itself.” This is likewise worthy of approbation: self-consciousness,
enjoyment, is just this return into self, the consciousness of this
unity in which I enjoy something and thereby have my unity as this
individual in the objective element. The case is similar in regard
to man; his end is self-preservation, but with a conscious end, with
consideration, according to reason. “In plants nature operates without
voluntary inclination (ὁρμῆς) or sense-perception, but some things in
us take place in the same manner as in plants.” For in the plant there
also is the seed-containing conception, but it is not in it as end, nor
as its object, for it knows nothing about it. “In animals inclination
comes in; in them nature makes their impulses conformable to their
first principle;” _i.e._ the end of inclination is simply the first
principle of their nature, and that through which they make for their
own preservation. “Rational creatures likewise make nature their end,
but this is to live according to reason, for reason becomes in them the
artist who produces inclination,” _i.e._ it makes a work of art in man
from what in the animal is desire merely. To live in accordance with
nature is thus, to the Stoics, to live rationally.

This now appears somewhat like certain receipts given by the Stoics for
the purpose of discovering right motive forces in regard to virtue. For
their principle put generally is this: “Men must live in conformity
with nature, _i.e._ with virtue; for to it” (rational) “nature leads
us.” That is the highest good, the end of everything—a most important
form in Stoic morality, which appears in Cicero as _finis bonorum_
or _summum bonum_. With the Stoics right reason and the securing of
it on its own account, is the highest principle. But here, too, we
immediately see that we are thereby merely led round in a circle in a
manner altogether formal, because virtue, conformity to nature, and
reason, are only determined through one another. Virtue consists in
living conformably with nature, and what is conformable to nature is
virtue. Likewise thought must further determine what is in conformity
with nature, but conformity with nature again is that alone which
is determined through reason. The Stoics further say, according to
Diogenes Laërtius (VII. 87, 88) “To live according to nature is to
live according to that which experience teaches us of the laws both
of universal nature and of our own nature, by doing nothing which
universal law forbids; and that law is the right reason which pervades
everything, being the same with Jupiter, the disposer (καθηγεμόνι) of
the existing system of things. The virtue of the happy man is when
everything occurs according to the harmony of the genius (δαίμονος)
of each individual with reference to the will of the disposer of all
things.” Thus everything remains as it was in a universal formalism.

We must throughout allow to the Stoics that virtue consists in
following thought, _i.e._ the universal law, right reason; anything is
moral and right only in as far as a universal end is in it fulfilled
and brought into evidence. This last is the substantial, the essential
nature of a relationship, and in it we have that which is really in
thought alone. The universal which must be the ultimate determination
in action, is, however, not abstract, but the universal in this
relationship, just as, for example, in property the particular is
placed on one side. Because man, as a man of thought and culture, acts
according to his perception, he subordinates his impulses and desires
to the universal; for they are individual. There is in each human
action an individual and particular element; but there is a distinction
as to whether the particular as such is solely insisted upon or whether
in this particular the universal is secured. It is to the securing
of this universal that the energy of Stoicism is directed. But this
universal has still no content and is undetermined, and thereby the
Stoic doctrines of virtue are incomplete, empty, meaningless and
tedious. Virtue indeed is commended in a forcible, lively and edifying
manner, but as to what this universal law of virtue is, we have no
indications given us.

b. The other side as regards the good is external existence, and the
agreement of circumstances, of external nature, with the end aimed
at by man. For although the Stoics have expressed the good as being
conformity with law, in relation to the practical will, they yet
defined it, according to Diogenes Laërtius (VII. 94, 95), as being at
the same time the useful, “either absolutely and immediately useful or
not contrary to utility,” so that generally speaking the useful is,
as it were, the accident of virtue. “The Stoics likewise distinguished
manifold good into good having reference to the soul, and external
good; the former indicates virtues and their actions; the latter the
fact of pertaining to a noble country, having a virtuous friend, and
so on. In the third place it is neither external nor is it a matter
of self-consciousness alone, when the self-same man is virtuous and
happy.” These conclusions are quite good. Morality does not require
to look so coldly on what concerns utility, for every good action is
in fact useful, _i.e._ it has actuality and brings forth something
good. An action which is good without being useful is no action and
has no actuality. That which in itself is useless in the good is its
abstraction as being a non-reality. Men not only may, but must have
the consciousness of utility; for it is true that it is useful to know
the good. Utility means nothing else but that men have a consciousness
respecting their actions. If this consciousness is blameworthy, it
is still more so to know much of the good of one’s action and to
consider it less in the form of necessity. Thus the question was raised
as to how virtue and happiness are related to one another, a theme
of which the Epicureans have also treated. Here it was, as in more
recent times, regarded as the great problem to discover whether virtue
gives happiness, taken altogether by itself, whether the conception
of happiness is included in its conception. That union of virtue and
happiness, as the mean, is thus rightly represented as being perfect,
neither pertaining only to self-consciousness nor to externality.

α. In order to be able to give a general answer to this question,
we most recollect what was said above of the principle of
self-preservation, according to which virtue has to do with the
rational nature. The fulfilment of its end is happiness as finding
itself realized, and as the knowledge or intuitive perception of itself
as an external—a harmony of its Notion or its genius with its Being
or its reality. The harmony of virtue with happiness thus means that
the virtuous action realizes itself in and for itself, man becomes in
it an immediate object to himself, and he comes to the perception of
himself as objective, or of the objective as himself. This rests in
the conception of action and particularly of good action. For the bad
destroys reality and is opposed to self-preservation; but the good
is what makes for its self-preservation and effectuates it—the good
end is thus the content that realizes itself in action. But in this
general answer to that question, properly speaking, the consciousness
of the implicitly existent end has not sufficiently exactly the
signification of virtue, nor has action proceeding from the same
exactly the signification of virtuous action, neither has the reality
which it attains the signification of happiness. The distinction rests
in the fact that the Stoics have merely remained at this general
conception, and set it forth immediately as actuality; in it however,
the conception of virtuous action is merely expressed, and not reality.

β. A further point is that just because the Stoics have remained at
this position, the opposition between virtue and happiness immediately
enters in, or, in abstract form, that between thought and its
determination. These opposites are with Cicero _honestum_ and _utile_,
and their union is the question dealt with.[137] Virtue, which is
living in accordance with the universal law of nature, is confronted
by the satisfaction of the subject as such in his particularity.
The two sides are, in the first place, this particularity of the
individual, which, in the most varied aspects has existence in me as
the abstract “this,” for example, in the pre-supposition of determinate
inclinations; and here we have pleasure and enjoyment in which my
existence harmonizes with the demands of my particularity. In the
second place, I, as the will that fulfils law, am only the formal
character which has to carry out the universal; and thus, as willing
the universal, I am in accord with myself as thinking. The two now
come into collision, and because I seek the one satisfaction or the
other, I am in collision with myself, because I am also individual.
As to this we may hear many trivial things said, such as that things
often go badly with the virtuous and well with the wicked, and that
the latter is happy, &c. By going well all external circumstances
are understood, and on the whole the content is quite uninteresting,
for it is constituted by the attainment of commonplace ends, points
of view and interests. Such at once show themselves, however, to be
merely contingent and external; hence we soon get past this standpoint
in the problem, and thus external enjoyment, riches, noble birth,
&c., do not accord with virtue or happiness. The Stoics indeed said:
“The implicitly good is the perfect” (that which fulfils its end) “in
accordance with the nature of the rational; now virtue is such, but
enjoyment, pleasure and such-like are its accessories”[138]—the end of
the satisfaction of the individual on his own account. Thus these may
be the concomitants of virtue, although it is a matter of indifference
whether they are so or not, for since this satisfaction is not end,
it is equally a matter of indifference if pain is the concomitant
of virtue. Conduct which is according to reason only, thus further
contains man’s abstract concentration within himself, and the fact that
the consciousness of the true enters into him, so that he renounces
everything that belongs to immediate desires, feelings, &c.

In this quite formal principle of holding oneself in a pure harmony
with oneself of a merely thinking nature, there now rests the power of
becoming indifferent to every particular enjoyment, desire, passion
and interest. Because this following of the determinations of reason
is in opposition to enjoyment, man should seek his end or satisfaction
in nothing else than in the satisfaction of his reason, in satisfying
himself in himself, but not in anything outwardly conditioned. Hence
much has been said by the Stoics in respect of that which pertains to
the passions being something that is contradictory. The writings of
Seneca and Antoninus contain much that is true in this regard, and
they may be most helpful to those who have not attained to the higher
degree of conviction. Seneca’s talent must be recognized, but we must
also be convinced that it does not suffice. Antoninus (VIII. 7) shows
psychologically that happiness or pleasure is not a good. “Regret is a
certain self-blame, because something useful has failed, the good must
be something useful, and the noble and good man must make the same his
interest. But no noble and good man will feel regret that he has fallen
short in pleasure; pleasure is thus neither useful nor good. The man
who has the desire for glory after his death does not recollect that
he who holds him in remembrance himself dies also, and again he who
follows this one, until all recollection through these admiring ones
who have passed away, has been extinguished.” Even if this independence
and freedom is merely formal, we must still recognize the greatness of
this principle. However, in this determination of the abstract inward
independence and freedom of the character in itself lies the power
which has made the Stoics famous; this Stoic force of character which
says that man has only to seek to remain like himself, thus coincides
with the formal element which I have already given (p. 254). For if
the consciousness of freedom is my end, in this universal end of the
pure consciousness of my independence all particular determinations of
freedom which are constituted by duties and laws, have disappeared. The
strength of will of Stoicism has therefore decided not to regard the
particular as its essence, but to withdraw itself therefrom; we see on
the one hand, that this is a true principle, but on the other, it is at
the same time abstract still.

Now because the principle of the Stoic morality professes to be the
harmony of mind with itself, what should be done is not to let this
remain formal, and therefore not to let what is not contained in
this self-contained be any longer shut out of it. That freedom which
the Stoics ascribe to man is not without relation to what is other
than himself; thus he is really dependent, and under this category
happiness really falls. My independence is only one side, to which
the other side, the particular side of my existence, hence does not
yet correspond. The old question, which at this time again came up,
thus concerns the harmony between virtue and happiness. We speak of
morality rather than virtue, because that according to which I ought
to direct my actions is not, as in virtue, my will, as it has become
custom. Morality really contains my subjective conviction that that
which I do is in conformity with rational determinations of will, with
universal duties. That question is a necessary one, a problem which
even in Kant’s time occupied men, and in endeavouring to solve it
we must begin by considering what is to be understood by happiness.
Much more is afterwards said of that in which satisfaction is to be
sought. However, from what is external and exposed to chance we must
at once break free. Happiness in general means nothing more than the
feeling of harmony with self. That which is pleasing to the senses is
pleasing because a harmony with ourselves is therein contained. The
contrary and unpleasing is, on the other hand, a negation, a lack of
correspondence with our desires. The Stoics have posited as the very
essence of enjoyment this harmony of our inner nature with itself,
but only as inward freedom and the consciousness, or even only the
feeling of this harmony, so that enjoyment such as this is contained in
virtue itself. Yet this enjoyment ever remains a secondary matter, a
consequence, which in so far as it is so cannot be made end, but should
only be considered as an accessory. The Stoics said in this regard
that virtue is alone to be sought, but with virtue happiness on its
own account is found, for it confers blessing explicitly as such. This
happiness is true and imperturbable even if man is in misfortune;[139]
thus the greatness of the Stoic philosophy consists in the fact that
if the will thus holds together within itself, nothing can break into
it, that everything else is kept outside of it, for even the removal
of pain cannot be an end. The Stoics have been laughed at because they
said that pain is no evil.[140] But toothache and the like are not in
question as regards this problem. We cannot but know we are subject
to such; pain like this, and unhappiness are, however, two different
things. Thus the problem throughout is only to be understood as the
demand for a harmony of the rational will with external reality. To
this reality there also belongs the sphere of particular existence, of
subjectivity, of personality, of particular interests. But of these
interests the universal alone truly pertains to this reality, for only
in so far as it is universal, can it harmonize with the rationality
of the will. It is thus quite right to say that suffering, pain, &c.,
are no evil, whereby the conformity with myself, my freedom, might be
destroyed; I am elevated over such in the union which is maintained
with myself, and even if I may feel them, they can still not make me
at variance with myself. This inward unity with myself as felt, is
happiness, and this is not destroyed by outward evil.

