2. To search for the quality of actions in the actions them selves.
Utility, which in its last analysis is Pleasure, is the test of right, in the first method; an assumed or discovered Law of Nature, in the second. If the world were perfect, and the balance of the human faculties undisturbed, it is evident that both systems would give identical results. As it is, there is a tendency to error on each side, which is fully developed in the rival schools of the Epicureans and Stoics, who practically divided the suffrages of the mass of educated men until the coming of Christ.
EPICUREANS.
Epicurus was born B.C. 342, and died B.C. 270. He purchased a Garden within the city, and commenced, at thirty-six years of age, to teach philosophy. The Platonists had their academic Grove: the Aristotelians walked in the Lyceum: the Stoics occupied the Porch: the Epicureans had their Garden, where they lived a tranquil life, and seem to have had a community of goods.
There is not one of all the various founders of the ancient philosophical schools whose memory was cherished with so much veneration by his disciples as that of Epicurus. For several centuries after his death, his portrait was treated by them with all the honors of a sacred relic: it was carried about with them in their journeys, it was hung up in their schools, it was preserved with reverence in their private chambers; his birthday was celebrated with sacrifices and other religious observances, and a special festival in his honor was held every month.
So much honor having been paid to the memory of Epicurus, we naturally expect that his works would have been preserved with religious care. He was one of the most prolific of the ancient Greek writers. Diogenes calls him "a most voluminous writer," and estimates the number of works composed by him at no less than three hundred, the principal of which he enumerates. [764] But out of all this prodigious collection, not a single book has reached us in a complete, or at least an independent form. Three letters, which contain some outlines of his philosophy, are preserved by Diogenes, who has also embodied his "Fundamental Maxims"--forty-four propositions, containing a summary of his ethical system. These, with part of his work "On Nature," found during the last century among the Greek MSS. recovered at Herculaneum, constitute all that has survived the general wreck.
[Footnote 764: ][ (return) ] Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. x. ch. xvi., xvii.
We are thus left to depend mainly on his disciples and successors for any general account of his system. And of the earliest and most immediate of these the writings have perished. [765] Our sole original authority is Diogenes Laertius, who was unquestionably an Epicurean. The sketch of Epicurus which is given in his "Lives" is evidently a "labor of love." Among all the systems of ancient philosophy described by him, there is none of whose general character he has given so skillful and so elaborate an analysis. And even as regards the particulars of the system, nothing could be more complete than Laertius's account of his physical speculations. Additional light is also furnished by the philosophic poem of Lucretius "On the Nature of Things," which was written to advocate the physical theory of Epicurus. These are the chief sources of our information.
[Footnote 765: ][ (return) ] Some fragments of the writings of Metrodorus, Phædrus, Polystratus, and Philodemus, have been found among the Herculanean Papyri, and published in Europe, which are said to throw some additional light on the doctrines of Epicurus. See article on "Herculanean Papyri," in Edinburgh Review, October, 1862.
It is said of Epicurus that he loved to hearken to the stories of the indifference and apathy of Pyrrhon, and that, in these qualities, he aspired to imitate him. But Epicurus was not, like Pyrrhon, a skeptic; on the contrary, he was the most imperious dogmatist. No man ever showed so little respect for the opinions of his predecessors, or so much confidence in his own. He was fond of boasting that he had made his own philosophy--he was a "self-taught" man! Now "Epicurus might be perfectly honest in saying he had read very little, and had worked out the conclusions in his own mind, but he was a copyist, nevertheless; few men more entirely so." [766] His psychology was certainly borrowed from the Ionian school. From thence he had derived his fundamental maxim, that "sensation is the source of all knowledge, and the standard of all truth." His physics were copied from Democritus. With both, "atoms are the first principle of all things." And in Ethics he had learned from Aristotle, that if an absolute good is not the end of a practical life, happiness must be its end. [767] All that is fundamental in the system of Epicurus was borrowed from his predecessors, and there is little that can be called new in his teaching.