existence of a first or creating cause demonstrated to our senses by all we see, and hear, and feel?"
"The existence of all that we see and hear and feel is demonstrated to our senses; and the belief we yield to this existence is immediate and irresistible, that is, intuitive. —The existence of the creating cause, that you speak of, is not demonstrated to our senses; and therefore the belief in it cannot be immediate and irresistible. I prefer the expression "creating" to "first" cause, because it seems to present a more intelligible meaning. When you shall have examined farther into the phenomena of nature, you will see, that there can be as little a first as a last cause."
"But there must be always a cause, producing an effect."
"Certainly; and so your cause, — creating all that we see and hear and feel — must itself have a producing cause, otherwise you are in the same difficulty as before."
"I suppose it a Being unchangeable and eternal, itself unproduced, and producing all things."
"Unchangeable it may be, — eternal it must be — since every thing is eternal.''
"Every thing eternal?"
"Yes; that is, the elements composing all substances are, so far as we know and can reason, eternal, and in their nature unchangeable; and it is apparently only the different disposition of these eternal and unchangeable atoms that produces all the varieties in the substances constituting the great material whole, of which we form a part. Those particles, whose peculiar agglomeration or arrangement, we call a vegetable to-day, pass into, and form part of an animal to-morrow; and that animal again, by the falling asunder of its constituent atoms, and the different approximation and agglomeration of the same, — or, of the same with other atoms, — is transformed into some other substance presenting a new assemblage of qualities. To this simple exposition of the phenomena of nature (which, you will observe, is not explaining their wonders, for that is impossible, but only observing them,) we are led by the exercise of our senses. In studying the existences which surround us, it is clearly our business to use our eyes, and not our imaginations. To see things as they are, is all we should attempt, and is all that is possible to be done. Unfortunately, we can do but little even here, as our eyes serve us to see but a very little way. But, were our eyes better — were they so good as to enable us to observe all the arcana of matter, we could never acquire any other knowledge of them, than that they are as they are; — and, in knowing this, that is, in seeing every link in the chain of occurrences, we should know all that even an omniscient being could know. One astronomer traces the course of the sun round the earth, another imagines that of the earth round the sun. Some future improvements in science may enable us to ascertain which conjecture is the true one. We shall then have ascertained a fact, which fact may lead to the discovery of other facts, and so on. Until this plain and simple view of the nature of all science be generally received, all the advances we may make in it are comparatively as nothing. Until we occupy ourselves in examining, observing, and ascertaining, and not in explaining, we are idly and childishly employed. — With every truth we may discover we shall mix a thousand errors; and, for one matter of fact, we shall charge our brain with a thousand fancies. To this leading misconception of the real, and only possible object of philosophical inquiry, I incline to attribute all the modes and forms of human superstition. The vague idea that some mysterious cause not merely precedes but produces the effect we behold, occasions us to wander from the real object in search of an imaginary one. We see the sun rise in the east: instead of confining our curiosity to the discovery of the time and manner of its rising, and of its course in the heavens, we ask also — why does it rise? What makes it move? The more ignorant immediately conceive some Being spurring it through the heavens, with fiery steeds, on wheels of gold, while the more learned tell us of laws of motion, decreed by an almighty fiat, and sustained by an almighty will. Imagine the truth of both suppositions: in the one case, we should see the application of what we call physical power in the driver and the steeds followed by the motion of the sun, and in the other, an almighty volition followed by the motion of the sun. But, in either case, should we understand why the sun moved? — why or how its motion followed what we call the impulse of the propelling power, or the propelling volition? All that we could then know, more than we now know, would be, that the occurrence of the motion of the sun was preceded by another occurrence; and if we afterwards frequently observed the same sequence of occurrences, they would become associated in our mind as necessary precedent and consequent — as cause and effect: and we might give to them the appellation of law of nature, or any other appellation; but they would still constitute merely a truth — that is a fact, and envelope no other mystery, than that involved in every occurrence and every existence."
"But, according to this doctrine," said Theon, "there would be no less reason in attributing the beautiful arrangement of the material world to the motion of a horse, than to the volition of an almighty mind.''
"If I saw the motion of a horse followed by the effect you speak of, I should believe in some relation between them; and if I saw it follow the volition of an almighty mind —the same."
"But the cause would be inadequate to the effect."
"It could not be so, if it were the cause. For what constitutes the adequacy of which you speak? Clearly only the contact, or immediate proximity of the two occurrences. If any sequence could in fact be more wonderful than another, it should rather seem to be for the consequent to impart grandeur to the precedent — the effect to the cause, — than for the cause to impart grandeur to the effect. But in reality all sequences are equally wonderful. That light should follow the appearance of the sun, is just as wonderful, and no more so, as if it were to follow the appearance of any other body — and did light follow the appearance of a black stone it would excite astonishment simply because we never saw light follow such an appearance before. Accustomed, as we now are, to see light when the sunrises, our wonder would be, if we did not see light when he rose : but were light regularly to attend the appearance of any other body, our wonder at such a sequence would, after a time, cease; and we should then say, as we now say, there is a light because such a body has risen; and imagine then, as we imagine now, that we understand why light is."
"In like manner all existences are equally wonderful. An African lion is in himself nothing more extraordinary than a Grecian horse; although the whole people of Athens will assemble to gaze on the lion, and exclaim how wonderful! while no man observes the horse."
"True — but this is the wondering of ignorance."
"I reply — true again, but so is all wondering. If, indeed, we should consider it in this and in all other cases as simply an emotion of pleasurable surprise, acknowledging the presence of a novel object, the feeling is perfectly rational; but if it imagine anything more intrinsically marvelous in the novel existence, than in the familiar one, it is then clearly the idle — that is, the unreasoned and unreflecting marveling of ignorance. There is but one real wonder to the thinking mind: it is the existence of all things; that is the existence of matter. And the only rational ground of this one great wonder is, that the existence of matter is the last link in the chain of cause and effect at which we can arrive. You imagine yet another link — the existence of a power creating that matter. — My only objections to this additional link, or superadded cause, are, that it is imagined, and that it leaves the wonder as before; unless, indeed, we should say that it has superadded other wonders, since it supposes a power, or rather, an existence possessing a power, of which we never saw an example."
"How so? Does not even man possess a species of creating power? And do you not suppose, in your inert matter, that very property which others attribute, with more reason it appears to me, to some superior and unknown existence?'"
"By no means. No existence, that we know of, possesses creating power, in the sense you suppose. Neither the existence we call a man, nor any other of the existences comprised under the generic names of matter, physical world, nature, &c., possesses the power of calling into being its own constituent elements, nor the constituent elements of any other substance. It can change one substance into another substance, by altering the position of its particles, or intermingling them with others: but it cannot call into being, any more than it can annihilate, those particles themselves. The hand of man causes to approach particles of earth and of water, and, by their approximation produces clay; to which clay it gives a regular form, and, by the application of fire, produces the vessel we call a vase. You may say that the hand of man creates the vase, but it does not create the earth, or the water, or the fire; neither has the admixture of these substances added to, or subtracted from, the sum of their elementary atoms. Observe, therefore, there is no analogy between the power inherent in matter, of changing its appearance and qualities, by a simple change in the position of its particles, and that which you attribute to some unseen existence, who by a simple volition, should have called into being matter itself, with all its wonderful properties. An existence possessing such a power I have never seen; and though this says nothing against the possibility of such an existence, it says every thing against my belief in it. And farther, the power which you attribute to this existence — that of willing every thing out of nothing, — being, not only what I have never seen, but. that of which I cannot with any distinctness conceive — it must appear to me the greatest of all improbabilities."
"Our young friend," observed Metrodorus, "lately made use of an expression, the error involved in which, seems to be at the root of his difficulty. In speaking of matter," he continued, turning to Theon, "you employed the epithet inert. What is your meaning? And what matter do you here designate?"
"All matter surely is, in itself, inert."
"All matter surely is, in itself, as it is," said Metrodorus with a smile; "and that, I should say, is living and active. Again, what is matter?"
"All that is evident to our senses," replied Theon, "and which stands opposed to mind."
"All matter then is inert which is devoid of mind. "What then do you understand by mind?"
"I conceive some error in my definition," said Theon, smiling. "Should I say — thought — you would ask if every existence devoid of thought was inert, or if every existence, possessing life, possessed thought."
"I should so have asked. Mind or thought I consider a quality of that matter constituting the existence we call a man, which quality we find in a varying degree in other existences; many, perhaps all animals, possessing it. Life is another quality, or combination of qualities, of matter, inherent in — we know not how many existences. We find it in vegetables; we might perceive it even in stones, could we watch their formation, growth, and decay. We may call that active principle, pervading the elements of all things, which approaches and separates the component particles of the ever-changing, and yet ever-enduring world — life. Until you discover some substance, which undergoes no change, you cannot speak of inert matter: it can only be so, at least, relatively, — that is, as compared with other substances."
"The classing of thought and life among the qualities of matter is new to me."