γ. Another opposition is that within virtue itself. Because the
universal law of right reason is alone to be taken as the standard of
action, there is no longer any really absolutely fixed determination,
for all duty is always, so to speak, a particular content, which
can plainly be grasped in universal form, without this, however, in
any way affecting the content. Because virtue is thus that which is
conformable to the real essence or law of things, in a general sense
the Stoics called virtue everything, in every department, which is
in conformity with law in that department. Hence, Diogenes tells us
(VII. 92), they also speak of logical and physical virtues, just as
their morality represents individual duties (τὰ καθήκοντα) by passing
in review the individual natural relationships in which man stands,
and showing what in them is rational.[141] But this is only a kind
of quibbling such as we have also seen in Cicero’s case. Thus in as
far as an ultimate deciding criterion of that which is good cannot be
set up, the principle being destitute of determination, the ultimate
decision rests with the subject, Just as before this it was the oracle
that decided, at the commencement of this profounder inwardness the
subject was given the power of deciding as to what is right. For since
Socrates’ time the determination of what was right by the standard of
customary morality had ceased in Athens to be ultimate; hence with the
Stoics all external determination falls away, and the power of decision
can only be placed in the subject as such, which in the last instance
determines from itself as conscience. Although much that is elevated
and edifying may find its support here, an actual determination
is still wanting; hence there is according to the Stoics only one
virtue,[142] and the wise man is the virtuous.

c. The Stoics have thus in the third place likewise been in the way of
representing an ideal of the wise man which, however, is nothing more
than the will of the subject which in itself only wills itself, remains
at the thought of the good, because it is good, allows itself in its
steadfastness to be moved by nothing different from itself, such as
desires, pain, &c., desires its freedom alone, and is prepared to give
up all else—which thus, if it experiences outward pain and misfortune,
yet separates these from the inwardness of its consciousness. The
question of why the expression of rel morality has with the Stoics
the form of the ideal of the wise man finds its answer, however,
in the fact that the mere conception of virtuous consciousness, of
action with respect to an implicitly existent end, finds in individual
consciousness alone the element of moral reality. For if the Stoics
had gone beyond the mere conception of action for the implicitly
existent end, and had reached to the knowledge of the content, they
would not have required to express this as a subject. To them rational
self-preservation is virtue. But if we ask what it is that is evolved
by virtue, the answer is to the effect that it is just rational
self-preservation; and thus they have not by this expression got beyond
that formal circle. Moral reality is not expressed as that which is
enduring, which is evolved and ever evolving itself. And moral reality
is just this, to exist; for as nature is an enduring and existent
system, the spiritual as such must be an objective world. To this
reality the Stoics have, however, not reached. Or we may understand
this thus. Their moral reality is only the wise man, an ideal and not a
reality—in fact the mere conception whose reality is not set forth.

This subjectivity is already contained in the fact that moral reality,
expressed as virtue, thereby immediately presents the appearance
of being present only as a quality of the individual. This virtue,
as such, in as far as only the moral reality of the individual is
indicated, cannot attain to happiness in and for itself, even though
happiness, regarded in the light of realization, were only the
realization of the individual. For this happiness would be just the
enjoyment of the individual as the harmony of existence with him
as individual; but with him as individual true happiness does not
harmonize, but only with him as universal man. Man must likewise not
in the least desire that it should harmonize with him as individual
man, that is, he must be indifferent to the individuality of his
existence, and to the harmony with the individual as much as to the
want of harmony; he must be able to dispense with happiness just
as, if he possesses it, he must be free from it; or it is only a
harmony of him with himself as a universal. If merely the subjective
conception of morality is therein contained, its true relationship is
yet thereby expressed; for it is this freedom of consciousness which
in its enjoyment rests in itself and is independent of objects,—what
we expressed above (p. 264) as the special characteristic of the
Stoic morality. Stoic self-consciousness has not here to deal with
its individuality as such, but solely with the freedom in which it is
conscious of itself only as the universal. Now could one call this
happiness, in distinction to the other, true happiness, happiness
would still, on the whole, remain a wrong expression. The satisfaction
of rational consciousness in itself as an immediate universal, is a
state of being which is simulated by the determination of happiness;
for in happiness we have the moment of self-consciousness as an
individuality. But this differentiated consciousness is not present in
that self-satisfaction; for in that freedom the individual has rather
the sense of his universality only. Striving after happiness, after
spiritual enjoyment, and talking of the excellence of the pleasures of
science and art, is hence dull and insipid, for the matter with which
we are occupied has no longer the form of enjoyment, or it does away
with that conception. This sort of talk has indeed passed away and
it no longer has any interest. The true point of view is to concern
oneself with the matter itself and not with enjoyment, that is, not
with the constant reflection on the relation to oneself as individual,
but with the matter as a matter, and as implicitly universal. We must
take care besides that things are tolerable to us as individuals,
and the pleasanter the better. But no further notice or speech about
this is requisite, nor are we to imagine that there is much that is
rational and important within it. But the Stoic consciousness does not
get beyond this individuality to the reality of the universal, and
therefore it has only to express the form, the real as an individual,
or the wise man.

The highest point reached by Aristotle, the thought of thought, is
also present in Stoicism, but in such a way that it does not stand in
its individual capacity as it appears to do in Aristotle, having what
is different beside it, but as being quite alone. Thus in the Stoic
consciousness there is just this freedom, this negative moment of
abstraction from existence, an independence which is capable of giving
up everything, but not as an empty passivity and self-abnegation, as
though everything could be taken from it, but an independence which
can resign it voluntarily, without thereby losing its reality; for its
reality is really just the simple rationality, the pure thought of
itself. Here pure consciousness thus attains to being its own object,
and because reality is to it only this simple object, its object annuls
in itself all modes of existence, and is nothing in and for itself,
being therein only in the form of something abrogated.

All is merged into this: the simplicity of the Notion, or its pure
negativity, is posited in relation to everything. But the real
filling in, the objective mode, is wanting, and in order to enter
into this, Stoicism requires that the content should be given. Hence
the Stoics depicted the ideal of the wise man in specially eloquent
terms, telling how perfectly sufficient in himself and independent
he is, for what the wise man does is right. The description of the
ideal formed by the Stoics is hence a common subject of discussion
and is even devoid of interest; or at least the negative element in
it is alone noteworthy. “The wise man is free and likewise in chains,
for he acts from himself, uncorrupted by fear or desire.” Everything
which belongs to desire and fear he does not reckon to himself, he
gives to such the position of being something foreign to him; for no
particular existence is secure to him. “The wise man is alone king,
for he alone is not bound to laws, and he is debtor to no one.” Thus
we here see the autonomy and autocracy of the wise man, who, merely
following reason, is absolved from all established laws which are
recognized, and for which no rational ground can be given, or which
appear to rest somewhat on a natural aversion or instinct. For even
in relation to actual conduct no definite law has properly speaking
reality for him, and least of all those which appear to belong to
nature as such alone, _e.g._ the prohibition against entering into
marriage relations which are considered incestuous, the prohibition
of intercourse between man and man, for in reason the same thing is
fitting as regards the one which is so as regards the others. Similarly
the wise man may eat human flesh,[143] &c. But a universal reason is
something quite indeterminate. Thus the Stoics have not passed beyond
their abstract understanding in the transgression of these laws, and
therefore they have allowed their king to do much that was immoral;
for if incest, pederasty, the eating of human flesh, were at first
forbidden as though through a natural instinct only, they likewise
can by no means exist before the judgment-seat of reason. The Stoic
wise man is thus also ‘enlightened,’ in the sense that where he did
not know how to bring the natural instinct into the form of a rational
reason, he trampled upon nature. Thus that which is called natural
law or natural instinct comes into opposition with what is set forth
as immediately and universally rational. For example, those first
actions seem to rest on natural feelings, and we must remember that
feelings are certainly not the object of thought; as opposed to this,
property is something thought, universal in itself, a recognition of my
possession from all, and thus it indeed belongs to the region of the
understanding. But should the wise man hence not be bound by the former
because it is not something immediately thought, this is merely the
fault of his want of comprehension. As we have, however, seen that in
the sphere of theory the thought-out simplicity of the truth is capable
of all content, so we find this also to be the case with the good, that
which is practically thought-out, without therefore being any content
in itself. To wish to justify such a content through a reason thus
indicates a confusion between the perception of the individual and that
of all reality, it means a superficiality of perception which does not
acknowledge a certain thing because it is not known in this and that
regard. But this is so for the reason that it only seeks out and knows
the most immediate grounds and cannot know whether there are not other
aspects and other grounds. Such grounds as these allow of reasons for
and against everything being found—on the one hand a positive relation
to something which, though in other cases necessary, as such can also
be again sublated; and, on the other hand, a negative relation to
something necessary, which can likewise again be held to be valid.

Because the Stoics indeed placed virtue in thought, but found
no concrete principle of rational self-determination whereby
determinateness and difference developed, they, in the first place,
have carried on a reasoning by means of grounds to which they lead back
virtue. They draw deductions from facts, connections, consequences,
from a contradiction or opposition; and this Antoninus and Seneca do in
an edifying way and with great ingenuity. Reasons, however, prove to
be a nose of wax; for there are good grounds for everything, such as
“These instincts, implanted as they are by nature,” or “Short life,”
&c. Which reasons should be esteemed as good thereby depends on the end
and interest which form the pre-supposition giving them their power.
Hence reasons are as a whole subjective. This method of reflecting on
self and on what we should do, leads to the giving to our ends the
breadth of reflection due to penetrative insight, the enlargement
of the sphere of consciousness. It is thus I who bring forward these
wise and good grounds. They do not constitute the thing, the objective
itself, but the thing of my own will, of my desire, a bauble through
which I set up before me the nobility of my mind; the opposite of this
is self-oblivion in the thing. In Seneca himself there is more folly
and bombast in the way of moral reflection than genuine truth; and thus
there has been brought up against him both his riches, the splendour
of his manner of life, his having allowed Nero to give him wealth
untold, and also the fact that he had Nero as his pupil; for the latter
delivered orations composed by Seneca.[144] This reasoning is often
brilliant, as with Seneca: we find much that awakens and strengthens
the mind, clever antitheses and rhetoric, but we likewise feel the
coldness and tediousness of these moral discourses. We are stimulated
but not often satisfied, and this may be deemed the character of
sophistry: if acuteness in forming distinctions and sincere opinion
must be there recognized, yet final conviction is ever lacking.

In the second place there is in the Stoic standpoint the higher,
although negatively formal principle, that what is thought is alone as
such the end and the good, and therefore that in this form of abstract
thought alone, as in Kant’s principle of duty, there is contained that
by which man must establish and secure his self-consciousness, so
that he can esteem and follow nothing in himself in as far as it has
any other content for itself. “The happy life,” says Seneca (De vita
beata, 5), “is unalterably grounded on a right and secure judgment.”
The formal security of the mind which abstracts from everything,
sets up for us no development of objective principles, but a subject
which maintains itself in this constancy, and in an indifference
not due to stupidity, but studied; and this is the infinitude of
self-consciousness in itself.

