CHAPTER XIII.

The Religious Attitude and Moral Teaching of Lucretius.

Lucretius does not enforce his moral teaching on the systematic plan on which his physical philosophy is discussed. His view of human life is sometimes presented as it arises in the regular course of the argument, at other times in highly finished digressions, interspersed throughout the work with the view apparently of breaking its severe monotony. These passages might be compared to the lyrical odes in a Greek drama. They afford relief to the strained attention, and suggest the close and permanent human interest involved in what is apparently special, abstract, and remote. There is no necessary connexion between the atomic theory of philosophy, and that view of the end and objects of life which Lucretius derived from Epicurus. Although the moral attitude of Epicurus was, in some respects, anticipated by Democritus, Epicureanism really started from independent sources, viz. from the later development of the ethical teaching of Socrates, and from the personal circumstances and disposition of Epicurus. By the ordinary Epicurean his philosophy was valued chiefly as affording a basis for the denial of the doctrines of Divine Providence and of the immortality of the soul. But there is a wide difference between ordinary Epicureanism and that solemn view of human life which was revealed to the world in the poem of Lucretius. The power which his speculative philosophy exercised over his mind was one cause of this difference. Although there is no necessary connexion between his philosophical convictions and his ethical doctrines, yet the elevation of feeling which he has imparted to the least elevated of all the moral systems of antiquity may be in part accounted for by the influence of ideas derived from the philosophy of Democritus.

Epicureanism, in its original form, was the expression of a character as unlike as possible to that of Lucretius. It arose in a state of society and under circumstances widely different from the social and political condition of the last phase of the Roman Republic. It was a doctrine suited to the easy social life which succeeded to the great political career, the energetic ambition, and the creative genius which ennobled the great age of Athenian liberty. It was essentially the philosophy of the ῥεῖα ζώοντες, who found in refined and regulated pleasure, in friendliness and sociability, a compensation for the loss of political existence, and of the sacred associations and ideal glories of their ancestral religion. Human life, stripped of its solemn meaning and high practical interest, was supposed to be understood and realised, and brought under the control of a comfortable and intelligible philosophy. Pleasure was the obvious end of existence; the highest aim of knowledge was to ascertain the conditions under which most enjoyment could be secured; the triumph of the will was to conform to these conditions. All violent emotion, all care and anxiety, whatever impaired the capacity of enjoyment or fostered artificial desire, was to be controlled or resisted, as inimical to the tranquillity of the soul. The philosophers of the garden taught and acted on the practical truth, that pleasure depended on the mind more than on external things; that a simple life tended more to happiness than luxury [¹]; that excess of every kind was followed by reaction. They inculcated political quiescence as well as the abnegation of personal ambition. As death was 'the end of all,' life was to be temperately enjoyed while it lasted, and resigned when necessary, with cheerful composure.

Such a philosophy would scarcely be thought capable of having given birth to any form of serious and elevated poetry. Its natural fruit was the refined, cheerful, and witty new comedy of Athens. Yet the genius of Lucretius and of Horace expressed these doctrines in tones of dignity and beauty, which have been denied to more ennobling truths. The philosophy of pleasure thus makes its appeal to the poetical susceptibility, as well as to the ordinary temperament of men. It might have been thought also that no philosophy would have been less attractive to the dignity of the nobler type, or to the coarser texture of the common type of Roman character. Yet among the Romans of the last age of the Republic, Epicureanism was a formidable rival to the more congenial system of Stoicism, and was professed by men of pure character and intellectual tastes as well as by men like the Piso Caesoninus, of whom both Cicero and Catullus have left so unflattering a portrait. These two systems, although antagonistic in their view and aim, yet had this common adaptation to the Roman character, that they held out a definite plan of life, and laid down precepts by which that life might be attained. The strength of will and singleness of aim, characteristic of the Romans, their love of rule and impatience of speculative suspense, inclined and enabled them to embrace the teaching of those schools whose tenets were most definite and most readily applicable to human conduct. To a Greek philosopher the interest of conforming his life to any system arose in a great measure from the freedom and exercise thereby afforded to his intellect. Thus Epicurus, in denying the power of luxury to give happiness, says,—'These are not the things which form the life of pleasure,'—' ἀλλὰ νήφων λογισμὸς καὶ τὰς αἰτίας ἐξερευνῶν πάσης αἱρέσεως καὶ φυγῆς, καὶ τὰς δόξας ἐξελαύνων, ἀφ' ὧν πλεῖστος τὰς ψυχὰς καταλαμβάνει θόρυβος [²].' To a Roman, on the other hand, such a scheme of life was recommended by the new power which was thus imparted to the will. Greek philosophy has sometimes been reproached as the cause of the corruption of Roman character and the decay of Roman religion. But it would be more true to say that, to the higher natures at least, philosophy supplied the place of the ancient principles of duty, which had long since decayed with the decay of patriotism and religion. The idea of regulating life by an ideal standard afforded a broader aim and a more humane and liberal sphere of action to that self-control and constancy of will, out of which, in combination with absolute devotion to the State, the ancient Roman virtue had been formed. But still it is true that the principles of Epicureanism were difficult to reconcile with some of the conditions, both good and bad, of Roman character. While fostering the humaner feelings and more social tastes, and so softening the primitive rudeness and austerity, these doctrines tended to discourage national and political spirit, by withdrawing the energies of the will from outward activity to the regulation of the inner life. The attitude both of Stoicism and Epicureanism was one of resistance on the part of the will to outward influences;—the one system striving to attain entire independence of circumstances, the other to regulate life in accordance with them, so as to secure the utmost positive enjoyment, and the utmost exemption from pain. The political passions of the last age of the Republic inclined men of thought and leisure to that philosophy which seemed best fitted to meet and satisfy—

'The longing for confirmed tranquillity

Inward and outward.'

