CHAPTER XIX.. The Moral Science of the Epicureans. General Principles.

THE MORAL SCIENCE OF THE EPICUREANS. GENERAL PRINCIPLES.

Natural science is intended to overcome the prejudices which stand in the way of happiness; moral science to give positive instruction as to the nature and means of attaining to happiness. The speculative parts of the Epicurean system had already worked out the idea that reality belongs only to individual things, and that all general order must be referred to the accidental harmony of individual forces. The same idea is now met with in the sphere of morals, individual feeling being made the standard, and individual well-being the object of all human activity. Natural science, beginning with external phenomena, went back to the secret principles of these phenomena, accessible only to thought. It led from an apparently accidental movement of atoms to a universe of regular motions. Not otherwise was the course followed by Epicurus in moral science. Not content with human feelings alone, nor with selfishly referring everything to the individual taken by himself alone, that science, in more accurately defining the conception of well-being, ascertained that the same can only be found by rising superior to feelings and purely individual aims, in short by that very process of referring consciousness to itself and its universal being, which the Stoics declared to be the only path to happiness. It is for us now to portray this development of the Epicurean philosophy in its most prominent features.

The only unconditional good, according to Epicurus, is pleasure; the only unconditional evil is pain. No proof of this proposition seemed to him to be necessary; it rests on a conviction supplied by nature herself, and is the ground and basis of all our doing and not doing. If proof, however, were required, he appealed to the fact that all living beings from the first moment of their existence pursue pleasure and avoid pain, and that consequently pleasure is a natural good, and the normal condition of every being. Hence follows the proposition to which Epicurus in common with all the philosophers of pleasure appealed, that pleasure must be the object of life.

At the same time, this proposition was restricted in the Epicurean system by several considerations. In the first place, neither pleasure nor pain is a simple thing. There are many varieties and degrees of pleasure and pain, and the case may occur in which pleasure has to be secured by the loss of other pleasures, or even by pain, or in which pain can only be avoided by submitting to another pain, or at the cost of some pleasure. In this case Epicurus would have the various feelings of pleasure and pain carefully weighed, and in consideration of the advantages and disadvantages which they confer, would under circumstances advise the good to be treated as an evil, and the evil as a good. He would have pleasure forsworn if it would entail a greater corresponding pain, and pain submitted to if it holds out the prospect of greater pleasure. He also agrees with Plato in holding that every positive pleasure presupposes a want, i.e. a pain which it proposes to remove; and hence he concludes that the real aim and object of all pleasure consists in obtaining freedom from pain, and that the good is nothing else but emancipation from evil. By a Cyrenaic neither repose of soul nor freedom from pain, but a gentle motion of the soul or positive pleasure was proposed as the object of life; and hence happiness was not made to depend on man’s general state of mind, but on the sum-total of his actual enjoyments. But Epicurus, advancing beyond this position, recognised both the positive and the negative side of pleasures, both pleasure as repose, and pleasure as motion. Both aspects of pleasure, however, do not stand on the same footing in his system. On the contrary, the essential and immediate cause of happiness is repose of mind—ἀταραξία. Positive pleasure is only an indirect cause of ἀταραξία in that it removes the pain of unsatisfied craving. This mental repose, however, depends essentially on the character of a man’s mind, just as conversely positive pleasure in systems so materialistic must depend on sensuous attractions. It was consistent, therefore, on the part of Aristippus to consider bodily gratification the highest pleasure; and conversely Epicurus was no less consistent in subordinating it to gratification of mind.

In calling pleasure the highest object in life, says Epicurus, we do not mean the pleasures of profligacy, nor indeed sensual enjoyments at all, but the freedom of the body from pain, and the freedom of the soul from disturbance. Neither feasts nor banquets, neither the lawful nor unlawful indulgence of the passions, nor the joys of the table, make life happy, but a sober judgment, investigating the motives for action and for inaction, and dispelling those greatest enemies of our peace, prejudices. The root from which it springs,

and, therefore, the highest good, is intelligence. It is intelligence that leaves us free to acquire possession thereof, without being ever too early or too late. Our indispensable wants are simple, little being necessary to ensure freedom from pain; other things only afford change in enjoyment, by which the quantity is not increased, or else they rest on a mere sentiment. The little we need may be easily attained. Nature makes ample provision for our happiness, would we only receive her gifts thankfully, not forgetting what she gives in thinking what we desire. He who lives according to nature is never poor; the wise man living on bread and water has no reason to envy Zeus; chance has little hold on him; with him judgment is everything, and if that be right, he need trouble himself but little about external mishaps. Not even bodily pain appeared to Epicurus so irresistible as to be able to cloud the wise man’s happiness. Although he regards as unnatural the Stoic’s insensibility to pain, still he is of opinion that the wise man may be happy on the rack, and can smile at pains the most violent, exclaiming in the midst of torture, How sweet! A touch of forced sentiment may be discerned in the last expression, and a trace of self-satisfied exaggeration is manifest even in the beautiful language of the dying philosopher on the pains of disease. Nevertheless, the principle involved is based in the spirit of the Epicurean philosophy, and borne out by the testimony of the founder. The main thing, according to Epicurus, is not the state of the body, but the state of the mind; bodily pleasure being of short duration, and having much about it to unsettle; mental enjoyments only being pure and incorruptible. For the same reason mental sufferings are more severe than those of the body, since the body only suffers from present ills, whilst the soul feels those past and those to come. In a life of limited duration the pleasures of the flesh never attain their consummation. Mind only, by consoling us for the limited nature of our bodily existence, can produce a life complete in itself, and not standing in need of unlimited duration.