Because the moral principle of the Stoics remains at this formalism,
all that they treat of is comprised in this. For their thoughts are the
constant leading back of consciousness to its unity with itself. The
power of despising existence is great, the strength of this negative
attitude sublime. The Stoic principle is a necessary moment in the
Idea of absolute consciousness; it is also a necessary manifestation
in time. For if, as in the Roman world, the life of the real mind
is lost in the abstract universal; the consciousness, where real
universality is destroyed, must go back into its individuality and
maintain itself in its thoughts. Hence, when the political existence
and moral actuality of Greece had perished, and when in later times the
Roman Empire also became dissatisfied with the present, it withdrew
into itself, and there sought the right and moral which had already
disappeared from ordinary life. It is thus herein implied, not that
the condition of the world is a rational and right one, but only that
the subject as such should assert his freedom in himself. Everything
that is outward, world, relationships, &c., are so disposed as to be
capable of being abrogated; in it there is thus no demand for the real
harmony of reason and existence; or that which we might term objective
morality and rectitude is not found in it. Plato has set up the ideal
of a Republic, _i.e._ of a rational condition of mankind in the state;
for this esteem for right, morality and custom which is to him the
principal matter, constitutes the side of reality in that which is
rational; and it is only through a rational condition of the world
such as this, that the harmony of the external with the internal is
in this concrete sense present. In regard to morality and power of
willing the good, nothing more excellent can be read than what Marcus
Aurelius has written in his Meditations on himself; he was Emperor
of the whole of the then known civilized world, and likewise bore
himself nobly and justly as a private individual. But the condition
of the Roman Empire was not altered by this philosophic emperor,
and his successor, who was of a different character, was restrained
by nothing from inaugurating a condition of things as bad as his own
wicked caprice might direct. It is something much higher when the
inward principle of the mind, of the rational will, likewise realizes
itself, so that there arises a rational constitution, a condition of
things in accordance with culture and law. Through such objectivity
of reason, the determinations which come together in the ideal of
the wise man are first consolidated. There then is present a system
of moral relationships which are duties; each determination is then
in its place, the one subordinated to the other, and the higher is
predominant. Hence it comes to pass that the conscience becomes bound
(which is a higher point than the Stoic freedom), that the objective
relationships which we call duties are consolidated after the manner
of a just condition of things, as well as being held by mind to be
fixed determinations. Because these duties do not merely appear to
hold good in a general sense, but are also recognized in my conscience
as having the character of the universal, the harmony of the rational
will and reality is established. On the one hand, the objective system
of freedom as necessity exists, and, on the other, the rational in
me is real as conscience. The Stoic principle has not yet reached
to this more concrete attitude, as being on the one hand abstract
morality, and, on the other, the subject that has a conscience. The
freedom of self-consciousness in itself is the principle, but it has
not yet attained to its concrete form, and its relation to happiness
exists only in its determination as indifferent and contingent, which
relation must be given up. In the concrete principle of rationality
the condition of the world, as of my conscience, is not, however,
indifferent.

This is a general description of Stoic morality; the main point is to
recognize its point of view and chief relationships. Because in the
Roman world a perfectly consistent position, and one conformable to
existing conditions, has attained to the consciousness of itself,
the philosophy of the Stoics has more specially found its home in the
Roman world. The noble Romans have hence only proved the negative, an
indifference to life and to all that is external; they could be great
only in a subjective or negative manner—in the manner of a private
individual. The Roman jurists are also said to have been likewise
Stoic philosophers, but, on the one hand, we find that our teachers of
Roman law only speak ill of Philosophy, and, on the other, they are
yet sufficiently inconsistent to state it to the credit of the Roman
jurists that they were philosophers. So far as I understand law, I can
find in it, among the Romans, nothing either of thought, Philosophy
or the Notion. If we are to call the reasoning of the understanding
logical thought, they may indeed be held to be philosophers, but this
is also present in the reasoning of Master Hugo, who certainly does not
claim to be a philosopher. The reasoning of the understanding and the
philosophic Notion are two different things. We shall now proceed to
what is in direct contrast to the Stoic philosophy, Epicureanism.

B. EPICURUS.

The Epicurean philosophy, which forms the counterpart to Stoicism, was
just as much elaborated as the Stoic, if, indeed, it were not more so.
While the latter posited as truth existence for thought—the universal
Notion—and held firmly to this principle, Epicurus, the founder of
the other system, held a directly opposite view, regarding as the
true essence not Being in general, but Being as sensation, that is,
consciousness in the form of immediate particularity. As the Stoics
did not seek the principle of the Cynics—that man must confine himself
to the simplicity of nature—in man’s requirements, but placed it in
universal reason, so Epicurus elevated the principle that happiness
should be our chief end into the region of thought, by seeking pleasure
in a universal which is determined through thought. And though, in so
doing, he may have given a higher scientific form to the doctrines of
the Cyrenaics. it is yet self-evident that if existence for sensation
is to be regarded as the truth, the necessity for the Notion is
altogether abrogated, and in the absence of speculative interest
things cease to form a united whole, all things being in point of fact
lowered to the point of view of the ordinary human understanding.
Notwithstanding this proviso, before we take this philosophy into
consideration, we must carefully divest ourselves of all the ideas
commonly prevalent regarding Epicureanism.

As regards the life of Epicurus, he was born in the Athenian village of
Gargettus in Ol. 109, 3 (B.C. 342), and therefore before the death of
Aristotle, which took place in Ol. 114, 3. His opponents, especially
the Stoics, have raked up against him more accusations than I can tell
of, and have invented the most trivial anecdotes respecting his doings.
He had poor parents; his father, Neocles, was village schoolmaster,
and Chærestrata, his mother, was a sorceress: that is, she earned
money, like the women of Thrace and Thessaly, by furnishing spells and
incantations, as was quite common in those days. The father, taking
Epicurus with him, migrated with an Athenian colony to Samos, but here
also he was obliged to give instruction to children, because his plot
of land was not sufficient for the maintenance of his family. At the
age of about eighteen years, just about the time when Aristotle was
living in Chalcis, Epicurus returned to Athens. He had already, in
Samos, made the philosophy of Democritus a special subject of study,
and now in Athens he devoted himself to it more than ever; in addition
to this, he was on intimate terms with several of the philosophers
then flourishing, such as Xenocrates, the Platonist, and Theophrastus,
a follower of Aristotle. When Epicurus was twelve years old, he read
with his teacher Hesiod’s account of Chaos, the source of all things;
and this was perhaps not without influence on his philosophic views.
Otherwise he professed to be self-taught, in the sense that he produced
his philosophy entirely from himself; but we are not to suppose from
this that he did not attend the lectures or study the writings of other
philosophers. Neither is it to be understood that he was altogether
original in his philosophy as far as content was concerned; for, as
will be noted later, his physical philosophy especially is that of
Leucippus and Democritus. It was at Mitylene in Lesbos that he first
came forward as teacher of an original philosophic system, and then
again at Lampsacus in Asia Minor; he did not, however, find very many
hearers. After having for some years led an unsettled life, he returned
in about the six and thirtieth year of his age to Athens, to the
very centre of all Philosophy; and there, some time after, he bought
for himself a garden, where he lived and taught in the midst of his
friends. Though so frail in body that for many years he was unable to
rise from his chair, in his manner of living he was most regular and
frugal, and he devoted himself entirely to science, to the exclusion
of all other interests. Even Cicero, though in other respects he has
little to say in his favour, bears testimony to the warmth of his
friendships, and adds that no one can deny he was a good, a humane,
and a kindly man. Diogenes Laërtius gives special commendation to his
reverence towards his parents, his generosity to his brothers, and his
benevolence to all. He died of stone in the seventy-first year of his
age. Just before his death he had himself placed in a warm bath, drank
a cup of wine, and charged his friends to remember what he had taught
them.[145]

No other teacher has ever been loved and reverenced by his scholars
as much as Epicurus; they lived on such intimate terms of friendship
that they determined to make common stock of their possessions with
him, and so continue in a permanent association, like a kind of
Pythagorean brotherhood. This they were, however, forbidden to do by
Epicurus himself, because it would have betrayed a distrust in their
readiness to share what they had with one another; but where distrust
is possible, there neither friendship, nor unity, nor constancy of
attachment can find a place. After his death he was held in honoured
remembrance by his disciples: they carried about with them everywhere
his likeness, engraved on rings or drinking-cups, and remained so
faithful to his teaching that they considered it almost a crime to make
any alteration in it (while in the Stoic philosophy development was
continually going on), and his school, in respect of his doctrines,
resembled a closely-barricaded state to which all entrance was denied.
The reason for this lies, as we shall presently see, in his system
itself; and the further result, from a scientific point of view, ensued
that we can name no celebrated disciples of his who carried on and
completed his teaching on their own account. For his disciples could
only have gained distinction for themselves by going further than
Epicurus did. But to go further would have been to reach the Notion,
which would only have confused the system of Epicurus; for what is
devoid of thought is thrown into confusion by the introduction of
the Notion, and it is this very lack of thought which has been made
a principle. Not that it is in itself without thought, but the use
made of thought is to hold back thought, and thought thus takes up a
negative position in regard to itself; and the philosophic activity of
Epicurus is thus directed towards the restoration and maintaining of
what is sensuous through the very Notion which renders it confused.
Therefore his philosophy has not advanced nor developed, but it must
also be said that it has not retrograded; a certain Metrodorus alone
is said to have carried it on further in some directions. It is also
told to the credit of the Epicurean philosophy that this Metrodorus
was the only disciple of Epicurus who went over to Carneades; for the
rest, it surpassed all others in its unbroken continuity of doctrine
and its long duration; for all of them became degenerate or suffered
interruption. When some one called the attention of Arcesilaus to this
attachment to Epicurus, by the remark that while so many had gone over
from other philosophers to Epicurus, scarcely a single example was
known of any one passing over from the Epicurean system to another,
Arcesilaus made the witty rejoinder: “Men may become eunuchs, but
eunuchs can never again become men.”[146]

Epicurus himself produced in his lifetime an immense number of works,
being a much more prolific author than Chrysippus, who vied with him
in the number of his writings,[147] if we deduct from the latter his
compilations from the works of others or from his own. The number of
his writings is said to have amounted to three hundred; it is scarcely
to be regretted that they are lost to us. We may rather thank Heaven
that they no longer exist; philologists at any rate would have had
great trouble with them. The main source of our knowledge of Epicurus
is the whole of the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, which after all
gives us but scanty information, though it deals with the subject
at great length. We should, of course, have been better off had we
possessed the philosopher’s own writings, but we know enough of him to
make us honour the whole. For, besides this, we know a good deal about
the philosophy of Epicurus through Cicero, Sextus Empiricus and Seneca;
and so accurate are the accounts they give of him, that the fragment of
one of Epicurus’s own writings, found some years ago in Herculaneum,
and reprinted by Orelli from the Neapolitan edition (Epicuri Fragmenta
libri II. et XI. De natura, illustr. Orellius, Lipsiæ 1818), has
neither extended nor enriched our knowledge; so that we must in all
earnestness deprecate the finding of the remaining writings.

With regard to the Epicurean philosophy, it is by no means to be looked
on as setting forth a system of Notions, but, on the contrary, as a
system of ordinary conceptions or even of sensuous existence, which,
looked at from the ordinary point of view as perceived by the senses,
Epicurus has made the very foundation and standard of truth (p. 277). A
detailed explanation of how sensation can be such, he has given in his
so-called Canonic. As in the case of the Stoics, we have first to speak
of the manner which Epicurus adopted of determining the criterion of
truth; secondly, of his philosophy of nature; and thirdly and lastly,
of his moral teaching.

1. CANONICAL PHILOSOPHY.

Epicurus gave the name of Canonic to what is really a system of logic,
in which he defines the criteria of truth, in regard to the theoretic,
as in fact sensuous perceptions, and, further, as conceptions or
anticipations (προλήψεις); in regard to the practical, as the passions,
impulses, and affections.[148]

a. On the theoretic side the criterion, closely considered, has,
according to Epicurus, three moments, which are the three stages of
knowledge; first, sensuous perception, as the side of the external;
secondly, ordinary conception, as the side of the internal; thirdly,
opinion (δόξα), as the union of the two.

