Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

22 LATER GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
The eye was not made for seeing; an eye happened somehow
to come into existence, and was found useful for sight,
and so
on with the rest. The mind is but a finer sense, subject to
finer and more delicate influences and impressions, but equally
getting its pleasure from the impact
of those more subtle
atoms which belong to what is called the intellectual sphere.
The virtue of this cosmical theory to Epicurus was the element
of chance which pervaded
it ;
the impossibility of constructing
out of it
any system which might impose a law or bring
external authority to bear on man. He wanted to free man
utterly from any influence, cosmical or spiritual, which might
interfere with his quiet, serene regulation of his life.
In the same key entirely is his doctrine about the gods.
He affirms the existence of the gods. He finds in himself and
in man the feeling that there are Beings of a higher nature ;
accordingly there must be gods. But seeing that the idea of
gods and of divine intervention in human affairs was a source
of constant distraction and terror to man, he remits the gods
to abodes of serene contemplation and blessedness, where,
careless of mankind, they know nothing of the turmoil of
creation and of government, where nature is beautiful and
bountiful, where storms and plagues never come, and where
content with their own tranquil enjoyments
they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl d
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl d,
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.
Here again we have an instance of the wonderful worldly
wisdom of Epicurus in the construction of his system. He
could not get rid of the idea of the gods ;
he set himself to
neutralise it, and to make it wholly inoperative on the practical
life of mankind. Quite in harmony with his doctrine that the
senses are the only trustworthy guides, is his notion that the
sun and the stars are about the size that they seem ;
that the
sun is somehow lit
every morning and extinguished every