"What is in a substance cannot be separate from it. And is not all matter a compound of qualities? Hardness, extension, form, color, motion, rest — take away all these, and where is matter? To conceive of mind independent of matter, is as if we should conceive of color independent of a substance colored: What is form, if not a body of a particular shape? What is thought, if not something which thinks? Destroy the substance, and you destroy its properties; and so equally — destroy the properties, and you destroy the substance. To suppose the possibility of retaining the one, without the other, is an evident absurdity."
"The error of conceiving a quality in the abstract often offended me in the Lyceum," returned the youth, "but I never considered the error as extending to mind and life, any more than to vice and virtue."
"You stopped short with many others," said Leontium. "It is indeed surprising how many acute minds will apply a logical train of reasoning in one case, and invert the process in another exactly similar."
"To return, and if you will, to conclude our discussion," said Metrodorus, "I will observe that no real advances can be made in the philosophy of mind, without a deep scrutiny into the operations of nature, or material existences. Mind being only a quality of matter, the study we call the philosophy of mind, is necessarily only a branch of general physics, or the Study of a particular part of the philosophy of matter."
"I am indebted to your patience," said the youth, "and would fain intrude farther on it. I will confine myself at present, however, to one observation. The general view of things, which you present to my mind, the simplicity of which I will confess to be yet more fascinating than its novelty, is evidently unfavorable to religion, — and, if so, unfavorable to virtue."
"An opportunity will, to-day, be afforded you," said Leontium, "of examining this important question in detail. At the request of some of our youth, the Master will himself give his views on the subject."
"I am all curiosity," said Theon. "Other teachers have commanded my respect, inflamed my imagination, and, I believe, often controlled my reason. The son of Neocles inspires me with love, and wins me to confidence, by encouraging me to exercise my own judgment, in scanning his arguments, and examining the groundwork of his own opinions. With such a teacher, and in such a school, I feel suspicion to be wholly misplaced; and I shall now start in the road of inquiry, anxious only to discover truth, and willing to part with every erroneous opinion, the moment it shall be proved to be erroneous."
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR. — How beautifully have the modern discoveries in chemistry and natural philosophy, and the more accurate analysis of the human mind — sciences unknown to the ancient world — substantiated the leading principles of the Epicurean ethics and physics — the only ancient school of either, really deserving the name.
To what have all our ingenious inventions and contrivances for the analysis of material substances led us, but to the atoms of Epicurus? To what, our accurate observation of the decomposition of substances, and the arresting and weighing of their most subtle and invisible elements, but to the eternal and unchangeable nature of those atoms? We have, in the course of our scrutiny, superadded to the wonderful qualities of matter with which he was acquainted, those which we call attraction, repulsion, electricity, magnetism, &c. How do these discoveries multiply and magnify the living powers inherent in the simple elements of all existences, and point our admiration to the sagacity of that intellect which 2,000 years ago, started in the true road of inquiry; while, at this day, thousands of teachers, and millions of scholars are stumbling in the paths of error!
If we look to our mental philosophy, to what has our scrutiny led, but to the leading principles of Epicurean ethics. In the pleasure, — utility, — propriety of human action — whatever word we employ, the meaning is the same — in the consequences of human actions, that is, in their tendency to promote our good or our evil, we must ever find the only test of their intrinsic merit or demerit.
It might seem strange that, while the truth of the leading principles of the Epicurean philosophy have been long admitted by all sound reasoners, the abuse of the school and of its founder is continued to this day: this might and would seem strange and incomprehensible, did we not, on every subject find the same cowardly fear effacing, openly and honestly, the prejudices of men. Teachers, aware of the ignorance of those they teach, develop their doctrines in language intelligible only to the few; or, where they hazard a more distinct exposition of truth, shelter themselves from obloquy by echoing the vulgar censure against those who have taught the same truth, with more explicitness, before them. The mass, even of what is called the educated world, know nothing of the principles they decry, or of the characters they abuse. It is easy, therefore, by joining in the abuse against the one, to encourage a belief that we cannot be advocating the other. This desire of standing fair with the wise, without incurring the enmity of the ignorant, may suit with the object of those who acquire knowledge only for its display, or for the gratification of mere curiosity. But they whose nobler aim, and higher gift it is, to advance the human mind in the discovery of truth, must stand proof equally to censure and to praise. That such lips and such pens should employ equivocation, or other artifice, to turn aside the wrath of ignorance, is degrading to themselves and mortifying to their admirers. The late amiable and enlightened teacher, Thomas Brown, of Edinburgh, whose masterly exposition of old and new truths, and exposure of modern as well as ancient errors, has so advanced the science he professed, is yet chargeable with this weakness. After inculcating the leading principles of the Epicurean philosophy, and building upon those principles, the whole of his beautiful system, he condescends to soothe the prejudices which all his arguments have tended to uproot, by passing a sweeping censure on the school, whose doctrines he has borrowed and taught. We might say — how unworthy of such a mind! But we will rather say — how is it to be lamented that such a mind bears not within itself the conviction that all truths are important to all men; and that to employ deception with the ignorant, is to defeat our own purpose; which is, surely, not to open the eyes of those who already see, but to enlighten the blind!
CHAPTER XIV.
Uneasy thoughts bred unquiet slumbers; and Theon rose from a restless couch, before the first blush of Aurora tinged the forehead of the sky. He trod the paths of the garden, and waited with impatience, for the first time not unmixed with apprehension, the appearance of the Master. The assertions of Cleanthes were corroborated by the testimony of the public; but that testimony he had learned to despise. They were made after perusal of Epicurus' writings; with these writings he was still unacquainted. Had they been misinterpreted? Cleanthes was no Timocrates. If prejudiced, he was incapable of wilful misrepresentation; and he was too familiar with the science of philosophy, so grossly to misunderstand a reasoner, as lucid as appeared to be Epicurus. These musings were soon interrupted. The morning star still glowed in the kindling east, when he heard approaching footsteps, and turning from the shades upon a small open lawn where a crystal fountain flowed from the inverted urn of a recumbent naiad, he was greeted by the Sage.
"Oh no," exclaimed Theon half audibly, as he gazed on the serene countenance before him, "this man is not an Atheist."
"What thoughts are with you, my Son, this morning?" said the philosopher, with kind solicitude. "I doubt your plunge in Ilyssus disturbed your dreams. Did the image of a fair nymph, or of a river God flit round your couch, and drive sleep from your eyelids?"
"I was in some danger from the first," said the youth, half smiling, half blushing, "until a visitant of a different character, and one, I imagine, more wont to soothe than to disturb the mind, brought to my imagination a host of doubts and fears, which your presence alone has dispelled."
"And who played the part of your Incubus?" demanded the Sage.
"Even yourself, most benign and indulgent of men."
"Truly, I grieve to have acted so ill by thee, my Son. It shall be well, however, if having inflicted the disease, I may be its physician."
"On leaving you, last night," said Theon, "I encountered Cleanthes. He came from the perusal of your writings, and brought charges against them which I was unprepared to answer."
"Let us hear them, my Son; perhaps, until you shall have perused them yourself, we may assist your difficulty."
"First, that they deny the existence of the gods."
"I see but one other assertion that could equal that in folly," said Epicurus.
"I knew it," exclaimed Theon, triumphantly; "I knew it was impossible. But where will not prejudice lead men, when even the upright Cleanthes is capable of slander!"
"He is utterly incapable of it," said the Master ; "and the inaccuracy, in this case, I rather suspect to rest with you than with him. To deny the existence of the gods would indeed be presumption in a philosopher; a presumption equaled only by that of him who should assert their existence."
"How!" exclaimed the youth, with a countenance in which astonishment seemed to suspend every other expression.
"As I never saw the gods, my son," calmly continued the Sage, "I cannot assert their existence; and, that I never saw them, is no reason for my denying it."
"But do we believe nothing except that of which we have ocular demonstration?"
"Nothing, at least, for which we have not the evidence of one or more of our senses; that is, when we believe on just grounds, which, I grant, taking men collectively, is very seldom."{14}
"But where would this spirit lead us? To impiety! — to Atheism! — to all, against which I felt confidence in defending the character and philosophy of Epicurus!"
"We will examine presently, my Son, into the meaning of the terms you have employed. But as respects your defense of my philosophy, I am sorry that you presumed so much, where you knew so little. Let this serve for another caution against pronouncing before you examine, and asserting before you inquire. It is my usual custom," continued the Master, "with the youth who frequent my school, to defer the discussion of all important questions until they are naturally, in the course of events, suggested to their own minds. Their curiosity once excited, it is my endeavor, so far as in me lies, to satisfy it. When you first entered the garden your mind was unfit for the examination of the subject you have now started: it is no longer so; and we will therefore enter upon the inquiry, and pursue it in order."
"Forgive me if I express — if I acknowledge," said the youth, slightly recoiling from his instructor, "some reluctance to enter on the discussion of truths, whose very discussion would seem to argue a doubt, — and – "
"And what then?"
"That very doubt were a crime."