α. “Sensuous perception is devoid of reason,” being what is given
absolutely. “For it is not moved by itself, nor can it, if if is moved
by something else, take away from or add to” that which it is, but
it is exactly what it is. “It is beyond criticism or refutation. For
neither can one sensation judge another, both being alike, since both
have equal authority;”—when the presentations of sight are of the
same kind, every one of them must admit the truth of all the rest.
“Nor can one of them pass judgment on another when they are unlike,
for they each have their value as differing;” red and blue, for
example, are each something individual. “Nor can one sensation pass
judgment on another when they are heterogeneous; for we give heed to
all. Thought, in the same way, cannot criticize the senses; for all
thought itself depends on the sensation,” which forms its content.
But sensuous perception may go far wrong. “The truth of what our
senses perceive is first evinced by this, that the power of perception
remains with us; sight and hearing are permanent powers of this kind
as much as the capacity of feeling pain. In this way even the unknown”
(the unperceived) “may be indicated by means of that which appears”
(perception). Of this conception of objects of perception which are not
immediate we shall have to speak more particularly hereafter (p. 292)
in dealing with physical science. “Thus all” (unknown, imperceptible)
“thoughts originated in the senses either directly in respect of their
chance origin or in respect of relationship, analogy, and combination;
to these operations thought also contributes something,” namely as the
formal connection of the sensuous conceptions. “The fancies of the
insane or of our dreams are also true; for they act upon us, but that
which is not real does not act.”[149] Thus every sensuous perception
is explicitly true, in so far as it shows itself to be abiding, and
that which is not apparent to our senses must be apprehended after the
same manner as the perception known to us. We hear Epicurus say, just
as we hear it said in everyday life: What I see and hear, or, speaking
generally, what I perceive by my senses, comprises the existent; every
such object of sense exists on its own account, one of them does not
contradict the other, but all are on the same level of validity, and
reciprocally indifferent. These objects of perception are themselves
the material and content of thought, inasmuch as thought is continually
making use of the images of these things.

β. “Ordinary conception is now a sort of comprehension (κατάληψις),
or correct opinion or thought, or the universal indwelling power of
thinking; that is to say, it is the recollection of that which has
often appeared to us,”—the picture. “For instance, when I say, ‘this is
a man,’ I, with the help of previous perceptions, at once by my power
of representation recognize his form.” By dint of this repetition the
sensuous perception becomes a permanent conception in me, which asserts
itself; that is the real foundation of all that we hold true. These
representations are universal, but certainly the Epicureans have not
placed universality in the form of thinking, but only said it is caused
by frequency of appearance. This is further confirmed by the name which
is given to the image which has thus arisen within us. “Everything
has its evidence (ἐναργές) in the name first conferred on it.”[150]
The name is the ratification of the perception. The evidence which
Epicurus terms ἐνάργεια is just the recognition of the sensuous through
subsumption under the conceptions already possessed, and to which the
name gives permanence; the evidence of a conception is therefore this,
that we affirm an object perceptible by the senses to correspond with
the image. That is the acquiescence which we have found taking place
with the Stoics when thought gives its assent to a content; thought,
however, which recognizes the thing as its own, and receives it into
itself, with the Stoics remained formal only. With Epicurus the
unity of the conception of the object with itself exists also as a
remembrance in consciousness, which, however, proceeds from the senses;
the image, the conception, is what harmonizes with a sense-perception.
The recognition of the object is here an apprehension, not as an
object of thought, but as an object of imagination; for apprehension
belongs to recollection, to memory. The name, it is true, is something
universal, belongs to thinking, makes the manifold simple, yea, is in a
high degree ideal; but in such a way that its meaning and its content
are the sensuous, and are not thus to be counted as simple, but as
sensuous. In this way opinion is established instead of knowledge.

γ. In the last place, opinion is nothing but the reference of
that general conception, which we have within us, to an object, a
perception, or to the testimony of the senses; and that is the passing
of a judgment. For in a conception we have anticipated that which comes
directly before our eyes; and by this standard we pronounce whether
something is a man, a tree, or not. “Opinion depends on something
already evident to us, to which we refer when we ask how we know that
this is a man or not. This opinion is also itself termed conception,
and it may be either true or false:—true, when what we see before
our eyes is corroborated or not contradicted by the testimony of the
conception; false in the opposite case.”[151] That is to say, in
opinion we apply a conception which we already possess, or the type, to
an object which is before us, and which we then examine to see if it
corresponds with our mental representation of it. Opinion is true if
it corresponds with the type; and it has its criterion in perceiving
whether it repeats itself as it was before or not. This is the whole of
the ordinary process in consciousness, when it begins to reflect. When
we have the conception, it requires the testimony that we have seen or
still see the object in question. From the sensuous perceptions blue,
sour, sweet, and so on, the general conceptions which we possess are
formed; and when an object again comes before us, we recognize that
this image corresponds with this object. This is the whole criterion,
and a very trivial process it is; for it goes no further than the first
beginnings of the sensuous consciousness, the immediate perception
of an object. The next stage is without doubt this, that the first
perception forms itself into a general image, and then the object which
is present is subsumed under the general image. That kind of truth
which anything has of which it can only be said that the evidence of
the senses does not contradict it, is possessed by the conceptions of
the unseen, for instance, the apprehension of heavenly phenomena: here
we cannot approach nearer, we can see something indeed, but we cannot
have the sensuous perception of it in its completeness; we therefore
apply to it what we already know by other perceptions, if there is
but some circumstance therein which is also present in that other
perception or conception (_supra_, p. 282).

b. From these external perceptions of objects presently existing, with
which we here began, the affections, the internal perceptions, which
give the criteria for practical life are however distinguished; they
are of two kinds, either pleasant or unpleasant. That is to say, they
have as their content pleasure or satisfaction, and pain: the first, as
that which peculiarly belongs to the perceiver, is the positive; but
pain, as something alien to him, is the negative. It is these sensuous
perceptions which determine action; they are the material from which
general conceptions regarding what causes me pain or pleasure are
formed; as being permanent they are therefore again conceptions, and
opinion is again this reference of conception to perception, according
to which I pass judgment on objects—affections, desires, and so
on.[152] It is by this opinion, therefore, that the decision to do or
to avoid anything is arrived at.

This constitutes the whole Canon of Epicurus, the universal standard
of truth; it is so simple that nothing can well be simpler, and yet it
is very abstract. It consists of ordinary psychological conceptions
which are correct on the whole, but quite superficial; it is the
mechanical view of conception having respect to the first beginnings
of observation. But beyond this there lies another and quite different
sphere, a field that contains determinations in themselves; and these
are the criteria by which the statements of Epicurus must be judged.
Nowadays even Sceptics are fond of speaking of facts of consciousness;
this sort of talk goes no further than the Epicurean Canon.

2. METAPHYSICS.

In the second place, Epicurus enters on a metaphysical explanation of
how we are related to the object; for sensuous perception and outside
impressions he unhesitatingly regards as our relation to external
things, so that he places the conceptions in me, the objects outside
of me. In raising the question of how we come by our conceptions,
there lies a double question: on the one hand, since sense-perceptions
are not like conceptions, but require an external object, what is
the objective manner in which the images of external things enter
into us? On the other hand, it may be asked how conceptions of such
things as are not matter of perception arise in us; this seems to be
an activity of thought, which derives conceptions such as these from
other conceptions; we shall, however, see presently (pp. 287, 288) and
more in detail, how the soul, which is here related to the object in
independent activity, arrives at such a point.

“From the surfaces of things,” says Epicurus in the first place, “there
passes off a constant stream, which cannot be detected by our senses”
(for things would in any other case decrease in size) and which is very
fine; “and this because, by reason of the counteracting replenishment,
the thing itself in its solidity long preserves the same arrangement
and disposition of the atoms; and the motion through the air of these
surfaces which detach themselves is of the utmost rapidity, because
it is not necessary that what is detached should have any thickness;”
it is only a surface. Epicurus says, “Such a conception does not
contradict our senses, when we take into consideration how pictures
produce their effects in a very similar way, I mean by bringing us into
sympathy with external things. Therefore emanations, like pictures,
pass out from them into us, so that we see and know the forms and
colours of things.”[153] This is a very trivial way of representing
sense-perception. Epicurus took for himself the easiest criterion of
the truth that is not seen, a criterion still in use, namely that it is
not contradicted by what we see or hear. For in truth such matters of
thought as atoms, the detachment of surfaces, and so forth, are beyond
our powers of sight. Certainly we manage to see and to hear something
different; but there is abundance of room for what is seen and what is
conceived or imagined to exist alongside of one another. If the two are
allowed to fall apart, they do not contradict each other; for it is not
until we relate them that the contradiction becomes apparent.

“Error,” as Epicurus goes on to say on the second point “comes to pass
when, through the movement that takes place within us on the conception
therein wrought, such a change is effected that the conception can no
longer obtain for itself the testimony of perception. There would be no
truth, no likeness of our perceptions, which we receive as in pictures
or in dreams or in any other way, if there were nothing on which we,
as it were, put out our faculty of observation. There would be no
untruth if we did not receive into ourselves another movement, which,
to be sure, is conformable to the entering in of the conception, but
which has at the same time an interruption.”[154] Error is therefore,
according to Epicurus, only a displacement of the pictures in us, which
does not proceed from the movement of perception, but rather from this,
that we check their influence by a movement originating in ourselves;
how this interruption is brought about will be shown more fully later
on (pp. 290, 300).

The Epicurean theory of knowledge reduces itself to these few passages,
some of which are also obscurely expressed, or else not very happily
selected or quoted by Diogenes Laërtius; it is impossible to have a
theory less explicitly stated. Knowledge, on the side of thought, is
determined merely as a particular movement which makes an interruption;
and as Epicurus, as we have already seen, looks on things as made up
of a multitude of atoms, thought is the moment which is different from
the atoms, the vacuum, the pores, whereby resistance to this stream of
atoms is rendered possible. If this negative is also again, as soul,
affirmative, Epicurus in the notional determination of thinking has
only reached this negativity, that we look away from something, _i.e._
we interrupt that inflowing stream. The answer to the question of
what this interrupting movement exactly is, when taken for itself, is
connected with the more advanced conceptions of Epicurus; and in order
to discuss them more in detail, we must go back to the implicit basis
of his system.

This constitutes on the whole the metaphysic of Epicurus; in it he has
expounded his doctrine of the atom, but not with greater definiteness
than did Leucippus and Democritus. The essence and the truth of things
were to him, as they were to them, atoms and vacuum: “Atoms have no
properties except figure, weight and magnitude.” Atoms, as atoms, must
remain undetermined; but the Atomists have been forced to take the
inconsistent course of ascribing properties to them: the quantitative
properties of magnitude and figure, the qualitative property of
weight. But that which is in itself altogether indivisible can have
neither figure nor magnitude; and even weight, direction upon something
else, is opposed to the abstract repulsion of the atom. Epicurus even
says: “Every property is liable to change, but the atoms change not. In
all dissolutions of the composite, something must remain a constant and
indissoluble, which no change can transform into that which is not, or
bring from non-being into Being. This unchangeable element, therefore,
is constituted by some bodies and figures. The properties are a certain
relation of atoms to each other.”[155] In like manner we have already
seen with Aristotle (p. 178) that the tangible is the foundation of
properties: a distinction which under various forms is still always
made and is in common use. We mean by this that an opposition is
established between fundamental properties, such as we here have in
weight, figure and magnitude, and sensuous properties, which are
only in relation to us, and are derived from the former original
differences. This has frequently been understood as if weight were in
things, while the other properties were only in our senses: but, in
general, the former is the moment of the implicit, or the abstract
essence of the thing, while the latter is its concrete existence, which
expresses its relation to other things.

