From this slight outline of his Ethical doctrine may be seen how readily it furnished arguments both to assailants and to defenders. We may also notice its vagueness and elasticity, which would enable many minds to adapt it to their virtues or to their vices. The luxurious would see in it only an exhortation to their own vices; the temperate would see in it a scientific exposition of temperance.

Epicureanism, in leading man to a correct appreciation of the moral end of his existence, in showing him how to be truly happy, has to combat with many obstructions which hide from him the real road of life. These obstructions are his illusions, his prejudices, his errors, his ignorance. This ignorance is of two kinds: first, ignorance of the laws of the external world, which creates absurd superstitions, and troubles the soul with false fears and false hopes; hence the necessity of some knowledge of Physics. The second kind of ignorance is that of the nature of man; hence the necessity of the Epicurean Logic called Canonic, which is a collection of rules respecting human reason and its application.

The Epicurean psychology and physics were derived from the Democritean. The atoms of which the universe is formed are supposed to be constantly throwing off some of their parts, droppoαí: and these, in contact with the senses, produce sensation, aïdonos. But Epicurus did not maintain that these droppoαí αἴσθησις. were images of the atoms; he believed them to have a certain resemblance to their atoms, but was unable to point out where, and in how far this resemblance exists. Every sensation must be true as a sensation; and, as such, it can neither be proved nor contradicted; it is aλoyos. The sensations of the insane and the dreaming are also true; and, although there is a difference between their sensations and those of sane and waking men, yet Epicurus confessed himself unable to determine in what the difference consists. Sensations, however, do not alone constitute. knowledge; man has also the faculty of conception, póλnts, which arises from the repeated iteration of sensation: it is recol

lection of various sensations; or, as Aristotle would say, the general idea gathered from particular sensations. It is from these conceptions that the general ideas, doğal, are formed, and it is in these general ideas that error resides. A sensation may be considered either in relation to its object or in relation to him who experiences it; in the latter case it is agreeable or disagreeable, and renders the sentiments, rà ráon, the basis of all morality.

With such a basis, we may readily anticipate the nature of the superstructure. If agreeable and disagreeable sensations are the origin of all moral phenomena, there can be no other moral rule than to seek the agreeable and to avoid the disagreeable; and whatever is pleasant becomes the great object of existence.

The Physics of Epicurus are so similar to the Physics of Democritus that we need not occupy our space with them.*

On reviewing the whole doctrine of Epicurus, we find in it that skepticism which the imperfect Philosophy of the day necessarily brought to many minds, in many different shapes; and the consequence of that skepticism was the effort to find a refuge in Morals, and the attempt to construct Ethics on a philosophic basis. The attempt failed because the basis was not broad enough; but the attempt itself is worthy of notice, as characteristic of the whole Socratic movement; for, although the Socratic Method was an attempt at reconstructing Philosophy, yet that reconstruction. itself was only attempted with a view to morals. Socrates was the first to bring Philosophy down from the clouds; he was the first to make it the basis of Morality, and in one shape or other all his followers and all the schools that issued from them, kept this view present to their minds. The Epicureans are therefore to be regarded as men who ventured on a solution of the great problem, and failed because they only saw a part of the truth.

* They are expounded by Lucretius, who claims a rebellious originality for Epicurus which history cannot endorse. I. 67, 899.

CHAPTER III.

THE STOICS.

§ I. ZENO.

THE Stoics were a large sect, and of its members so many have been celebrated, that a separate work would be needed to chronicle them all. From Zeno, the founder, down to Brutus and Marcus Antoninus, the sect embraces many Greek and Roman worthies, and not a few solemn mountebanks. Some of these we would willingly introduce; but we are forced to confine ourselves to one type, and the one we select is Zeno.

He was born at Citium, a small city in the island of Cyprus, of Phoenician origin, but inhabited by Greeks. The date of his birth is uncertain. His father was a merchant, in which trade he himself engaged, until his father, after a voyage to Athens, brought home some works of Socratic Philosophers; these Zeno studied with eagerness and rapture, and determined his vocation.

