mes have
had a deeper influence on the progress of man than any other continuous
intellectual movement, at least until the rise of modern science in a
new epoch of liberty.

The doctrines of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Sceptics all aimed at
securing peace and guidance for the individual soul. They were widely
propagated throughout the Greek world from the third century B.C., and
we may say that from this time onward most

[37] well-educated Greeks were more or less rationalists. The teaching
of Epicurus had a distinct anti-religious tendency. He considered fear
to be the fundamental motive of religion, and to free men's minds from
this fear was a principal object of his teaching. He was a Materialist,
explaining the world by the atomic theory of Democritus and denying any
divine government of the universe. [2] He did indeed hold the existence
of gods, but, so far as men are concerned, his gods are as if they were
not--living in some remote abode and enjoying a "sacred and everlasting
calm." They just served as an example of the realization of the ideal
Epicurean life.

There was something in this philosophy which had the power to inspire a
poet of singular genius to expound it in verse. The Roman Lucretius
(first century B.C.) regarded Epicurus as the great deliverer of the
human race and determined to proclaim the glad tidings of his philosophy
in a poem On the Nature of the World. [3] With all the fervour

[38] of a religious enthusiast he denounces religion, sounding every
note of defiance, loathing, and contempt, and branding in burning words
the crimes to which it had urged man on. He rides forth as a leader of
the hosts of atheism against the walls of heaven. He explains the
scientific arguments as if they were the radiant revelation of a new
world; and the rapture of his enthusiasm is a strange accompaniment of a
doctrine which aimed at perfect calm. Although the Greek thinkers had
done all the work and the Latin poem is a hymn of triumph over prostrate
deities, yet in the literature of free thought it must always hold an
eminent place by the sincerity of its audacious, defiant spirit. In the
history of rationalism its interest would be greater if it had exploded
in the midst of an orthodox community. But the educated Romans in the
days of Lucretius were sceptical in religious matters, some of them were
Epicureans, and we may suspect that not many of those who read it were
shocked or influenced by the audacit