The important matter now would be to indicate the relation of atoms to
sensuous appearance, to allow essence to pass over into the negative:
but here Epicurus rambles amidst the indeterminate which expresses
nothing; for we perceive in him, as in the other physicists, nothing
but an unconscious medley of abstract ideas and realities. All
particular forms, all objects, light, colour, &c., the soul itself
even, are nothing but a certain arrangement of these atoms. This is
what Locke also said, and even now Physical Science declares that
the basis of things is found in molecules, which are arranged in a
certain manner in space. But these are empty words, and a crystal,
for instance, is not a certain arrangement of parts, which gives this
figure. It is thus not worth while to deal with this relation of atoms;
for it is an altogether formal way of speaking, as when Epicurus again
concedes that figure and magnitude, in so far as pertaining to atoms,
are something different from what they are as they appear in things.
The two are not altogether unlike; the one, implicit magnitude, has
something in common with apparent magnitude. The latter is transitory,
variable; the former has no interrupted parts,[156] that is, nothing
negative. But the determination of the atoms, as originally formed in
this or that fashion, and having original magnitude of such and such
a kind, is a purely arbitrary invention. That interruption, which we
regarded above (p. 288) as the other side to atoms, or as vacuum, is
the principle of movement: for the movement of thought is also like
this and has interruptions. Thought in man is the very same as atoms
and vacuum are in things, namely their inward essence; that is to say,
atoms and vacuum belong to the movement of thought, or exist for this
in the same way as things are in their essential nature. The movement
of thinking is thus the province of the atoms of the soul; so that
there takes place simultaneously therein an interruption of the inward
flow of atoms from without. There is therefore nothing further to be
seen in this than the general principle of the positive and negative,
so that even thought is affected by a negative principle, the moment of
interruption. This principle of the Epicurean system, further applied
to the difference in things, is the most arbitrary and therefore the
most wearisome that can be imagined.

Besides their different figures, atoms have also, as the fundamental
mode in which they are affected, a difference of movement, caused
by their weight; but this movement to some extent deviates from the
straight line in its direction. That is to say, Epicurus ascribes
to atoms a curvilinear movement, in order that they may impinge
on one another and so on.[157] In this way there arise particular
accumulations and configurations; and these are things.

Other physical properties, such as taste and smell, have their basis
again in another arrangement of the molecules. But there is no bridge
from this to that, or what results is simply empty tautology, according
to which the parts are arranged and combined as is requisite in order
that their appearance may be what it is. The transition to bodies
of concrete appearance Epicurus has either not made at all, or what
has been cited from him as far as this matter is concerned, taken by
itself, is extremely meagre.

The opinion that one hears expressed respecting the Epicurean
philosophy is in other respects not unfavourable; and for this reason
some further details must be given regarding it. For since absolute
Being is constituted by atoms scattered and disintegrated, and by
vacuum, it directly follows that Epicurus denies to these atoms any
relationship to one another which implies purpose. All that we call
forms and organisms, or generally speaking, the unity of Nature’s
end, in his way of thinking, belongs to qualities, to an external
connection of the configurations of the atoms, which in this way is
merely an accident, brought about by their chance-directed motion; the
atoms accordingly form a merely superficial unity, and one which is
not essential to them. Or else Epicurus altogether denies that Notion
and the Universal are the essential, and because all originations are
to him chance combinations, for him their resolution is just as much
a matter of chance. The divided is the first and the truly existent,
but at the same time chance or external necessity is the law which
dominates all cohesion. That Epicurus should in this fashion declare
himself against a universal end in the world, against every relation
of purpose—as, for instance, the inherent conformity to purpose of the
organism—and, further, against the teleological representations of the
wisdom of a Creator in the world, his government, &c., is a matter of
course; for he abrogates unity, whatever be the manner in which we
represent it, whether as Nature’s end in itself, or as end which is
in another, but is carried out in Nature. In contrast to this, the
teleological view enters largely into the philosophy of the Stoics,
and is there very fully developed. To show that conformity to an end
is lacking, Epicurus brings forward the most trivial examples; for
instance, that worms and so on are produced by chance from mud through
the warmth of the sun. Taken in their entirety, they may very well be
the work of chance in relation to others; but what is implicit in them,
their Notion and essence is something organic: and the comprehension of
this is what we have now to consider. But Epicurus banishes thought as
implicit, without its occurring to him that his atoms themselves have
this very nature of thought; that is, their existence in time is not
immediate but essentially mediate, and thus negative or universal;—the
first and only inconsistency that we find in Epicurus, and one which
all empiricists are guilty of. The Stoics take the opposite course of
finding essential Being in the object of thought or the universal; and
they fail equally in reaching the content, temporal existence, which,
however, they most inconsistently assume. We have here the metaphysics
of Epicurus; nothing that he says farther on this head is of interest.

3. PHYSICS.

The natural philosophy of Epicurus is based on the above foundation;
but an aspect of interest is given it by the fact that it is still
peculiarly the method of our times; his thoughts on particular aspects
of Nature are, however, in themselves feeble and of little weight,
containing nothing but an ill-considered medley of all manner of loose
conceptions. Going further, the principle of the manner in which
Epicurus looks on nature, lies in the conceptions he forms, which we
have already had before us (pp. 282, 285). That is to say, the general
representations which we receive through the repetition of several
perceptions, and to which we relate such perceptions in forming an
opinion, must be then applied to that which is not exactly matter of
perception, but yet has something in common with what we can perceive.
In this way it comes about that by such images we can apprehend the
unknown which does not lend itself immediately to perception; for from
what is known we must argue to what is unknown. This is nothing else
but saying that Epicurus judged by analogy, or that he makes so-called
evidence the principle of his view of Nature; and this is the principle
which to this day has authority in ordinary physical science. We go
through experiences and make observations, these arising from the
sensuous perceptions which are apt to be overlooked. Thus we reach
general concepts, laws, forces, and so on, electricity and magnetism,
for instance, and these are then applied by us to such objects and
activities as we cannot ourselves directly perceive. As an example, we
know about the nerves and their connection with the brain; in order
that there may be feeling and so on, it is said that a transmission
from the finger-tips to the brain takes place. But how can we represent
this to ourselves? We cannot make it a matter of observation. By
anatomy we can lay bare the nerves, it is true, but not the manner
of their working. We represent these to ourselves on the analogy of
other phenomena of transmission, for instance as the vibration of a
tense string that passes through the nerves to the brain. As in the
well-known phenomenon of a number of billiard balls set close together
in a row, the last of which rolls away when the first is struck, while
those in the middle, through each of which the effect of the stroke has
been communicated to the next, scarcely seem to move, so we represent
to ourselves the nerves as consisting of tiny balls which are invisible
even through the strongest magnifying glass, and fancy that at every
touch, &c., the last springs off and strikes the soul. In the same way
light is represented as filaments, rays, or as vibrations of the ether,
or as globules of ether, each of which strikes on the other. This is an
analogy quite in the manner of Epicurus.

In giving such explanations as those above, Epicurus professed to
be most liberal, fair and tolerant, saying that all the different
conceptions which occur to us in relation to sensuous objects—at our
pleasure, we may say,—can be referred to that which we cannot ourselves
directly observe; we should not assert any one way to be the right one,
for many ways may be so. In so saying, Epicurus is talking idly; his
words fall on the ear and the fancy, but looked on more narrowly they
disappear. So, for instance, we see the moon shine, without being able
to have any nearer experience of it. On this subject Epicurus says:
“The moon may have its own light, or a light borrowed from the sun; for
even on earth we see things which shine of themselves, and many which
are illuminated by others. Nothing hinders us from observing heavenly
things in the light of various previous experiences, and from adopting
hypotheses and explanations in accordance with these. The waxing and
waning of the moon may also be caused by the revolution of this body,
or through changes in the air” (according as vapour is modified in one
way or another), “or also by means of adding and taking away somewhat:
in short, in all the ways whereby that which has a certain appearance
to us is caused to show such appearance.” Thus there are to be found in
Epicurus all these trivialities of friction, concussion, &c., as when
he gives his opinion of lightning on the analogy of how we see fire of
other kinds kindled: “Lightning is explained by quite a large number
of possible conceptions; for instance, that through the friction and
collision of clouds the figuration of fire is emitted, and lightning
is produced.” In precisely the same way modern physicists transfer the
production of an electric spark, when glass and silk are rubbed against
each other, to the clouds. For, as we see a spark both in lightning and
electricity, we conclude from this circumstance common to both that the
two are analogical; therefore, we come to the conclusion that lightning
also is an electric phenomenon. But clouds are not hard bodies, and
by moisture electricity is more likely to be dispersed; therefore,
such talk has just as little truth in it as the fancy of Epicurus. He
goes on to say: “Or lightning may also be produced by being expelled
from the clouds by means of the airy bodies which form lightning—by
being struck out when the clouds are pressed together either by each
other or by the wind,” &c. With the Stoics things are not much better.
Application of sensuous conceptions according to analogy is often
termed comprehension or explanation, but in reality there is in such
a process not the faintest approach to thought or comprehension. “One
man,” adds Epicurus, “may select; one of these modes, and reject the
others, not considering what is possible for man to know, and what is
impossible, and therefore striving to attain to a knowledge of the
unknowable.”[158]

This application of sensuous images to what has a certain similarity
to them, is pronounced to be the basis and the knowledge of the
cause, because, in his opinion, a transference such as this cannot
be corroborated by the testimony of mere immediate sensation; thus
the Stoic method of seeking a basis in thought is excluded, and in
this respect the mode of explanation adopted by Epicurus is directly
opposed to that of the Stoics. One circumstance which strikes us at
once in Epicurus is the lack of observation and experience with regard
to the mutual relations of bodies: but the kernel of the matter, the
principle, is nothing else than the principle of modern physics. This
method of Epicurus has been attacked and derided, but on this score no
one need be ashamed of or fight shy of it, if he is a physicist; for
what Epicurus says is not a whit worse than what the moderns assert.
Indeed, in the case of Epicurus the satisfactory assurance is likewise
always present of his emphasizing the fact most strongly that just
because the evidence of the senses is found to be lacking, we must
not take our stand on any one analogy. Elsewhere he in the same way
makes light of analogy, and when one person accepts this possibility
and another that other possibility, he admires the cleverness of the
second and troubles himself little about the explanation given by
the first; it may be so, or it may not be so.[159] This is a method
devoid of reason, which reaches no further than to general conceptions.
Nevertheless, if Physical Science is considered to relate to immediate
experience on the one hand, and, on the other hand—in respect of that
which cannot be immediately experienced—to relate to the application
of the above according to a resemblance existing between it and that
which is not matter of experience, in that case Epicurus may well be
looked on as the chief promoter, if not the originator of this method,
and also as having asserted that it is identical with knowledge. Of the
Epicurean method in philosophy we may say this, that it likewise has
a side on which it possesses value, and we may in some measure assent
when we hear, as we frequently do, the Epicurean physics favourably
spoken of. Aristotle and the earlier philosophers took their start in
natural philosophy from universal thought _a priori_, and from this
developed the Notion; this is the one side. The other side, which is
just as necessary, demands that experience should be worked up into
universality, that laws should be found out; that is to say, that the
result which follows from the abstract Idea should coincide with the
general conception to which experience and observation have led up.
The _a priori_ is with Aristotle, for instance, most excellent but not
sufficient, because to it there is lacking connection with and relation
to experience and observation. This leading up of the particular to the
universal is the finding out of laws, natural forces, and so on. It may
thus be said that Epicurus is the inventor of empiric Natural Science,
of empiric Psychology. In contrast to the Stoic ends, conceptions of
the understanding, experience is the present as it appears to the
senses: there we have abstract limited understanding, without truth
in itself, and therefore without the present in time and the reality
of Nature; here we have this sense of Nature, which is more true than
these other hypotheses.