When about thirty, he undertook a voyage, both of interest and pleasure, to Athens, the great mart both for trade and philosophy. Shipwrecked on the coast, he lost the whole of his valuable cargo of Phoenician purple; and, thus reduced to poverty, he willingly embraced the doctrine of the Cynics, whose ostentatious display of poverty had captivated many minds.

There is an anecdote of his having one day read Xenophon's Memorabilia, in a bookseller's shop, with such delight that he asked where such men were to be met with. At that moment Crates the Cynic passed by: the bookseller pointed him out to Zeno, and bade him follow Crates. He did so; and he became a disciple. But he could not long remain a disciple. The gross

manners of the Cynics, so far removed from true simplicity, and their speculative incapacity, soon caused him to seek a master elsewhere. Stilpo, of Megara, became his next instructor; and from him he learned the art of disputation, which he subsequently practised with such success.

But the Megaric doctrine was too meagre for him. He was glad to learn from Stilpo; but there were things which Stilpo could not teach. He turned, therefore, to the expositors of Plato-Xenocrates and Polemo. In the philosophy of Plato there is, as before remarked, a germ of Stoicism; but there is also much that contradicts Stoicism, and so, we presume, Zeno grew discontented with that also.

After twenty years of laborious study in these various schools, he opened one for himself, wherein to teach the result of all these inquiries. The spot chosen was the Stoa, or Porch, which had once been the resort of the Poets, and was decorated with the pictures of Polygnotus. From this Stoa the school derived

its name.

As a man, Zeno appears deserving of the highest respect. Although sharing the doctrines of the Cynics, he did not share their grossness, their insolence, or their affectation. In person he was tall and slender; and although of a weakly constitution, he lived to a great age, being rigidly abstemious, feeding mainly upon figs, bread, and honey. His brow was furrowed with thought; and this gave a tinge of severity to his aspect, which accorded with the austerity of his doctrines. So honored and respected was he by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys of the citadel; and when he died they erected to his memory a statue of brass. His death is thus recorded :—In his ninety-eighth year, as he was stepping out of his school, he fell and broke his finger. He was so affected at the consciousness of his infirmity, that, striking the earth, he exclaimed, “Why am I thus importuned? Earth, I obey thy summons!" He went home and strangled himself.

In the history of humanity there are periods when society

seems fast dissolving; when ancient creeds have lost their majesty, and new creeds want disciples; when the onlooker sees the fabric tottering, beneath which his fellow-men are crowded either in sullen despair or in blaspheming levity, and, seeing this, he feels that there is safety still possible, if men will but be bold; he raises a voice of warning, and a voice of exhortation; he bids them behold their peril and tremble, behold their salvation and resolve. He preaches to them a doctrine they have been unused to hear, or, hearing it, unused to heed; and by the mere force of his own intense conviction he gathers round him some believers who are saved. If the social anarchy be not too widely spread, he saves his country by directing its energies in a new channel; if the country's doom is scaled, he makes a gallant effort, though a vain one, and "leaves a spotless name to after-times."

Such a man was Zeno. Greece was fallen; but hope still remained. A wide-spread disease was fast eating out the vigor of its life: Skepticism, Indifference, Sensuality, Epicurean softness were only counteracted by the magnificent but vague works of Plato, or the vast but abstruse system of Aristotle. Greek civilization was fast falling to decay. A little time, and Rome, the she-wolf's nursling, would usurp the place which Greece had once so proudly held-the place of vanguard of European civilization. Rome, the mighty, would take from the feeble hands of Greece the trust she was no longer worthy to hold. There was a presentiment of Rome in Zeno's breast. In him the manly energy and stern simplicity which were to conquer the world; in him the deep reverence for moral worth, which was the glory of Rome, before, intoxicated with success, she sought to ape the literary and philosophical glory of old Hellas. Zeno the Stoic. had a Roman spirit; and this is the reason why so many noble Romans became his disciples: he had deciphered the wants of their spiritual nature.

Alarmed at the skepticism which seemed inevitably following speculations of a metaphysical kind, Zeno, like Epicurus, fixed