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* The Stoics were very unjust to Epicurus. Epictetus, for example, addressing him, says: «This is the life of which you pronounce yourself worthy: eating, drinking, copulation, evacuation and snoring.» Bk. II, Chap. XX, Discourses of Epictetus.
€ Murray, Five Stages, p. 130.
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not practise that dignity and reserve in the expression of the emotions that was expected of ancient philosophers; his letters are amazingly natural and unaffected.
The life of the community was very simple, partly on principle, and partly (no doubt) for lack of money. Their food and drink was mainly bread and water, which Epicurus found quite satisfying. «I am thrilled with pleasure in the body,» he says, «when I live on bread and water, and I spit on luxurious pleasures, not for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow them.» The community depended financially, at least in part, on voluntary contributions. «Send me some preserved cheese,» he writes, «that when I like, I may have a feast.» To another friend: «Send us offerings for the sustenance of our holy body on behalf of yourself and your children.» And again: «The only contribution I require is that which ——ordered the disciples to send me, even if they be among the Hyperboreans. I wish to receive from each of you two hundred and twenty drachmae * a year and no more.»
Epicurus suffered all his life from bad health, but learnt to endure it with great fortitude. It was he, not a Stoic, who first maintained that a man could be happy on the rack. Two letters written, one a few days before his death, the other on the day of his death, show that he had some right to this opinion. The first says: «Seven days before writing this the stoppage became complete and I suffered pains such as bring men to their last day. If anything happens to me, do you look after the children of Metrodorus for four or five years, but do not spend any more on them than you now spend on me.» The second says: «On this truly happy day of my life, as I am at the point of death, I write this to you. The diseases in my bladder and stomach are pursuing their course, lacking nothing of their usual severity: but against all this is the joy in my heart at the recollection of my conversations with you. Do you, as I might expect from your devotion from boyhood to me and to philosophy, take good care of the children of Metrodorus.» Metrodorus, who had been one of his first disciples, was dead; Epicurus provided for his children in his will.
Although Epicurus was gentle and kindly towards most people, a different side of his character appeared in his relations to philos-
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* About twenty dollars.
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ophers, especially those to whom he might be considered indebted. «I suppose,» he says, «that these grumblers will believe me to be a disciple of The Mollusc (Nausiphanes) and to have listened to his teaching in company with a few bibulous youths. For indeed the fellow was a bad man and his habits such as could never lead to wisdom.» * He never acknowledged the extent of his indebtedness to Democritus, and as for Leucippus, he asserted that there was no such philosopher-meaning, no doubt, not that there was no such man, but that the man was not a philosopher. Diogenes Laertius gives a whole list of abusive epithets that he is supposed to have applied to the most eminent of his predecessors. With this lack of generosity towards other philosophers goes another grave fault, that of dictatorial dogmatism. His followers had to learn a kind of creed embodying his doctrines, which they were not allowed to question. To the end, none of them added or modified anything. When Lucretius, two hundred years later, turned the philosophy of Epicurus into poetry, he added, so far as can be judged, nothing theoretical to the master’s teaching. Wherever comparison is possible, Lucretius is found to agree closely with the original, and it is generally held that, elsewhere, he may be used to fill in the gaps in our knowledge caused by the loss of all of Epicurus’s three hundred books. Of his writings, nothing remains except a few letters, some fragments, and a statement of «Principal Doctrines.»
The philosophy of Epicurus, like all those of his age (with the partial exception of Scepticism), was primarily designed to secure tranquillity. He considered pleasure to be the good, and adhered, with remarkable consistency, to all the consequences of this view. «Pleasure,» he said, «is the beginning and end of the blesséd life.» Diogenes Laertius quotes him as saying, in a book on The End of Life, «I know not how I can conceive the good, if I withdraw the pleasures of taste and withdraw the pleasures of love and those of hearing and sight.» Again: «The beginning and the root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach; even wisdom and culture must be referred to this.» The pleasure of the mind, we are told, is the contemplation of pleasures of the body. Its only advantage over bodily pleasures is that we can learn to contemplate pleasure rather than pain, and thus have
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* The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, by W. J. Oates, p. 47. Where possible, I have availed myself of Mr. Oates’s translations.
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more control over mental than over physical pleasures. «Virtue, unless it means «prudence in the pursuit of pleasure,» is an empty name. Justice, for example, consists in so acting as not to have occasion to fear other men’s resentment—a view which leads to a doctrine of the origin of society not unlike the theory of the Social Contract.
Epicurus disagrees with some of his hedonist predecessors in distinguishing between active and passive pleasures, or dynamic and static pleasures. Dynamic pleasures consist in the attainment of a desired end, the previous desire having been accompanied by pain. Static pleasures consist in a state of equilibrium, which results from the existence of the kind of state of affairs that would be desired if it were absent. I think one may say that the satisfying of hunger, while it is in progress, is a dynamic pleasure, but the state of quiescence which supervenes when hunger is completely satisfied is a static pleasure. Of these two kinds, Epicurus holds it more prudent to pursue the second, since it is unalloyed, and does not depend upon the existence of pain as a stimulus to desire. When the body is in a state of equilibrium, there is no pain; we should, therefore, aim at equilibrium and the quiet pleasures rather than at more violent joys. Epicurus, it seems, would wish, if it were possible, to be always in the state of having eaten moderately, never in that of voracious desire to eat.
He is thus led, in practice, to regarding absence of pain, rather than presence of pleasure, as the wise man’s goal. * The stomach may be at the root of things, but the pains of stomach ache outweigh the pleasures of gluttony; accordingly Epicurus lived on bread, with a little cheese on feast days. Such desires as those for wealth and honour are futile, because they make a man restless when he might be contented. «The greatest good of all is prudence: it is a more precious thing even than philosophy.» Philosophy, as he understood it, was a practical system designed to secure a happy life; it required only common sense, not logic or mathematics or any of the elaborate training prescribed by Plato. He urges his young disciple and friend Pythocles to «flee from every form of culture.» It was a natural consequence of his principles that he advised abstinence from public life, for in proportion as a man achieves power he increases the number of those who
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* (For Epicurus) «Absence of pain is in itself pleasure, indeed in his ultimate analysis the truest pleasure.» Bailey, op. cit., p. 249.
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envy him and therefore wish to do him injury. Even if he escapes outward misfortune, peace of mind is impossible in such a situation. The wise man will try to live unnoticed, so as to have no enemies.
Sexual love, as one of the most «dynamic» of pleasures, naturally comes under the ban. «Sexual intercourse,» the philosopher declares, «has never done a man good and he is lucky if it has not harmed him.» He was fond of children (other people’s), but for the gratification of this taste he seems to have relied upon other people not to follow his advice. He seems, in fact, to have liked children against his better judgement; for he considered marriage and children a distraction from more serious pursuits. Lucretius, who follows him in denouncing love, sees no harm in sexual intercourse provided it is divorced from passion.
The safest of social pleasures, in the opinion of Epicurus, is friendship. Epicurus, like Bentham, is a man who considers that all men, at all times, pursue only their own pleasure, sometimes wisely, sometimes unwisely; but, again like Bentham, he is constantly seduced by his own kindly and affectionate nature into admirable behaviour from which, on his own theories, he ought to have refrained. He obviously liked his friends without regard to what he got out of them, but he persuaded himself that he was as selfish as his philosophy