The same effect which followed the rise of a knowledge of natural laws,
&c., in the modern world was produced by the Epicurean philosophy in
its own sphere, that is to say, in so far as it is directed against
the arbitrary invention of causes. The more, in later times, men
made acquaintance with the laws of Nature, the more superstition,
miracles, astrology, &c. disappeared; all this fades away owing to
the contradiction offered to it by the knowledge of natural laws. The
method of Epicurus was directed more especially against the senseless
superstition of astrology, &c., in whose methods there is neither
reason nor thought, for it is quite a thing of the imagination,
downright fabrication being resorted to, or what we may even term
lying. In contrast with this, the way in which Epicurus works, when
the conceptions and not thought are concerned, accords with truth. For
it does not go beyond what is perceived by the sight, and hearing,
and the other senses, but keeps to what is present and not alien to
the mind, not speaking of certain things as if they could be seen and
heard, when that is quite impossible, seeing that the things are pure
inventions. The effect of the Epicurean philosophy in its own time was
therefore this, that it set itself against the superstition of the
Greeks and Romans, and elevated men above it.[160] All the nonsense
about birds flying to right or to left, or a hare running across the
path, or men deciding how they are to act according to the entrails of
animals, or according as chickens are lively or dull—all that kind of
superstition the Epicurean philosophy made short work of, by permitting
that only to be accepted as truth which is counted as true by sense
perception through the instrumentality of anticipations; and from it
more than anything those conceptions which have altogether denied the
supersensuous have proceeded. The physics of Epicurus were therefore
famous for the reason that they introduced more enlightened views
in regard to what is physical, and banished the fear of the gods.
Superstition passes straightway from immediate appearances to God,
angels, demons; or it expects from finite things other effects than the
conditions admit of, phenomena of a higher kind. To this the Epicurean
natural philosophy is utterly opposed, because in the sphere of the
finite it refuses to go beyond the finite, and admits finite causes
alone; for the so-called enlightenment is the fact of remaining in the
sphere of the finite. There connection is sought for in other finite
things, in conditions which are themselves conditioned; superstition,
on the contrary, rightly or wrongly, passes at once to what is above
us. However correct the Epicurean method may be in the sphere of
the conditioned, it is not so in other spheres. Thus if I say that
electricity comes from God, I am right and yet wrong. For if I ask for
a cause in this same sphere of the conditioned, and give God as answer,
I say too much; though this answer fits all questions, since God is
the cause of everything, what I would know here is the particular
connection of the phenomenon. On the other hand, in this sphere even
the Notion is already something higher; but this loftier way of looking
at things which we met with in the earlier philosophers, was quite put
an end to by Epicurus, since with superstition there also passed away
self-dependent connection and the world of the Ideal.

To the natural philosophy of Epicurus there also belongs his conception
of the soul, which he looks on as having the nature of a thing, just
as the theories of our own day regard it as nerve-filaments, cords
in tension, or rows of minute balls (p. 294). His description of the
soul has therefore but little meaning, since here also he draws his
conclusion by analogy, and connects therewith the metaphysical theory
of atoms: “The soul consists of the finest and roundest atoms, which
are something quite different from fire, being a fine spirit which
is distributed through the whole aggregate of the body, and partakes
of its warmth.” Epicurus has consequently established a quantitative
difference only, since these finest atoms are surrounded by a mass of
coarser atoms and dispersed through this larger aggregate. “The part
which is devoid of reason is dispersed in the body” as the principle
of life, “but the self-conscious part (τὸ λογικόν) is in the breast,
as may be perceived from joy and sadness. The soul is capable of much
change in itself, owing to the fineness of its parts, which can move
very rapidly: it sympathizes with the rest of the aggregate, as we see
by the thoughts, emotions and so on; but when it is taken away from us
we die. But the soul, on its part, has also the greatest sympathy with
sensuous perception; yet it would have nothing in common with it, were
it not in a certain measure covered by the rest of the aggregate” (the
body)—an utterly illogical conception. “The rest of this aggregate,
which this principle provides for the soul, is thereby also partaker,
on its part, of a like condition” (sensuous perception), “yet not of
all that the former possesses; therefore, when the soul escapes,
sensuous perception exists no more for it. The aggregate spoken of
above has not this power in itself, but derives it from the other which
is brought into union with it, and the sentient movement comes to pass
through the flow of sympathy which they have in common.”[161] Of such
conceptions it is impossible to make anything. The above-mentioned
(p. 287) interruption of the streaming together of images of external
things with our organs, as the ground of error, is now explained by
the theory that the soul consists of peculiar atoms, and the atoms
are separated from one another by vacuum. With such empty words and
meaningless conceptions we shall no longer detain ourselves; we can
have no respect for the philosophic thoughts of Epicurus, or rather he
has no thoughts for us to respect.

4. ETHICS.

Besides this description of the soul the philosophy of mind contains
the ethics of Epicurus, which of all his doctrines are the most
decried, and therefore the most interesting; they may, however,
also be said to constitute the best part of that philosophy. The
practical philosophy of Epicurus depends on the individuality of
self-consciousness, just as much as does that of the Stoics; and the
end of his ethics is in a measure the same, the unshaken tranquillity
of the soul, and more particularly an undisturbed pure enjoyment of
itself. Of course, if we regard the abstract principle involved in
the ethics of Epicurus, our verdict cannot be other than exceedingly
unfavourable. For if sensation, the feeling of pain and pleasure, is
the criterion for the right, good, true, for that which man should
make his aim in life, morality is really abrogated, or the moral
principle is in fact not moral; at least we hold that the way is
thereby opened up to all manner of arbitrariness in action. If it is
now alleged that feeling is the ground of action, and that because I
find a certain impulse in myself it is for that reason right—this is
Epicurean reasoning. Everyone may have different feelings, and the
same person, may feel differently at different times; in the same way
with Epicurus it may be left to the subjectivity of the individual to
determine the course of action. But it is of importance to notice this,
that when Epicurus sets tip pleasure as the end, he concedes this only
so far as its enjoyment is the result of philosophy. We have before now
remarked (vol. i., p. 470) that even with the Cyrenaics, while on the
one hand sensation was certainly made the principle, on the other hand
it was essential that thought should be in intimate connection with
it. Similarly it is the case with Epicurus that while he designated
pleasure as the criterion of the good, he demanded a highly cultured
consciousness, a power of reflection, which weighs pleasure to see if
it is not combined with a greater degree of pain, and in this way forms
a correct estimate of what it is. Diogenes Laërtius (X. 144) quotes
from him with regard to this point of view: “The wise man owes but
little to chance; Reason attains what is of the greatest consequence,
and both directs it and will direct it his whole life long.” The
particular pleasure is therefore regarded only with reference to the
whole, and sensuous perception is not the one and only principle of
the Epicureans; but while they made pleasure the principle, they made
a principle at the same time of that happiness which is attained,
and only attainable by reason; so that this happiness is to be
sought in such a way that it may be free and independent of external
contingencies, the contingencies of sensation. The true Epicureans were
therefore, just as much as the Stoics, raised above all particular
ties, for Epicurus, too, made his aim the undisturbed tranquillity of
the wise man. In order to be free from superstition Epicurus specially
requires physical science, as it sets men free from all the opinions
which most disturb their rest—opinions regarding the gods, and their
punishments, and more particularly from the thought of death.[162]
Freed from all this fear, and from the imaginings of the men who make
any particular object their end and aim, the wise man seeks pleasure
only as something universal, and holds this alone to be positive. Here
the universal and the particular meet; or the particular, regarded only
in its bearings to the whole, is raised into the form of universality.
Thus it happens that, while materially, or as to content, Epicurus
makes individuality a principle, on the other hand he requires the
universality of thinking, and his philosophy is thus in accordance with
that of the Stoics.

Seneca, who is known as a thorough-going and uncompromising Stoic, when
in his treatise _De Vita Beata_ (c. 12, 13) he happens to speak of the
Epicureans, gives testimony which is above suspicion to the ethical
system of Epicurus: “My verdict is, however—and in thus speaking I
go, to some extent, against many of my own countrymen—that the moral
precepts of Epicurus prescribe a way of life that is holy and just,
and, when closely considered, even sorrowful. For every pleasure of
Epicurus turns on something very paltry and poor, and we scarcely know
how restricted it is, and how insipid. The self-same law which we lay
down for virtue he prescribes for pleasure; he requires that Nature be
obeyed; but very little in the way of luxury is required to satisfy
Nature. What have we then here? He who calls a lazy, self-indulgent,
and dissolute life happiness merely seeks a good authority for a thing
that is evil, and while, drawn on by a dazzling name, he turns in the
direction where he hears the praise of pleasure sounding, he does not
follow the pleasures to which he is invited by Epicurus, but those
which he himself brings with him. Men who thus abandon themselves
to crime seek only to hide their wickedness under the mantle of
philosophy, and to furnish for their excesses a pretext and an excuse.
Thus it is by no means permitted that youth should hold up its head
again for the reason that to the laxity of its morality an honourable
title has been affixed.” By the employment of our reflective powers,
which keep guard over pleasure and consider whether there can be any
enjoyment in that which is fraught with dangers, fear, anxiety and
other troubles, the possibility of our obtaining pleasure pure and
unalloyed is reduced to a minimum. The principle of Epicurus is to live
in freedom and ease, and with the mind at rest, and to this end it is
needful to renounce much of that which men allow to sway them, and in
which they find their pleasure. The life of a Stoic is therefore but
little different from that of an Epicurean who keeps well before his
eyes what Epicurus enjoins.

It might perhaps occur to us that the Cyrenaics had the same moral
principle as the Epicureans, but Diogenes Laërtius (X. 139, 136, 137)
shows us the difference that there was between them. The Cyrenaics
rather made pleasure as a particular thing their end, while Epicurus,
on the contrary, regarded it as a means, since he asserted painlessness
to be pleasure, and allowed of no intermediate state. “Neither do the
Cyrenaics recognize pleasure in rest (καταστηματικήν), but only in the
determination of motion,” or as something affirmative, that consists
in the enjoyment of the pleasant; “Epicurus, on the contrary, admits
both—the pleasure of the body as well as that of the soul.” He meant
by this that pleasure in rest is negative, as the absence of the
unpleasant, and also an inward contentment, whereby rest is maintained
within the mind. Epicurus explained these two kinds of pleasure more
clearly as follows: “Freedom from fear and desire (ἀταραξία) and from
pain and trouble (ἀπονία) are the passive pleasures (καταστηματικὶα
ἡδοναί),”—the setting of our affections on nothing which we may run the
risk of losing; pleasures of the senses, on the other hand, like “joy
and mirth (χαρὰ δὲ καὶ εὐφροσύνη), are pleasures involving movement
(κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνεργείᾳ βλέπονται.9)” The former pleasures Epicurus held
to be the truest and highest. “Besides this, pain of the body was held
by the Cyrenaics to be worse than sorrow of the soul, while with the
Epicureans this is reversed.”

