rection--an idea which
seemed incredible until the modern discoveries about light, sound, and
radiation. Thus there is direct contact with reality, and consequently
knowledge. Besides direct vision, however, we have 'anticipations', or
+prolepseis+, sometimes called 'common conceptions', e. g. the general
conception which we have of a horse when we are not seeing one. These
are merely the result of repeated acts of vision. A curious result of
this doctrine was that all our 'anticipations' or 'common ideas' are
true; mistakes occur through some interpretation of our own which we add
to the simple sensation.

We can know the world. How then are we to understand it? Here again
Epicurus found refuge in the old Ionian theory of Atoms and the Void,
which is supposed to have originated with Democritus and Leucippus, a
century before. But Epicurus seems to have worked out the Atomic Theory
more in detail, as we have it expounded in Lucretius' magnificent poem.
In particular it was possibly he who first combined the Atomic Theory
with hylozoism; i. e. he conceived of the Atoms as possessing some
rudimentary power of movement and therefore able to swerve slightly in
their regular downward course. That explains how they have become
infinitely tangled and mingled, how plants and animals are alive, and
how men have Free Will. It also enables Epicurus to build up a world
without the assistance of a god. He set man free, as Lucretius says,
from the 'burden of Religion', though his doctrine of the 'blessed
Being' which neither has pain nor gives pain, enables him to elude the
dangerous accusation of atheism. He can leave people believing in all
their traditional gods, including even, if so they wish, 'the bearded
Zeus and the helmed Athena' which they see in dreams and in their
'common ideas', while at the same time having no fear of them.

There remains the foolish fancy of the Cynics and Stoics that 'Arete'
is the only good. Of course, he answers, Arete is good; but that is
because it produces happy life, or blessedness or pleasure or whatever
you call it. He used normally the word +hedone+ 'sweetness', and counted
the Good as that which makes life sweet. He seems never to have entered
into small disputes as to the difference between 'sweetness', or
'pleasure', and 'happiness' and 'well-being' (+hedone, eudaimonia,
euesto, ktl.+), though sometimes, instead of 'sweetness' he spoke of
'blessedness' (+makariotes+). Ultimately the dispu