"It is there that I wished to lead you; and with the examination of this point we shall rest, until time and circumstances lead you to push the investigation farther. I have in me little of the spirit of proselytism. A mere abstract opinion, supposing it not to affect the conduct or disposition of him who holds it, would be in my eyes of very minor importance. And it is only in so far as I believe that all our opinions, however apparently removed from any practical consequences, do always more or less affect one or the other — our conduct or our dispositions — that I am at the pains to correct in my scholars, those which appear to me erroneous. I understand you to say, that to enter upon the discussion of certain opinions, which you consider as sacred truths, would appear to argue a doubt of those truths, and that a doubt would here constitute a crime. Now as I think such a belief inconsistent with candor and charity — two feelings, indispensable both for the enjoyment of happiness ourselves, and for its distribution to others, I shall challenge its investigation. If the doubt of any truth shall constitute a crime, then the belief of the same truth should constitute a virtue."
"Perhaps a duty would rather express it."
"When you charge the neglect of any duty as a crime, or account its fulfillment a virtue, you suppose the existence of a power to neglect or fulfill; and it is the exercise of this power, in the one way or the other, which constitutes the merit or demerit. Is it not so?"
"Certainly."
"Does the human mind possess the power to believe or disbelieve, at pleasure, any truths whatsoever?"
"I am not prepared to answer: but I think it does, since it possesses always the power of investigation."
"But, possibly, not the will to exercise the power. Take care lest I beat you with your own weapons. I thought this very investigation appeared to you a crime."
"Your logic is too subtle," said the youth, "for my inexperience."
"Say rather, my reasoning too close. Did I bear you down with sounding words and weighty authorities, and confound your understanding with hair-drawn distinctions, you would be right to retreat from the battery."
"I have nothing to object to the fairness of your deductions," said Theon, "But would not the doctrine be dangerous that should establish our inability to help our belief; and might we not stretch the principle, until we asserted our inability to help our actions?"
"We might, and with reason. But we will not now traverse the ethical pons asinorum of necessity — the most simple and evident of moral truths, and the most darkened, tortured, and belabored by moral teachers. You inquire if the doctrine we have essayed to establish, be not dangerous. I reply — not, if it be true. Nothing is so dangerous as error, — nothing so safe as truth. A dangerous truth would be a contradiction in terms, and an anomaly in things."
"But what is a truth?" said Theon.
"It is pertinently asked. A truth I consider to be an ascertained fact; which truth would be changed into an error, the moment the fact, on which it rested, was disproved."
"I see, then, no fixed basis for truth."
"It surely has the most fixed of all — the nature of things. And it is only an imperfect insight into that nature, which occasions all our erroneous conclusions, whether in physics or morals."
"But where, if we discard the gods, and their will, as engraven on our hearts, are our guides in the search after truth ?"
"Our senses and our faculties as developed in and by the exercise of our senses, are the only guides with which I am acquainted. And I do not see why, even admitting a belief in the gods, and in a superintending providence, the senses should not be viewed as the guides, provided by them, for our direction and instruction. But here is the evil attendant on an ungrounded belief, whatever be its nature. The moment we take one thing for granted, we take other things for granted: we are started in a wrong road, and it is seldom that we can gain the right one, until we have trodden back our steps to the starting place. I know but of one thing that a philosopher should take for granted; and that only because he is forced to it by an irresistible impulse of his nature; and because, without doing so, neither truth nor falsehood could exist for him. He must take for granted the evidence of his senses; in other words, he must believe in the existence of things, as they exist to his senses. I know of no other existence, and can therefore believe in no other: although, reasoning from analogy, I may imagine other existences to be. This, for in stance, I do as respects the gods. I see around me, in the world I inhabit, an infinite variety in the arrangement of matter; — a multitude of sentient beings, possessing different kinds, and varying grades of power and intelligence, — from the worm that crawls in the dust, to the eagle that soars to the sun, and man who marks to the sun its course. It is possible, it is moreover probable, that, in the worlds which I see not, — in the boundless infinitude and eternal duration of matter, beings may exist, of every countless variety, and varying grades of intelligence inferior and superior to our own, until we descend to a minimum, and rise to a maximum, to which the range of our observation affords no parallel, and of which our senses are inadequate to the conception. Thus far, my young friend, I believe in the gods, or in what you will of existences removed from the sphere of my knowledge. That you should believe, with positiveness, in one unseen existence or another, appears to me no crime, although it may appear to me unreasonable: and so, my doubt of the same should appear to you no moral offense, although you might account it erroneous. I fear to fatigue your attention, and will, therefore, dismiss, for the present, these abstruse subjects."
But we shall both be amply repaid for their discussion, if this truth remain with you — that an opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.”
CHAPTER XIII.
Night's refreshing airs fanned the cheeks of Theon, and rustled the myrtle on his brow; but the subtle fever of love which swept through his veins, and throbbed in his heart and temples, was beyond their cooling influence. The noisy business of life had now given place in the streets to noisy merriment. The song and the dance sounded from the open portals; and the young votaries of Bacchus, in all the frenzy of the god, rushed from the evening banquet, to the haunts of midnight excess, while the trembling lover glided past to the stolen interview, shrinking even from the light of Day's pale sister. Theon turned abruptly from the crowd, and sought instinctively a public walk, at this hour always private, where he had often mused on the mysteries of philosophy, and taxed his immature judgment to hold the balance between the doctrines of her contending schools. No thoughts so deep and high now filled his youthful fancy. He wandered on, his senses steeped in delirium not less potent than that of wine, until his steps were suddenly arrested by a somewhat rude encounter with a human figure, advancing with a pace more deliberate than his own. He started backwards and his eyes met those of Cleanthes. The stoic paused a moment, then moved to pass on. But Theon, however little he might have desired such a companion at such a moment, hailed him by name, and placed himself at his side. Again Cleanthes gazed on him in silence; when Theon, following the direction of his glance, raised a hand to his temples, and removed, with a conscious blush, the offending garland. He held it for a moment; then, placing it in his bosom — "You misjudge this innocent token; — a pledge of acknowledgment for a life redeemed from the waves."
"Would that I might receive a pledge of the redemption of thy virtue, Theon, from the flood of destruction! For thy sake I have opened the volumes of this smooth deceiver. And shall a few fair words and a fairer countenance shield such doctrines from opprobrium? Shall he who robs virtue of her sublimity, the gods of their power, man of his immortality, and creation of its providence, pass for a teacher of truth, and expounder of the laws of nature? Where is thy reason, Theon? where thy moral sense? to see, in doctrines such as these, aught but impiety and crime, or to imagine, that he, who advocates them, can merit aught but the scorn of the wise, and the opprobrium of the good?"
"I know not such to be the doctrines of Epicurus," said the youth, "and you will excuse my farther reply, until I shall have examined the philosophy you so bitterly, and apparently so justly condemn."
"The philosophy? honor it not with the name."
"Nay," returned Theon with a smile, "There are so many absurdities honored with that appellative, in Athens, that the compliment might pass unchallenged, although applied to one less worthy than, in my eyes, appears the sage of Gargettium. But," preventing the angry interruption of the stoic, "my slowness to judge and to censure offends your enthusiasm. The experience of three days has taught me this caution. My acquaintance, as yet, is rather with the philosopher than the philosophy; my prejudices at first were equally strong against both. Having discovered my error with respect to one, ought I not to read, listen, and examine, before I condemn the other. And, the rather, as all that I have heard in the garden has hitherto convinced my reason, and awakened my admiration and love."
"Permit me the question," said Cleanthes, stopping short, and fixing his piercing glance on the countenance of his companion — "Honor ye the Gods, and believe ye in a creating cause, and a superintending Providence?"
"Surely I do," said Theon.
"How, then, venerate ye the man who proclaims his doubt of both?"
"So, in my hearing, has never the son of Neocles."
"But he has and does in the hearing of the world."
"I have so heard, and ranked it among the libels of his enemies."
"He has so written, and the fact is acknowledged by his friends."
"I will read his works," said Theon, "and question the writer. A mind more candid, whatever be its errors, exists not, I am persuaded, than that of Epicurus; I should have said also, a mind more free of errors. But he has taught me to think no mind, however wise, infallible."
"Call ye such doctrines, errors? I should rather term them crimes."
"I object not to the word," said Theon. '"I will examine into this. The Gods have ye in their keeping! Good night." They entered the city, and the friends divided.
CHAPTER XII.
Theon, rising, recruited from the warm bath, and his limbs being well rubbed with ointments, joined the party at supper in health and spirits. It consisted of the master, Leontium, Metrodorus, and two other scholars, whose persons were new to him. There was something in the gentle manners of one, not unmixed with a little awkwardness, the grave repose of his features, the abstract thought that lined his forehead, and fixed his mild eye, that led him to guess it was Polyoenus. The other, whose gait had the dignity of manhood, and the polish of art; whose face, without being handsome, had that beauty which refined sentiment and a well stored mind always throw more or less into the features; whose whole appearance showed at once the fine scholar and the amiable man, fixed instantly Theon's attention and curiosity. All received the youth with congratulations, and Metrodorus, as he held him in his embrace, jokingly upbraided him as a greedy and barbarous invader, who was carrying off, in his single person, the whole love and honor of the garden. "But yet," he added, "have a care; for I doubt you have secured the envy also."
