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declared that among things indifferent some are preferable to others. If the wise man has the choice between health and sickness, he will choose the former. Indifferent things were divided into three classes, those to be preferred, those to be avoided, and those which are absolutely indifferent. In the third place, the Stoics toned down the principle that men are either wholly good, or wholly evil. The famous heroes and statesmen of history, though fools, are yet polluted with the common vices of mankind less than others. Moreover, what were the Stoics to say about themselves? Were they wise men or fools? They hesitated to claim perfection, to put themselves on a level with Socrates and Diogenes. Yet they could not bring themselves to admit that there was {353} no difference between themselves and the common herd. They were "proficients," and, if not absolutely wise, approximated to wisdom.

If the Stoics were thus merely less consistent Cynics, and originated nothing in the doctrines of physics and ethics so far considered, yet of one idea at least they can claim to be the inventors. This was the idea of cosmopolitanism. This they deduced from two grounds. Firstly, the universe is one, proceeds from one God, is ordered by one law, and forms one system. Secondly, however much men may differ in unessentials, they share their essential nature, their reason, in common. Hence all men are of one stock, as rational beings, and should form one State. The division of mankind into warring States is irrational and absurd. The wise man is not a citizen of this or that State. He is a citizen of the world.

This is, however, only an application of principles already asserted. The Stoics produced no essentially new thought, in physics, or in ethics. Their entire stock of ideas is but a new combination of ideas already developed by their predecessors. They were narrow, extreme, over-rigorous, and one-sided. Their truths are all half-truths. And they regarded philosophy too subjectively. What alone interested them was the question, how am I to live? Yet in spite of these defects, there is undoubtedly something grand and noble about their zeal for duty, their exaltation above all that is petty and paltry, their uncompromising contempt for all lower ends. Their merit, says Schwegler, was that "in an age of ruin they held fast by the moral idea."


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CHAPTER XVI

THE EPICUREANS

Epicurus was born at Samos in 342 B.C. He founded his school a year or two before Zeno founded the Stoa, so that the two schools from the first ran parallel in time. The school of Epicurus lasted over six centuries. Epicurus early became acquainted with the atomism of Democritus, but his learning in earlier systems of philosophy does not appear to have been extensive. He was a man of estimable life and character. He founded his school in 306 B.C. The Epicurean philosophy was both founded and completed by him. No subsequent Epicurean to any appreciable extent added to or altered the doctrines laid down by the founder.

The Epicurean system is even more purely practical in tendency than the Stoic. In spite of the fact that Stoicism subordinates logic and physics to ethics, yet the diligence and care which the Stoics bestowed upon such doctrines as those of the criterion of truth, the nature of the world, the soul, and so on, afford evidence of a genuine, if subordinate, interest in these subjects. Epicurus likewise divided his system into logic (which he called canonic), physics, and ethics, yet the two former branches of thought are pursued with an obvious carelessness and absence of interest. It is evident that learned {355} discussions bored Epicurus. His system is amiable and shallow. Knowledge for its own sake is not desired. Mathematics, he said, are useless, because they have no connexion with life. The logic, or canonic, we may pass over completely, as possessing no elements of interest, and come at once to the physics.


Physics.

Physics interests Epicurus only from one point of view--its power to banish superstitious fear from the minds of men. All supernatural religion, he thought, operates for the most part upon mankind by means of fear. Men are afraid of the gods, afraid of retribution, afraid of death because of the stories of what comes after death. This incessant fear and anxiety is one of the chief causes of the unhappiness of men. Destroy it, and we have at least got rid of the prime hindrance to human happiness. We can only do this by means of a suitable doctrine of physics. What is necessary is to be able to regard the world as a piece of mechanism, governed solely by natural causes, without any interference by supernatural beings, in which man is free to find his happiness how and when he will, without being frightened by the bogeys of popular religion. For though the world is ruled mechanically, man, thought Epicurus in opposition to the Stoics, possesses free will, and the problem of philosophy is to ascertain how he can best use this gift in a world otherwise mechanically governed. What he required, therefore, was a purely mechanical philosophy. To invent such a philosophy for himself was a task not suited to his indolence, and for which he could not pretend to possess the necessary {356} qualifications. Therefore he searched the past, and soon found what he wanted in the atomism of Democritus. This, as an entirely mechanical philosophy, perfectly suited his ends, and the pragmatic spirit in which he chose his beliefs, not on any abstract grounds of their objective truth, but on the basis of his subjective needs and personal wishes, will be noted. It is a sign of the times. When truth comes to be regarded as something that men may construct in accordance with their real or imagined needs, and not in accordance with any objective standard, we are well advanced upon the downward path of decay. Epicurus, therefore, adopted the atomism of Democritus en bloc, or with trifling modifications. All things are composed of atoms and the void. Atoms differ only in shape and weight, not in quality. They fall eternally through the void. By virtue of free will, they deviate infinitesimally from the perpendicular in their fall, and so clash against one another. This, of course, is an invention of Epicurus, and formed no part of the doctrine of Democritus. It might be expected of Epicurus that his modifications would not be improvements. In the present case, the attribution of free will to the atoms adversely affects the logical consistency of the mechanical theory. From the collision of atoms arises a whirling movement out of which the world emerges. Not only the world, but all individual phenomena, are to be explained mechanically. Teleology is rigorously excluded. In any particular case, however, Epicurus is not interested to know what particular causes determine a phenomenon. It is enough for him to be sure that it is wholly determined by mechanical causes, and that supernatural agencies are excluded.

