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,—