But while Epicureanism was a natural refuge from the passions of a revolutionary era, Stoicism was a fortress of inward strength to the few who, at the fall of the Republic, resisted the manifest tendency of things, and, in a later age, to those who strove to maintain the dignity of Roman citizens under the degradation of the early Empire.

But the profession of Epicureanism, in the last age of the Republic, was not confined to men like Atticus and Lucretius who stood aloof from public life. The existence of Cassius, who acted and suffered for the same cause as the Stoic Cato, shows that political apathy, although theoretically required by this philosophy, was not essential to a Roman Epicurean. Lucretius, though animated by an ardent spirit of proselytism, does not desire that Memmius should forget his duties as a citizen and statesman. The denial of the Divine interference in human affairs and of the doctrine of a future state was the essential bond of agreement among the adherents of Epicureanism. The religious unsettlement of the age assumed in them a positive form. They were the Sadducees of Rome, who escaped from the perplexity as well as from the most elevating influences of life, by moulding their feelings and conduct on the firm conviction, that while man was master of his happiness in this world, he had nothing either to hope or fear after death.

It seems a strange result of the moral confusion of that time to find the enthusiasm of Lucretius springing from this denial of what from the days of Plato have been regarded as the highest hopes of mankind. No writer of antiquity was more profoundly impressed by the serious import and mystery of life. Yet he appears as the unhesitating advocate of all the tenets of this philosophy, and denies the foundations of religious belief with a zeal more like religious earnestness than the spirit of any other writer of antiquity. Without conscious deviation from the teaching of his master, he reproduces the calm unimpassioned doctrines of Epicurus, in a new type,—earnest, austere, and ennobled; enforcing them not for the sake of ease or for the love of pleasure, but in the cause of truth and human dignity. Pleasure is indeed recognised by him as the universal law or condition of existence—'dux vitae dia voluptas,'—the great instrument of Nature through which all life is created and maintained. But the real object of his teaching is to obtain not active pleasure, but peace and a 'pure heart.' 'For life,' he says, 'may go on without corn or wine, but not without a pure heart—

At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi.

All that Nature craves is that the body should be free from actual pain, and that the mind, undisturbed by fear and anxiety, should be open to the influence of natural enjoyment—'

Nonne videre

Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut, cui

Corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur

Iucundo sensu cura semotu' metuque [³]?

Although in different places he indicates a genuine appreciation of the charms of art,—in the form of music, paintings, statues, etc.,— yet he expresses or implies an independence of all the adventitious stimulants to enjoyment. The only needful pleasure is that which Nature herself bestows on a mind free from care, passion, violent emotion, restless discontent, and slothful apathy.

Although no new principle or maxim of conduct appears in his teaching, the view of human life presented by Lucretius was really something new in the world. A strong and deep flood of serious thought and feeling was for the first time poured into the shallow channel of Epicureanism. The spirit in which Lucretius contemplated the world was different from that of any other man of antiquity; especially different from that of his master in philosophy. To the one human life was a pleasant sojourn, which should be temperately enjoyed and gracefully terminated at the appointed time: to the other it was the more sombre and tragic side of the august spectacle which all Nature presents to the contemplative mind. Moderation in enjoyment was the practical lesson of the one: fortitude and renunciation were the demands which the other made of all who would live worthily.

This difference in the spirit, rather than the letter, of their philosophy is to be attributed in some degree to this, that Lucretius was a Roman of the antique type of Ennius, born with the passionate heart of a poet, and inheriting the resolute endurance of the great patrician families. Partly too, as was said before, the effect of the speculative philosophy which he embraced was to deepen and strengthen that mood of imaginative contemplation, which he shares, not with any of his countrymen, but with a few great thinkers of the world. It is his philosophical enthusiasm which distinguishes the teaching of Lucretius from the meditative and practical wisdom which has made Horace the favourite Epicurean teacher and companion of modern times. Partly too, as was said in a former chapter, this new aspect of Epicureanism in Lucretius may be attributed to the reaction of his nature from the confusion of the times in which he lived.

It is not indeed possible to learn whether the passions of his age first drove him to Epicureanism, or whether the doctrines of that philosophy, adopted on speculative grounds, may not rather have led him to regard his age in the spirit of contemplative isolation, which he has described in the well-known passage—

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, etc.

His philosophy may have been forced on him by personal experience, or the intimations of experience may have assumed their form and colour from the nature of his philosophy. But the memories of his youth and the experience of things witnessed in his manhood did undoubtedly colour all his thoughts and feelings on human life. Some of the forms of evil against which he contends had never been so prominently displayed before. Yet all these considerations afford only a partial explanation of the character of his practical philosophy. There were other Roman Epicureans, contemporary with him and later, and none are known to have been in any way like him. Although his nature was made of the strong Roman fibre; although his mind had been deeply imbued with the spirit of Greek philosophy; although his view of life was necessarily coloured by the action of his times; yet all these considerations go but a little way to explain his attitude of mind and the work which he accomplished in the world. Over all these considerations this predominates, that he was a man of great original and individual force, and one who in power and sincerity of thought and feeling rose higher than any other above the level of his age and country.

The moral teaching of the poem was rather an active protest against various forms of evil than the proclamation of a positive good. The happiness which the philosophic life promised is described in vague outline, like the delineation given of the calm and passionless existence of the Gods. Epicureanism appears here in antagonism to the prejudice and ignorance, the weakness and the passions of human nature, rather than in its hold of any positive good. Hence it is that the tones of Lucretius might in many places be mistaken for those of a Stoic rather than an Epicurean. In their resistance to the common forms of evil these systems were at one. Perhaps, too, in the positive good at which he aimed, the spirit of Lucretius was more that of a Stoic than he imagined. His sense of human dignity was much more powerful than his regard for human enjoyment. Yet his philosophy enabled him, along with the strength of Stoicism, to cherish humaner sympathies. While his earnest temper, his scorn of weakness, his superiority to pleasure were in harmony with the militant rather than the quiescent attitude of each of these philosophies, his humanity and tenderness of feeling and the enjoyment which he derived from Nature and art were more in harmony with the better side of Epicureanism than with the formal teaching of the Porch.

