The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE EPICUREAN CONTRAST 121
Consequently, on the basis of this physical doctrine
of atomic declination, Epicurus went on to establish
his doctrine of free will.
To Democritus, there was no such thing as free will :
the uniformity of nature and the reign of law, extending
to every being and to all departments of existence,
forbade that. This teaching, in the view of Epicurus,
neglected to take account of the testimony of con
sciousness. Free will is a fact of our experience, and
the great fact on which ethics reposes ;
and as ethics
was the prime consideration for Epicurus, this fact
must be conserved, and, if conserved, explained: and
the explanation seemed to him to be found in atomic
declination in the supposition of an innate spontaneity
in the
atoms, whereby
atomic combinations and inter
actions might be rendered possible.
There was also a difference between Epicurus and
Democritus as to the composition of the soul. As has
been seen, Epicurus demanded four elements heat,
air, vapour, and an unnamed fourth. To Democritus,
the soul was "a kind of fire (trvp n)."
It consisted,
therefore, wholly of atoms the same in shape as those
of fire
namely, round and
;
the only differences between
soul-atoms and fire-atoms that he allowed were
differences of arrangement, and, probably,
the soul-atoms being the smaller.
V
of size
Now, reverting to the Epicurean teaching, the con
trast to Stoicism at crucial points will be apparent.
There is, first, the conception of the formation of the
universe by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, thereby