"I believe it," said Theon. "At least I know I should envy you, or any of your fraternity, who had risked his life, aye, or lost it, in service of your master, or any your master loved."
"Well said, my dear youth," said the stranger, taking his hand; "and when you have seen more of the nymph you so gallantly rescued, you will perhaps think the man a no less object of envy, who should risk his life for her, or any he loved."
They moved to the table, when Leontium whispered Theon, "Hermarchus of Mytelene, the bosom friend of Epicurus."
"I thank you," replied Theon, "you have well read my curiosity."
The party were about to place themselves when a sound in the passage turned all eyes to the door. "Yes, nurse, you may just peaceably let me take my own way. Go, go, I am quite well, quite warm, and quite active. I tell you, you have rubbed my skin off" —would you rub away my flesh too?" And in came, with the light foot of a nymph of Dian, the young Hedeia. A white garment, carelessly adjusted, fell with inimitable grace, over her airy form; in equal negligence, her long hair, still moist from the recent waves, and disheveled by the anxious rubbing of her careful attendant, hung down her shoulders to her zone. Her face, though pale from late alarm and fatigue, beaming with life and joy. Her full dark eyes sparkling with intelligence, and her lips, though their coral was slightly faded, lovely with smiles. In one hand she held a goblet, in the other a chaplet of myrtle. "Which is my hero?" she asked in a voice more sweet than the evening zephyr, as she looked round the board - "Am I right?" approaching Theon. The youth, as he gazed on the lovely face, forgot to answer. "Nay, is it a statue?" leaning forward, and gazing in her turn, as if in curious inspection.
"No, a slave," said Theon, half smiling, half blushing, as he stooped his knee, while she placed the garland on his head. "I come to pledge you," she said, putting the cup to her lips, "and to bid you pledge me," presenting it with bewitching grace to the youth. He took it in speechless ecstasy from her taper fingers, and turning that side to his mouth which had received the touch of hers, quaffed at once the draught of wine and love."
"Beware," said a voice in his ear: "it is the cup of Circe." He turned, Polyoenus stood behind him; but when he saw his motionless features, he could hardly believe the whisper had been uttered by him.
"I know," continued the fair one, pointing to the table, "there is but cold beverage here for a drowned man. My wise father may know to give comfort to the mind, but come to my good nurse, when you want the comfort of the body. She is the most skillful compounder of elixirs, philters, and every palatable medicine, that you might haply find in all Greece, all Asia, aye, or all the earth. And now make way," putting back the surrounding company, and leading Theon by the arm to the upper end of the table. "Behold the king of the feast."
"That is, if you are the queen," said the intoxicated youth.
"Oh, certainly," placing herself by his side, " I never refuse consequence, whenever I can get it."
"Whenever you can take it, you mean," said the master, laughing.
"And is not that everywhere?" said Hermarchus, bowing to the fair girl.
"Yes, I believe it is. A pretty face, my friends, may presume much; a wilful nature may carry all things. I have both to perfection; have I not?"
"Praise to Venus, and the Graces," said Leontium; "our sister has brought a heart as gay from the college of Pythagoras, as she took into it."
"To be sure; and did you expect otherwise? Psha! you philosophers know nothing of human nature. I could have told you before this last experiment, that humor lies in contrast, and that a wag will find more subject in a synod of grave sages than a crew of laughing wits. You must know," turning to Theon, "I have been on a visit to a wise man, a very wise man, who has followed from his youth up the whim, and all very wise men have whims, of restoring the neglected school of Pythagoras to its pristine greatness. Accordingly, he has collected and brought up some dozen submissive youths to his full satisfaction; for not one of them dare know his right hand from his left, but on his master's authority, doubly backed by that of the great founder. They have, in short, no purse of their own, no time of their own, no tongue of their own, no will of their own, and no thought of their own. You cannot conceive a more perfect community. One more virtuously insipid, more scientifically absurd, or more wisely ignorant."
"Fie, fie you giddy girl," said the master, smiling, while he tried to frown.
"Giddy, not at all. I am delivering a grave matter of fact story."
"And we are all here," said Hermarchus, "so pray let us have the whole of it."
"The whole? nay, you have it already. An abode of the blessed; a house with twelve bodies in it, and one brain to serve them all."
"Why," replied Hermarchus, " I believe you have at home some hundred bodies in the same predicament."
"To be sure; and so I told the sage Pythagorean, when he looked so complacently on his eleven pieces of mechanism, and assured him that were it not for me, there would not be a single original in the garden, save the master. I assure you, father, I gave just as matter of fact a description of your household, as I now do of the old Pythagorean's. And, a most singular coincidence, I remember he cried, 'Fie, fie,' just as you did now. Once more, it was a most perfect household; with the men, all peace, method, virtue, learning and absurdity; with the women, all silence, order, ignorance, modesty, and stupidity."
"And pray, sister," said Metrodorus, "what made you leave a society that afforded such rich food to your satire?"
"Because, brother, the richest food cloys the fastest. I passed three days to my perfect satisfaction; a fourth would have killed me."
"And your friends too," said the philosopher, shaking his head.
"Killed them. They never knew they had life, till I found it out for them. No, no, I left sore hearts behind me. The master indeed — ah, the master! poor man, shall I confess it? Before I left the house, he caught one of his pupils looking into a mirror with a candle, heard that another had stirred the fire with a sword, and oh! more dreadful than all, that a third had swallowed a bean.{13} If I could but have stayed three days longer, I might have wound my girdle round the necks of the whole dozen, brought them on my back, and laid them at the feet of Epicurus."
"And what said the master, all this time?" said Leontium.
"Said he? what said he? umph! I never heard what he said, for I was reading what he felt."
"And what felt he?" asked Hermarchus.
"Just what you have felt — and you too," looking at Polyoenus. "Aye, and you also, very sage philosopher;" and turning short round to Theon, "what you have to feel, if you have not yet felt — that I was vastly witty, vastly amusing, and vastly beautiful.''
"And do you think," said the Gargettian, "when we feel all this, we can't be angry with you?"
"Nay, what do you think? But no, no, I know you all better than you know yourselves. And I think you cannot, or if you can, 'tis as the poet, who curses the muse he burns to propitiate. Oh philosophy! philosophy! thou usest hard maxims and showest a grave face, yet thy maxims are but words, and thy face but a mask. A skillful histrion, who, when the buskin is off, paint, plaster, and garment thrown aside, stands no higher, no fairer, and no more mighty, than the youngest, poorest, and simplest of thy gaping worshipers. Ah, friends! laugh and frown; but show me the man, the wisest, the gravest, or the sourest, that a bright pair of eyes can't make a fool of."
"Ah, you proud girl," said Hermarchus, "tremble! remember, the blue-eyed Sappho died at last for a Phaon."
"Well, if such be my fate, I must submit. I do not deny, because I have been wise hitherto, that I may not turn fool with the philosophers before I die."
"What an excellent school for the rearing of youth," said the master, "the old Pythagorean must think mine."
"Judging from me as a specimen, you mean. And trust me now, father, I am the best. Do I not practice what you preach? What you show the way to, do I not possess? Look at my light foot, look in my laughing eye, read my gay heart, and tell — if pleasure be not mine. Confess, then, that I take a shorter cut to the goal than your wiser scholars, aye than your wisest self. You study, you lecture, you argue, you exhort. And what is it all for? as if you could not be good without so much learning, and happy without so much talking. Here am I — I think I am very good, and I am quite sure I am very happy; yet I never wrote a treatise in my life, and can hardly listen to one without a yawn."
"Theon," said Epicurus, smiling, "you see now the priestess of our midnight orgies."
"Ah! poor youth, you must have found the garden but a dull place in my absence. But have patience, it will be better in future."
"More dangerous," said Polyoenus.
"Never mind him," whispered Hedeia, in the Corinthian's ear — "he is not the grave man that a bright pair of eyes cannot make a fool of. This is very odd," she continued, looking round the board. "Here am I, the stranger, and one too half drowned, charged with the entertaining of this whole learned society."
"Nay, my girl," said the master, "thou hadst need to be whole drowned, ere your friends might secure the happiness of being listened to."
"Indeed, I believe it's true; and considering that the greatest pleasure of life is the being listened to, I wonder how any one was found to pick me out of the water. The Corinthian, to be sure, did not know what he saved; but that the master should wet his tunic in my service is a very unaccountable circumstance. Is there any reason for it in philosophy?"
"I am afraid none."
"Or in mathematics?" turning to Polyoenus. "Now, just see there a proof of my argument. Can any man look more like wisdom, or less like happiness? This comes of diagrams and ethics. My young Corinthian, take warning."
"I wish we could fix you to a diagram," said Leontium.
"The Graces forfend! and why should you wish it? Think you it would make me wiser? Let Polyoenus be judge, if I am not wiser than he. I admire the different prescriptions that are given by different doctors. The wife of the good Pythagorean recommended me a distaff."