The evils of life, for the cure of which Lucretius considers his philosophy available, appeared to him to spring not out of man's relation to Nature, but out of the weakness of his reason and the corruption of his heart. The great service of Epicurus consisted not only in revealing the laws of Nature, but in laying his finger on the secret cause of man's unhappiness. Observing the insufficiency of all external goods to bestow peace and contentment, he saw that the evil lay in the vessel into which these blessings were poured:—

Intellegit ibi vitium vas efficere ipsum

Omniaque illius vitio corrumpier intus,

Quae conlata foris et commoda cumque venirent;

Partim quod fluxum pertusumque esse videbat,

Ut nulla posset ratione explerier umquam;

Partim quod taetro quasi conspurcare sapore

Omnia cernebat, quaecumque receperat, intus [⁴].

The evils which vitiate our happiness are the cowardice which dares not accept the blessings of life, the weakness which repines at what is inevitable, the restless desires which cannot enjoy the present and crave for what is beyond their reach, the apathy and insensibility to natural enjoyment, which are the necessary consequence of luxurious indulgence. Thus the aim of his moral teaching was to purify the heart from superstition, from the fear of death, from the passions of ambition and of love, from all artificial pleasures and desires.

The greatest of these evils and the mainspring of all human misery is superstition. It is this which surrounds life with the gloom of death—

Omnia suffundens mortis nigrore [⁵].

Against the arbitrary and cruel power, supposed to be exercised by the Gods, Lucretius proclaimed internecine war. The fear of this power is denounced, not as a restraint on natural inclination, but as a base and intolerable burden, degrading life, confounding all genuine feeling, corrupting our ideas of what is holiest and most divine. The pathetic story of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is told to enforce the antagonism between the exactions of religious belief and the most sacred human affections. Every line of the poem is indirectly a protest against the religious errors of antiquity. At occasional intervals this protest is directly uttered, sometimes with indignant irony, at other times with the profoundest pathos. The first feeling breaks forth in the passage at vi. 380, etc., where he argues against the fancies which attribute thunder to the capricious anger of the Gods. 'Why is it,' he asks, 'that the bolts pass over the guilty and often strike the innocent? Why are they idly spent on desert places? Is this done by the Gods merely in the way of practice and exercise for their arms? Why is it that Jupiter never hurls his bolts in a clear sky? Does he descend into the clouds in order that his aim may be surer? Why does he cast his bolts into the sea? What charge has he against the waves and the waste of waters?

Quid undas

Arguit et liquidam molem camposque natantis [⁶]?

Why is it that he often destroys and disfigures his own temples and images?'

Elsewhere, however, he is moved by a feeling deeper than scorn,—a feeling of true reverence, springing from a high ideal of the attitude which it became man to maintain in presence of a superior nature. There is no passage in the poem in which he speaks more from the depths of his heart than in the lines—

O genus infelix humanum, talia divis

Cum tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas!

Quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis

Volnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris!

Nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri

Vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras

Nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas

Ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo

Spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota,

Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri [⁷].

The terrors of the popular mythology are denounced as a violation of the majesty of the Gods, as well as the cause of infinite evil to ourselves,—not indeed because any thought or act of ours has the power to rouse the Divine anger, but from the effect that these feelings have on our own minds. 'No longer can we approach the temples of the Gods with a quiet heart, nor receive into our minds the intimations of the Divine nature in peace'—

Nec delubra deum placido cum pectore adibis,

Nec de corpore quae sancto simulacra feruntur

In mentes hominum divinae nuntia formae

Suscipere haec animi tranquilla pace valebis [⁸].

This passage and others in the poem imply that Lucretius both believed in the existence of Gods, and conceived of them as revealing themselves through direct impressions to the mind of man, and filling it with solemn awe and peace. But the account which he gives of their eternal existence is vague and poetical, and might almost be regarded as a symbolical expression of what seemed to him most holy and divine in man. The highest aim of man is to 'lead a life worthy of the Gods': the essential attribute of the divine life is 'peace.' The Gods are said to consist of the finest and purest essence, to be exempt from death, decay, and wasting passions, to be supplied with all things by the liberal bounty of Nature, and to dwell for ever in untroubled serenity above the darkness and the storms of our world. Their abode in the spaces betwixt different worlds—(the 'intermundia' as they are called by Cicero),—is described in words almost literally translated from the description of the Heaven of the Odyssey—

Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae

Quas neque concutiunt venti nec nubila nimbis

Aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina

Cana cadens violat semperque innubilus aether

Integit, et large diffuso lumine rident [⁹].

They reveal themselves to man in dreams and waking visions by images of ampler size and more august aspect than that of our mortal condition. Fear and ignorance have assigned to these unchanging forms the functions of creating and governing the world, and out of this fear have arisen all over the earth temples and altars, along with the festivals and the solemn rites of superstition. But the Gods are neither the arbitrary tyrants nor the beneficent guardians of the world. Why should they have done anything for the benefit of man? How can he add to or detract from their eternal happiness? Shall we suppose them weary of their existence, and infected with a human passion for change?—

At, credo, in tenebris vita ac maerore iacebat,

Donec diluxit rerum genitalis origo.

Whence could they have obtained the idea of creation, whence gathered the secret powers of matter—

Si non ipsa dedit specimen natura creandi?

