CHAPTER I. The Epicurean Pursuit of Pleasure

THE EPICUREAN PURSUIT OF PLEASURE

SELECTIONS FROM THE EPICUREAN SCRIPTURES

Epicureanism is so simple a philosophy of life that it scarcely needs interpretation. In fact, as the following citations show, it was originally little more than a set of directions for living "the simple life," with pleasure as the simplifying principle. The more subtle teaching of the other philosophies will require to be introduced by explanatory statement, or else accompanied by a running commentary as it proceeds. The best way to understand Epicureanism, however, is to let Epicurus and his disciples speak for themselves. Accordingly, as in religious services the sermon is preceded by reading of the Scriptures and singing of hymns, we will open our study of the Epicurean philosophy of life by selections from their scriptures and hymns. First the master, though unfortunately he is not so good a master of style as many of his disciples, shall speak. The gist of Epicurus's teaching is contained in the following passages.

"The end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear; and when once we have attained this, all the tempest of the soul is laid, seeing that the living creature has not to go to find something that is wanting, or to seek something else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled." "Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. From it is the commencement of every choice and every aversion, and to it we come back, and make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing." "When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal, or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood by some who are either ignorant and prejudiced for other views, or inclined to misinterpret our statements. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking feasts and of revelry, not the enjoyments of the fish and other delicacies of a splendid table, which produce a pleasant life: it is sober reasoning, searching out the reasons for every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which great tumults take possession of the soul." "Nothing is so productive of cheerfulness as to abstain from meddling, and not to engage in difficult undertakings, nor force yourself to do something beyond your power. For all this involves your nature in tumults." "The main part of happiness is the disposition which is under our own control. Service in the field is hard work, and others hold command. Public speaking abounds in heart-throbs and in anxiety whether you can carry conviction. Why then pursue an object like this, which is at the disposal of others?" "Wealth beyond the requirements of nature is no more benefit to men than water to a vessel which is full. Both alike overflow. We can look upon another's goods without perturbation and can enjoy purer pleasure than they, for we are free from their arduous struggle."

"Thou must also keep in mind that of desires some are natural, and some are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some are natural only. And of the necessary desires, some are necessary if we are to be happy, and some if the body is to remain unperturbed, and some if we are even to live. By the clear and certain understanding of these things we learn to make every preference and aversion, so that the body may have health and the soul tranquillity, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life." "Cheerful poverty is an honourable thing." "Great wealth is but poverty when matched with the law of nature." "If any one thinks his own not to be most ample, he may become lord of the whole world, and will yet be wretched." "Fortune but slightly crosses the wise man's path." "If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from his desires."

"And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but oftentimes pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And oftentimes we consider pains superior to pleasures, and submit to the pain for a long time, when it is attended for us with a greater pleasure. All pleasure, therefore, because of its kinship with our nature, is a good, but it is not in all cases our choice, even as every pain is an evil, though pain is not always, and in every case, to be shunned."

"It is, however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, that all these things must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good; and we regard independence of outward goods as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little, if we have not much, being thoroughly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured, and only the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when once the pain due to want is removed; and bread and water confer the highest pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate self, therefore, to plain and inexpensive diet gives all that is needed for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking, and it places us in a better frame when we approach at intervals a costly fare, and renders us fearless of fortune."

"Riches according to nature are of limited extent, and can be easily procured; but the wealth craved after by vain fancies knows neither end nor limit. He who has understood the limits of life knows how easy it is to get all that takes away the pain of want, and all that is required to make our life perfect at every point. In this way he has no need of anything which involves a contest." "The beginning and the greatest good is prudence. Wherefore prudence is a more precious thing even than philosophy: from it grow all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot lead a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and justice; nor lead a life of prudence, honour, and justice, which is not also a life of pleasure. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them."

"Of all the things which wisdom procures for the happiness of life as a whole, by far the greatest is the acquisition of friendship."

"We ought to look round for people to eat and drink with, before we look for something to eat and drink: to feed without a friend is the life of a lion and a wolf." "Do everything as if Epicurus had his eye upon you. Retire into yourself chiefly at that time when you are compelled to be in a crowd." "We ought to select some good man and keep him ever before our eyes, so that we may, as it were, live under his eye, and do everything in his sight." "No one loves another except for his own interest." "Among the other ills which attend folly is this: it is always beginning to live." "A foolish life is restless and disagreeable: it is wholly engrossed with the future." "We are born once: twice we cannot be born, and for everlasting we must be non-existent. But thou, who art not master of the morrow, puttest off the right time. Procrastination is the ruin of life for all; and, therefore, each of us is hurried and unprepared at death." "Learn betimes to die, or if it please thee better to pass over to the gods." "He who is least in need of the morrow will meet the morrow most pleasantly." "Injustice is not in itself a bad thing: but only in the fear, arising from anxiety on the part of the wrong-doer, that he will not escape punishment." "A wise man will not enter political life unless something extraordinary should occur." "The free man will take his free laugh over those who are fain to be reckoned in the list with Lycurgus and Solon."

"The first duty of salvation is to preserve our vigour and to guard against the defiling of our life in consequence of maddening desires." "Accustom thyself in the belief that death is nothing to us, for good and evil are only where they are felt, and death is the absence of all feeling: therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes enjoyable the mortality of life, not by adding to years an illimitable time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For in life there can be nothing to fear, to him who has thoroughly apprehended that there is nothing to cause fear in what time we are not alive. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present causes only a groundless pain by the expectation thereof. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we are, death is not yet, and when death comes, then we are not. It is nothing then, either to the living or the dead, for it is not found with the living, and the dead exist no longer."

These words of the master, given with no attempt to reconcile their apparent inconsistencies, convey very fairly the substance of his teaching, including both its excellences and its deep defects. The exalted esteem in which his doctrines were held, leading his disciples to commit them to memory as sacred and verbally inspired; the personal reverence for his character; and the extravagant expectations as to what his philosophy was to do for the world, together with a glimpse into the Epicurean idea of heaven, are well illustrated by the following sentences at the opening of the third book of Lucretius, addressed to Epicurus:--

"Thee, who first wast able amid such thick darkness to raise on high so bright a beacon and shed a light on the true interests of life, thee I follow, glory of the Greek race, and plant now my footsteps firmly fixed in thy imprinted marks, not so much from a desire to rival thee as that from the love I bear thee I yearn to imitate thee. Thou, father, art discoverer of things, thou furnishest us with fatherly precepts, and like as bees sip of all things in the flowery lawns, we, O glorious being, in like manner, feed from out thy pages upon all the golden maxims, golden I say, most worthy ever of endless life. For soon as thy philosophy issuing from a godlike intellect has begun with loud voice to proclaim the nature of things, the terrors of the mind are dispelled, the walls of the world part asunder, I see things in operation throughout the whole void: the divinity of the gods is revealed, and their tranquil abodes which neither winds do shake, nor clouds drench with rains nor snow congealed by sharp frost harms with hoary fall: an ever cloudless ether o'ercanopies them, and they laugh with light shed largely round. Nature too supplies all their wants, and nothing ever impairs their peace of mind."

