THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

FRANCIS BACON 77
elon, 2
"bought a fair garden, which he tilled himself. There it was he set
up his school, and there he lived a gentle and agreeable life with his
disciples, whom he taught as he walked and worked. ... He was gentle
and affable to all men ... He held there was nothing nobler than to
apply one's self to philosophy." His starting point is a conviction that
apathy is impossible, and that pleasure though not necessarily sensual
pleasure is the only conceivable, and quite legitimate, end of life and
action. "Nature leads every organism to prefer its own good to every other
even the Stoic finds a subtle pleasure in renunciation. "We must
good" ;
not avoid pleasures, but we must select them." Epicurus, then, is no epicurean;
he exalts the joys of intellect rather than those of sense; he warns
against pleasures that excite and disturb the soul which they should
rather quiet and appease. In the end he proposes to seek not pleasure in
its usual sense, but ataraxia tranquillity, equanimity, repose of mind;
all of which trembles on the verge of Zeno's "apathy."
The Romans, coming to despoil Hellas in 146 B. a, found these rival
schools dividing the philosophic field; and having neither leisure nor
subtlety for speculation themselves, brought back these philosophies with
their other spoils to Rome. Great organizers, as much as inevitable slaves,
tend to stoic moods: it is difficult to be either master or servant if one is
sensitive. So such philosophy as Rome had was mostly of Zeno's school,
whether in Marcus AureHus the emperor or in Epictetus the slave; and
even Lucretius talked epicureanism stoically (like Heine's Englishman
taking his pleasures sadly) , and concluded his stern gospel of pleasure
by committing suicide. His noble epic "On the Nature of Things," 3
follows Epicurus in damning pleasure with faint praise. Almost con-
temporary with Caesar and Pompey, he lived in the midst of turmoil and
alarms; his nervous pen is forever inditing prayers to tranquillity and
peace. One pictures him as a timid soul whose youth had been darkened
with religious fears; for he never tires of telling his readers that there is
no hell, except here, and that there are no gods except gentlemanly ones
who live in a garden of Epicurus in the clouds, and never intrude in the
affairs of men. To tlie rising cult of heaven and hell among the people
of Rome he opposes a ruthless materialism. Soul and mind are evolved
with the body, grow with its growth, ail with its ailments, and die with
its death. Nothing exists but atoms, space, and law; and the law of laws is
that of evolution and dissolution everywhere.
No single thing abides, but all things flow.
Fragment to fragment dings; the Mngs thus grow
Until we know and name them. By degrees
They melt, and are no more the things we know.
a
Quoted as motto on the title-page of Anatole France's Garden of Epicures.
8 Professor Shotwell (Introduction to the History of History) calls it "the most
marvelous performance in all antique literature."