fore, teleology, and optimism profoundly dominate the Stoic system, and its true character must be described as 'Pantheistic.'

The Stoics had a strikingly pure and correct doctrine of the freedom of the will. Moral accountability is involved in the fact that conduct flows from the will, and so from the innermost and most essential nature of man; but the manner in which each man's will shapes itself is only a result of the mighty necessity and divine predestination which govern all the machinery of the universe down to the smallest detail. For his thought also man is responsible, because even our judgments are shaped by the influence of our moral character.

The soul, which is bodily in its nature, subsists for a certain time after death: wicked and foolish souls, whose matter is less pure and durable, perish quicker; the good mount to an abode of the blessed, where they remain till they are resolved in the great conflagration of the universe, with everything that exists, into the unity of the divine being.

But how was it that the Stoics, from their lofty theory of morals, proceeded to a theory of the universe standing in many points so near to Materialism? Zeller thinks that, in consequence of their practical tendency, they had conceived their metaphysic in the simplest form in which it is supplied by the immediate experience of practical life.57 There is a good deal to be said for this view of the

57 Zeller, iii. 1, S. 113 ff., E. T. (Reichel, Stoics, &c.), p. 129: "Originally devoting themselves with all their energies to practical inquiries, in their theory of nature the Stoics occupied the ground of ordinary common sense, which knows of no real object except what is grossly sensible and corporeal. In all their speculations their primary aim was to discover a firm basis for human actions. In actions, however, men are brought into direct contact with external obVOL. I.

jects. The objects then presented to the senses are regarded by them as real things, nor is an opportunity afforded for doubting their real being. Their reality is practically taken for granted, because of the influence they exercise on man, and because they serve as objects for the exercise of man's powers. In every such exercise of power both subject and object are material. Even when an impression is conveyed to the soul of man, the direct instrument is something

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question; but there is in the system of Epikuros a still deeper link between ethical and physical science. And is such a link wanting in the case of the Stoics? May it not be, perhaps, that Zeno found a support for his theory of virtue just in this thought of the absolute unity of the universe? Aristotle leaves us stranded in the dualism of a transcendental God and the world he governs, of the body with an animal soul and the separable immortal spirit: an excellent foundation for the consciousness of medieval Christianity, broken and yearning from the dust towards eternity, but not for the haughty self-sufficiency of the Stoic.

The step from absolute Monism to the physic of the Stoics is now easy, for either all bodies must be reduced to pure idea, or all spirits, including that which moves in them, must become bodies; and even if, with the Stoics, we simply define body as that which is extended in space, the difference between these two views, utterly opposed as they seem to one another, is not really great.-Yet here we must break off, since whatever may have been the connection between the ethic and the physic of the Stoics, the speculations as to space, in its relation to the world of ideas and of bodies, belong to modern times.—We turn now to the revival by Epikuros of a consequent Materialistic theory, resting upon a purely mechanical theory of the world.

The father of Epikuros is said to have been a poor schoolmaster of Athens, who became a kleruchos, or colonist, at Samos. There Epikuros was born towards the

material-the voice or the gesture. In the region of experience there are no such things as non-material impressions." Comp. ibid., S. 325 ff., E. T. 362, where an admirable parallel is drawn between the Stoical ethic and their theoretical views of the absolute sway of the divine will in the world, while, on the other hand, Materialism there too is deduced

merely from the predominance of practical interests. But, in fact, Materialism, in the wider sense (pantheistic or mechanical), was for the ancients an almost inevitable consequence of rigorous Monism and Determinism; for they were still far removed from the modern Idealism of a Descartes, Leibniz, or Kant.

end of the year 342, or at the beginning of 341. In his fourteenth year, it is said, he studied Hesiod's Cosmogony at school, and finding that everything was explained to arise from chaos, he cried out and asked, Whence, then, came chaos? To this his teacher had no reply that would content him, and from that hour the young Epikuros began to philosophise for himself.

Epikuros must, in fact, be regarded as self-taught, although the most important ideas which he incorporated in his system were individually already commonly known. His general education is said to have been deficient. He joined himself to none of the then prevailing schools, but studied the more industriously the writings of Demokritos, which supplied him with the corner-stone of his cosmology, the doctrine of atoms. Nausiphanes, a somewhat sceptical follower of Demokritos, is said to have first introduced this doctrine to him at Samos.