The main teaching of Epicurus in respect of morals is contained in a
letter to Men\nceus, which Diogenes Laërtius has preserved, and in
which Epicurus expresses himself as follows: “The youth must neither
be slow to study philosophy, nor must the old man feel it a burden,
for no one is either too young or too old to study the health of his
soul. We must therefore endeavour to find out wherein the happy life
consists; the following are its elements: First, we must hold that
God is a living Being, incorruptible and happy, as the general belief
supposes Him to be; and that nothing is lacking to His incorruptibility
nor to His happiness. But though the existence of the gods is known
to be a fact, yet they are not such as the multitude suppose them to
be. He is therefore not impious who discards his faith in the gods of
the multitude, but he who applies to them the opinions entertained of
them by the mass.” By these gods of Epicurus we can understand nothing
else than the Holy, the Universal, in concrete form. The Stoics held
more to the ordinary conception, without indeed giving much thought
to the Being of God; with the Epicureans, on the other hand, the gods
express an immediate Idea of the system. Epicurus says: “That which is
holy and incorruptible has itself no trouble nor causes it to others;
therefore it is unstirred by either anger or show of favour, for it is
in weakness only that such find a place. The gods may be known by means
of Reason; they consist partly in Number; others are the perfected
type of man, which, owing to the similarity of the images, arises
from the continuous confluence of like images on one and the same
subject.”[163] The gods are thus the altogether general images which
we receive into ourselves; and Cicero says (De Natura Deorum, 18, 38)
that they come singly upon us in sleep. This general image, which is
at the same time an anthropomorphic conception, is the same to which
we give the name of Ideal, only that here the source assigned to it is
the reiterated occurrence of images. The gods thus seem to Epicurus to
be Ideals of the holy life; they are also existent things, consisting
of the finest atoms; they are, however, pure souls, unmixed with any
grosser element, and therefore exempt from toil and trouble and pain.
Their self-enjoyment is wholly passive, as it must be if consistent,
for action has always in it something alien, the opposition of itself
and reality, and the toil and trouble which are involved in it really
represent the aspect of consciousness of opposition rather than that
of realization. The gods lead an existence of pure and passive self
enjoyment, and trouble themselves not with the affairs of the world
and of men. Epicurus goes on to say: “Men must pay reverence to the
gods on account of the perfection of their nature and their surpassing
holiness, not in order to gain from them some special good, or for the
sake of this or that advantage,”[164] The manner in which Epicurus
represents the gods as corporeal Beings in human likeness has been
much derided; thus Cicero, for instance, in the passage quoted (c. 18)
laughs at Epicurus for alleging that the gods have only _quasi_ bodies,
flesh and blood. But from this there follows only that they are, as it
were, the implicit, as we see it stated of the soul and things palpable
to the senses, that they have behind them what is implicit. Our talk
of qualities is no better; for if justice, goodness, and so on, are to
be taken _in sensu eminentiori_, and not as they are with men, we have
in God a Being in the same way possessed of only something resembling
justice and the other qualities. With this there is closely connected
the theory of Epicurus that the gods dwell in vacant space, in the
intermediate spaces of the world, where they are exposed neither to
rain or wind or snow or the like.[165] For the intermediate spaces are
the vacuum, wherein, as the principle of movement, are the atoms in
themselves. Worlds, as phenomena, are complete continuous concretions
of such atoms, but concretions which are only external relations.
Between them, as in vacuum, there are thus these Beings also, which
themselves are certainly concretions of atoms, but concretions which
remain implicit. Yet this leads only to confusion, if a closer
definition is given, for concretion constitutes what is for the senses,
but the gods, even if they were concretions, would not be realities
exactly such as these. In illogical fashion the general, the implicit,
is taken out of reality and set above it, not as atoms, but just as
before, as a combination of these atoms; in this way this combination
is not itself the sensuous. This seems ridiculous, but it is connected
with the interruptions spoken of, and with the relation of the vacuum
to the plenum, the atom. So far, therefore, the gods belong to the
category of negativity as against sensuality, and as this negative is
thought, in that sense what Epicurus said of the gods may still to
some extent be said. To this determination of God a larger measure of
objectivity of course belongs, but it is a perfectly correct assertion
that God, as Thought, is a holy Being, to whom reverence is due for
His own sake alone. The first element in a happy life is therefore
reverence for the gods, uninfluenced by fear or hope.

Further, a second point with Epicurus is the contemplation of death,
the negative of existence, of self-consciousness in man; he requires
us to have a true conception of death, because otherwise it disturbs
our tranquillity. He accordingly says: “Accustom thyself then to the
thought that death concerns us not; for all good and evil is a matter
of sensation, but death is a deprivation (στέρησις) of sensation.
Therefore the true reflection that death is no concern of ours,
makes our mortal life one of enjoyment, since this thought does not
add an endless length of days, but does away with the longing after
immortality. For nothing in life has terrors for him who has once truly
recognized the fact that not to live is not a matter of dread. Thus it
is a vain thing to fear death, not because its presence but because
the anticipation of it brings us pain. For how can the anticipation
of a thing pain us when its reality does not? There is therefore in
death nothing to trouble us. For when we are in life, death is not
there, and when death is there, we are not. Therefore death does not
concern either the living or the dead.” This is quite correct, if we
look at the immediate; it is a thought full of meaning, and drives away
fear. Mere privation, which death is, is not to be confounded with the
feeling of being alive, which is positive; and there is no reason for
worrying oneself about it. “But the future in general is neither ours,
nor is it not ours; hence we must not count upon it as something that
will come to pass, nor yet despair of it, as if it would not come to
pass.”[166] It is no concern of ours either that it is or that it is
not; and it need not therefore cause us uneasiness. This the right way
in which to regard the future also.

Epicurus passes on to speak of impulses, saying: “This moreover is
to be kept in mind, that amongst impulses some are natural, but
others are vain; and of those that are natural some are necessary
while others are natural only. Those that are necessary are either
necessary to happiness, or tend to save the body from pain, or to
self-preservation in general. The perfect theory teaches how to choose
that which promotes health of body and steadfastness of soul, and how
to reject what impairs them, this being the aim of the holy life.
This is the end of all our actions, to have neither pain of body nor
uneasiness of mind. If we but attain to this, all turmoil of the soul
is stilled, since the life no longer has to strive after something
which it needs, and no longer has to seek anything outside of itself
by which the welfare of soul and body is arrived at. But even on the
supposition that pleasure is the first and the inborn good, we do not
for that reason choose all pleasures, but many we renounce, when they
are more than counterbalanced by their painful results; and many pains
we prefer to pleasures, if there follows from them a pleasure that
is greater. Contentment we hold to be a good, not that we may aim at
merely reducing our requirements to a minimum, as the Cynics did, but
that we may seek not to be discontented even when we have not very
much, knowing that they most enjoy abundance who can do without it, and
that what is naturally desired is easy to procure, while what is a mere
idle fancy can be procured only with difficulty. Simple dishes afford
just as much enjoyment as costly banquets, if they appease hunger.
Therefore when we make pleasure our aim, it is not the enjoyments of
the gourmand, as is often falsely thought, but freedom from both pain
of body and uneasiness of mind. We attain to this life of happiness by
sober reason alone, which examines the grounds of all choice and all
rejection, and expels the thoughts by which the soul’s rest is most
disturbed. It is surely better to be unhappy and reasonable than to be
happy and unreasonable; for it is better that in our actions we should
judge correctly than that we should be favoured by luck. Meditate on
this day and night, and let thyself be shaken by nought from thy peace
of soul, that thou mayest live as a god amongst men; for the man who
lives amongst such imperishable treasures has nothing in common with
mortal men. Of all those the first and foremost is reasonableness
(φρόνησις), which on this account is still more excellent than
philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues. For they show that
one cannot live happily, unless he lives wisely and honourably and
justly: nor can he live wisely and honourably and justly without living
happily.”[167]

Therefore, although at first sight there seems not much to be said for
the principle of Epicurus, nevertheless by means of the inversion of
making the guiding principle to be found in thought proceeding from
Reason, it passes into Stoicism, as even Seneca himself has admitted
(_v. supra_, pp. 302, 303); and actually the same result is reached
as with the Stoics. Hence the Epicureans describe their wise man in
at least as glowing terms as the Stoics do theirs; and in both these
systems the wise man is depicted with the same qualities, these being
negative. With the Stoics the Universal is the essential principle,—not
pleasure, the self-consciousness of the particular as particular; but
the reality of this self-consciousness is equally something pleasant.
With the Epicureans pleasure is the essential principle, but pleasure
sought and enjoyed in such a way that it is pure and unalloyed, that
is to say, in accordance with sound judgment, and with no greater evil
following to destroy it: therefore pleasure is regarded in its whole
extent, that is, as being itself a universal. In Diogenes Laërtius,
however (X. 117-121), the Epicurean delineation of the wise man has a
character of greater mildness; he shapes his conduct more according to
laws already in operation, while the Stoic wise man, on the other hand,
does not take these into account at all. The Epicurean wise man is less
combative than the Stoic, because the latter makes his starting-point
the thought of self-dependence, which, while denying self, exercises
activity: the Epicureans, on the other hand, proceed from the thought
of existence, which is not so exacting, and seeks not so much this
activity directed outwards, as rest; this, however, is not won by
lethargy, but by the highest mental culture. Yet although the content
of the Epicurean philosophy, its aim and result, stands thus on as high
a level as the Stoic philosophy, and is its exact parallel, the two
are nevertheless in other respects directly opposed to one another;
but each of these systems is one-sided, and therefore both of them
are dogmatisms inconsistent with themselves by the necessity of the
Notion, that is, they contain the contrary principle within them. The
Stoics take the content of their thought from Being, from the sensuous,
demanding that thought should be the thought of something existent: the
Epicureans, on the contrary, extend their particularity of existence
to the atoms which are only things of thought, and to pleasure as a
universal; but in accordance with their respective principles, both
schools know themselves to be definitely opposed to each other.

The negative mean to these one-sided principles is the Notion, which,
abrogating fixed extremes of determination such as these, moves them
and sets them free from a mere state of opposition. This movement of
the Notion, the revival of dialectic—directed as it is against these
one-sided principles of abstract thinking and sensation—we now see in
its negative aspect, both in the New Academy and in the Sceptics. Even
the Stoics, as having their principle in thought, cultivated dialectic,
though theirs was (pp. 254, 255) a common logic, in which the form of
simplicity passes for the Notion, while the Notion, as such, represents
the negative element in it, and dissolves the determinations, which are
taken up into that simplicity. There is a higher form of the Notion of
dialectic reality, which not only applies itself to sensuous existence,
but also to determinate Notions, and which brings to consciousness the
opposition between thought and existence; not expressing the Universal
as simple Idea, but as a universality in which all comes back into
consciousness as an essential moment of existence. In Scepticism we now
really have an abrogation of the two one-sided systems that we have
hitherto dealt with; but this negative remains negative only, and is
incapable of passing into an affirmative.

C. THE NEW ACADEMY.

As opposed to the Stoic and Epicurean Dogmatism, we first of all have
the New Academy, which is a continuation of Plato’s Academy in as far
as the followers of Plato are divided into the Old, Middle, and New
Academies; some indeed allow of a fourth Academy and even a fifth.[168]
The most noteworthy figures here are those of Arcesilaus and Carneades.
The establishment of the Middle Academy is ascribed to Arcesilaus,
and the New Academy is said to contain the philosophy of Carneades;
but this distinction has no signification. Both of these are closely
connected with Scepticism, and the Sceptics themselves have often
trouble in distinguishing their standpoint from the Academic principle.
Both have been claimed by Scepticism as Sceptics, but between the
Academics and pure Scepticism a distinction has been drawn, which is
certainly very formal, and has but little signification, but to which
the Sceptics in their subtlety undoubtedly attached some meaning. The
distinction often consists in the meanings of words only, and in quite
external differences.

The standpoint of the Academics is that they express the truth as a
subjective conviction of self-consciousness; and this tallies with the
subjective idealism of modern times. The truth, in so far as it is only
a subjective conviction, has hence been called, by the New Academy,
the _probable_. Although followers of Plato, and hence, Platonists,
the Academicians did not remain at the standpoint of Plato, nor could
they have done so. But we easily see the connection of this principle
with the Platonic doctrines, if we recollect that with Plato the Idea
has been the principle, and that, indeed, on the whole, in the form
of universality. Plato remained, as we saw above (pp. 139, 140), in
the abstract Idea; to him the one great matter in Philosophy is to
combine the infinite and finite. Plato’s Ideas are derived from the
necessities of reason, from enthusiasm for the truth, but they are in
themselves devoid of movement, and only universal, while Aristotle
demands actuality, self-determining activity. Plato’s dialectic has
only attempted to assert the universal as such, and to demonstrate the
determinate and particular to be null, thus leaving nothing at all but
abstract universality. His dialectic has hence very often a negative
result, in which determinations are merely done away with and annulled.
With Plato the working out of the concrete has thus not gone far, and
where he, as in the Timæus, proceeds into the determinate, _e.g._ of
organic life, he becomes infinitely trivial and quite unspeculative,
while with Aristotle matters are very different. The necessity for a
scientific ground has necessarily caused us to be carried on beyond
this Platonic point of view. The Stoics and Epicureans were imbued
with the scientific necessity, not yet recognized by Plato, of giving
a content to the universal of the Idea, _i.e._ of grasping particular
determinateness, but the succeeding Academicians stand in a negative
attitude to them in this regard. To the end they made a point of
holding to the Platonic universality, uniting to this the Platonic
dialectic also. The principle of the New Academy could thus, like the
Platonic dialectic, possess a dialectic attitude and bearing which
proceeded to nothing affirmative; as, indeed, in many of Plato’s
dialogues, mere confusion is what is arrived at. But while with Plato
the affirmative result is essentially the result of dialectic, so that
with him we have really found the universal Idea as species, during all
this time, on the other hand, the tendency to abstract apprehension
is predominant; and as this showed itself in the Stoic and Epicurean
philosophy, it has also extended to the Platonic Idea and degraded it
into being a form of the understanding. Plato’s Ideas were thus torn
from their rest through thought, because in such universality thought
has not yet recognized itself as self-consciousness. Self-consciousness
confronted them with great pretensions, actuality in general asserted
itself against universality; and the rest of the Idea necessarily
passed into the movement of thought. This movement now, however, in
the New Academy turned dialectically against the determination of the
Stoics and Epicureans, which rested on the fact that the criterion of
the truth ought to be a concrete. For example, in the conception as
comprehended by the Stoics, there is a thought which likewise has a
content, although, again, this union still remains very formal. But the
two forms in which the dialectic of the New Academy turns against this
concrete, are represented by Arcesilaus and Carneades.