Horace is so saturated with Epicureanism that it is hard to select any one of his odes as more expressive of it than another. His ode on the "Philosophy of Life" perhaps presents it in as short compass as any. He asks what he shall pray for? Not crops, and ivory, and gold gained by laborious and risky enterprise; but healthy, solid contentment with the simple, universal pleasures near at hand.

"Why to Apollo's shrine repair New hallowed? Why present with prayer Libation? Not those crops to gain, Which fill Sardinia's teeming plain,

"Herds from Calabria's sunny fields, Nor ivory that India yields, Nor gold, nor tracts where Liris glides So noiseless down its drowsy sides.

"Blest owners of Calenian vines, Crop them; ye merchants, drain the wines, That cargoes brought from Syria buy, In cups of gold. For ye, who try

"The broad Atlantic thrice a year And never drown, must sure be dear To gods in heaven. Me--small my need-- Light mallows, olives, chiccory, feed.

"Give me then health, Apollo; give Sound mind; on gotten goods to live Contented; and let song engage An honoured, not a base, old age."

For a lesson from the new Epicurean testament we cannot do better than turn to the sensible pages of Herbert Spencer's "Data of Ethics."

"The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness. To see this it needs but to contrast one whose self-regard has maintained bodily well-being with one whose regardlessness of self has brought its natural results; and then to ask what must be the contrast between two societies formed of two such kinds of individuals.

"Bounding out of bed after an unbroken sleep, singing or whistling as he dresses, coming down with beaming face ready to laugh on the smallest provocation, the healthy man of high powers, conscious of past successes and, by his energy, quickness, resource, made confident of the future, enters on the day's business not with repugnance but with gladness; and from hour to hour experiencing satisfactions from work effectually done, comes home with an abundant surplus of energy remaining for hours of relaxation. Far otherwise is it with one who is enfeebled by great neglect of self. Already deficient, his energies are made more deficient by constant endeavours to execute tasks that prove beyond his strength, and by the resulting discouragement. Hours of leisure which, rightly passed, bring pleasures that raise the tide of life and renew the powers of work, cannot be utilized: there is not vigour enough for enjoyments involving action, and lack of spirits prevents passive enjoyments from being entered upon with zest. In brief, life becomes a burden. Now if, as must be admitted, in a community composed of individuals like the first the happiness will be relatively great, while in one composed of individuals like the last there will be relatively little happiness, or rather much misery; it must be admitted that conduct causing the one result is good and conduct causing the other is bad.

"He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare.

"Full of vivacity, the one is ever welcome. For his wife he has smiles and jocose speeches; for his children stores of fun and play; for his friends pleasant talk interspersed with the sallies of wit that come from buoyancy. Contrariwise, the other is shunned. The irritability resulting now from ailments, now from failures caused by feebleness, his family has daily to bear. Lacking adequate energy for joining in them, he has at best but a tepid interest in the amusements of his children; and he is called a wet blanket by his friends. Little account as our ethical reasonings take note of it, yet is the fact obvious that since happiness and misery are infectious, such regard for self as conduces to health and high spirits is a benefaction to others, and such disregard of self as brings on suffering, bodily or mental, is a malefaction to others.

"The adequately egoistic individual retains those powers which make altruistic activities possible. The individual who is inadequately egoistic loses more or less of his ability to be altruistic. The truth of the one proposition is self-evident; and the truth of the other is daily forced on us by examples. Note a few of them. Here is a mother who, brought up in the insane fashion usual among the cultivated, has a physique not strong enough for suckling her infant, but who, knowing that its natural food is the best, and anxious for its welfare, continues to give milk for a longer time than her system will bear. Eventually the accumulating reaction tells. There comes exhaustion running, it may be, into illness caused by depletion; occasionally ending in death, and often entailing chronic weakness. She becomes, perhaps for a time, perhaps permanently, incapable of carrying on household affairs; her other children suffer from the loss of maternal attention; and where the income is small, payments for nurse and doctor tell injuriously on the whole family. Instance, again, what not unfrequently happens with the father. Similarly prompted by a high sense of obligation, and misled by current moral theories into the notion that self-denial may rightly be carried to any extent, he daily continues his office work for long hours regardless of hot head and cold feet; and debars himself from social pleasures, for which he thinks he can afford neither time nor money. What comes of this entirely unegoistic course? Eventually a sudden collapse, sleeplessness, inability to work. That rest which he would not give himself when his sensations prompted he has now to take in long measure. The extra earnings laid by for the benefit of his family are quickly swept away by costly journeys in aid of recovery and by the many expenses which illness entails. Instead of increased ability to do his duty by his offspring there comes now inability. Lifelong evils on them replace hoped-for goods. And so is it, too, with the social effects of inadequate egoism. All grades furnish examples of the mischiefs, positive and negative, inflicted on society by excessive neglect of self. Now the case is that of a labourer who, conscientiously continuing his work under a broiling sun, spite of violent protests from his feelings, dies of sunstroke; and leaves his family a burden to the parish. Now the case is that of a clerk whose eyes permanently fail from overstraining, or who, daily writing for hours after his fingers are painfully cramped, is attacked with 'scrivener's palsy,' and, unable to write at all, sinks with aged parents into poverty which friends are called on to mitigate.

"And now the case is that of a man devoted to public ends who, shattering his health by ceaseless application, fails to achieve all he might have achieved by a more reasonable apportionment of his time between labour on behalf of others, and ministration to his own needs."

After this lengthy prose extract, let us turn to the modern Epicurean poets.

At once the best and the worst rendering of Epicureanism into verse is Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam. It is the best because of the frankness with which it draws out to its logical conclusion, in a cynical despair of everything nobler than the pleasure of the moment, the consequences of identifying the self with mere pleasure-seeking. It is the worst because, instead of presenting Epicureanism mixed with nobler elements, as Walt Whitman and Stevenson do, it gives us the pure and undiluted article as a final gospel of life. The fact that it has proved such a fad during the past few years is striking evidence of the husky fare on which our modern prodigals can be content to feed.

"Come fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of repentance fling: The bird of Time has but a little way To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.

"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow.

"Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears To-day of past Regrets and future Fears: To-morrow!--Why, To-morrow I may be Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years.

"I sent my soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return'd to me, And answer'd, "I myself am Heav'n and Hell:

"Heav'n but the vision of fulfill'd Desire, And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on Fire, Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, So late emerged from, shall so soon expire."

From this melancholy attempt to offer us Epicureanism as a complete account of life, overshadowed as it is by the gloom of the Infinite which the man who stakes his all on momentary pleasure feels doomed to forego, it is a relief to turn to men who strike cheerfully and firmly the Epicurean note; but pass instantly on to blend it with sterner notes and larger views of life, in which it plays its essential, yet strictly subordinate part.

Of all the men who thus strike scattered Epicurean notes, without attempting the impossible task of making a harmonious and satisfactory tune out of them, our American Pagan, Walt Whitman, is the best example.

"What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, Scattering it freely forever.

"O the joy of manly self-hood! To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown, To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic, To look with calm gaze or with flashing eye, To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest, To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth.

"O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave, To meet life as a powerful conqueror, No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms, To these proud laws of the air, the water, and the ground, proving my interior soul impregnable, And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.

"For not life's joys alone I sing, repeating--the joy of death! The beautiful touch of death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for reasons, Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd, or render'd to powder, or buried, My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres, My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices, eternal uses of the earth.

"O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys! To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on! To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports, A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys."

Whitman, with this wild ecstasy, to be sure is an Epicurean and something more. Indeed, pure Epicureanism, unmixed with better elements, is rather hard to find in modern literature. One other hymn, by Robert Louis Stevenson, likewise adds to pure Epicureanism a note of strenuous intensity in the great task of happiness which was foreign to the more easy-going form of the ancient doctrine. In Stevenson Epicureanism is only a flavour to more substantial viands.

THE CELESTIAL SURGEON

"If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness; If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face; If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books, and my food, and summer rain Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:-- Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake! Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, Choose thou, before that spirit die, A piercing pain, a killing sin, And to my dead heart run them in."

While we are with Stevenson, we may as well conclude our selections from the Epicurean scriptures in these words from his Christmas Sermon: "Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality: they are the perfect duties. If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say, 'give them up,' for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better men."

THE EPICUREAN VIEW OF WORK AND PLAY

Pleasure is our great task, "the gist of life, the end of ends." To be happy ourselves and radiating centres of happiness to choice circles of congenial friends,--this is the Epicurean ideal. The world is a vast reservoir of potential pleasures. Our problem is to scoop out for ourselves and our friends full measure of these pleasures as they go floating by. We did not make the world. It made itself by a fortuitous concourse of atoms. It would be foolish for us to try to alter it. Our only concern is to get out of it all the pleasure we can; without troubling ourselves to put anything valuable back into it. Since it is accidental, impersonal, we owe it nothing. We simply owe ourselves as big a share of pleasure as we can grasp and hold.

This, however, is a task in which it is easy to make mistakes. We need prudence to avoid cheating ourselves with short-lived pleasures that cost too much; wisdom to choose the simpler pleasures that cost less and last longer. Such shrewd calculation of the relative cost and worth of different pleasures is the sum and substance of the Epicurean philosophy. He who is shrewd to discern and prompt to snatch the most pleasure at least cost, as it is offered on the bargain counter of life,--he is the Epicurean sage.

We might work this out into a great variety of applications: but one or two spheres must suffice. Eating and drinking, as the most elemental relations of life, are the ones commonly chosen as applications of the Epicurean principle. These applications, however, the selections from Epicurus and Horace have already made clear.

The Epicurean will regulate his diet, not by the immediate, trivial, short-lived pleasures of taste, though these he will by no means despise, but mainly by their permanent effects upon health. Wholesome food, and enough of it, daintily prepared and served, he will do his best to obtain. But elaborate and ostentatious feasting he will avoid, as involving too much expense and trouble, and too heavy penalties of disease and discomfort. He will find out by practical experience the quantity, quality, and variety of simple food that keeps him in perfect condition; and no enticements of sweetmeats or stimulants will divert him from the simplicity in which the most permanent pleasure is found. To eat cake and candy between meals, to sip tea at all hours, no less than to drink whiskey to the point of intoxication, are sins against the simplicity of the true Epicurean regimen.

The Epicurean will not lose an hour of needed sleep nor tolerate such an abomination as an alarm clock in his house. If he permits himself to be awakened in the morning, it will be as Thomas B. Reed used to when, as a student at Bowdoin College, he was obliged to be in chapel at six o'clock. He had the janitor call him at half-past four, in order that he might have the luxury of feeling that he had another whole hour in which to sleep, and then call him again at the last moment which would permit him to dress in time for chapel.

These things, however, we may for the most part take for granted. We do not require a philosopher to regulate our diet for us; or to put us to bed at night, and tuck us in, and hear us say our prayers. Those elementary lessons were doubtless needed in the childhood of the race. The selection from Spencer on work and play strikes closer to the problem of the modern man; and it is at this point that we all sorely need to go to school to Epicurus. Perhaps we are inclined to look down on Epicurus's ideal as a low one. Well, if it is a low ideal, it is all the more disgraceful to fall below it. And most of us do fall below it every day of our tense and restless lives. Let us test ourselves by this ideal, and answer honestly the questions it puts to us.

How many of us are slaving all day and late into the night to add artificial superfluities to the simple necessities? How many of us know how to stop working when it begins to encroach upon our health; and to cut off anxiety and worry altogether? How many of us measure the amount and intensity of our toil by our physical strength; doing what we can do healthfully, cheerfully, joyously, and leaving the rest undone, instead of straining up to the highest notch of nervous tension during early manhood and womanhood, only to break down when the life forces begin to turn against us? Every man in any position of responsibility and influence has opportunity to do the work of twenty men. How many of us in such circumstances choose the one thing we can do best, and leave the other nineteen for other people to do, or else to remain undone? How many of us have ever seriously stopped to think where the limit of healthful effort and endurance lies, unless insomnia or dyspepsia or nervous prostration have laid their heavy hands upon us and compelled us to pause? Every breakdown from avoidable causes, every stroke of work we do after the border-land of exhaustion and nervous strain is crossed, is a crime against the teaching of Epicurus; and these diseases that beset our modern business life are the penalties with which nature visits us in vindication of the wisdom of his teachings. Every day that we work beyond our strength; every hour that we spend in consequent exhaustion and depression; every minute that we give over to worrying about things beyond our immediate control, we either fall below, or else rise above, Epicurus's level.