Against the old argument from final causes he opposes that drawn from the imperfections of the world, such as the waste of Nature's resources on vast tracts of mountain and forest, on desolate marshes, rocks, and seas,—the enmity to man of other occupants of the earth,—the malign influences of climate and the seasons,—the feebleness of infancy,—the devastations of disease,—the untimeliness of early death [¹⁰].

While his belief in the Gods is thus expressed in vague outline and poetical symbolism, yet it is clear that as he recognised a secret, orderly, and omnipotent power in Nature, so also he recognised the ideal of a purer and serener life than that of earthly existence. These two elements in all true religion, a reverential acknowledgment of a universal power and order, and a sense of a diviner life with which man may have communion, were part of the being of Lucretius. His denial of supernatural beliefs extended not only to all the fables and false conceptions of ancient mythology, but to the doctrine of a Divine Providence recompensing men, here or hereafter, according to their actions. The intensity of his nature led him to identify all religion with the cruel or childish fables of the popular faith. The certainty with which he grasped the truth of the laws and order of Nature was incompatible with the only conception he could form of a Divine action on the world. His deep sense of human rights and deep sympathy with human feeling rebelled against a belief in Powers exercising a capricious tyranny over the world, and exacting human sacrifice as a propitiation of their offended majesty. His reverence for truth and his sense of the power and mystery of Nature led him to scorn the virtue attributed to an idolatrous and formal worship. This attitude of religious isolation, not more from his own time than from the subsequent course of thought, in a man of unusual sincerity and earnestness of feeling, is certainly among the most impressive phenomena of ancient literature. The spirit in which he denies the beliefs of the world is far from resembling the triumph of a cold philosophy over the religious associations of mankind. He is moved even to a kind of poetical sympathy with some of the ceremonies and symbols of Paganism. A sense of religious awe,—a sympathetic recognition of the power of religious emotion over the hearts of men,—is expressed, for instance, in the lines which describe the procession of Cybele through the great cities and nations of the world. While guarding himself against the pollution of a base idolatry, he yet acknowledges not only the power of religious associations to entwine themselves with human affections, but the intrinsic power of the truths symbolised in that worship; viz. the truth of the majesty of Nature, and of the duties arising from the elemental affections to parents and country. In regard to all his religious impressions his intensity of feeling and imagination seems to place him on a solitary height, nearly as far apart from the followers of his own school as from their adversaries [¹¹].

The same strength of heart and mind characterises that passage of sustained and impassioned feeling, in which Lucretius encounters the thought of eternal death. The vast spiritual difference between the Roman poet and the Greek philosopher is apparent when we contrast the cold, unsympathetic language of the epistle to Menœceus with the fervent and profoundly human tones of the third book of the poem of Lucretius. Epicurus escapes from the fear of death through a placid indifference of feeling, an easy contentment with the comforts of this life, a sense of relief in getting rid of 'the longing for immortality' ( τὸν τῆς ἀθανασίας πόθον). Lucretius, while realising the full pathos and solemnity of the thought of death, preaches submission to the inexorable decree of Nature with a stern consistency and a proud fortitude combating the suggestions of human weakness.

The whole of the third book is devoted to this part of his subject, and the argument of the fourth is to a great extent supplementary to that of the third book. The physical doctrine enunciated and illustrated in the first half of the third book is the materiality of the soul and its indissoluble connexion with the body. The practical consequence of this doctrine, viz. that death is nothing to us, is there enforced in a long passage [¹²] of sustained power and solemnity of feeling. First, we are made to realise the entire unconsciousness in death throughout all eternity. 'As it was before we were born, so shall it be hereafter. As we felt no trouble in the past at the clash of conflict between Roman and Carthaginian, when all the world shook with alarm, so nothing can touch us or move us then—

Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo [¹³].

It is but the trick of our fancy which suggests the thought of any kind of suffering after all consciousness has ceased—

Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et eicit

Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse [¹⁴].

Men feel that the sadness of death lies in the separation from wife, and children, and home; in the extinction which a single day has brought to all the blessings and the gains of a lifetime. But they forget that along with these blessings is extinguished all desire and longing for them. So, too, men "spice their fair banquets with the dust of death." They say, "our joy is but for a season; it will soon be past, nor ever again be recalled,"—as if forsooth any want or any desire can haunt that sleep from which there is no awaking—

Nec quisquam expergitus exstat,

Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta [¹⁵].

Nature herself might utter this reproof to all weak complaining: "Thou fool, if thy life hath given thee joy, and all its blessings have not been poured into a leaky vessel, why dost thou not leave the feast like a satisfied guest, and take thy rest contentedly? But if all has hitherto been to thee vanity and vexation of spirit, why seek to add to thy trouble? I can devise or frame no new pleasure for thee. "There is no new thing under the sun"—"eadem sunt omnia semper."' To the weak complaint of age, Nature would speak with sterner voice: 'Away hence with thy tears and thy complainings. It is because, unable to enjoy the present, thou art ever weakly longing for what is absent, that death has come on thee unsatisfied.' 'This would be, indeed, a just charge and reproof. For the old order is ever yielding place to new; and life is given to no man in possession, to all men for use. The time before we were born is a mirror to us of what the future shall be. Is there any gloom or horror there? Is there not a deeper rest than any sleep?'

'The terrors of the unseen world are but the hell which fools make for themselves out of their passions [¹⁶]. The torments of Tantalus, of Tityus, of Sisyphus, and the Danaides, are but symbols of the blind cowardice and superstition, of the craving passions, of the ever-foiled and ever-renewed ambition, of the thankless discontent with the natural joy and beauty of the world, which curse and degrade our mortal existence. The stories of Cerberus and the Furies, and of the tortures of the damned are creations of a guilty conscience, or the projections into futurity of the experiences of earthly punishment.'

