of on the Stoics even in ancient times; but, however
unattractive it may seem to us, it is of significance as a manifestation
of the great hold popular belief continued to have even on the minds of
the upper classes, for it was to these that the Stoics appealed.

Far more original and consistent is the Epicurean attitude towards the
popular faith. Epicurus unreservedly acknowledged its foundation, _i.e._
the existence of anthropomorphic beings of a higher order than man. His
gods had human shape but they were eternal and blessed. In the latter
definition was included, according to the ethical ideal of Epicurus, the
idea that the gods were free from every care, including taking an interest
in nature or in human affairs. They were entirely outside the world, a
fact to which Epicurus gave expression by placing them in the empty spaces
between the infinite number of spherical worlds which he assumed. There
his gods lived in bliss like ideal Epicureans. Lucretius, the only poet of
this school, extolled them in splendid verse whose motif he borrowed from
Homer's description of Olympus. In this way Epicurus also managed to
uphold public worship itself. It could not, of course, have any practical
aim, but it was justified as an expression of the respect man owed to
beings whose existence expressed the human ideal.

The reasons why Epicurus assumed this attitude towards popular belief are
simple enough. He maintained that the evidence of sensual perception was
the basis of all knowledge, and he thought that the senses (through
dreams) gave evidence of the existence of the gods. And in the popular
ideas of the bliss of the gods he found his ethical ideal directly
confirmed. As regards their eternity the case was more difficult. The
basis of his system was the theory that everything was made of atoms and
that only the atoms as such, not the bodies composed of the atoms, were
eternal. He conceived the gods, too, as made of atoms, nevertheless he
held that they were eternal. Any rational explanation of this postulate is
not possible on Epicurus's hypotheses, and the criticism of his theology
was therefore especially directed against this point.

Epicurus was the Greek philosopher who most consistently took the course
of emphasising the popular dogma of the perfection of the gods in order to
preserve the popular notions about them. And he was the philosopher to
whom this would seem the most obvious course, because his ethical
ideal-