of retribution, afraid of
death because of the stories of what comes after death. This incessant
fear and anxiety is one of the chief causes of the unhappiness of men.
Destroy it, and we have at least got rid of the prime hindrance to
human happiness. We can only do this by means of a suitable doctrine
of physics. What is necessary is to be able to regard the world as a
piece of mechanism, governed solely by natural causes, without any
interference by supernatural beings, in which man is free to find his
happiness how and when he will, without being frightened by the bogeys
of popular religion. For though the world is ruled mechanically, man,
thought Epicurus in opposition to the Stoics, possesses free will, and
the problem of philosophy is to ascertain how he can best use this
gift in a world otherwise mechanically governed. What he required,
therefore, was a purely mechanical philosophy. To invent such a
philosophy for himself was a task not suited to his indolence, and for
which he could not pretend to possess the necessary {356}
qualifications. Therefore he searched the past, and soon found what he
wanted in the atomism of Democritus. This, as an entirely mechanical
philosophy, perfectly suited his ends, and the pragmatic spirit in
which he chose his beliefs, not on any abstract grounds of their
objective truth, but on the basis of his subjective needs and personal
wishes, will be noted. It is a sign of the times. When truth comes to
be regarded as something that men may construct in accordance with
their real or imagined needs, and not in accordance with any objective
standard, we are well advanced upon the downward path of decay.
Epicurus, therefore, adopted the atomism of Democritus _en bloc_, or
with trifling modifications. All things are composed of atoms and the
void. Atoms differ only in shape and weight, not in quality. They fall
eternally through the void. By virtue of free will, they deviate
infinitesimally from the perpendicular in their fall, and so clash
against one another. This, of course, is an invention of Epicurus, and
formed no part of the doctrine of Democritus. It might be expected of
Epicurus that his modifications would not be improvements. In the
present case, the attribution of free will to the atoms adversely
affects the logical consistency of the mechanical theory. From the
collision of atoms arises a whirling movement out of which the world
emerges. Not only the world, but all individual p