EPICUREANS

Followers of the tenets of Epicurus, a philosopher who lived from b. c.337 to b. c. 270, and taught during the latter half of his life at Athens. The name of Epicurean has become the general designation of those who, either theoretically or practically, make pleasure the chief end of life jand the standard of all virtue. Of the genuine doctrines of Epicurus himself we have notices in the work of Dipgenes Laertius, who has preserved to us fragments of his very voluminous writings: but for these remains we should be at a lo , amid the conflicting statements of his friends and enemies, how to judge of his character as a man and a philosopher. The private character of Epicurus has, we doubt not, been un-" justly aspersed; it will be found, however, on a careful examination of his system, that his merits as a philosopher have been as undeservedly extolled. Epicurus was the first philosophical teacher who deserted the lofty idea of science which Plato and Aristotle bad striven to develop. Truth is, with him, no longer an object worth pursuing for its own sake, but only in so far as it contributes to the peace of mind of its po e or. Hence, though he retains the threefold division of philosophy into ethics, physics, and dialectics (in Epicurean language, canonic), he a igns the two latter a place subordinate to the first, and bestows on them a cursory and heedle mode of treatment. We should greatly wrong Epicurus if we represented the gratification of the sensual appetites to be the object proposed by him to the wise man. The happine which he regards as the true end of existence is rather a species of quietism, in which the philosopher, protected by his. knowledge Oom all fear of injury from the powers of nature, and by the laws from the a aults of his fellow creatures, holds himself open to all the pleasurable sensations which the temperate indulgence of his ordinary appetites, the recollection of past enjoyments, and the anticipation of future, are sufficient abundantly to furnish. In order to support his imaginary wise man in this tranquillity, he deemed it nece ary to show that the apprehensions which beset mankind, of death, of the power and anger of the gods, and the like, are wholly unfounded. For this purpose he made use of the physical doctrine of Demo crit us; a system of atomic materialism,which makes all existences to arise from the concourse of minute particles of matter — the soul among the number, which is consequently, at the moment of death, resolved into its constituent elements. The mental philosophy of Epicurus was of a similar stamp: all our mental powers are resolved into sensation, immediate or recollected; and sensation, under both its fonns, consists in the influx of certain extremely fine films, which are perpetually, as it were, sloughed from external objects, and find their way through the organs of sense to the soul. The gods of the Epicureans bear no relation to any part of their system: they are beings sprung, like men, from the concourse of atoms, and differing from them only in their superior ble edne and tranquillity, shown in their entire aloofne from the care and government of tlie world. The followers of Epicurus were numerous, especially among the Romans. Little more, however, than their names are recorded; with the exception of Lucretius, who, in his well-known poem, De Rerum Naturd, illustrates and defends the physical and religious tenets of his master. In modern times, Gas send i, an atomic philosopher of the 17th century, has published an able statement of the Epicurean system, under the title of Syntagma Philosophic a Epicuri. ( See also Diogenes Laertius, Fit. Phil. 1. x.; and Cicero's philosophical writings generally: also Ritter, Gesch. der Philos. b. X. And' for a list of the Epicureans, Fabric i i Bibliotkeca Grceca, vol.iii, ed. Harles.) EPICYCLE (Yunanca köken — orijinale bakınız.), in the Ancient Astronomy, is a circle having its centre ou Dd3 [s. 418]