Other consolations are suggested by the thoughts of those who have gone before us. Echoing the stern irony of Achilles—

ἀλλά, φίλος, θάνε καὶ σύ' τίη ὀλοφύρεαι οὕτως;

κάτθανε καὶ Πάτροκλος, ὅπερ σέο πολλὸν ἀμείνων [¹⁷]—

he reminds us that better and greater men than we have died,—kings and soldiers, poets and philosophers, the mightiest equally with the humblest. In the spirit, and partly too in the words of Ennius, he enforces the thought that 'Scipio, the thunderbolt of war, the terror of Carthage, gave his bones to the earth as if he were the meanest slave.' 'Why, then, should one whose life is half a sleep, who is the prey of weak fears and restless discontent, complain that he too is subject to the common law? What is this wretched love of life, which makes us tremble at every danger? Death cannot be avoided; no new pleasure can be forged out by longer living. This evil of our lot is not inflicted by Nature, but by our own craving hearts, which cannot enjoy, and are yet ever thirsting for longer life [¹⁸].'

The power of the whole of this passage depends partly on the vividness of feeling and conception with which the thought is realised, partly on the august and solemn associations with which it is surrounded. Such graphic touches as these—

Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta [¹⁹];—

Cum summo gelidi cubat aequore saxi [²⁰];—

Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae [²¹],—

and again, the life, truth, and tenderness of the picture presented in the lines—

Iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor

Optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati

Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent [²²],

bring home to the mind, in startling distinctness, the old familiar contrast between the 'cold obstruction' of the grave and 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day.' But the horror and pain of the thought of death are lost in a feeling of august resignation to the universal law. Though the fact is made present to our minds in its sternest reality, yet it is encompassed with the pomp and majesty of great associations. It suggests the thought of the most momentous crisis in history—

Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis [²³],

of the regal state of kings and mighty potentates—

Inde alii multi reges rerumque potentes

Occiderunt, magnis qui gentibus imperitarunt [²⁴],

of the simpler and more impressive grandeur of the great men of old, such as the 'good Ancus,' the mighty Scipio, Homer, 'peerless among poets,' the sage Democritus, Epicurus, 'the sun among all the lesser luminaries.' Lastly, we are reminded of the universal law of Nature, that the death of the old is the condition of the life of the new—

Sic alid ex alio nunquam desistet oriri [²⁵].

Even if the spirit of the poet cannot be said to rise buoyantly above the depressing and paralysing influence of this conviction, yet he draws a higher lesson from it than the maxim of 'Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' He understands the epicurean precept of 'carpe diem' in a sense more befitting to human dignity. The lesson which he teaches is the need of conquering all weakness, sloth, and irresolution in life. This life is all that we have through eternity; let it not be wasted in unsatisfied desires, insensibility to present and regrets for absent good, or restless disquiet for the future; let us understand ourselves and our position here, bear and enjoy whatever is allotted to us during our few years of existence. We are masters of ourselves and of our fortunes, so far at least as to rise clearly above the degradation of ignorance and misery.

The practical use of the study of Nature, according to Lucretius, is, first, to inspire confidence in the room of an ignorant and superstitious fear of supernatural power; and, secondly, to show what man really needs, and so to clear the heart from all artificial desires and passions. All that is wanted for happiness in this world is a mind free from error, and a heart neither incapable of natural enjoyment (fluxum pertusumque) nor vitiated by false appetite [²⁶]. Of the errors to which man is liable superstition and the fear of death are the most deeply seated. Of the artificial desires and passions, on the other hand, the most destructive are the love of power and of riches, and the sensual appetite for pleasure. In the opening lines of the second book the strife of ambition, the rivalries of rank and intellect in the warfare of politics are contrasted with the serene life of philosophy, as darkness, error, and danger with light, certainty, and peace—

Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere

Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,

Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre

Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae,

Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,

Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore

Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri [²⁷].

Yet to be the master of armies and of navies, or to be clothed in gold and purple, gives not that exemption from the real terrors and anxieties of life which the power of reason only can bestow—

Quod si ridicula haec ludibriaque esse videmus,

Re veraque metus hominum curaeque sequaces

Nec metuunt sonitus armorum nec fera tela,

Audacterque inter reges rerumque potentis

Versantur neque fulgorem reverentur ab auro

Nec clarum vestis splendorem purpureai,

Quid dubitas quin omni' sit haec rationi' potestas?

Omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret [²⁸].

The desire of power and station leads to the shame and misery of baffled hopes, of which the toil of Sisyphus is the type, and also to the guilt which deluges the world in blood, and violates the most sacred ties of Nature [²⁹]. While failure in the struggle is degradation, success is often only the prelude to the most sudden downfall. Weary with bloodshed, and with forcing their way up the hostile and narrow road of ambition [³⁰], men reach the summit of their hopes only to be hurled down by envy as by a thunderbolt [³¹]. They are slaves to ambition, merely because they cannot distinguish the true from the false, because they cannot judge of things as they really are, apart from the estimate which the world puts upon them—

Quandoquidem sapiunt alieno ex ore petuntque

Res ex auditis potius quam sensibus ipsis.[³²]

The love of riches and of luxurious living, which had begun to corrupt the Roman character in the age of Lucilius, had increased to gigantic dimensions in the last age of the Republic. By no aspect of his age was Lucretius more repelled than by this. No doctrine is enforced in the poem with more sincerity of conviction than that of the happiness and dignity of plain and natural living, the vanity of all the appliances of wealth, and their inability to give real enjoyment either to body or mind. In a well-known passage at the beginning of the second book he adapts an ideal description from Homer's account of the palace of Alcinous to the costly magnificence and splendour of Roman banquets, with which he contrasts the pleasure of gratifying simple tastes, in fine weather, among the beauties of Nature—

Praesertim cum tempestas adridet et anni

Tempora conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas [³³].

With fervid sincerity he announces the truth that 'to the man who would govern his life by reason plain living and a contented spirit are great riches'—

Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet,

Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce

Aequo animo [³⁴].

