CHAPTER X

EPICUREANISM

=The Life of Epicurus= (341–270 B. C.). Epicurus was born in Samos in Asia Minor. He was a school-teacher in Mitylene and Lampsacus, and in 307 B. C. he established in Athens his Philosophical School, in a garden within the walls on the road to the Academy (see map). His School was thereafter called the Gardens. He claimed to have been self-taught, and he probably did not have a thorough education. He did, however, possess great personal charm and, as his doctrine made few demands upon its disciples and expressed the refined and delicate hedonism of the time, it spread very wide. His disciples held him in great reverence, and long after his death the image of his personality was a living influence with them. Indeed, it was the personal work of Epicurus that was the supreme influence with the sect. His formulas passed on from generation to generation and were called “Golden Maxims.”[34] He wrote three hundred separate treatises, and in the amount of his writings was exceeded in antiquity only by the Stoic, Chrysippus. His great work, _On Nature_, consisted of thirty-seven books. The other Schools joined in a bitter attack upon him, and in modern times he has been called _Socrate doublé d’un Voltaire_. Since neither polytheism nor Christianity had any reason for preserving his writings, they have been almost entirely lost. Some have been found in Herculaneum, and many more are thought to be still in that buried city. The mother of Epicurus was a priestess, and her superstitions probably set him against the superstitions of his age. His later acquaintance with the philosophy of Democritus gave him a scientific basis for his aggression against all religions.

=The Epicureans.= The Epicurean body was a guild or sect that seemed to have been little affected by the vicissitudes of time. The Epicureans proselyted vigorously, closely organized their society, and extended it throughout Greece. It was a state within a state. With a fixed constitution it was held together by itinerant preaching, correspondence, and material assistance. It had an _esprit de corps_, and like religious communities it brought together into one organization the individuals that had been scattered by the breaking up of political institutions. The School had special protection from the Roman emperors and existed as late as the fourth century A. D., having outlived all the other systems. It had some famous literary representatives,――Metrodorus, Colotes, Philodemus,――but especially the Roman poet Lucretius, who popularized the doctrine for the Romans. Amafinius introduced Epicureanism into Rome during the middle of the second century B. C., and the teaching was received with great favor. Its numerous disciples in all antiquity changed the doctrine only in its unessentials. The charges of immorality and licentiousness are not true of the teaching or of the practices of the founder or of the early members of the School.

=Some Types of Hedonism,――Aristippus, Epicurus, and Rousseau.= Epicureanism was not a philosophy of pleasure for people without ideals or who were merely seeking indulgence. The question that Epicurus asked was this: What enduring pleasure is possible to a man in these days of turmoil? He tried to give a rational answer to those of his day who wished to live and enjoy. His aim was to free man from responsibility in his share of the world’s work and to provide for him a life of serenity. The pleasure theory of Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, was very different. Aristippus, a voluptuary in a luxurious city, presented a pleasure theory for the few who have fortunes. It is hardly more than a grading of pleasures and the setting up of a criterion of their selection. Epicurus goes deeper than that. His pleasure theory is for the few, not because they are fortunate, but because they are wise; not because they have fortunes to gratify their passions, but because they are independent of all fortune. The Cyrenaic was a man of the world; the Epicurean was in the world, but not of it.

There is a superficial resemblance between the teaching of Epicurus and the message of Rousseau to the French people of the eighteenth century. Both sought an ideal of enduring pleasure. Both would discard the artificialities of society. But Rousseau was a political reformer and attempted to find his ideal in a newly constructed society. Epicurus, on the other hand, was no political reformer, but would find his ideal in society as it existed. Rousseau appealed to the primitive feelings. He felt “the call of the wild.” Epicurus appealed to the refined and derivative feelings. He had no aggressive propaganda. He aimed at no external reform. His ideal was peace, and not the sword.

=The Epicurean Ideal.= _The central principle of Epicurus is that pleasure is a good and pain an evil._ In this he was in agreement with Aristippus, and from this position he never receded. He offered no proof of this, but rested his central principle upon the conviction that men pursue pleasure and avoid pain. He was convinced of the biological fact. But he was not unobservant from the beginning that the subject was complex. He saw that the individual has to make a selection of pleasure and often has to choose pain for the sake of a greater pleasure. Pleasure is the only good, but Epicurus asks further, What is pleasure? He finds that he must give a content to pleasure and evaluate the pleasures in the interests of pleasure itself. This was to Epicurus no moral appraisal, but with reference to the pleasantest possible life.

