s inconsistent with these attributes, and
repulsive to his feelings of reverence, to conceive them as agents. The
idea of agency is derived from human experience; we, as agents, act
with a view to supply some want, to fulfil some obligation, to acquire
some pleasure, to accomplish some object desired but not yet
attained--in short, to fill up one or other of the many gaps in our
imperfect happiness; the gods already _have_ all that agents strive to
get, and more than agents ever do get; their condition is one not of
agency, but of tranquil, self-sustaining, fruition. Accordingly,
Epicurus thought (as Aristotle[14] had thought before him) that the
perfect, eternal, and imperturbable well-being and felicity of the gods
excluded the supposition of their being agents. He looked upon them as
types of that unmolested safety and unalloyed satisfaction which was
what he understood by pleasure or happiness--as objects of reverential
envy, whose sympathy he was likely to obtain by assimilating his own
temper and condition to theirs, as far as human circumstances allowed.

These theological views were placed by Epicurus in the foreground of
his ethical philosophy, as the only means of dispelling those fears of
the gods that the current fables instilled into every one, and that did
so much to destroy human comfort and security. He proclaimed that
beings in immortal felicity neither suffered vexation in themselves nor
caused vexation to others--neither showed anger nor favour to
particular persons. The doctrine that they were the working managers in
the affairs of the Cosmos, celestial and terrestrial, human and
extra-human, he not only repudiated as incompatible with their
attributes, but declared to be impious, considering the disorder,
sufferings, and violence, everywhere visible. He disallowed all
prophecy, divination, and oracular inspiration, by which the public
around him believed that the gods were perpetually communicating
special revelations to individuals, and for which Sokrates had felt so
peculiarly thankful.[15]

It is remarkable that Stoics and Epicureans, in spite of their marked
opposition in dogma or theory, agreed so far in practical results, that
both declared these two modes of uneasiness (fear of the gods and fear
of death) to be the great torments of human existence, and both strove
to remove or counterbalance them.

So far, the teaching of Epicurus appears confined to the separate
happiness of each individ