Moderation, independence, and self-control are the virtues which Horace derives from his philosophy. He knew how to enjoy both the luxury of the city and the simple fare of the country. Lucretius is more alive to the dangers of pampering the body and enervating the mind. He is more active in his resistance to the common forms of indulgence: he shows more truly simple tastes, stronger capacity of natural enjoyment. He is vividly sensible of the apathy and ennui produced by the luxury and inaction of his age. Others among the Roman poets, with more or less sincerity and consistency, appear to long for a return to more natural ways, and paint their ideals of the purity and simplicity of country life. But no writer of antiquity is less of an idealist than Lucretius: there is no writer, ancient or modern, whose words are more truthful and unvarnished. There is no romance or self-deception in what he longs for. There may be some anticipation of the spirit of Rousseau in Virgil, and still more in Tibullus, but none whatever in Lucretius. The privations and rude misery of savage life are painted in as sombre colours as the satiety and discontent of his own age. It would be difficult to name any writer, ancient or modern, by whom the lesson of 'plain living and high thinking' was more worthily inculcated.

The passion of love, which, in its more violent phases, was seen to be a prominent motive in the comedy of Plautus, became a very powerful influence in actual life during the last years of the Republic and the early years of the Empire. Extreme license in the pursuit of pleasure was common among men and women of the highest rank: but, over and above this, the poetry of Catullus and of the elegiac poets of the Augustan age shows that in the case of young men of fashion and literary accomplishment (and these were often combined) intrigue and temporary liaisons had become the absorbing interest and occupation of life. With these claims of passion and sentiment, apparently so alien to the ancient strength and dignity of the Roman character, Lucretius felt no sympathy. No writer has shown a profounder reverence for human affection. In his eyes the crowning guilt of superstition is the cruel violation of natural ties exacted by it: the chief bitterness of death is the thought of eternal separation from wife and children: the first civilising influence acting on the world is traced to the power of the blandishments of children over the savage pride of strength. The pathos of the famous passage, at Book ii. 350, attests his sympathy with the sorrow caused by the disruption of natural ties, even in the lower animals. Other casual expressions, as in that line of profound feeling—

Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus [³⁵];—

or such pictures, as that at iii. 469, of friends and relatives surrounding the bed of one who has sunk into a deep lethargy—

Ad vitam qui revocantes

Circumstant lacrimis rorantes ora genasque [³⁶],—

show how strong and real was his regard for the great elemental affections of human nature. But, on the other hand, he is austerely indifferent to the follies and the idealising fancies of lovers. With satirical and not fastidious realism he strips passion of all romance, and exhibits it as a bondage fatal alike to character and independence, to peace of mind and to self-respect. But it is the weakness, not the immorality of licentious passion which he condemns. And it would be altogether an anachronism to attribute to a writer of that age sentiments on this subject in harmony either with the austere virtue of the primitive Romans, or with the moral standard of modern times. It is not the indulgence of inclination, but its excess and perversion, by which the happiness and dignity of life are placed in another's power, which he condemns.

In order to perceive the limitation of the view of the evils of human life and of their remedy presented by Lucretius, it is not necessary to contrast it with the higher aspects of moral and religious thought in modern times. It is clear that owing to some idiosyncrasy, the result perhaps of some accident of his early years, and fostered by seclusion in later years from the common ways of life, he greatly exaggerates the influence of the terrors of the ancient religion over the world. There is little trace, either in the literature [³⁷] or in the sepulchral inscriptions of the Romans, of that 'fear of Acheron'—

Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo

Omnia suffendens mortis nigrore neque ullam

Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque reliquit.

The answer of Cicero to the exaggerated pretensions of Epicureanism seems to express the common sense of his age, 'Where can you find an old woman fatuous enough to believe what you forsooth would have believed, if you had not studied physical science [³⁸]?' The passionate protest of Lucretius seems more applicable to times of religious persecution, and to extreme forms of fanaticism in modern times, than to the tolerant spirit and the not unkindly superstition of the Greek and Roman world, as they are known in its literature. But if the experience of the modern world gives a still more startling significance to the words—

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,—

that experience also enables us better to understand the blindness of Lucretius to the purifying and consoling power which even ancient religion was capable of exercising. Though not insensible to the poetical charm of some of the old mythological fancies, and to the solemnising effect of impressive ceremonials, he can see only the baser influences of fear in man's whole attitude to a supernatural Power. His ordinary acuteness of mind seems to desert him in that passage [³⁹] where he resolves the passions of ambition and avarice into the fear of death, and that again into the dread of eternal punishment.

The limitation of his philosophy is also apparent in his want of sympathy with the active duties and pursuits of life. He can see only different modes of evil in the busy interests of the world. War, politics, commerce, appeared to him a mere struggle of personal passion with a view to personal aggrandisement. A life of peace, not of energetic action, was his ideal. In eternal peace he placed the supreme happiness of the Gods: a state of peaceful contemplation—

Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri—

he regards as the only true religion for man: the 'mute and uncomplaining' peace of the grave reconciles him to the thought of everlasting death. The inadequacy of his philosophy may thus be traced partly to his vivid impressibility of imagination, which made him too exclusively sensible of the awe produced on man's spirit by the mystery of the universe, partly to his defective sympathy with the active interests and duties of life. Partly, too, the bent of his mind towards material observation and enquiry had some share in determining his convictions. In dwelling on the outward appearances of decay and death, he seems to have shut his eyes to those inward conditions of the human spirit which to Plato, Cicero, and Virgil appeared the witnesses of immortality. The inability to form the definite conception of a God without human limitations, as well as his strong sense of the imperfection of the world, forced upon him the absolute denial of any Divine providence over human affairs.