"Well," said Hermarchus, "that might do equally."
"Pray, why don't you take one yourself?"
"I, you see, am busy with philosophy."
"And so am I, with laughing at it. Ah, my sage brother, every man thinks that perfection, that he is himself — that the only knowledge that he possesses — and that the only pleasure that he pursues. Trust me, there are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no more fit to lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped."
"You would make a strange world, were you the queen of it," said Hermarchus, laughing.
"Just as strange, and no stranger, than it is at present. For why? I should take it as I found it, and leave it as I found it. 'Tis your philosophers, who would rub and twist, and plague and doctor it, and fret your souls out, to bring all its heterogeneous parts, fools, wits, knaves, simpletons, grave, gay, light, heavy, long-faced, and short-faced, black, white, brown, straight and crooked, tall, short, thin and fat, to fit together, and patiently reflect each other, like the acorns of an oak, or the modest wives and helpless daughters of the good citizens of Athens; 'tis you, I say, who would make a strange world, were you kings of it — you who would shorten and lengthen, clip, pull, and carve men's minds to fit your systems, as the tyrant did men's bodies to fit his bed."
"I grant there's some truth, my girl, in thy nonsense," said the master.
"And I grant that there is not a philosopher in Athens, who would have granted as much, save thyself. You will find my young hero," turning to Theon, that my father philosophizes more sense, that is, less absurdity, than any man since the seven sages; nay! even than the seven sages philosophized themselves. He only lacks to be a perfectly wise man ––"
"To burn," said the master, "his books of philosophy, and to sing a tune to thy lyre."
"No, it shall do to let me sing a tune to it myself." She bounded from the couch and the room, and returned in a moment, with the instrument in her hand. "Fear not," she said, nodding to the sage, as she lightly swept the chords, " I shall not woo my own lover, but your mistress."
Come, Goddess! Come! not in thy power,
With gait and garb austere,
And threatning brow severe,
Like stern Olympus in the judgment hour;
But come with looks the heart assuring.
Come with smiling eyes alluring.
Moving soft to Lydian measures,
Girt with graces, loves, and pleasures.
Bound with Bazilea's zone.
Come, Virtue; come! in joyous tone
We bid thee welcome to our hearth,
For well we know that thou alone
Canst give the purest bliss of earth."
"No thanks, no thanks. I shall take my own reward," and stealing behind Epicurus, she threw her white arms around his neck, and laid her cheek on his lips. Then rising, "Good dreams be with you," and waving round her hand, and throwing a smile on Theon, vanished in an instant. The youth saw and heard no more, but sat as in a dream, until the party divided.
"Have a care," whispered the master, as he followed him into the vestibule. "Cupid is a knavish god; he can pierce the hearts of others, and hold a shield before his own."
CHAPTER XI.
The sun had far declined from his meridian, yet no cool breeze tempered the fervors of the heat. The air was chained in oppressive stillness, when suddenly a bustling wind shook the trees, and a low growling reverberated round the horizon. The scholars retired before the threatening storm; but Theon, his ear still filled with the musical voice of the sage, and his heart imbued with his gentle precepts, lingered to feed alone upon the thoughts they had awakened in him. "How mad is the folly of man," he said, as he threw his back against a tree. "Professing to admire wisdom and love virtue, and yet ever persecuting and slandering both. How vain is it to look for credit by teaching truth, or to seek fame by the road of virtue!"
"Thy regret is idle, my son," said a well known voice in his ear.
"Oh! my guardian spirit!" cried the startled youth — "Is it you ?"
"I linger," said the Gargettian, "to watch the approach of the storm, and I suppose you do the same."
"No," returned the youth; "I hardly heeded the heavens."
"They are singular, however, at this moment." Theon looked where the sage pointed; a dark mass of vapors was piled upon the head of Hymettus, from which two columns, shooting forth like the branches of some giant oak, spread themselves over the sky. The opposing sun, fast traveling to the horizon, looked red through the heated atmosphere, and flashed a deep glare on their murky sides. Soon half the landscape was blackened with the sinking clouds, that each moment increasing in bulk and density, seemed to touch the bosom of the earth. The western half glowed with a brilliant light, like molten gold. The distant outline was marked with a pencil of fire, while the gardens and villas that speckled the plain, seemed illuminated in jubilee.
"See," said the sage, stretching his hand towards the gilded scene; "see the image of that fame which is not founded in virtue. Thus bright may it shine for a moment, but the cloud of oblivion or infamy comes fast to cover its glory."
"Is it so?" said Theon. "Do not the vile of the earth fill the tongues of men, and are not the noble forgotten? Does not the titled murderer inscribe his name on the tablets of eternity, with the sword which is dipped in the blood of his fellows? And does not the man who has spent his youth, and manhood, and age, in the courts of wisdom — who has planted peace at the hearth, and given truth to the rising age, does he not go down to the grave in silence, his bones unhonored, and his name forgotten?"
"Possibly his name; but, if he have planted peace at the hearth, and given truth to the rising age, surely not his better part — his virtues. Do not confound noise with fame. The man who is remembered, is not always honored; and reflect, what a man toils for, that probably will he win. The titled murderer, who weaves his fate with that of empires, will with them go down to posterity. The sage, who does his work in the silence of retirement, unobserved in his own generation, will pass into the silence of the grave, unknown to the future."
"But suppose he be known. How few worshipers should crowd to his shrine, and what millions to that of the other!"
"And those few, my son, who are they? The wise of the earth, the enlightened patriot, the discerning philosopher. And who are the millions? The ignorant, the prejudiced, and the idle. Nor yet, let us so wrong the reason of our species, as to say, that they always give honor to the mischievous rather than the useful — gratitude to their oppressors, rather than their benefactor. In instances they may be blind, but in the gross they are just. The splendor of action, the daring of enterprise, or the glitter of majesty, may seize their imagination, and so drown their judgment; but never is it the tyranny of power, the wantonness of cruelty, the brutality of vice, which they adore, any more than it is the innocence and usefulness of virtue, which they despise. The united experience of mankind has pronounced virtue to be the great good: nay, so universal is the conviction, that even those who insult her in their practice, bow to her in their understanding. Man is for the most part more fool than knave, more weak than depraved in action, more ignorant than vicious in judgment; and seldom is he so weak and so ignorant, as not to see his own interest, and value him who promotes it. But say that he often slanders the virtuous, and persecutes the wise; he does it more in error than from depravity. He is credulous, and on the report of malice, takes virtue for hypocrisy; — he is superstitious, and some of the truths of wisdom appear to him profane. Say he does homage to vice —you will find when he does it, he believes her to be virtue. Hypocrisy has masked her deformity, or talent decked her with beauty. Is here, then, subject for wrath? Rather, surely, for compassion. Is here matter for disgust? Rather, surely, for exertion. The darker the ignorance, the more praise to the sage who dispels it; — the deeper the prejudice, more fame to the courage which braves it. But may the courage be vain? May the sage fall the victim of the ignorance he combats? He may; he often has. But ere he engage, knows he not the risk? The risk is to himself; the profit to mankind. To a benevolent soul, the odds is worth the throw; and though it be against him at the present, he may win it in the future. The sage, whose vision is cleared from the mists of prejudice, can stretch it over the existing age, to the kindling horizon of the succeeding, and see, perhaps, unborn generations weeping the injustice of their fathers, and worshiping those truths which they condemned. Or is it otherwise? Lives he in the old age of the world, and does he see the stream of time flowing through a soil yet more rank with prejudice and evil? Say then — were the praise of such a world a fit object of his ambition, or shall he be jealous of the fame which ignorance yields to the unworthy? But any way, my son, it is not the voice of fame that we should seek in the practice of virtue, but the peace of self-satisfaction. The object of the sage is to make himself independent of all that he cannot command within himself. Yet, when I speak of independence, I mean not indifference; while we make ourselves sufficient for ourselves, we need not forget the crowd about us. We are not wise in the contempt of others but in calm approbation of ourselves."
"Still dost thou droop thy head, my son?" said the gentle philosopher, laying a hand on the shoulder of his young friend.
"Your words sink deep into my soul," replied Theon; "yet they have not chased the melancholy they found there. I have not such a world in myself as to be independent of that about me, nor can I forgive the offenses of my fellows, merely because they commit them from ignorance. Nay, is not their very ignorance often a crime, when the voice of truth is whispering in their ear?"
"And if they do not hear her whisper in the one ear, it is because prejudice is crying aloud into the other."
"Prejudice! I hate prejudice," said Theon.
"And so do I," said the master.
"Yes, but I am provoked with it."
"I suspect that will not remove the evil."
"Nothing will remove it. It is inherent in men's nature."
"Then as we are men, it may be inherent in ours. Trust me, my son, it is better to correct ourselves, than to find fault with our neighbors."
"But is it not allowed to do both? Can we help seeing the errors of the world in which we live, and seeing, can we help being angry at them?"
