re stock of ideas is but a new combination of ideas
already developed by their predecessors. They were narrow, extreme,
over-rigorous, and one-sided. Their truths are all half-truths. And
they regarded philosophy too subjectively. What alone interested them
was the question, how am I to live? Yet in spite of these defects,
there is undoubtedly something grand and noble about their zeal for
duty, their exaltation above all that is petty and paltry, their
uncompromising contempt for all lower ends. Their merit, says
Schwegler, was that "in an age of ruin they held fast by the moral
idea."

{354}

CHAPTER XVI

THE EPICUREANS

Epicurus was born at Samos in 342 B.C. He founded his school a year or
two before Zeno founded the Stoa, so that the two schools from the
first ran parallel in time. The school of Epicurus lasted over six
centuries. Epicurus early became acquainted with the atomism of
Democritus, but his learning in earlier systems of philosophy does not
appear to have been extensive. He was a man of estimable life and
character. He founded his school in 306 B.C. The Epicurean philosophy
was both founded and completed by him. No subsequent Epicurean to any
appreciable extent added to or altered the doctrines laid down by the
founder.

The Epicurean system is even more purely practical in tendency than
the Stoic. In spite of the fact that Stoicism subordinates logic and
physics to ethics, yet the diligence and care which the Stoics
bestowed upon such doctrines as those of the criterion of truth, the
nature of the world, the soul, and so on, afford evidence of a
genuine, if subordinate, interest in these subjects. Epicurus likewise
divided his system into logic (which he called canonic), physics, and
ethics, yet the two former branches of thought are pursued with an
obvious carelessness and absence of interest. It is evident that
learned {355} discussions bored Epicurus. His system is amiable and
shallow. Knowledge for its own sake is not desired. Mathematics, he
said, are useless, because they have no connexion with life. The
logic, or canonic, we may pass over completely, as possessing no
elements of interest, and come at once to the physics.

Physics.

Physics interests Epicurus only from one point of view--its power to
banish superstitious fear from the minds of men. All supernatural
religion, he thought, operates for the most part upon mankind by means
of fear. Men are afraid of the gods, afraid