If we rise above him, to serve higher ideals, conscious of the sacrifice we make, and clear about the superior ends we gain thereby, then we may be forgiven. What some of those higher ideals are we shall have occasion to consider later. But to work ourselves into depression, disease, and pain, for no better reason than to get high mark in some rank-book or other, to gratify somebody's false vanity, to get together a little more gold than we can spend wisely or our children can inherit without enervation, to live in a bigger house than our neighbour has or we can afford to take care of--to work for such ends as these beyond the point where work is healthy and happy, is to commit a sin which neither Epicurus nor Nature will forgive. With the people who have risen above Epicurus, and are deliberately sacrificing to some extent the Epicurean to one of the higher ideals, as I have said, we have no quarrel; for them we have only hearty commendation. We do not ask the mother whose child is dangerously sick, the statesman in a political crisis, the artist when the conception of his great work comes over him, to heed for the time being the limits of strength and the conditions of completest health. All we ask of them is that later on, when the child has recovered, when the crisis is past, when the picture is painted, they shall reverently and humbly pay to Epicurus, or to Nature whom he represents, the penalty for their sin, by a corresponding period of complete rest and relaxation. We must bear strain at times; and Nature will forgive us if we do not take it too often. But we must not bunch our strains. We must not pass from one strain to another, and another, without periods of relaxation between. We must not let the attitude of strain become chronic, and develop into a moral tetanus, which keeps us forever on the rack of exertion from sheer restless inability to sit down and enjoy ourselves.

What we take from excessive work Epicurus would bid us add to needed play. Play is an arrangement by which we get artificially, in highly concentrated form, the pleasure which in ordinary life is diffused over long periods, and attainable only in attenuated form. Play puts the great fundamental pleasures of the race at the disposal of the individual.

Foot-ball, for instance, gives the student of to-day the essential joy in combat of his barbarian ancestors, with the modern field-marshal's delight in subtle tragedy thrown in. Base-ball gives the intense zest that comes of speed, accuracy, and cunning exercised in emergencies. Golf, in milder form, gives us the pleasure that comes of accuracy of aim and calculation of conditions in good company and in the open air. Billiards give to the clerk cramped all day over his desk the joy of a delicate touch which otherwise would be the exclusive property of his artisan brother. The various games of cards give the mechanic and the housewife a taste at evening of the eager interests that fill the banker's and the broker's days. Checkers and chess give to the humblest in their homes some touch of the pleasures of the general and admiral. Dancing carries to the limit of orderly expression that delight in the person and presence of the opposite sex which otherwise would have to be postponed until youth was able to assume the more serious responsibilities of permanent relationships. Sailing, tramping, camping out, hunting, fishing, mountain climbing, are all devices for bringing into the lives of studious, strenuous, city people the elemental pleasures which otherwise would be the monopoly of sailors, fishermen, foresters, and explorers. Swimming, skating, bicycle riding, driving a horse or an automobile, all give the keen joy that comes of the mastery of graceful and forceful motion.

The theatre, which embodies so distinctively the peculiar essence of play that its performances have appropriated the name, takes us in a couple of hours through the epitomised experience of many persons extending over many years in circumstances far removed from our individual lives. Poetry, novels, biographies, histories, painting, music, and all the forms of art perform for us this same function. They take us out of our local and temporal situation, and let us live in other days and other lands, in other customs and costumes; and so enormously widen the world of experience we imaginatively make our own. Besides in all the forms of play and art the ends are made artificially simple, the means are made supernaturally accessible; so that instead of toiling for years in doubt of results as in actual work, we experience in play, and witness in artistic representation, the whole process of selecting materials and moulding them to a successful issue in a few minutes, or a few hours at most. All this reacts upon our power to prosecute with confidence the remoter ends, and marshal the more obdurate means of real work. It expands and limbers our capacity to subordinate means to ends and find delight in the process as well as in the outcome. Hence a man who goes a year without a considerable period given over to play, or a week without at least one or two solid periods of it, or lets many days go by without any play whatever, is selling his birthright of personality for a mess of pottage. Psychology and pedagogy are recognising the important function of play in the development of personality as never before. Professor Baldwin, in his "Social and Ethical Interpretations," sums up the functions of play in these words: "In the education of the individual for his life-work in a network of social relationships play is a most important form of organic exercise,--a most important method of realisation of the social instincts; gives flexibility of mind and body with self-control; gives constant opportunity for imitative learning and invention, and is the experimental verification of the benefits and pleasures of united action."

III

THE EPICUREAN PRICE OF HAPPINESS

Whoever contracts his work and expands his play, on Epicurean principles, will of course have common sense enough to cut off hurry and worry altogether. Both are sheer waste and wantonness,--the most foolish and wicked things in the whole list of forbidden sins. The Epicurean will live his life in care-tight, worry-proof compartments; working with all his might while he works; and then cutting it off short; never letting the cares of work intrude on the precious precincts of well-earned leisure, or permitting the strain of remembered or anticipated toil to mar the hours sacred to rest and recreation. Some things are bound to go wrong in every life. That is our misfortune. But there is no need of brooding over them in gratuitous grief after they have gone, or dreading them in gloomy anticipation before they come. If either in anticipation or in retrospect these evils are permitted to darken the hours when they are physically absent, that is not our misfortune; it is our folly and our fault.

We hear a great deal in these days about mind cures, and rest cures, and faith cures, and cures by hypnotism, and cures by patent medicines. If anybody needs these cures, of course he is welcome to them; though there is much to be said for the stalwart conservative who refused proffered aid of this sort with the remark that he would rather die in the hands of a skilful physician than be cured by a quack. Strict obedience to the plain, homely doctrine of Epicurus would prevent ninety-nine one hundredths of the physical and mental ailments which these various systems of healing profess to cure. In almost every such case work, or the square of work which is hurry, or the cube of work which is worry, carried beyond the sane limits which Epicurus prescribes, is at the root of trouble. Where it is not work and worry, it is their passive counterparts, grief nursed long after its occasion has gone by, or fear harboured long before its appropriate object has arrived. Cut these off and all the use you will have for either healers or physicians will be on such comparatively rare occasions as birth, death, contagious diseases, and unavoidable accident. You will not be the chronic patient of any doctor regular or irregular; or the consumer of any medicine, patented or prescribed.

Neither useless regrets for the past nor profitless forebodings for the future should ever cast their shadows over the present, which taken in itself is always endurable, and may generally be made positively happy. Memory should be purged of all its unpleasantness before its pictures are permitted to appear before the footlights of reflection; and the searchlight of expectation should always be turned toward the pleasures that are still in store for us. Past and future are mainly in our power, so far as the quality of things we remember and anticipate are concerned. And even the brief and fleeting present is mainly filled by reminiscence and anticipation, so that it too is largely what we please to make it.