"Certainly not the seeing them, but I hope, very possibly, the being angry with them. He that loses temper with the folly of others, shows that he has folly himself. In which case they have as much right to complain of his, as he of theirs. And have I not been trying to show you, that when you are wise you will be independent of all that you cannot command within yourself? You say you are not so now. I admit it, but when you are wise you will be so. And till you are wise, you have surely no title to quarrel with another's ignorance."
"I can never be independent of my friends," returned Theon. "I must ever feel the injustice done to them though I might be regardless of that which affected merely myself."
"Why so? What would enable you to disregard that done to yourself?"
"Conscious innocence. Pride, if you will. Contempt of the folly and ignorance of my judges."
"Well, and are you less conscious of the innocence of your friend? If you are, where is your indignation? And if you are not, have you less pride for him than for yourself? Do you respect that folly and ignorance in his judges, that you despise in your own?"
"I believe it will not stand argument," said Theon. "But you must forgive me if, when I contemplate Epicurus, I feel indignant at the slander which dares to breathe upon his purity."
"And do you think you were yourself an object of indignation, when you spoke of him as a monster of vice ?"
"Yes, I feel I was."
"But he felt otherwise," said the master, "and which, think you, is likely to feel most wisely ?"
"Ah! I hope it is Epicurus," said the youth, snatching his instructor's hand. This conversation was here interrupted by the bursting of the storm. The fire flashed round the horizon, the thunder cracked over the zenith, and the first big drops fell from the burdened clouds. "We are near the Temple," said the sage, "let us seek shelter under its portico. We may watch the storm there, without a wet skin." They had hardly gained it, when the rain poured down in torrents. Ilisus, whom the burning sun had of late faded into a feeble rill, soon filled and overflowed his bed; wave after wave, in sudden swell, came roaring down, as if he now first burst to life from the womb of his parent mountain. But the violence of the storm soon spent its strength. Already the thunder broke with longer intervals, and a faint light, like the opening of morning, gleamed over the western heavens. At length the sun cleared his barrier of clouds. He stood on the verge of the waves, and shot his level rays over the blazing Salamis and the glistening earth. The sage stood with his young friend in silent admiration, when the eye of the latter was attracted by a horseman, who came full gallop over the plain, directly towards them. The object of his attention had nearly reached the river, when he perceived the rider to be a female. The swift feet of the steed now touched the opposing bank. "Great Jove, he will not attempt the passage," exclaimed the youth, as he sprung towards the river. "Stop, stop," he cried. She checked the rein, but too late. The animal, accustomed to the passage, and blinded by speed, plunged into the flood. Theon tore his robe from his shoulders, and was about to make the plunge on his side, when he was grasped by Epicurus.
"Be not rash. The horse is strong, and the rider skillful." The voice that uttered these words was calm and distinct, but its wonted music was changed into the deep tone of suppressed horror. Even at that moment, the accent struck Theon's ear.
"Do you know her? Is she your friend? Is she dear to you? If so" — he made another effort to throw himself forward, but was still restrained by Epicurus. He looked into the philosopher's face. There was no motion in it, save a quivering round the mouth, while the eyes were fixed in aching gaze on the struggling animal. He breasted the water midway, when seemingly frightened at the rapidity of the current, he tried to turn. The rider saw the danger, she curbed the rein, she tried with voice and effort to urge him to the conflict. Theon looked again at the sage. He saw he had loosened his mantle, and was prepared to try the flood. "I conjure you, by the gods!" said the youth, "what is my life to yours?" He grasped the sage in his turn. "Let me save her! I will save her — I swear it." They both struggled a moment for the leap. "I swear," continued Theon, with furious energy, "that if you go I will follow." He made another effort, and dashed from the hold of Epicurus into the river. Naturally strong, he was doubly so at this moment. He felt not fear, he saw not danger. In a moment he was in the centre of the current —another stroke, and he had seized the mane of the steed. But the terrified animal even then gave way to the stream. The rider still struggled for her seat. But her strength fast failed, she stretched out her hand with a feeble cry of despair. Theon shot forward yet swifter than the tide; he drove with a shock against the horse, and caught with one arm the expiring girl. Then, half yielding to the current, he parted with the other the roaring waters, and with effort almost superhuman, grappled with their fury. Panting, choking, bewildered, yet never relaxing, he reached, but he knew not how, the land. When he recovered recollection, he found himself lying on a couch, in the arms of Epicurus. "Where am I," he said, "and where is the lovely girl?"
"Safe, safe, as her generous deliverer. Oh, my son! now indeed my son, when I owe to thee my Hedeia."
"Was it your adopted child, then," cried the youth, with a shout of delirious joy, as he threw himself on the breast of the sage. "But tell me," he said, rising and looking round on Metrodorus, who, with two other scholars, stood beside the couch, "how came I here?"
"I believe," said Metrodorus, "the master swam to your aid — at least we found him lifting you and Hedeia from the water."
"I watched your strength, my son, and reserved mine till it should fail; when I observed it do so, I came to your assistance. Now, compose yourself awhile, and I will go and put myself into a dry tunic.”
CHAPTER X.
Epicurus stood in the midst of the expectant scholars. "My sons," he said, "why do you enter the gardens? Is it to seek happiness, or to seek virtue and knowledge? Attend, and I will show you that in finding one, you shall find the three. To be happy, we must be virtuous; and when we are virtuous, we are wise. Let us then begin: and first, let us for a while hush our passions into slumber, forget our prejudices, and cast away our vanity and our pride. Thus patient and modest, let us come to the feet of philosophy; let us say to her, 'Behold us scholars and children, gifted by nature with faculties, affections, and passions. Teach us their use and their guidance. Show us how to turn them to account — how best to make them conduce to our ease, and minister to our enjoyment.'
"Sons of earth," says the Deity, "you have spoken wisely; you feel that you are gifted by nature with faculties, affections, and passions; and you perceive that on the right exertion and direction of these depends your well-being. It does so. Your affections both of soul and body may be shortly reduced to two, pleasure and pain; the one troublesome, and the other agreeable. It is natural and befitting, therefore, that you shun pain, and desire and follow after pleasure. Set forth then on the pursuit; but ere you start, be sure that it is in the right road, and that you have your eye on the true object. Perfect pleasure, which is happiness, you will have attained when you have brought your bodies and souls into a state of satisfied tranquillity. To arrive at this, much previous exertion is requisite; yet exertion, not violent, only constant and even. And first, the body, with, its passions and appetites, demands gratification and indulgence. But beware! for here are the hidden rocks which may shipwreck your bark on its passage, and shut you out for ever from the haven of repose. Provide yourselves then with a skilled pilot, who may steer you through the Scylla and Charybdis of your carnal affections, and point the steady helm through the deep waters of your passions. Behold her! it is Prudence, the mother of the virtues, and the handmaid of wisdom. Ask, and she will tell you, that gratification will give new edge to the hunger of your appetites, and that the storm of the passions shall kindle with indulgence. Ask, and she will tell you, that sensual pleasure is pain covered with the mask of happiness. Behold she strips it from her face, and reveals the features of disease, disquietude, and remorse. Ask, and she will tell you, that happiness is not found in tumult, but tranquillity; and that, not the tranquillity of indolence and inaction, but of a healthy contentment of soul and body. Ask, and she will tell you, that a happy life is like neither to a roaring torrent, nor a stagnant pool, but to a placid and crystal stream, that flows gently and silently along. And now Prudence shall bring to you the lovely train of the virtues. Temperance, throwing a bridle on your desires, shall gradually subdue and annihilate those whose present indulgence would only bring future evil; and others more necessary and more innocent, she shall yet bring down to such becoming moderation, as shall prevent all disquiet to the soul and injury to the body. Fortitude shall strengthen you to bear those diseases which even temperance may not be efficient to prevent; those afflictions which fate may level at you; those persecutions which the folly or malice of man may invent. It shall fit you to bear all things, to conquer fear, and to meet death. Justice shall give you security among your fellows, and satisfaction in your own breasts. Generosity shall endear you to others, and sweeten your own nature to yourselves. Gentleness shall take the sting from the malice of your enemies, and make you extract double sweet from the kindness of friends. Gratitude shall lighten the burden of obligation, or render it even pleasant to bear. Friendship shall put the crown on your security and your joy. With these, and yet more virtues, shall prudence surround you. And, thus attended, hold on your course in confidence, and moor your barks in the haven of repose."