At the same time, the Epicureans, if consistent with their principles, could not deny that bodily pleasure is the earlier form, and likewise the ultimate source, of all pleasure, and neither Epicurus nor his favourite pupil Metrodorus shrank from making this admission; Epicurus declaring that he could form no conception of the good apart from enjoyments of the senses; Metrodorus asserting that everything good has reference to the belly. For all that the Epicureans did not feel themselves driven to give up the pre-eminence which they claimed for goods of the soul over those of the body. Did even the Stoics, notwithstanding the grossness of their theory of knowledge, ever abate their demand for a knowledge of conceptions; or cease to subordinate the senses to reason, although they built their theory of morals on nature? But all definite character has vanished from these intellectual joys and pains. The only distinctive feature which they possess is the addition either of memory, or of hope, or of fear to the present feeling of pleasure or pain; and their greater importance is simply ascribed to the greater force or duration belonging to ideal feelings as compared with the attractions which momentarily impress the senses. Incidentally the remembrance of philosophic discourses is mentioned as a counterpoise to bodily pain; properly speaking, mental pleasures and pains are not different from other pleasures in kind, but only in degree, by reason of their being stronger and more enduring. Accordingly Epicurus cannot escape the admission that we have no cause for rejecting gross and carnal enjoyments if these can liberate us from the fear of higher powers, of death, and of sufferings; and thus the only consolation he can offer in pain is the uncertain one that the most violent pains either do not last long, or else put an end to life; and the less violent ones ought to be endured since they do not exclude a counterbalancing pleasure. Hence victory over the impression of the moment must be won, not so much by mental force stemming the tide of feeling, as by a proper estimate of the conditions and actions of the senses.

In no other way can the necessity of virtue be established in the Epicurean system. Agreeing with the strictest moralists, so far as to hold that virtue can be as little separated from happiness as happiness from virtue, having even the testimony of opponents as to the purity and integrity of his moral teaching, which in its results differed in no wise from that of the Stoics; Epicurus, nevertheless, holds a position of strong contrast to the Stoics in respect of the grounds on which his moral theory is based. To demand virtue for its own sake seemed to him a mere phantom of the imagination. Those only who make pleasure their aim have a real object in life. Virtue has only a conditional value as a means to happiness; or, as it is otherwise expressed, Virtue taken by itself does not render a man happy, but the pleasure arising from the exercise of virtue. This pleasure the Epicurean system does not seek in the consciousness of duty fulfilled, or of virtuous action, but in the freedom from disquiet, fear, and dangers, which follows as a consequence from virtue. Wisdom and intelligence contribute to happiness by liberating us from the fear of the Gods and of death, by making us independent of immoderate passions and vain desires, by teaching us to bear pain as something subordinate and passing, and by pointing the way to a more cheerful and natural life. Self-control aids, in that it points out the attitude to be assumed towards pleasure and pain, so as to receive the maximum of enjoyment and the minimum of suffering; valour, in that it enables us to overcome fear and pain; justice, in that it makes life possible without that fear of Gods and men, which ever haunts the transgressor. To the Epicurean virtue is never an end in itself, but only a means to an end lying beyond—a happy life—but withal a means so certain and necessary, that virtue can neither be conceived without happiness, nor happiness without virtue. However unnecessary it may seem, still Epicurus would ever insist that an action to be right must be done not according to the letter, but according to the spirit of the law, not simply from regard to others, or by compulsion, but from delight in what is good.

The same claims were advanced by Epicurus on behalf of his wise man as the Stoics had urged on behalf of theirs. Not only does he attribute to him a control over pain, in nothing inferior to the Stoic insensibility of feeling, but he endeavours himself to describe the wise man’s life as most perfect and satisfactory in itself. Albeit not free from emotions, and in particular susceptible to the higher feelings of the soul such as compassion, the wise man finds his philosophic activity in no wise thereby impaired. Without despising enjoyment, he is altogether master of his desires, and knows how to restrain them by intelligence, so that they never exercise a harmful influence on life. He alone has an unwavering certainty of conviction; he alone knows how to do the right thing in the right way; he alone, as Metrodorus observes, knows how to be thankful. Nay, more, he is so far exalted above ordinary men, that Epicurus promises his pupils that, by carefully observing his teaching, they will dwell as Gods among men; so little can destiny influence him, that he calls him happy under all circumstances. Happiness may, indeed, depend on certain external conditions; it may even be allowed that the disposition to happiness is not found in every nature, nor in every person; but still, when it is found, its stability is sure, nor can time affect its duration. For wisdom—so Epicurus and the Stoics alike believed—is indestructible, and the wise man’s happiness can never be increased by time. A life, therefore, bounded by time can be quite as complete as one not so bounded.

Different as are the principles and the tone of the systems of the Stoics and of Epicurus, one and the same tendency may yet be traced in both—the tendency which characterises all the post-Aristotelian philosophy—the desire to place man in a position of absolute independence by emancipating him from connection with the external world, and by awakening in him the consciousness of the infinite freedom of thought.