Yet a modern reader, without accepting the conclusions of his philosophy, may sympathise with much of his spirit. In his firm faith in the laws which govern the universe, he will recognise a great position established, as essential to the progress of religious as of scientific thought. He will see, in the earnest intensity of his feeling and the sincerity of his expression, a spirit akin to the purer kinds of religious fervour in modern times. In no other writer, ancient or modern, will he find a profounder sense of human dignity, of the supreme claims of affection, of the superiority of a natural to a conventional life. From the direct exhortation and the indirect teaching of Lucretius, he may learn such lessons as these,—that it is man's first business to know and obey the laws of his being,—that the sphere of his happiest activity is to be found in contemplation rather than in action,—that his well-being consists in valuing rightly the real blessings of life rather than in following the illusions of fancy or of custom,—in reverencing the sanctity of family life,—and in cherishing a kindly sympathy with all living things. If there was nothing especially new in the views which he enunciated, the power of realising the common conditions of life, the passionate effort not only to rise himself above human weakness, but to redeem the whole race of man from the curse of ignorance, and the force of imaginative sympathy with which he executed this part of his task were, perhaps, something altogether new in the world.

The same 'vivida vis' with which he observes natural phenomena characterises his insight into human character and passion. He penetrates below the surface of life with the searching insight of a great satirist, and sees more clearly into the hearts of men, and has a more subtle perception of the secret springs of their unhappiness, than any of his countrymen. The aim of his satire is not to make men seem objects of ridicule or scorn, but to restore them to the dignity which they had forfeited through weakness and ignorance. The observation of Horace is wider and more varied, but it ranges much more over the surface of life. He has neither the same sense of the mystery of our being, nor the same sympathy with the common conditions of mankind.

The power of truthful moral painting which Lucretius exercises is seen in that passage in which he reveals the secret of the 'amari aliquit,' 'amid the very flowers of love,'—

Aut cum conscius ipse animus se forte remordet

Desidiose agere aetatem lustrisque perire,

Aut quod in ambiguo verbum iaculata reliquit

Quod cupido adfixum cordi vivescit ut ignis,

Aut nimium iactare oculos aliumve tueri

Quod putat in voltuque videt vestigia risus [⁴⁰]:

and in that in which he describes the satiety and restlessness which is the avenging nemesis of an opulent and luxurious society,—

Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille,

Esse domi quem pertaesumst, subitoque revertit,

Quippe foris nilo melius qui sentiat esse.

Currit agens mannos ad villam praecipitanter,

Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans;

Oscitat extemplo, tetigit cum limina villae,

Aut abit in somnum gravis atque oblivia quaerit,

Aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit [⁴¹].

There is always poetry and pathos in the satire of Lucretius. There is no trace in him of the malice or the love of detraction which is seldom wholly absent from satiric writing. The futility of human effort is the burden of his complaint [⁴²]: and this (as has been pointed out by M. Martha) is the explanation of the pathetic recurrence of the word 'nequicquam' in so many passages of his poem. His scorn and indignation are shown only in exposing the impostures which men mistake for truths. There is thus infinite compassion for the common lot of man blended with the irony of the passage in which he represents the aged husbandman complaining of the general decay of piety as the cause of the failure of the earth to respond to his labours. His direct and realistic power of expression enhances his power as a moral painter and teacher. Though the writings of Horace supply many more quotations applicable to various situations in life, and expressed in equally apposite language, yet such lines as these in the older poet seem to come from the heart of one ever 'sounding a deeper and more perilous way' over the sea of human life, than suited the more worldly wisdom of Horace,—

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum [⁴³].—

Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis [⁴⁴]?—

Vitaque mancipio nulli datur omnibus usu [⁴⁵].—

Surgit amari aliquit quod in ipsis floribus augat [⁴⁶].—

Nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab imo

Eiciuntur et eripitur persona, manet res [⁴⁷].—

Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce

Aequo animo [⁴⁸].

Many other lines and expressions of similar force will occur to every reader familiar with Lucretius. As his ordinary style brings the outward aspects of the world vividly before the mind, so the language in which his moral teaching is enforced, or the result of his moral observation is expressed, stamps powerfully on the mind important and permanent truths of human nature. His thoughts are uttered sometimes with the impressive dignity of Roman oratory, sometimes with the nervous energy, not without flashes of the vigorous wit, of Roman satire. There are occasionally to be heard also higher and deeper tones than those familiar to classical poetry. His burning zeal and indignation against idolatry, and the scorn with which he exposes the impotence of false gods—

Cur etiam loca sola petunt frustraque laborant?

An tum bracchia consuescunt firmantque lacertos [⁴⁹]?—

show some affinity of spirit to the prophets of another race and an earlier time. The 'grandeur of desolation' uttered in the reproof of Nature,—

Nam tibi praeterea quod machiner inveniamque,

Quod placeat, nil est: eadem sunt omnia semper [⁵⁰],—

recalls the old words of the Preacher—'The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.'

[¹] Cf. Juv. xiv. 319:—

Quantum Epicure tibi parvis suffecit in hortis.

[²] 'But the sober exercise of reason, investigating the causes why we choose or avoid anything, and banishing those opinions which cause the greatest trouble in the soul.'

[³] ii. 16-19.

[⁴] 'Thereupon he perceived that the vessel itself caused the evil, and that all external gains and blessings whatsoever were vitiated within through its fault, partly because he saw that it was so unsound and leaky that it could never be filled in any way, partly because he discerned that it tainted inwardly everything which it had received as it were with a nauseous flavour.'—vi. 17-23.

[⁵] iii. 39.

[⁶] vi. 404-5.

[⁷] 'O miserable race of man when they imputed to the Gods such acts as these, and ascribed to them also angry passions. What sorrow did they then prepare for themselves, what deep wounds for us, what tears for our descendants. For there is no holiness in being often seen, turning round with head veiled, in presence of a stone, and in drawing nigh to every altar; nor in lying prostrate in the dust, and uplifting the hands before the temples of the Gods; nor in sprinkling altars with the blood of beasts, and in ever fastening up new votive offerings, but rather in being able to look at all things with a mind at peace.'—v. 1194-1203.