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The soul being composed of atoms which are scattered at death, a future life is not to be thought of. But this is to be regarded as the greatest blessing. It frees us from the fear of death, and the fear of a hereafter. Death is not an evil. For if death is, we are not; if we are, death is not. When death comes we shall not feel it, for is it not the end of all feeling and consciousness? And there is no reason to fear now what we know that we shall not feel when it comes.

Having thus disposed of the fear of retribution in a future life, Epicurus proceeds to dispose of the fear of the interference of the gods in this life. One might have expected that Epicurus would for this purpose have embraced atheism. But he does not deny the existence of the gods. On the contrary, he believed that there are innumerable gods. They have the form of men, because that is the most beautiful of all forms. They have distinctions in sex. They eat, drink, and talk Greek. Their bodies are composed of a substance like light. But though Epicurus allows them to exist, he is careful to disarm them, and to rob them of their fears. They live in the interstellar spaces, an immortal, calm, and blessed existence. They do not intervene in the affairs of the world, because they are perfectly happy. Why should they burden themselves with the control of that which nowise concerns them? Theirs is the beatitude of a wholly untroubled joy.

  "Immortal are they, clothed with powers,
     Not to be comforted at all,
  Lords over all the fruitless hours,
     Too great to appease, too high to appal,
        Too far to call."
  [Footnote 17]

[Footnote 17: A. C. Swinburne's Felise.]

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Man, therefore, freed from the fear of death and the fear of the gods, has no duty save to live as happily as he can during his brief space upon earth. We can quit the realm of physics with a light heart, and turn to what alone truly matters, ethics, the consideration of how man ought to conduct his life.


Ethics.

If the Stoics were the intellectual successors of the Cynics, the Epicureans bear the same relation to the Cyrenaics. Like Aristippus, they founded morality upon pleasure, but they differ because they developed a purer and nobler conception of pleasure than the Cyrenaics had known. Pleasure alone is an end in itself. It is the only good. Pain is the only evil. Morality, therefore, is an activity which yields pleasure. Virtue has no value on its own account, but derives its value from the pleasure which accompanies it.

This is the only foundation which Epicurus could find, or desired to find, for moral activity. This is his only ethical principle. The rest of the Epicurean ethics consists in the interpretation of the idea of pleasure. And, firstly, by pleasure Epicurus did not mean, as the Cyrenaics did, merely the pleasure of the moment, whether physical or mental. He meant the pleasure that endures throughout a lifetime, a happy life. Hence we are not to allow ourselves to be enslaved by any particular pleasure or desire. We must master our appetites. We must often forego a pleasure if it leads in the end to greater pain. We must be ready to undergo pain for the sake of a greater pleasure to come.

And it was just for this reason, secondly, that the {359} Epicureans regarded spiritual and mental pleasures as far more important than those of the body. For the body feels pleasure and pain only while they last. The body has in itself neither memory nor fore-knowledge. It is the mind which remembers and foresees. And by far the most potent pleasures and pains are those of remembrance and anticipation. A physical pleasure is a pleasure to the body only now. But the anticipation of a future pain is mental anxiety, the remembrance of a past joy is a present delight. Hence what is to be aimed at above all is a calm untroubled mind, for the pleasures of the body are ephemeral, those of the spirit enduring. The Epicureans, like the Stoics, preached the necessity of superiority to bodily pains and external circumstances. So a man must not depend for his happiness upon externals; he must have his blessedness in his own self. The wise man can be happy even in bodily torment, for in the inner tranquillity of his soul he possesses a happiness which far outweighs any bodily pain. Yet innocent pleasures of sense are neither forbidden, nor to be despised. The wise man will enjoy whatever he can without harm. Of all mental pleasures the Epicureans laid, perhaps, most stress upon friendship. The school was not merely a collection of fellow-philosophers, but above all a society of friends.

Thirdly, the Epicurean ideal of pleasure tended rather towards a negative than

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