Of the two qualities of pleasure _Epicurus valued its duration_ and showed his advance over the Cyrenaics, who had valued its intensity. It was on this account that the Epicureans disclaimed all relationship with the Cyrenaics, the earlier school. The difference is certainly a radical one between them: to Epicurus true pleasure is that which endures; to Aristippus it is that which is most intense, however fleeting. There is this to be said of the Cyrenaic theory: it could be easily understood. Aristippus could tell exactly what he meant by pleasure. It is this or that gratification of sense. It includes every positive pleasure, and that which is intensest is best. One always knows when he is enjoying, and in flitting from pleasure to pleasure he knows when he is intensely enjoying. But the Cyrenaic presented no ideal. While the Epicurean theory is more difficult to understand, it is more mature and more profound because it presents a well-conceived ideal. Indeed, the farther we follow Epicurus along this line of his pursuit of the ideal of lasting pleasure, the more are we impressed with his contribution to our knowledge of the nature of pleasure.

In this connection Epicurus shows his comprehensive grasp of the subject in determining what are the lasting pleasures. Although he was a materialist he regarded the pleasures of the mind as superior to those of the body. The inner pleasures, the spiritual joys, the control of the mind so that it could enjoy without indulgence――these were to Epicurus the enduring pleasures. The pleasures of sense are primary, for, in the last analysis, the mental life is a combination of sensations, and sensations are only material motions; nevertheless the secondary and derivative pleasures of the mind were superior, according to Epicurus, because they had duration. This estimate of the superiority of the mental pleasures was probably reinforced by two other reasons: such pleasures were possessed by Epicurus; and such a doctrine was in accord with the Greek æsthetic ideal of self-enjoyment of the refined egoist.

The most permanent state of mind is called by Epicurus _independence of the world_, on the one hand, and _emotionlessness_, on the other. These are the positive and negative sides of one and the same thing――the Epicurean ideal of pleasure. In ancient times the conception of the “affections,” “passions,” or “emotions” included all states of feeling and will in which man is dependent on the outer world. To be emotionless is to be independent of the world. The Epicurean word is _ataraxia_, which is variously translated as serenity, peace, repose, imperturbability. Since man has no control over the world without him, he must control its effects within himself. These effects are the feelings and desires which are by nature only mental disturbances. In mastering these he becomes independent of the world.

If one will scrutinize his life, he will find, according to Epicurus, that his experiences form a stream of mental disturbances. These may be divided into two classes,――desires and positive pleasures. Desires are wants and want is pain. Pain is therefore exciting. Positive pleasure presupposes desire and want, and such pleasure is also an excitement,――the excitement that accompanies the removal of want. The positive pleasures are not, therefore, the goal of independence of the outer world. There is another kind of pleasure――the pleasure of repose. Epicurus recognizes therefore both the pleasure of motion and the pleasure of repose, but they do not have the same importance in his system. Repose is the goal of all our experiences. It is a neutral state, a state of freedom from bodily pain and mental excitement. There is nothing higher than such a neutral state. We cannot advance beyond it. If we seek new pleasures by gratifying new desires, we are only returning to the old round of want, desire, and the pleasurable excitement of removing the want. The pleasure of repose is the only escape from this round of experiences. Emotionlessness is the maximum pleasure――it is the repose in independence of the world. Any deviation from it may vary but it will not increase our pleasure.

This ideal of Epicurus looks very much like the Cynic doctrine of absence of wants as constituting virtue and happiness. But Epicurus is far from renouncing pleasure. He is no ascetic. On the contrary, the repose of the Epicurean will be the greater in proportion to the compass of his needs that are satisfied. But he needs insight into any given situation to tell him what positive pleasures should be encouraged. Epicurus thus distinguishes three kinds of wants and their attendant positive pleasures: (1) wants natural and indispensable――without the satisfaction of which we cannot exist; (2) wants artificial and dispensable, which ought always to be disregarded; (3) wants natural and dispensable――the great mass of wants which lie between the two other classes. Insight is necessary to decide about this third class. In case of necessity they can be renounced, but since they give happiness, the Wise Man will seek to satisfy them as far as possible.

There are three steps leading to Epicurean happiness: (1) the desire or the pain of unsatisfied craving; (2) the positive pleasure that removes the pain of unsatisfied desire; (3) ataraxia, the repose of the soul or true happiness.

=The Place of Virtue in Epicureanism.= Epicurus agreed with the strictest Greek moralists that virtue and happiness go together. His opponents had to testify to the beneficial effects of his teaching upon the character of his disciples. Yet his conception of the place of virtue in life is in direct conflict with Stoicism. He felt that the Stoic conception of virtue for its own sake is an ideal so imaginary that it lacks all incentive to action. Pleasure, on the other hand, seemed to him to be a concrete and real object. It can be given a definite content. Virtue had for Epicurus a value only as a means to happiness. Moreover, virtue by itself is not necessarily accompanied by happiness, but only when it is employed as a condition to happiness. Thus wisdom may be employed to gain the pleasure of liberation from the fear of the gods; self-control may be employed in order to get the maximum of happiness.

