Frankenstein's Cat.pdf - University of Cincinnati

EPICURUS AND THE ORIGINS OF WESTERN HUMANISM
sleep has relaxed our limbs, the rational parts of our
minds remain awake, but with this difference: the idols
that stir our minds when we are awake now stir them to
the point that we believe we truly see the man whom
death and the earth already hold bereft of life. Nature
brings this about because all the senses of the body,
checked by sleep, are dormant throughout the limbs
and cannot refute the false by the true. Moreover,
memory lies languid in sleep and does not argue that
he whom the mind believes it sees alive has long since
passed into the power of death and destruction.
! Similarly, mythical animals and monsters are due,
not to the imagination, but to real sensations resulting
from the mixing of stray idols:
Certainly an idol of a centaur is not made from a living
centaur, since no such animal ever existed; but when
by chance the idols of a horse and of a man have come
together, one clings readily to the other because of
their subtle nature and tenuous texture ... other idols of
this kind are formed in the same way.
! The importance of the theory of idols is that it also
forms the basis of the Epicurean theory of the nature of
the gods. As with ghosts and imaginary monsters, the
gods are not a product of the human imagination but
rather the result of sensations produced by external
stimuli or idols which originate from a race of perfected
beings who dwell between the worlds (intermundia):
1. ! These beings have human form and are not supernatural,
having been created from the concourse of
atoms and evolution like all natural objects.
2.! They are not responsible for the creation of the
universe, are not involved in its maintenance, and have
no special powers of any sort.
3.! They have no interest in human beings or their
welfare. They do not respond to prayers or sacrifices
nor do they bless or punish.
4.! However, they have succeeded in perfecting their
lives and now enjoy that perfect tranquility corresponding
to the Epicurean vision of true happiness.
5.! It is this vision of happiness and tranquility which
their highly attenuated idols awaken in the sleeping
brains of mankind and which account for the almost
universal belief in the existence of the gods as some
form of perfected human being.
Figure 9. A 19th-century etching of a bronze bust of Epicurus
uncovered at Herculaneum.
6.! Unfortunately, most humans have failed to correctly
interpret the true meaning of this vision and, in
their ignorance, have endowed the gods with all sorts
of false attributes and supernatural powers.
In short, the Epicurean gods serve only one purpose: to
function as cosmic role models. Thus, as with the term
“soul,” the term “god” has been given a very special
interpretation by Epicurus.
! Opinions on this interpretation have varied among
scholars. Some feel that it was taken very seriously by
the Epicureans as a concept totally in keeping with
both their physics and their ethics, whereas others feel
that it was an elaborate ruse on the part of Epicurus to
protect his followers from the charge of atheism. It
allowed them to claim a belief in the gods, while in
actual fact not believing in them in any normal sense of
the word. If the latter interpretation is correct, then the
ruse hardly failed to fool anyone:!
1.! Cicero, in his essay on The Nature of the Gods,
called the Epicurean concept of the gods “absurd.” Any
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