ABSTRACT
§ 1 . The school of Epicurus has only one positive doctrine, that the end of life is Happiness. For the rest its tenets are negations; it denies immaterial reality, final causes, immortality of the soul, and universal ideas. These negations become intelligible if the relation of Epicurean to Stoic doctrine is remembered. The Stoic sank the temporal and the individual beneath the eternal and the universal. The Epicurean is an atomist in theory and practice; he believes in one life and that limited; he believes in his own reason and not in Universal Reason; he believes in his own purposes but not in Providence; in short, he is satisfied with a universe which is just that of the Stoics without their “Reason.” If the Stoic could say that Nature and Reason are the same, the Epicurean could declare that our natures may be rational, but there is no real thing which we can call Nature in general or Reason in general, and therefore the Stoic formulae were extravagances. The opposition on this point is far reaching. The denial of Reason as defined by the Stoics carries with it the denial of final causes. The Epicurean has to write his history of the universe without the Stoic God, for he feels that he has no need of that hypothesis. The result is materialism. From the atoms all things arise under mechanical laws, and from the movement of atoms all occurrences can be explained. Physics may not suffer much from such a prejudiced treatment, but psychology is hopelessly maimed. A lengthy study of Epicureanism only reveals more and more clearly that its teaching, when not strictly ethical, was nothing but the provision of dogmas which filled out the traditional notion of a system. A brief summary will suffice for this part. The Epicurean doctrine asserts that the soul is corporeal, it is a body and part of body. The doctrine of atoms reduces all the real to some form of body occupying space, the criterion of real existence being the power of receiving and producing impressions; the soul is asserted to be “corporeal” with the implication that it is active and passive in relation to other bodies. Its genus then is that of the atoms; its specific difference is in the degree of its qualities, its superior mobility and lightness; in some respects it is similar to fire but is not by nature identical with fire; heat is a fundamental element in its nature and degrees of temperature constitute the peculiar qualities of individual souls. The soul has two parts, an irrational part diffused through the whole body (anima of Lucretius) and a rational part (animus) situated in the breast.