"Thus says Philosophy, my sons, and says she not wisely? Tell us, ye who have tried the slippery paths of licentiousness, who have given the rein to your passions, and sought pleasure in the lap of voluptuousness; tell us, did ye find her there? No, ye did not, or ye would not now inquire of her from Epicurus. Come, then, Philosophy hath shown ye the way. Throw off your old habits, wash impurity from your hearts; take up the bridle of your passions; govern your minds, and be happy. And ye, my sons, to whom all things are yet new; whose passions yet in the bud, have never led you to pain and regret; ye who have yet to begin your career, come ye also! Philosophy hath shown ye the way. Keep your hearts innocent, hold the bridle of your passions, govern your minds, and be happy. But, my sons, methinks I hear you say, ‘You have shown us the virtues rather as modifiers and correctors of evil, than as the givers of actual and perfect good. Happiness, you tell us, consists in ease of body and mind; yet temperance cannot secure the former from disease, nor can all the virtues united award affliction from the latter.' True, my children, Philosophy cannot change the laws of nature; but she may teach us to accommodate ourselves to them. She cannot annul pain; but she can arm us to bear it. And though the evils of fate be many, are not the evils of man's coining more! Nature afflicts us with disease; but for once that it is the infliction of nature, ninety-nine times it is the consequence of our own folly. Nature levels us with death; but how mild is the death of nature, with Philosophy to spread the pillow, and friendship to take the last sigh, to the protracted agonies of debauchery, subduing the body by inches, while Philosophy is not there to give strength, nor friendship consolation, but while the flames of fever are heated by impatience, and the stings of pain envenomed by remorse! And tell me, my sons, when the body of the sage is stretched on the couch of pain, hath he not his mind to minister delight to him? Hath he not conscience whispering that his present evil is not chargeable to his own past folly, but to the laws of nature, which no effort or foresight of his could have prevented? Hath he not memory to bring to him past pleasures, the pleasures of a well-spent life, on which he may feed even while pain racks his members, and fever consumes his vitals? Or, what if agony overpower his frame, and cripple his faculties, is there not death at hand to reach him deliverance? Here, then is death, that giant of terror, acting as a friend. But does he interrupt our enjoyments as well as our sufferings? And is it for this we fear him? Ought we not rather to rejoice, seeing that the day of life has its bright and its clouded hours, that we are laid to sleep while the sun of joy yet shines, before the storm of fate has broken our tranquillity or the evening of age bedimmed our prospect? Death, then, is never our foe. When not a friend, he cannot be worse than indifferent. For while we are, death is not; and when death is, we are not. To be wise, then, death is nothing. Examine the ills of life; are they not of our own creation, or take they not their darkest hues from our passions or our ignorance? What is poverty, if "we have temperance, and can be satisfied with a crust, and a draught from the spring? — if we have modesty, and can wear a woolen garment as gladly as a tyrian robe? What is slander, if we have no vanity that it can wound, and no anger that it can kindle? What is neglect, if we have no ambition that it can disappoint, and no pride that it can mortify? What is persecution, if we have our own bosoms in which to retire, and a spot of earth to sit down and rest upon? What is death, when without superstition to clothe him with terrors, we can cover our heads, and go to sleep in his arms? What a list of human calamities are here expunged — poverty, slander, neglect, disappointment, persecution, death. What yet remains? Disease? That, too, we have shown temperance can often shun, and Philosophy can always alleviate. But there is yet a pain, which the wisest and the best of men cannot escape; that all of us, my sons, have felt, or have to feel. Do not your hearts whisper it? Do you not tell me, that in death there is yet a sting? That ere he aim at us, he may level the beloved of our soul? The father, whose tender care hath reared our infant minds — the brother, whom the same breast hath nourished, and the same roof sheltered, with whom, side by side, we have grown like two plants by a river, sucking life from the same fountain and strength from the same sun — the child whose gay prattle delights our ears, or whose opening understanding fixes our hopes — the friend of our choice, with whom we have exchanged hearts, and shared all our pains and pleasures, whose eye hath reflected the tear of sympathy, whose hand hath smoothed the couch of sickness. Ah! my sons, here indeed is a pain — a pain that cuts into the soul. There are masters that will tell you otherwise; who will tell you that it is unworthy of a man to mourn even here. But such, my sons, speak not the truth of experience or philosophy, but the subtleties of sophistry and pride. He who feels not the loss, hath never felt the possession. He who knows not the grief, hath never known the joy. See the price of a friend in the duties we render him, and the sacrifices we make to him, and which, in making, we count not sacrifices, but pleasures. We sorrow for his sorrow; we supply his wants, or, if we cannot, we share them. We follow him to exile. We close ourselves in his prison; we soothe him in sickness; we strengthen him in death: nay, if it be possible, we throw down our life for his. Oh! What a treasure is that for which we do so much! And is it forbidden to us to mourn its loss? If it be, the power is not with us to obey. Should we, then, to avoid the evil, forego the good? Shall we shut love from our hearts, that we may not feel the pain of his departure? No; happiness forbids it. Experience forbids it. Let him who hath laid on the pyre the dearest of his soul, who hath washed the urn with the bitterest tears of grief — let him say if his heart hath ever formed the wish that it had never shrined within it him whom he now deplores. Let him say if the pleasures of the sweet communion of his former days doth not still live in his remembrance. If he love not to recall the image of the departed, the tones of his voice, the words of his discourse, the deeds of his kindness, the amiable virtues of his life. If, while he weeps the loss of his friend, he smiles not to think that he once possessed him. He who knows not friendship, knows not the purest pleasure of earth. Yet if fate deprive us of it, though we grieve, we do not sink; Philosophy is still at hand, and she upholds us with fortitude. And think, my sons, perhaps in the very evil we dread, there is a good; perhaps the very uncertainty of the tenure gives it value in our eyes; perhaps all our pleasures take their zest from the known possibility of their interruption. What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness? What the refreshing breezes of morning and evening, if we felt not the fervors of noon? Should we value the lovely-flower, if it bloomed eternally; or the luscious fruit, if it hung always on the bough? Are not the smiles of the heavens more beautiful in contrast with their frowns, and the delights of the seasons more grateful from their vicissitudes? Let us then be slow to blame nature, for perhaps in her apparent errors there is hidden a wisdom. Let us not quarrel with fate, for perhaps in our evils lie the seeds of our good. Were our body never subject to sickness, we might be insensible to the joy of health. Were our life eternal, our tranquillity might sink into inaction. Were our friendship not threatened with interruption, it might want much of its tenderness. This, then, my sons, is our duty, for this is our interest and our happiness; to seek our pleasures from the hands of the virtues, and for the pain which may befall us, to submit to it with patience, or bear up against it with fortitude. To walk, in short, through life innocently and tranquilly; and to look on death as its gentle termination, which it becomes us to meet with ready minds, neither regretting the past, nor anxious for the future."
The sage had scarcely ceased, when a scholar advanced from the crowd, and bowing his head with reverence, stooped and touched the knees of his master. "Refuse not my homage," he said, "nor call the expression of it presumptuous." Epicurus raised him in his arms. "Colotes, I am more proud of the homage of thy young mind, than I should be of that of the assembled crowds of Olympia. May thy master, my son, never lose his power over it, as I feel that he will never abuse it.”
CHAPTER IX.
"Do not!" said Metrodorus to Theon, "take me as the best sample of the pupils of Epicurus. We are not all so hot-brained and hot-tongued."
"Nay!" returned his companion, "I am too young in philosophy to blame your warmth. In your place, I should have been as hot myself."
"I am glad to hear it. I like you the better for the sentiment. But the sun scorches dreadfully, let us seek shelter."
They turned into a thicket, and proceeding some way, caught on the still air the notes of a flute. They advanced, and came to a beautiful bank of verdure, bordered by the river, and shadowed by a group of thick and wide-spreading oaks. "It is Leontium," said Metrodorus. "No other in Attica, can breathe the flute so sweetly." They turned one of the trunks, and found her lying on the turf; her shoulder leaning against a tree, and her figure raised on one elbow. Beside her was seated the black-eyed girl whom Theon had before seen; her taper fingers twining into a wreath the scented flowers, which were lightly thrown into her lap by the gay Sofron, who stood at some distance among the shrubs.
"Enough! Enough!" said the gentle voice of the girl, as the youth shook down in showers the leaves and nectareous odors of the over-ripe blossoms. "Enough! enough! stay thy hand, thou heedless ravager!"
"Thank thee for thy words, although they chide me," said the boy, letting go the bough which he had just seized, with a bound, light as that of the shrub when it sprung upward from his hand. "Thou hast but one feeling in thy soul, Boidion; and thy nature belies the sunny clime which saw its birth. Friendship is all to thee, and that friendship is but for one."
"In truth, thou repayest his cares but coldly," said Leontium, taking the pipe from her mouth, and smiling on the dark-haired maiden.
"But I repay not thine coldly," said Boidion, kissing the hand of her friend.
"I am well punished for the neglect of my morning's lecture," said Sofron, impatiently, as he snatched his book from the ground, and turned away.
"Part not in anger, brother!" exclaimed Boidion. But the youth had vanished, and in his place Metrodorus and Theon stood before her.
The startled girl was about to rise, when Leontium, laying her hand on her arm, "Rest thee, thou timid fawn," and the maiden resumed her seat.
"I rejoice," said Theon, as he placed himself with Metrodorus by the side of Leontium, and took up the pipe which had fallen from her hand; "I rejoice to find this little instrument restored to Athens."
"Say not restored to Athens," returned Leontium, "only admitted into the garden. I doubt our vain youth still remember the curse of Alcibiades, and looking in their mirror, vow that none but fools would play on it."