"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

If any one of us is not happy all the time, except at the rare instants when toothache, or the news of a friend's illness or death, or a bad turn in our investments takes us by surprise--if happiness is not the dominant tone of our ordinary life, it is simply because we do not want it, in that thoughtful, enterprising, insistent way in which the scholar wants knowledge, or the business man wants money, or the politician wants votes. Whoever is willing to pay the price in prudent planning of his daily pleasures, in relentless exclusion of the enterprises and indulgences that cost more pain than they can return in pleasure; whoever will cut out remorselessly the things in his past life on which he cannot dwell with pleasure, and lop off the considerations which give rise to dread; whoever is willing to pay this Epicurean price for happiness can have it just as soon and just as often as he pays down the cash of a faithful and consistent application of these principles. If any man goes about the world in a chronic unhappiness, it is ninety-nine per cent the fault, not of his circumstances, but of himself. There is not a reader of this book whose circumstances are so black that another person, in those same circumstances, would not find a way to be supremely and dominantly, if not exclusively and continuously, happy. There is not a reader of this book so rich, so blessed with family and friends, so occupied and diverted, but that another person in those same circumstances would be miserable himself, and a source of misery to everybody with whom he came in contact. Epicurus is right, that happiness is up at auction all the time, and sold in lots to suit the purchaser whenever he bids high enough. And the price is not exorbitant: prudence to plan for the simple pleasures that can be had for the asking; resolution to cut off the pleasures that come too high; determination to amputate our reflections the instant they develop morbid symptoms, and to take an anti-toxine against fret and worry, the moment we feel the approach of their contagious atmosphere; concentration, to live in a self-chosen present from which profitless regret and unprofitable anxieties, projected from the past or borrowed from the future, are absolutely banished.

It is high time to treat melancholy, depression, gloom, fretfulness, unhappiness, not merely as diseases, but as the inexcusable follies, the intolerable vices, the unpardonable sins which a sane and wholesome Epicureanism pronounces them to be.

The Epicurean principle, then, forbids us to go whining, whimpering, and weeping through this glorious and otherwise cheery world, making ourselves a burden and nuisance to our friends; and tells us frankly that if we are so much as tempted to such melancholy living, it is because we are too improvident, too slothful, too stupid to cast out these devils, which a little plain fare, hard work, outdoor exercise, vigorous play, and unworried rest would exorcise forever. It bids us put in place of these banished sighs and groans and tears, the laughter, song, and shout that "spin the great wheel of earth about." We may sum it all up in the picture of a worthy Epicurean's day.

After a night of sleep too sound to harbour an unpleasant dream, he greets the hour of rising with a shout and bound, plunges into the bath, meets with gusto the shock it gives, and rejoices in the glow of exhilaration a vigorous rubbing brings; greets the household "with morning face and morning heart," eager to share with the family the meal, the news, the outlook on the day, resolved like Pippa to "waste no wavelet of his twelve-hours' treasure"; then, whether work calls him forth immediately or not, takes a few minutes of brisk walking and deep breathing in the open air until he feels the great forces of earth, air, and sunshine pulsing in his veins; then greets the work of kitchen or factory, office or field, schoolroom or counter, bench or desk with an inward cheer, as something to put forth his surplus energy upon; and through the swift, precious forenoon hours delights in the mastery over difficulty his stored-up power imparts; takes the noon-day meal gayly and leisurely with congenial people; through the early afternoon hours does the lighter portion of the day's work if he must; gets out for an hour or two in the open air if he may, with horse, or wheel, or automobile, or boat, or racket, or golf clubs, or skates, or rod, or gun, or at least a friend and two stout walking shoes; comes to the evening meal in the family circle widened to include a few welcome guests, or at the home of some hospitable host, in garments from which all trace of stain or hint of strain has been removed, to share the best things market and purse afford, served in such wise as to prolong the opportunity for the interchange of wit and banter, cursory discussion and kindly compliment; spends the evening in quiet reading or public entertainment, games with his children or visiting with friends; and then returns again to sleep with such a sense of gratitude for the dear joys of the day as sends an echo of "All's well" down through even the shadowy substance of his unconscious dreams. Surely there are some features of this Epicurean day which we, in our bustling, restless, overelaborated lives, might introduce with great profit to ourselves, and great advantage to the people with whom we are intimately thrown. A series of such days, varied by even happier holidays and Sundays, broken once or twice a year at least by considerable vacations, added together, will make a life which Epicurus says a man may live with satisfaction, and after which he may pass away content.

If there be no other life, let us by all means make the most of this. And if, both here and hereafter, there be a larger life than that perceivable by sense,--as, on deeper grounds than the Epicurean psychology recognises, most of us believe there is,--this healthy, hearty, wholesome determination to live intensely and exclusively in the present is a much more sincere and effective way to develop it than the foolish attempt of a false other-worldliness to anticipate or discount the future, by a half-hearted, far-away affectation of superiority to the simple homely pleasures of to-day.

THE DEFECTS OF EPICUREANISM

Thus far we have pointed out certain valuable elements of truth which Epicureanism contains. Only incidentally have we encountered certain deep defects. Epicurus's "free laugh" at those who attempt to fulfil their political duties, his quiet ignoring of all interests that lie outside his little circle, or reach beyond the grave, his naive remark about the intrinsic harmlessness of wrong-doing, provided only the wrong-doer could escape the fear of being caught, must have made us aware that there are heights of nobleness, depths of devotion, lengths of endurance, breadths of sympathy altogether foreign to this easy-going, pleasure-seeking view of life. Justice requires us to dwell more explicitly on these Epicurean shortcomings. Much that has been charged against the school in the form of swinish sensuality is the grossest slander. Still there are defects in this view of life which are both logically deducible from its premises, and practically visible in the lives of its consistent disciples.