Nevertheless, we cannot assume that it was through ignorance of other systems that Epikuros took his own course; for already as a youth of eighteen he had been to Athens, and heard probably Xenokrates, the pupil of Plato, whilst Aristotle, accused of atheism, was at Chaleis, looking towards his end.

How different then the state of Greece from what it had been a hundred years before, whilst Protagoras was still teaching! Then Athens, the home of free culture, had reached its highest point of external power. Art and literature were in their fullest bloom. Philosophy was animated by all the vigour and arrogance of youth. Epikuros studied at Athens at the time of the downfall of liberty.

Thebes had perished, and Demosthenes lived in exile. From Asia were heard the news of Alexander's victories. The East disclosed its marvels; and as the circle of vision was widened, the Hellenic fatherland, with its glorious past, appeared more and more as a step that had been taken on the way to new developments, whose whence and whither no man yet knew.

Alexander died suddenly at Babylon; the last convulsive struggle of freedom followed, only to be cruelly repressed by Antipater. Amidst this confusion Epikuros again left Athens, in order to return to his parents' Ionian home. Afterwards he is supposed to have taught at Kolophon, Mitylene, and Lampsakos; and at the last-named. place he gained his first disciples. He only returned to Athens in the maturity of years, and there bought a garden, where he dwelt with his disciples. It is said to have borne as an inscription, "Stranger, here will it be well with thee: here pleasure is the highest good." Here lived Epikuros with his followers, temperately and simply, in harmonious effort, in heartfelt friendship, as in a united family. By his will he bequeathed the garden to his school, which for a long time still had its centre there. The whole of antiquity furnishes no brighter and purer example of fellowship than that of Epikuros and his school.

Epikuros never filled any public office; and yet he is said to have loved his country. He never came into conflict with religion, for he sedulously honoured the gods with all conventional observance, without pretending to a belief concerning them which he did not really feel.

The existence of the gods he based upon the pure subjective knowledge which we have of them: and yet that man is not an atheist, he taught, who denies the gods of the multitude, but much rather he who subscribes to the opinions of the multitude concerning the gods. We are to regard them as eternal and immortal beings, whose holiness excludes every thought of care or occupation; and therefore all the events of nature proceed according to eternal laws, and without any interference from the gods, whose majesty is insulted if we suppose that they trouble themselves about us: we must worship them, nevertheless, for the sake of their perfection.

If, now, we put together these partly contradictory expressions, there can be no doubt that Epikuros did

really respect the idea of the gods as an element of noble human nature, and not the gods themselves as actual objective existences. Only from this point of view, of a subjective and soul-harmonising reverence for the gods, can we explain the contradictions in which otherwise the Epikurean system would necessarily leave us involved.

For if the gods exist indeed, but do nothing, that would be reason enough for the credulous frivolity of the masses to believe in them but not to worship them, while Epikuros did in fact just the reverse of this. He reverences the gods for their perfection: this he might equally do whether this perfection is exhibited in their outward actions, or whether it is only developed as an ideal in our thoughts; and this latter seems to have been his view.

In this sense, however, we must not suppose that his reverence for the gods was mere hypocrisy in order to keep on good terms with the mass of the people and the dangerous priesthood: it came really from his heart; for these careless and painless gods did in fact represent, as it were, an incarnated ideal of his philosophy.

It was at the utmost a concession to existing circumstances, and certainly, at the same time, a habit endeared by the associations of youth, when he attached himself to the forms which must of course, from his standpoint, seem at least arbitrary and indifferent.

Thus Epikuros could at once impart a flavour of piety to his life, and still make the central point of his philosophy the effort to win that calmness of the soul which finds its only immovable foundation in deliverance from foolish superstitions.

Epikuros, then, taught expressly that even the motion of the heavenly bodies is not dependent upon the wish or impulse of a divine being; nor are the heavenly bodies themselves divine beings, but everything is governed by an eternal order which regulates the interchange of origination and destruction.

To investigate the reason of this eternal order is the