=The Epicurean Wise Man.= To what classes of people could this Epicurean ideal appeal? Is it an ideal possible only to the favorites of fortune, wealth, and rank? As presented by Epicurus it was not conditioned by external circumstances of any sort and its aim was to transcend all conditions. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the theory was restricted to those who had the desire to adopt it. On the whole, the unreflecting common people of that time were not as a matter of fact influenced by the Epicurean philosophy. The proof of this is the ease with which it was degraded into a simple pleasure theory without an ideal. Epicureanism as presented by its author was not an excuse for the voluptuary or the prodigal, although it was easily corrupted into that. It was, however, a philosophy of the individual. The individual must rely upon his own common sense as to what among the particular satisfactions will give him independence of the world. Sometimes repose is attained by the satisfaction of all wants; sometimes the satisfactions needed are few because the wants are few. True pleasure is possible to all reflective souls. “When you come,” says Seneca, “to the gardens where the words are inscribed: Friend, here it will be well for you to abide; here pleasure is the highest good;――there will meet you the keeper of the place, a hospitable kindly man who will set before you a dish of barley porridge and plenty of water and say, Have you not been well entertained? These gardens do not provoke hunger, but quench it; they do not cause a greater thirst by the drinks they afford.... In this pleasure I have grown old.” Man can use much, but he does not need much. Even life itself under extreme circumstances is not necessary. The pleasures to be sought are the permanent and gentle. In one place Epicurus says with a somewhat forced sentiment that the Wise Man on the rack will smile in the midst of torture and say, “How sweet!”

The Wise Man accepts the established order and accommodates himself to it. He is not like the Stoic Wise Man, indifferent to all pleasures, but he is nevertheless independent of them. He is superior to the world, a king and a god. Accidents cannot disturb him, for his virtuous happiness lies within himself. He cannot control the world without, but he can control the world within himself. He can be happy with few or many satisfactions, and he is master over the world if he is master of the effects of the world upon himself. To rest unmoved in one’s inner self――that is the Epicurean ideal of the Wise Man. In contrast to the Cyrenaic happiness, the Epicurean happiness seems passive; in contrast to the Stoic happiness it is satisfaction.

=The Epicurean Wise Man in Society.= Nevertheless the Wise Man is only a spectator of the world. He does not enter the world’s work nor does he enlist as a soldier to fight its moral battles. His individual independence gives a peculiar character to his social relations. He will have no ties on account of their complications. Moreover, his inner world offers him no compensation for his loss of social relationship, except that the good within is strong and the evil weak. He looks upon political government as a matter of selfish convenience. He is opposed to civic life, and therefore a supporter of absolute government. He refuses the responsibility of marriage, but accepts friendship as the only worthy social relationship, and only because friendship is of mutual advantage. Friendship means intellectual intercourse, compassion, and forgiveness. While there were many famous Epicurean friendships, one must admit that the Epicurean took an unfair advantage of the state. His happiness presupposed a highly developed civilization of refined tastes and noble sentiments. He is a parasite upon the community and appropriates the labor of others. The Epicurean ideal offers much to the individual, but nothing to society as a means of spiritual productivity.

=The Great Obstacles to Happiness.= To universalize pleasure, however paradoxical it may seem, is to set up an individualism. It is to abandon all the claims of the society of other beings upon us. The logic of any pleasure theory is anarchism. But Epicurus is no anarchist, for anarchism would be too disturbing to repose. Epicurus stopped far short of interfering with political conditions. His teaching did not have as its end a logical theory, but a practical accomplishment. He therefore accommodated his theory to the practical circumstances of his time. He pointed out that in the seething times of the third century B. C. the individual could be happy if he banished from his world two obstacles. These were religion and culture.

To Epicurus the sorrow in man’s heart and the evil in his practices are mainly due to religion. The chief source of the wretchedness of the world is to be found in the crushing fears of religious belief. Epicurus has in mind the exaggerated ceremonies and mystical beliefs of the Orient, where his mother had been a priestess. From this memory he was reacting. Religion pollutes men’s fancies, clouds the future with superstitious fears, and puts repose and happiness beyond our reach. In the first place, religion carries with it the fear of death. In modern times the idea of life after death is an added consolation. In the time of Epicurus death meant the giving up of the present life for a dim, sunless region of flitting shades bordering on the edge of Tartarus. No philosophical mind can be happy, according to Epicurus, if it contains the religious conception of death and the future life. Again, religion conceives the world of nature as created and operated by the gods. It is forever explaining nature-phenomena as miraculous and supernatural. The tranquil mind must believe in a nature world that is separated from miraculous intervention, and freed from oversight. The world must be a dependable world. Lastly, religion conceives of the gods as always busying themselves with the affairs of men. Men must secure their favor and avert their wrath by constant offerings. The religious man wastes his time and consumes his peace in the fear that the gods are not propitiated. The Epicurean seeks to build up the life of the individual. He seeks a tranquillity that is independent of everything. Religious belief with its interfering gods would thwart his ideal. Hence the chief concern of the Epicurean was to banish from life every conception of divine government. The gods exist, but they live quite apart from men. Their dwelling is in inter-stellar space amid the numberless worlds. They have nothing to do with the events of this world, but are only glorified actualizations of the philosophic ideal of soul-satisfying peace. The more the teleological conception of nature became the common ground of the Academy, the Lyceum, and the Porch, the more did the Epicureans isolate themselves by opposing the conception.