The fundamental defect of Epicureanism is its false definition of personality. According to Epicurus the person is merely a bundle of appetites and passions; and the gratification of these is made synonymous with the satisfaction of himself. But gratifications are short; while appetites are long. The result is that which Schopenhauer has so conclusively pointed out. During the long periods when desire burns unsatisfied, the balance of pleasure is against us. In the comparatively brief and rare intervals when passions are in process of gratification, the balance can never be more than even. Therefore our account with the world at the end of any period, whether a week or a year or a lifetime, is bound to stand as follows: credit, a few rare, brief moments--moments, too, which have long since vanished into nothingness--when appetites and passions were in process of satisfaction. Debit, the vast majority of moments, amounting in the aggregate to almost the total period considered, when appetites and passions were clamouring for a satisfaction that was not forthcoming. The obvious conclusion from the frequent examination of the Epicurean account-book is that which Schopenhauer so triumphantly demonstrates,--pessimism. The sooner we cease doing business on those terms, the less will be the balance of pain, or unsatisfied desire, against us. To be entirely frank, the devotees of Omar Khayyam would have to confess that it is this note of pessimism, despair, and self-pity, at the sorry contrast of the vast unattainable and the petty attained, which is the secret of his unquestionably fascinating lines. Here the blase amusement-seeker finds consolation in the fact that a host of other people are also yielding to the temptation to bury the unwelcome consciousness of a self they cannot satisfy in wine, or any other momentary sensuous titillation that will conceal the sense of their spiritual failure--a failure, however, which they are glad to be assured is shared by so many that the sense of it has been dignified by the name of a philosophy and sung by a poet.

Pleasure cannot be sought directly with success; for pleasure comes indirectly as the effect of causes far higher and deeper and wider than any that are recognised in the Epicurean philosophy. Pleasure comes unsought to those who lose themselves in large intellectual, artistic, social, and spiritual interests. But such noble losing of self without thought of gain is explicitly excluded from the consistent Epicurean creed.

In the picture of the Epicurean life already drawn, while domestic and political life have been presupposed as a background, nothing has been said about the sacrifice which one is called upon to make in the support and defence of a pure home and a free country. That was expressly excluded by Epicurus. Whatever attractiveness there was in the picture of the Epicurean life previously presented was largely due to this background of presupposition that this happy life was lived in a well-ordered and stable family, and in a free and just municipal and national life. In fact it is only as a parasite on these great domestic, social, and political institutions which it does nothing to create or maintain, and much to weaken and destroy, that Epicureanism is even a tolerable account of life. If we now paint our picture of the Epicurean man and woman with this background of domestic and civic life withdrawn, the ugliness and meanness of this parasitic Epicureanism will stare us in the face; and while we ought not to forget the valuable lessons it has to teach us, we shall shrink from the completed picture as a thing of deformity and degradation.

Who then is the consistent Epicurean man? He is the club man, who lives in easy luxury and fares sumptuously every day. Everything is done for him. Servants wait on him. He serves nobody, and is responsible for no one's welfare. He has a congenial set of cronies, loosely attached to be sure; and constantly changing, as matrimony, financial reverses, business engagements, professional responsibilities call one or another of his circle away to a more strenuous life. He is a good fellow, genial, free-handed with his set, indifferent to all who are outside. He generally hires some woman to serve for a few months as the instrument of his passions; only to cast her off to be hired by another and another until in due time she dies, he cares not when or how.

As business men these Epicureans are apt to be easy-going, and therefore failures. As debtors, they are the hardest people in the world from whom to collect a bill. As creditors or landlords they are the most merciless in their exactions. Their devotion to the state is generally confined to betting on the elections; the returns of which they watch with the same interest as the results of a horse-race. Their religion is confined to poking fun at the people who are foolish enough to be going to church while they are at their Sunday morning breakfast.

We all know these Epicureans; we do business with them; we meet them socially; we treat them decently; but it is to be hoped that underneath the smooth exterior we all detect their selfish heartlessness. They have taken a doctrine, which, as applied to the good things which are made to minister to our appetites is sound and true, and have perverted it into a moral monstrosity by daring to treat human hearts and social institutions as mere things, mere instruments of their selfish pleasures.

Epicurean women, likewise, abound in every wealthy community. They spend the winter in Florida, New York, or Washington; dividing the rest of the year between the sea-shore, the mountains, and the lakes, with occasional visits to what they call their homes. They must have the best of everything, and assume no responsibility beyond running up bills for their husbands to pay, or to remain unpaid. Their special paradise is foreign travel, and no pension or hotel along the beaten highways of Europe is without its quota of these precious daughters of Epicurus. They flit hither and thither where least ennui and most diversion allures. Two or three years of this irresponsible existence is sufficient to disqualify them for usefulness either in Europe or America, either here or hereafter. When they return, if they ever do, to their native town or city, the drudgery of housekeeping has become intolerable, the responsibilities of social life unendurable, and their poor husbands are glad enough when the restless fit seizes them again and they can be packed off to Egypt, or Russia, or whatever remote corner of the earth remains for their idle hands and restless feet, their empty minds and hollow hearts, to invade with their unearned gold.

There is no guarantee that the Epicurean will be the chaste husband of one wife, or a faithful mother, or a good provider for the family, or a devoted citizen of the republic, or a strenuous servant of art or science, or a heroic martyr in the cause of progress and reform. If all men were Epicureans, the world would speedily retrograde into the barbarism and animalism whence it has slowly and painfully emerged. The great interests of the family, the state, society, and civilisation are not accurately reflected in the feelings of the individual; and if the individual has no guide but feeling, he will prove a traitor to such of these higher interests as may have the misfortune to be intrusted to his pleasure-loving, self-indulgent, unheroic hands.

There are hard things to do and to endure; and if we are to meet them bravely, we shall have to call the Stoic to our aid. There are sordid and trivial things to put up with, or to rise above, and there we may need at times the Platonist and the mystic to show us the eternal reality underneath the temporal appearance. There are problems of conduct to be solved; conflicting claims to be adjusted; and for this the Aristotelian sense of proportion must be developed in our souls. Finally there are other persons to be considered, and one great Personal Spirit living and working in the world; and for our proper attitude toward these persons, human and divine, we must look to the Christian principle. To meet these higher relationships with no better equipment than Epicureanism offers, would be as foolish as to try to run barefoot across a continent, or swim naked across the sea. Naked, barefoot Epicureanism has its place on the sandy beaches and in the sheltered coves of life; but has no business on the mountain tops or in the depths of human experience.

It will not make a man an efficient workman, or a thorough scholar, or a brave soldier, or a public-spirited citizen. It spoils completely every woman whom it gets hold of, unless at the same time she has firm hold on something better; unless she has a husband and children whom she loves, or work in which she delights for its own sake, or friends and interests dearer than life itself. Epicureanism will not lift either man or woman far toward heaven, or save them in the hour when the pains of hell get hold of them. No home can be reared on it. The divorce court is the logical outcome of every marriage between a man and a woman who are both Epicureans. For it is the very essence of Epicureanism to treat others as means; while no marriage is tolerable unless at least one of the two parties is large and unselfish enough to treat the other as an end. No Epicurean state or city could endure longer than it would take for the men who are in politics for their pockets to plunder the people who are out of politics for the same reason. An Epicurean heaven, a place where eternally each should get his fill of pleasure at the expense of everybody else, would be insufferably insipid, incomparably unendurable. It is fortunate for the fame of Epicurus and the permanence of his philosophy that he evaded the necessity of thinking out the conditions of immortal blessedness by his specious dilemma in which he thought to prove that death ends all. As a temporary parasite upon a political and moral order already established, Epicureanism might thrive and flourish; but as a principle on which to rest a decent society here or a hope of heaven hereafter, Epicureanism is utterly lacking. If there were nothing better than Epicureanism in store for us through the long eternities, we all might well pray to be excused, as Epicurus happily believed we should be. For any ultimate delight in life must be rooted in something deeper than self-centred pleasure: it must love persons and seek ends for their own sake; and find its joy, not in the satisfaction of the man as he is, but in the development of that which his thought and love enable him to become.