"This recalls to me," said Theon, "that I have heard among the various reports concerning the gardens current in the mouths of the Athenians, very contradictory ones as to the place allowed in it to the sciences and liberal arts, and to music in particular."
"I suppose," said Metrodorus, " that you heard our whole employment was eating, drinking, and rioting in all licentiousness. "
"True, I did hear so; and I fear I must confess, half believed it. But I also heard your licentiousness described in various ways: sometimes as grossly sensual, enlivened by no elegances of art; veiled, adorned, if I may use the expression, by no refinement. In short, that Epicurus laughed as well at the fine arts as the grave sciences. From others, again, I learnt that music, dancing, poetry, and painting, were pressed into the service of his philosophy; that Leontium strung the lyre, Metrodorus the harp, Hedeia moved in the dance, Boidion raised the song to Venus; that his halls were covered with voluptuous pictures, the walks of his garden lined with indecent statues."
"And you may now perceive the truth," replied Metrodorus, "with your own eyes and ears."
"But," said Leontium, "the young Corinthian may be curious to know the sentiments of our master, and his advice regarding the pursuit of the sciences and the liberal arts. I can readily perceive," addressing herself to Theon, "the origin of the two contradictory reports you have just mentioned. The first you would hear from the followers of Aristippus, who, though not acknowledging the name, follow the tenets of his philosophy, and have long been very numerous in our degenerate city. These, because Epicurus recommends but a moderate culture of those arts, which by them are too often made the elegant incentives to licentious pleasure, accuse him of neglecting them altogether. The cynics, and other austere sects, who condemn all that ministers to the luxury, ease, or recreation of man, exaggerate his moderate use of these arts into a vicious encouragement of voluptuousness and effeminacy. You will perceive, therefore, that between the two reports lies the truth. Every innocent recreation is permitted in the garden. It is not poetry, but licentious poetry, that Epicurus condemns; not music, but voluptuous music; not painting, but licentious pictures; not dancing, but loose gestures. Yet thus he displeases alike the profligate and the austere; for these he is too moderate, and for those too severe. "With regard to the sciences, if it be said, that they are neglected among us, I do not say that our master, though himself versed in them, as in all other branches of knowledge, greatly recommends them to our study but that they are not unknown, let Polyoenus be evidence.
"He, one of the most amiable men of our school, and one most highly favored by our master, you must have heard mentioned throughout Greece as a profound geometrician."
"Yes," replied Theon, "but I have also heard, that since entering the garden, he has ceased to respect his science."
"I am not aware of that," said Leontium, "though I believe he no longer devotes to it all his time, and all his faculties. Epicurus called him from his diagrams, to open to him the secrets of physics, and the beauties of ethics; to show him the springs of human action, and lead him to the study of the human mind. He taught him, that any single study, however useful and noble in itself, was yet unworthy the entire employ of a curious and powerful intellect; that the man who pursued one line of knowledge, to the exclusion of others, though he should follow it up to its very head, would never be either learned or wise; that he who pursues knowledge, should think no branch of it unworthy attention; least of all, should he confine it to those which are unconnected with the business, and add nothing to the pleasures of life; that further not our acquaintance with ourselves, nor our fellows; that tend not to enlarge the sphere of our affections, to multiply our ideas and sensations, nor extend the scope of our inquiries. On this ground, he blamed the devotion of Polyoenus to a science that leads to other truths than those of virtue, to other study than that of man."
"I am obliged to you for the explanation," said Theon; "not because I could any longer have given credit to the absurd reports of your master's enemies; but because, whatever opens to me the character and opinions of such a man, interests and improves me."
"You will find this," said Metrodorus, " the more you consider them. The life of Epicurus is a lesson of wisdom. It is by example, even more than precept, that he guides his disciples. Without issuing commands, he rules despotically. His wishes are divined, and obeyed as laws; his opinions are repeated as oracles; his doctrines adopted as demonstrated truths. All is unanimity in the garden. We are a family of brothers, of which Epicurus is the father. And I say not this in praise of the scholars, but the master. Many of us have had bad habits, many of us evil propensities, many of us violent passions. That our habits are corrected, our propensities changed, our passions restrained, lies all with Epicurus. What I myself owe him, none but myself know. The giddy follower of licentious pleasure, the headstrong victim of my passions, he has made me taste of the sweets of innocence, and brought me into the calm of philosophy. It is thus — thus, by rendering us happy, that he lays us at his feet — thus that he gains, and holds the empire of our minds — thus that by proving himself our friend, he secures our respect, our submission, and our love. He cannot but know his power, yet he exerts it in no other way, than to mend our lives, or to keep them innocent. In argument, as you may have observed, he always seeks to convince rather than sway. He is as free from arrogance as from duplicity; he would neither force an opinion on the mind, nor conceal from it a truth. Ask his advice, and it is ever ready — his opinion, and he gives it clearly. Free from prejudice himself, he is tender to that of others; yet no fear of censure, or desire of popularity, ever leads him to humor it, either in his lessons or his writings. Candor, as you have already remarked, is the prominent feature of his mind; it is the crown of his perfect character. I say this, my young Corinthian, who know him. His soul, indeed, is open to all; but I have approached very near it, and considered its innermost recesses. Yes, I am proud to say it — I am one of those he has drawn most closely into his intimacy. With all my imperfections and errors, he has adopted me as a son; and, inferior as I am in years, wisdom and virtue, he deigns to call me his friend."
Tears here filled the eyes of the scholar; he seemed about to resume, when a slight sound made the party turn their heads, and they saw the master at their side. "Do not rise, my children, I will seat myself among you." Theon perceived he had heard the closing sentence of Metrodorus, for the water glistened in his eyes as he fixed them tenderly upon him. "Thanks, my son, for this tribute of thy gratitude; I have heard thy eulogy, and I accept it joyfully. Let all men,'' and he turned his eye upon Theon, "be above flattery; but let not a sage be above praise. He that is so is either arrogant or insincere. For myself, I own that the commendations of my friends fills me with triumph, as the assurance of their affection does with satisfaction. The approbation of our familiars, who are with us in our secret hours, hear our private converse, know the habits of our lives, and the bent of our dispositions, is, or should be to us, far more pleasing and triumphant than the shouts of a multitude, or the worship of the world."
There was a pause of some minutes, when Leontium took up the word. "I have been explaining, though very shortly and imperfectly, your views concerning the studies most proper to be pursued by men. I believe the Corinthian has some curiosity on this point."
Theon assented. "Knowledge," said the master, "is the best riches that man can possess. Without it, he is a brute, with it, he is a god. But like happiness, he often pursues it without finding it; or, at best, obtains of it but an imperfect glimpse. It is not that the road to it is either dark or difficult, but that he takes a wrong one; or if he enters on the right, he does so unprepared for the journey. Now he thinks knowledge one with erudition, and shutting himself up in his closet, he cons all the lore of antiquity; he fathoms the sciences, heaps up in his memory all the sayings of the dead, and reckoning the value of his acquisitions by the measure of the time and labor he hath expended on them, he is satisfied he hath reached his end, and from his retirement, looking down upon his more ignorant, because less learned, brethren, he calls them children and barbarians. But alas! Learning is not wisdom, nor will books give understanding. Again, he takes a more inviting road: he rushes into the crowd; he rolls down the stream of pleasure; he courts the breath of popularity: he unravels or weaves the riddles of intrigue ; he humors the passions of his fellows, and rises upon them to name and power. Then, laughing at the credulity, ignorance, and vice, he hath set his throne upon, he says, that to know the world is the only knowledge, and to see to dupe it, is to be wise. Yet knowledge of the world is not knowledge of man, nor to triumph in the passions of others, is not to triumph over our own. No, my sons, that only is real, is sterling knowledge, which goes to make us better and happier men, and which fits us to assist the virtue and happiness of others. All learning is useful, all the sciences are curious, all the arts are beautiful; but more useful, more curious, and more beautiful, is the perfect knowledge and perfect government of ourselves. Though a man should read the heavens, unravel their laws and their revolutions; though he should dive into the mysteries of matter, and expound the phenomena of earth and air; though he should be conversant with all the writings, and the sayings, and the actions of the dead; though he should hold the pencil of Parrhasius, the chisel of Polycletes, or the lyre of Pindar; though he should do one or all of these things, yet know not the secret springs of his own mind, the foundation of his opinions, the motives of his actions; if he hold not the rein over his passions; if he have not cleared the mist of all prejudices from his understanding; if he have not rubbed off all intolerance from his judgments; if he know not to weigh his own actions, and the actions of others, in the balance of justice — that man hath not knowledge; nor, though he be a man of science, a man of learning, or an artist, he is not a sage. He must yet sit down, patient, at the feet of philosophy. With all his learning, he hath yet to learn, and, perhaps, a harder task, he hath to unlearn."
The master here paused, but the ears of Theon still hung upon his lips. "Do not cease," he exclaimed; " I could listen to you through eternity."
"I cannot promise to declaim quite so long," returned the sage, smiling. "But if you wish it, we will follow out the topic when we have joined our other friends."
They rose, and bent their steps to the public walk.