The other obstacle to the imperturbability of the soul is culture. The Stoics subordinated theory to practice but Epicurus went so far as to deprecate all culture. It was the philosophical protest of an Oriental against all for which Greece had stood. All knowledge is superfluous which does not promote happiness. Knowledge may indirectly promote happiness, and that is the best you can say of it. Epicurus therefore despised the researches of the grammarians, the lore of history, the science of mathematics, the theory of music, poetry, rhetoric, oratory, logic. Although he set greater store by the intellectual than the physical pleasures, he placed as little value on knowledge for its own sake as upon virtue for its own sake. This teaching of Epicurus in Athens betrays the change that had come over Athenian society. Plato, who had been the impersonation of Athenian culture, had been dead not more than thirty years.

=Epicurus’ Conception of the Physical World.――Qualified Atomism.= To the cursory reader the science of physics seems to occupy a large place in the philosophy of Epicurus, and its presence appears inconsistent with his polemic against culture. Upon further reading one finds that physics, too, should be merely a servant of the happiness of the individual. We need knowledge of physics because the knowledge of natural causes will free us from the fears attending religion. Physics has no independent importance.

Epicurus undertook to support his doctrine of individualism by the scientific theory of Democritus. The materialistic theory of the great Abderite seems to loom large in the exposition of Epicurus. But Epicurus was not interested in the science of physics――not even in the physics of Democritus. He did not build his theory on the teaching of Democritus, but on the contrary he used the Democritan doctrine to support his theory of moral conduct. Epicurus needed a well-authenticated theory. On account of the influence of Lucretius’ poem, Epicurus has been called in modern times the scientist of antiquity. But his only contribution to science was that, finding the atomism of Democritus ready at hand although unpopular, he made it popular by adjusting it to his own purposes.

The Democritan conception that Being is matter consisting of innumerable uncreated and indestructible atoms furnished Epicurus this support for his moral atomism. He followed Democritus in his analysis of psychological, physiological, and astronomical phenomena――all are atoms in combinations. But he lacked scientific insight and the Democritan doctrine was emasculated in his hands. The central and fundamental principle of Democritus’ theory was the universal reign of law. This the Stoics adopted and this Epicurus neglected. Epicurus was impressed by the changes of the atoms in the Democritan theory; the Stoics by the law of such change.

This appears in the teaching of Epicurus in two ways. The first example is in his explanation of the origin of the cosmos. Democritus had conceived that irregular motion was an inherent quality of the atoms and that the universe was produced by their combinations in a purely mechanical way. Epicurus conceived that the original movement of the atoms was in a straight line from above downwards. This he called the “rain of atoms.” To explain their intermingling he conceived them to be endowed with volition by which they arbitrarily deviated from the direct fall. Secondly, this physical theory of Epicurus would be unimportant except that it afforded him a basis for his theory of the individual as possessing free will. The doctrine of freedom of the will had been since Aristotle a presupposition indispensable to the doctrine of moral accountability among the Greeks. The Stoic doctrine of fate is an exception. But determinism was opposed to Epicurus’ conception of the Wise Man as an independent individual. The human will is self-determined, and Epicurus even said that he preferred the illusions of religion to a belief in our slavery to fate. He classed freedom and chance together as uncaused occurrence, and out of the combination built his conception of freedom. The uncaused functioning of the will in man is the same as the causeless deviation of the atoms. Freedom is the choice between different possibilities and is determined by no cause. The Stoics alone among the philosophers of this time are the forerunners of the study of physics.

Epicurus introduced the conception of volition of the atoms to account for the origin of the cosmos. From that point he conceived the world to develop in a mechanical way. Teleology in the nature world was repugnant to him. By modifying the Democritan physics, he thus succeeded in establishing the independence of the individual in the social world and, on the other hand, removing the gods from interfering in the physical world. This seemed to Epicurus to afford an absolute deliverance from superstition. The important points of the physical theory of Epicurus are these: (1) the freedom of the atoms in motion; (2) and yet their mechanical development; (3) the atomic character of the gods; (4) the scattering of the atoms of the soul at death, which frees us from the fear of Hades.