“Ego deûm genus esse semper dixi et dicam cœlitum; Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat hominum genus.”
Cicero adds: “magno plausu loquitur assentiente populo.”—De Divin. ii. 50.
See that most impressive passage (Hist. Nat. vii. 56). That the sleep of annihilation is the happiest end of man is a favourite thought of Lucretius. Thus:
“Nil igitur mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.”—iii. 842.
This mode of thought has been recently expressed in Mr. Swinburne's very beautiful poem on The Garden of Proserpine.
“Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem;
Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem.”—Ennius.
See Seneca (Ep. lxxxix.). Seneca himself, however, has devoted a work to natural history, but the general tendency of the school was certainly to concentrate all attention upon morals, and all, or nearly all the great naturalists were Epicureans. Cicero puts into the mouth of the Epicurean the sentence, “Omnium autem rerum natura cognita levamur superstitione, liberamur mortis metu, non conturbamur ignoratione rerum” (De Fin. i.); and Virgil expressed an eminently Epicurean sentiment in his famous lines:—
“Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque
Acherontis avari.”
Georg. 490-492.
“Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano:
Fortem posce animum, mortis terrore carentem....
Monstro, quod ipse tibi possis dare.”