AN EXAMPLE OF EPICUREAN CHARACTER

The clearest example of the shortcomings of Epicureanism is the character of Tito Melema in George Eliot's "Romola." Pleasure and the avoidance of pain are this young Greek's only principles. He is "of so easy a conscience that he would make a stepping-stone of his father's corpse." "He has a lithe sleekness about him that seems marvellously fitted for slipping into any nest he fixes his mind on." "He had an unconquerable aversion to any thing unpleasant, even when an object very much loved and admired was on the other side of it." According to his thinking "any maxims that required a man to fling away the good that was needed to make existence sweet, were only the lining of human selfishness turned outward; they were made by men who wanted others to sacrifice themselves for their sake." "He would rather that Baldassarre should not suffer; he liked no one to suffer; but could any philosophy prove to him that he was bound to care for another's suffering more than for his own? To do so, he must have loved Baldassarre devotedly, and he did not love him: was that his own fault? Gratitude! seen closely, it made no valid claim; his father's life would have been dreary without him; are we convicted of a debt to men for the pleasure they give themselves?" "He had simply chosen to make life easy to himself--to carry his human lot if possible in such a way that it should pinch him nowhere; but the choice had at various times landed him in unexpected positions." "Tito could not arrange life at all to his mind without a considerable sum of money, and that problem of arranging life to his mind had been the source of all his misdoing." "He would have been equal to any sacrifice that was not unpleasant." "Of other goods than pleasure he can form no conception." As Romola says in her reproaches: "You talk of substantial good, Tito! Are faithfulness, and love, and sweet grateful memories no good? Is it no good that we should keep our silent promises on which others build because they believe in our love and truth? Is it no good that a just life should be justly honoured? Or, is it good that we should harden our hearts against all the wants and hopes of those who have depended on us? What good can belong to men who have such souls? To talk cleverly, perhaps, and find soft couches for themselves, and live and die with their base selves as their best companions."

This pleasure-loving Tito Melema, "when he was only seven years old, Baldassarre had rescued from blows, had taken to a home that seemed like opened paradise, where there was sweet food and soothing caresses, all had on Baldassarre's knee; and from that time till the hour they had parted, Tito had been the one centre of Baldassarre's fatherly cares." Instead of finding and rescuing this man who, long years ago, had rescued Tito when a little boy from a life of beggary, filth, and cruel wrong, had reared him tenderly and been to him as a father, Tito sold the jewels which belonged to his father and would have been sufficient to ransom him from slavery, and finally, when found by Baldassarre in Florence, denied him and pronounced him a madman. He betrayed an innocent, trusting young girl into a mock marriage, at the same time ruining her and proving false to his lawful wife. He sold the library which it was Romola's father's dying wish to have kept in Florence as a distinct memorial to his life and work. He entered into selfish intrigues in the politics of the city, ready to betray his associates and friends whenever his own safety required it.

What wonder that Romola came to have "her new scorn of that thing called pleasure which made men base--that dexterous contrivance for selfish ease, that shrinking from endurance and strain, when others were bowing beneath burdens too heavy for them, which now made one image with her husband." In her own distress she learns from Savonarola that there is a higher law than individual pleasure. "She felt that the sanctity attached to all close relations, and therefore preeminently to the closest, was but the expression in outward law, of that result toward which all human goodness and nobleness must spontaneously tend; that the light abandonment of ties, whether inherited or voluntary, because they had ceased to be pleasant, was the uprooting of social and personal virtue. What else had Tito's crime toward Baldassarre been but that abandonment working itself out to the most hideous extreme of falsity and ingratitude? To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law to appeal to, but in the face of a law which is not unarmed with Divine lightnings--lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false." The whole teaching of the book is summed up in the Epilogue. In the conversation between Romola and Tito's illegitimate son Lillo, Lillo says, "I should like to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy besides--something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of pleasure."

"That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo--you know why I keep to-morrow sacred; he had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds they are capable of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure, and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.'"

The trouble with Epicureanism is its assumption that the self is a bundle of natural appetites and passions, and that the end of life is their gratification. Experience shows, as in the case of Tito, that such a policy consistently pursued, brings not pleasure but pain--pain first of all to others, and then pain to the individual through their contempt, indignation, and vengeance. The truest pleasure must come through the development within one of generous emotions, kind sympathies, and large social interests. The man must be made over before the pleasures of the new man can be rightly sought and successfully found. This making over of man is no consistent part of the logical Epicurean programme, and consequently pure Epicureanism is sure to land one in the narrowness, selfishness, and heartlessness of a Tito Melema, and to bring upon one essentially the same condemnation and disaster.

Still, not in criticism or unkindness would we take leave of the serene and genial Epicurus. We may frankly recognise his fundamental limitations, and yet gratefully accept the good counsel he has to give. Parasite as it is,--a thing that can only live by sucking its life out of ideals and principles higher and hardier than itself, it is yet a graceful and ornamental parasite, which will beautify and shield the hard outlines of our more strenuous principles. There are dreary wastes in all our lives, into which we can profitably turn those streams of simple pleasure he commends. There are points of undue strain and tension where Epicurean prudence would bid us forego the slight fancied gain to save the ruinous expense to health and happiness. Let us fill up these gaps with hearty indulgence of healthy appetite, with vigorous exercise of dormant powers, with the eager joys of new-learned recreations. Let us tone down the strain and tension of our anxious, worried, worn, and weary lives by the rigid elimination of the superfluous, the strict concentration on the perpetual present, the resolute banishment from it of all past or future springs of depression and discouragement. Before we are through we shall see far nobler ideals than this; but we must not despise the day of small things. Though the lowest and least of them all, the Epicurean is one of the historical ideals of life. It has its claims which none of us may with impunity ignore. To serve him faithfully in the lower spheres of life is a wholesome preparation for the intelligent and reasonable service of Stoic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Christian ideals which rule the higher realms. He who is false to the humble, homely demands of Epicurus can never be quite at his best in the grander service of Zeno and Plato, Aristotle and Jesus.

