'we must not think there is any other end in the knowledge of rà μeréwpa, celestial phenomena, beyond tranquillity of mind and freedom from superstitious fears,'...'if it had not been for the anxieties caused by our ideas about death and about the influence of these heavenly powers, there would have been no need for Natural Philosophy (pvorioλoyías)'... 'The minute inquiries of the astronomers do not tend to happiness: nay the constant observation of the phenomena of the heavens, without a previous knowledge of the true causes of things, is likely to generate a timid and slavish turn of mind.' The indifference of Epicurus to scientific truth comes out still more strongly in the explanations which he offers of particular phenomena. His one object being to guard against the hypothesis either of divine agency or of necessary law3, he tells his disciples that it is madness to suppose that similar effects must always proceed from the same causes, and provides them with a choice of various hypotheses on which to explain the rising and setting of the sun, the changes of the moon, the movements of planets, earthquakes, thunder, lightning, &c. For instance, it may be that the sun (which is no bigger than it appears to the naked eye, so there is no need to be afraid of it or make a god of it), passes under the earth

1 Diog. L. x 85 and 142, and other passages cited by Zeller, p. 382 foll.

2 Paraphrased from Diog. x. 79, cf. § 93.

3 Compare Diog. X 134, where he speaks of the blessedness of the man who has learnt that necessity is only a name for the effect of chance or of our own free will, and says that 'it were better to believe in the fables about the gods than in the Fate of the philosophers; the former at least allows us some hope of propitiation, but fate is inexorable.'

on setting, and comes above it again on rising; but it may be, and it is just as probable, that the fiery particles collect anew every day to form a fresh sun. We cannot bring the matter to the direct test of sense, and therefore we can only argue from our general experience of what happens on earth, which shows that the one view is as admissible as the other, spite of all that our systemmongers may say'. Nay, even supposing that a certain class of phenomena, such as eclipses, are always caused in the same way in our world, it is still probable, indeed almost certain, that they must be caused in different ways in the countless worlds contained in the universe".

As regards the Logic of the Epicureans we are told that they rejected as useless almost all that was known under that name, Definition, Generalization, Classification, the Syllogism, and that they had a special objection to the Law of the Excluded Middle (A either is or is not B, aut vivet cras Hermarchus aut non vivet), as involving the principle of Necessity. But in that age of the world, it was no longer possible to fall back upon the master's Ipse dixit with the implicit confidence of the old Pythagoreans: some reason for their faith had to be given. This ground of certainty Epicurus found in the senses and feelings. What our sense or feeling tells us,

1 Cf. Diog. L. Χ 113 τὸ δὲ μίαν αἰτίαν τούτων ἀποδιδόναι, πλεοναχῶς τῶν φαινομένων ἐκκαλουμένων, μανικόν. See examples of these alternative hypotheses in Diog. x 84 foll., Lucr. V 510-770.

2 Compare Munro on Lucr. v. 532. In Diog. x. 78, Epicurus seems to be applying Aristotle's contrast between the disorderly and capricious movements of the sublunary sphere and the perfect order of the higher spheres, to his own кóσμοι and μeтaкóσμa, and to find in this a justification for the variety of causation in the former.

3 See Cic. Fin. I 22, and N. D. 1 70 and 89 with my notes.

(στερέμνιον).

It is true that the always correspond An image coming

we receive as certain. Even the supposed sensations of sleep or of insanity are in a way true. They have a real cause, viz. the influx of those images of which Democritus spoke. 'The error,' said Epicurus following Aristotle', 'lies not in the sensation, but in our interpretation of the sensation, in the inference we draw from it. If we once abandon this ground of certainty, all is gone. Whatever reasoning is not founded on the clear evidence (évápyela, perspicuitas) of sense, is mere words. image which comes to us does not with the actual object (σrepéuviov). from a square tower at a distance, will perhaps be round by the time it reaches us, its edges having been rubbed away in its passage through the air: but the sensation has given the image correctly; error arises when we add to the sensation the opinion that the image is an exact representation of the object. Opinions (voλýYeis) (υπολήψεις) are only true, if testified to by a distinct sensation, or, supposing such direct evidence unattainable, if there is no contrary sensation; they are false, in all other cases". Repeated sensations produce a permanent image, πрóAnys, so called because it exists in the mind as an anticipation of the name, which would be unmeaning if .it could not be referred to a known type. General terms can only be safely used for the purpose of argument when they rest upon and represent a póλns. Otherwise

1 See De Anima III 3, ἡ μὲν αἴσθησις τῶν ἰδίων ἀεὶ ἀληθής, διανοεῖσθαι δ ̓ ἐνδέχεται καὶ ψευδώς, and my note on N. D. I 70. 2 Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. vII 203, foll.

3 An instance given is the existence of void, of which there can be no distinct evidence, but it is in accordance with the fact of motion, which itself rests upon the evidence of our senses, Sext. Emp. 7. c. 213.

their use only engenders strifes of words. Epicurus himself does not seem to have carried his logical investigations further than this; but among the Herculanean papyri we have an interesting treatise by Philodemus in which he deals with Analogical and Inductive Arguments'.

It has been already stated that the only reason allowed by the Epicureans for studying Physics was to free the soul from superstitious fears, and with this view to prove that the constitution of the universe might be explained from mechanical causes. There is something very remarkable, and not altogether easy to account for, in the extreme earnestness with which the Epicureans deprecated the oppressive influence of superstition, at a time when other philosophers, and writers in general, treated it as too unimportant to deserve the slightest attention. Thus Cicero asks 'where is the old woman so far gone in dotage as to believe in a three-headed Cerberus and those other bugbears which your sect tells us you have only ceased to fear because of your knowledge of physical science',' and in arguing against the fear of death, he assumes as an undoubted point that death is either annihilation or the admission to a higher state of happiness. Friedländer however in his Sittengeschichte Roms has shown that this only expresses the opinion of

1 See Bahnsch on the περὶ σημείων καὶ σημειώσεων of Philodemus, 1879.

2 See Tusc. I 10 and 48, and compare N. D. I 86, quibus mediocres homines non ita valde moventur, his ille clamat omnium mortalium mentes esse perterritas.

3 Tusc. I 25.

Bk. XI on the Immortality of the Soul.

a small educated class, and that the mass still clung to the old beliefs about Charon and Cocytus. Even Cicero himself elsewhere speaks of the spread of superstition in terms not unlike those employed by Lucretius'. The fact seems to be that while, on the one side, the spread of enlightenment made it more and more impossible for any educated man to accept the absurdities and immoralities of paganism; and while the prevalence of this educated scepticism cannot but have shaken the popular hold on the old superstitions, so far as this partook in any degree of the nature of belief rather than of unreasoning custom; on the other hand that deepening of the individual consciousness which accompanied the extinction of the public life of Greece, and which was fostered by the growing influence of philosophy and its more subjective tone, must have intensified the sense of moral and religious responsibility, and given rise to an increased anxiety as to a possible retribution to follow this life. This appears partly in the rapid growth of the Orphic and other mysteries, partly in philosophic or poetic imaginations of the unseen world, such as we read in the Republic and the Aeneid. And thus 'the general conviction of a judgment to come, where the deeds done in this life would receive their reward and punishment, seems to have been widely felt, and to have been, for priests and prophets, a fruitful soil. Indulgences for sin, propitiation of impiety, sacramental atonement, not to

1 De Divin. II 148, Nam, ut vere loquamur, superstitio fusa per gentes oppressit omnium fere animos atque hominum imbecillitatem occupavit; compare Lucretius 1 62, Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret in terris oppressa gravi sub religione, quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, &c.