[⁸] vi. 75-78.

[⁹] 'The holy presence of the Gods is revealed, and their peaceful dwelling-places, which neither the winds beat upon, nor the clouds bedew with rain; nor does snow, gathered in flakes by keen frost, and falling white, invade them; ever the cloudless ether enfolds them, and they are radiant with far-spread light.'—iii. 18-22.

[¹⁰] v. 145-225.

[¹¹] The feelings with which Lucretius contemplates the solemn procession of Cybele may be illustrated by the following passage, quoted by Mr. Morley in his Life of Diderot, vol. ii. p. 65: 'Absurd rigorists do not know the effect of external ceremonies on the people: they can never have seen the enthusiasm of the multitude at the procession of the Fête Dieu, an enthusiasm that sometimes even gains me. I have never seen that long file of priests in their vestments, those young acolytes clad in their white robes, with broad blue sashes engirdling their waists, and casting flowers on the ground before the Holy Sacrament, the crowd, as it goes before and follows after them, hushed in religious silence, and so many with their faces bent reverently to the ground: I have never heard the grave and pathetic chant, as it is led by the priests and fervently responded to by an infinity of voices of men, of women, of girls, of little children, without my inmost heart being stirred, and tears coming into my eyes. There is in it something, I know not what, that is grand, solemn, sombre, and mournful.'

[¹²] From 830 till the end.

[¹³] iii. 842.

[¹⁴] iii. 877-8.

[¹⁵] iii. 929-30.

[¹⁶] Hic Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita.

[¹⁷] Iliad xxi. 106-7.

[¹⁸] iii. 830-1094.

[¹⁹] iii. 930.

[²⁰] iii. 892.

[²¹] iii. 893.

[²²] 'Soon shall thy home receive thee no more with glad welcome, nor thy true wife, nor thy dear children run to snatch the first kiss, touching thy heart with silent gladness.'—iii. 894-96.

[²³] iii. 833.

[²⁴] iii. 1027-8.

[²⁵] iii. 970.

[²⁶] Compare the metaphorical expressions at vi. 20-4.

[²⁷] 'But there is no greater joy than to hold high aloft the tranquil abodes, well bulwarked by the learning of the wise, whence thou mayest look down on other men, and see them wandering every way, and lost in error, seeking the road of life; mayest mark the strife of genius, the rivalries of rank, the struggle night and day with surpassing effort to reach the highest place, and be master of the State.'—ii. 48-54.

[²⁸] 'But if we see that all this is but folly and a mockery, and, in real truth, the fears of men and their dogging cares dread not the clash of arms nor the fierce weapons of warfare, and boldly mix with kings and potentates, nor fear the splendour of gold or the bright glare of purple robes, canst thou doubt that it is the force of reason on which all this depends, especially since all our life is in darkness and tribulation?'—ii. 48-55.

[²⁹] iii. 70.

[³⁰] v. 1131.

[³¹] v. 1125.

[³²] 'Since they take their wisdom from the lips of others, and pursue their object in accordance rather with what they hear than with what they really feel.'—v. 1133-4.

[³³] ii. 33.

[³⁴] v. 1117-19.

[³⁵] ii. 638.

[³⁶] iii. 468-9.

[³⁷] A passage in the Captivi of Plautus (995-7), shows that these terrors did appeal to the imagination in ancient times, and thus might powerfully affect the happiness of persons of specially impressible natures, although they do not seem to have often interfered with the actual enjoyment of life,—

Vidi ego multa saepe picta quae Acherunti fierent

Cruciamenta: verum enimvero nulla adaequest Acheruns

Atque ubi ego fui in lapicidinis.

Professor Wallace in his 'Epicureanism' (p. 109) writes, 'Whatever may have been the case in earlier ages of Greece, there is no doubt that in the age of Epicurus, the doctrine of a judgment to come, and of a hell where sinners were punished for their crimes, made a large part of the vulgar creed.... Orphic and other religious sects had enhanced the terrors of the world below,' etc. Cicero, however, is a better witness than Lucretius of the actual state of opinion among his educated contemporaries. The exaggerated sense entertained by Lucretius of the influence of such terrors among the class for whom his poem was written is a confirmation of his having acted on the maxim λάθε βιώσας.'

[³⁸] Tusc. Disp. i. 21.

[³⁹] iii. 59, etc.

[⁴⁰] 'Either when his mind is stung with the consciousness that he is wasting his life in sloth, and ruining himself in wantonness; or because from the shafts of her wit she has left in him some word of double meaning, which seizes on his passionate heart and burns there like a fire; or because he fancies that she casts about her eyes too much or gazes at another, and marks the traces of a smile on her countenance.'—iv. 1135-40.

[⁴¹] 'Oft-times, weary of home, the lord of some spacious mansion issues forth abroad, and suddenly returns, feeling that it is no better with him abroad. Driving his horses, he speeds in hot haste to his country house, as if his house were on fire and he was hurrying to bring assistance. Straightway he begins to yawn, so soon as he has reached his threshold, or sinks heavily into sleep and seeks forgetfulness, or even with all haste returns to the city.'—iii. 1060-67.

[⁴²] E.g. v. 1430-34:—

Ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat

Semper et in curis consumit inanibus aevom,

Nimirum quia non cognovit quae sit habendi

Finis et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas.

[⁴³] i. 101.

[⁴⁴] iii. 938.

[⁴⁵] iii. 971.

[⁴⁶] iv. 1134.

[⁴⁷] iii. 57-8.

[⁴⁸] v. 1116.

[⁴⁹] vi. 396-7.

[⁵⁰] iii. 944-5.