THE CONFESSIONS OF AN EPICUREAN HERETIC

A heretic is a man who, while professing to hold the tenets of the sect to which he adheres, and sincerely believing that he is in substantial agreement with his more orthodox brethren, yet in his desire to be honest and reasonable, so modifies these tenets as to empty them of all that is distinctive of the sect in question, and thus unintentionally gives aid and comfort to its enemies. Every vigorous and vital school of thought soon or late develops this species of enfant terrible. Like the Christian church, the Epicurean school has been blessed with numerous progeny of this disturbing sort. The one among them all who most stoutly professes the fundamental principles of Epicureanism, and then proceeds to admit pretty much everything its opponents advance against it, is John Stuart Mill. His "Utilitarianism" is a fort manned with the most approved idealistic guns, yet with the Epicurean flag floating bravely over the whole. He "holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and all desirable things are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain." A more square and uncompromising statement of Epicureanism than this it would be impossible to make.

Having thus squarely identified himself with the Epicurean school, Mr. Mill proceeds to add to this doctrine in turn the doctrines of each one of the four schools which we are to consider later. First he introduces a distinction in the kind of pleasure, "assigning to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation." When asked what he means by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, although he tells us there is but one possible answer, he gives us two or three. First he appeals to the verdict of competent judges. "Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account."

This appeal to competent judges, or, in other words, to authority, involves no philosophical principle at all unless we may call the doctrine of papal infallibility, to which this appeal of Mill is essentially akin, a principle. If these judges are competent, there must be a reason for the preference they give. In the next paragraph Mill tells us what that principle is; but in doing so introduces the principle of the subordination of lower to higher faculties, which we shall see later is the distinguishing principle of Plato. On this point Mill is as clear as Plato himself. "Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he, for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and is certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence." This appeal to quality rather than quantity of pleasure puts Mill, in spite of himself, squarely on Platonic ground and abandons consistent Epicureanism. An illustration will make this clear. A man professes that money is his supreme end, the only thing he cares for in the world; he tells us that whatever he does is done for money, and whenever he refrains from doing anything it is to avoid losing money. So far he puts his conduct on a consistently mercenary basis. Suppose, however, that in the next sentence he tells us that he prizes certain kinds of money. If we ask him what is the basis of the distinction, he replies that he prizes money honestly earned and despises money dishonestly acquired. Should we not at once recognise, that in spite of his original declaration, he is not the consistently mercenary being he professed himself to be? The fact that he prefers honest to dishonest money shows that honesty, not money, is his real principle; and, in spite of his original profession, this distinction lifts him out of the class of mercenary money lovers into the class of men whose real principle is not money but honesty. Precisely so Mill's confession that he cares for the height and dignity of the faculties employed rather than the quantity of pleasure gained lifts him out of the Epicurean school to which he professes adherence and makes him an idealist.

When asked for an explanation of his preference of higher to lower, Mill at once shifts to Stoic ground in the following sentences: "We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; we may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it; but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or another, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their highest faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness--that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior--confounds the two very different ideas of happiness and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which we can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides."

When pressed for a sanction of motive Mill appeals to the Aristotelian principle that the individual can only realise his conception of himself through union with his fellows in society: to the social nature of man and his inability to find himself in any smaller sphere, or through devotion to any lesser end. "This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become stronger, even without express inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilisation. The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body; and this association is riveted more and more, as mankind are farther removed from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. In this way people grow up unable to conceive as possible to them a state of total disregard of other people's interests. They are under a necessity of conceiving themselves as at least abstaining from all the grosser injuries, and (if only for their own protection) living in a state of constant protest against them. They are also familiar with the fact of cooeperating with others, and proposing to themselves a collective, not an individual, interest, as the aim (at least for the time being) of their actions. So long as they are cooeperating, their ends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only does all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of society, give to each individual a stronger personal interest in practically consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an ever greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to. This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilisation goes on, is felt to be more and more natural. Every step in political improvement renders it more so by removing the sources of opposition of interest, and levelling those inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing to which there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still practicable to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. The deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition of education, or a law despotically imposed by the power of society, but as an attribute which it would not be well for them to be without."

Lastly Mill introduces the Christian ideal. "As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as one's self, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality." In his attempt to prove the Christian obligation on an Epicurean basis the inconsistency between his Epicurean principle and his Christian preaching and practice becomes evident. Master of logic as Mill was, an author of a standard text-book on the subject, yet so desperate was the plight in which his attempt to stretch Epicureanism to Christian dimensions placed him, that he was compelled to resort to the following fallacy of composition, the fallaciousness of which every student of logic recognises at a glance. "Happiness is a good; each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons." As Carlyle has pointed out, this is equivalent to saying, since each pig wants all the swill in the trough for itself, a litter of pigs in the aggregate will desire each member of the litter to have its share of the whole,--a fallacy which a single experience in feeding pigs will sufficiently refute. It requires something deeper and higher than Epicurean principles to lift men to a plane where Christian altruism is the natural and inevitable conduct which Mill rightly says it ought to be.

These confessions of an Epicurean heretic, wrung from a man who had been rigidly trained by a stern father in Epicurean principles, yet whose surpassing candour compelled him to make these admissions, so fatal to the system, so ennobling to the man and to the doctrine he proclaimed, serve as an admirable preparation for the succeeding chapters, where these same principles, which Mill introduces as supplements, and modifications, and amendments to Epicureanism, will be presented as the foundation-stones of larger and deeper views of life. Mill starts with a jack-knife which he publicly proclaims to be in every part of the handle and in every blade through and through Epicurean; then gets a new handle from the Stoics; borrows one blade from Plato, and another from Aristotle; unconsciously steals the biggest blade of all from Christianity; makes one of the best knives to be found on the moral market: yet still, in loyalty to early parental training, insists on calling the finished product by the same name as that with which he started out. The result is a splendid knife to cut with; but a difficult one to classify. Our quest for the principles of personality will not bring us anything much better, for practical purposes, than the lofty teaching of Mill's "Utilitarianism," and its companion in inconsistency, Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Ethics." All our five principles are present in these so-called hedonistic treatises. But it is a great theoretical advantage, and ultimately carries with it considerable practical gain, to give credit where credit is due, and to call things by their right names. Thanks to the candour of these heretics, though the names we encounter hereafter will be new, we shall greet most of the principles we discover under these new names as old friends to whom the Epicurean heretics gave us our first introduction.