1. ARCESILAUS.

Arcesilaus kept to the abstraction of the Idea as against the
criterion; for though in the Idea of Plato, _i.e._ in the Timæus and in
his dialectic, the concrete was derived from quite another source, this
was only admitted for the first time later on by the Neo-platonists,
who really recognized the unity of the Platonic and the Aristotelian
principles. The opposition to the Dogmatists thus does not in the case
of Arcesilaus proceed from the dialectic of the Sceptics, but from
keeping to abstraction; and here we perceive the gulf marking out this
epoch from any other.

Arcesilaus was born at Pitane in Æolia in the 116th Olympiad (318
B.C.), and was a contemporary of Epicurus and Zeno. Though he
originally belonged to the Old Academy, yet the spirit of the time and
the progressive development of Philosophy did not now admit of the
simplicity of the Platonic manner. He possessed considerable means, and
devoted himself entirely to the studies requisite for the education
of a noble Greek, viz. to rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, &c.
Mainly for the purpose of exercising himself in rhetoric, he came to
Athens, here was introduced to Philosophy, and lived henceforth for
its sake alone; he held intercourse with Theophrastus, Zeno, &c.,
and it is a subject of dispute whether he did not hear Pyrrho also.
Arcesilaus, familiar with all the Philosophy of those days, was by
his contemporaries held to be as noble a man as he was a subtle and
acute philosopher; being without pride in himself, he recognized the
merits of others. He lived in Athens, occupied the post of scholarch
in the Academy, and was thus a successor of Plato. After the death
of Crates, the successor of Speusippus, the place of honour in the
Academy devolved on Sosicrates, but he willingly gave it up in favour
of Arcesilaus on account of the superiority of the latter in talent
and philosophy. What really happened as regards the transference
of the chair to others, is, for the rest, unknown to us. He filled
this office, in which he made use of the method of disputation, with
approbation and applause, until his death, which took place in Olympiad
134, 4 (244 B.C.), in the seventy-fourth year of his age.[169]

The principal points in the philosophy of Arcesilaus are preserved
by Cicero in his _Academics Quæstiones_, but Sextus Empiricus is
more valuable as an authority, for he is more thorough, definite,
philosophic and systematic.

_a._ This philosophy is specially known to us as being a dialectic
directed against Stoicism, with which Arcesilaus had much to do, and
its result, as far as its main principles are concerned, is expressed
thus: “The wise man must restrain his approbation and assent.”[170]
This principle was called ἐποχή, and it is the same as that of the
Sceptics; on the other hand this expression is connected with the
principle of the Stoics as follows. Because to Stoic philosophy truth
consists in the fact that thought declares some content of existence to
be its own, and the conception as comprehended gives its approbation
to this content, the content of our conceptions, principles and
thoughts undoubtedly appears to be different from thought, and the
union of the two, which is the concrete, only arises by means of some
determinate content being taken up into the form of thought and thus
being expressed as the truth. But Arcesilaus saw this consequence,
and his saying that approbation most be withheld is thus as much as
saying that by thus taking up the content no truth comes to pass, but
only phenomenon; and this is true, because, as Arcesilaus puts it,
conception and thought likewise remain apart. Arcesilaus has certainly
unthinkingly allowed that this content united to consciousness is
a concrete such as was indicated, only he has asserted that this
connection merely gives a perception with a good ground, and not
what he calls truth. This is called probability, but not quite
appropriately; it is a universal set forth through the form of thought,
and is only formal, having no absolute truth. Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c.
33, § 233) puts this plainly in saying that “Arcesilaus has declared
the withholding of approbation in relation to parts, to be a good, but
the assenting to parts to be an evil,” because the assent only concerns
_parts_. That is, if thought is to be retained as a universal, it
cannot come to be a criterion; and that is the meaning of Arcesilaus
when he asks that the wise man should remain at the universal, and not
go on to the determinate as if this determinate were the truth.

Sextus Empiricus gives us (adv. Math. VII. 155, 151-153) a more
particular explanation of this philosophy, which is preserved to us
only as being in opposition to the Stoics. Arcesilaus asserted as
against the Stoics, that everything is incomprehensible (ἀκατάληπτα).
He thus combated the conception of thought (καταληπτικὴν φαντασίαν),
which to the Stoics is the point of most importance and the concrete
truth. Arcesilaus further attacked the Stoics thus: “They themselves
say that the conception of thought is the mean between scientific
knowledge and opinion, the one of which pertains alone to fools and the
other alone to wise men; the conception of thought is common to both,
and the criterion of the truth. Arcesilaus here argued in such a way as
to show that between scientific knowledge and opinion the conception
of thought is no criterion, for it is either in the wise man or the
fool, and in the former it is knowledge, and in the latter, opinion.
If it is nothing excepting these, there remains to it nothing but an
empty name.” For knowledge must be a developed consciousness derived
from reasons, but these reasons, as conceptions of thought, Arcesilaus
states to be just such thoughts as those of the fool. They are thus,
no doubt, the concrete directing power which constitutes the principal
content of our consciousness; but it is not proved that they are the
truth. Thus this mean, as judging between reason and opinion, pertains
equally to the wise man and the fool, and may be error or truth
equally; and thus the wise man and the fool have the same criterion,
and yet they must, in relation to the truth, be distinguished from one
another.

Arcesilaus further gives effect to the distinctions which are more
particularly brought up in modern times, and relied upon. “If
comprehension is the assent given to a conception of thought, it does
not exist. For, in the first place, the assent is not on account of
a conception, but of a reason; that is to say, it is only as regards
axioms that this assent holds good.”[171] That is good; more fully
the purport would be something like this: Thought, as subjective, is
made to assent to an existence which is a determinate content of the
conception. A sensuous image such as this, however, is foreign to
thought, and with it thought cannot accord, because it is something
different from it, something from which thought, on the contrary,
holds itself aloof. It is, in general, only to a thought that thought
finds itself conformable, and only in a thought that it finds itself;
thus only a universal axiom is capable of such accord, for only
such abstract principles are immediately pure thoughts. Arcesilaus
thus holds it up against the Stoics that their principle contains a
contradiction within itself, because the conception of thought is made
to be the thought of another, but thought can only think itself. This
is a thought which concerns the inmost essence of the thing. Arcesilaus
thus here makes the same celebrated distinction as in recent times has
again been brought forward with so much force as the opposition between
thought and Being, ideality and reality, subjective and objective.
Things are something different from me. How can I attain to things?
Thought is the independent determination of a content as universal;
but a given content is individual and hence we cannot assent to such.
The one is here, the other there; subjective and objective cannot
pass to one another—this is a form of thought upon which for long the
whole culture of modern philosophy has turned, and which we still find
to-day. It is important to have a consciousness of this difference,
and to assert this consciousness against the principle of the Stoics.
It was of this unity of thought and reality that the Stoics ought to
have given an account; and this they did not do, and indeed it was
never done in ancient times. For the ancients did not prove that the
subjective element of thought and this objective content are really in
their diversity the passing into one another, and that this identity
is their truth; this was only found in Plato in an abstract form and
as a first commencement. The unity of thought and conception is the
difficult matter; thus if thought, as such, is the principle, it is
abstract. The logic of the Stoics hence remained formal merely, and the
attainment of a content could not be demonstrated. Thought and Being
are themselves such abstractions, and we may move to and fro between
them for long without arriving at any determination. Thus this unity of
universal and particular cannot be the criterion. With the Stoics the
conception as comprehended appears to be immediately asserted; it is a
concrete, but it is not shown that this is the truth of these distinct
elements. Against this immediately accepted concrete, the assertion of
the difference of the two is thus quite consistent.

“In the second place,” says Arcesilaus, “there is no apprehended
conception that is not also false, as has been confirmed many times and
oft,” just as the Stoics themselves say that the apprehended conception
could be both true and false. Determinate content has its opposite in
a determinate which must likewise as an object of thought be true; and
this destroys itself. In this consists the blind wandering about in
thoughts and reasons such as these, which are not grasped as Idea, as
the unity of opposites, but in one of the opposites asserts one thing,
and then, with as good reason, the opposite. The truth of the world is,
on the contrary, quite different, the universal law of reason which is
as such for thought. Reasons are relatively ultimate for a content, but
not absolutely ultimate; they can only be regarded as good reasons, as
probability, as the Academics express it. This is a great truth which
Arcesilaus had attained. But because no unity can thus come forth, he
then draws the conclusion that the wise man must withhold his assent,
that is, not that he should not think, but that he must not merely for
that reason regard as true that which is thought. “For since nothing is
comprehensible, he will, if he assents, assent to an incomprehensible;
now because such an assent is opinion, the wise man will only be wise
in opinion.”[172] We still likewise hear this said: Man thinks, but
does not thereby arrive at the truth; it remains beyond. Cicero (Acad.
Quæst. IV. 24) thus expresses this: “Neither the false nor the true can
be known, if the true were simply to be such as is the false.”

_b._ In relation to what is practical, Arcesilaus says: “But since
the conduct of life without a criterion of the true or the false is
impossible, and the end of life, or happiness, can only be determined
through such grounds, the wise man, not withholding his approbation
regarding everything, will, as regards what has to be done and left
undone, direct his actions in accordance with the probable (εὔλογον),”
as the subjectively convincing conception. What is right in this is
that the good ground does not extend as far as truth. “Happiness is
brought about by discretion (φρόνησις), and rational conduct operates
in fitting and right action (κατορθώμασι); that is rightly done which
is permitted by a well-grounded justification,” so that it appears to
be true. “Thus, he who regards what is well-founded will do rightly and
be happy,” but for this culture and intelligent thought are requisite.
Arcesilaus thus remains at the indeterminate, at subjectivity of
conviction, and a probability justified by good grounds. Thus we see
that in regard to what is positive, Arcesilaus does not really get
any further than the Stoics, nor say anything different from what
they do; only the form is different, because, what the Stoics call
true, Arcesilaus calls well-founded or probable. But, on the whole, he
possessed a higher kind of knowledge than the Stoics, because what is
thus founded cannot be held to have the significance of an implicit
existence, but only a relative truth in consciousness.

2. CARNEADES.

Carneades was equally famous; he was one of the followers of Arcesilaus
in the Academy, and he also lived in Athens, though considerably later.
He was born in Cyrene in Ol. 141, 3 (217 B.C.), and died in Ol. 162,
4 (132 B.C.), thus being eighty-five years old; though, according to
others he was as much as ninety.[173] During the already mentioned (pp.
241, 242) embassy of the three philosophers to Rome, it was chiefly
Carneades’ quickness, eloquence, and power of conviction, as also his
great fame, which aroused remark, attracted men together, and gained
great approbation in Rome. For he here held, after the manner of the
Academics, two discourses on justice; the one for and the other against
justice. That on which both generally speaking rested, can easily be
discovered. In the justification of justice he took the universal as
principle; but in showing its nullity, he laid weight on the principle
of individuality, of self-interest. To the young Romans who knew little
of the opposition in the Notion, this was something new; they had no
idea of such methods of applying thought, were much attracted by them,
and were soon won over to them. But the older Romans, and particularly
the elder Cato, the Censor, who was then still living, saw this very
unwillingly, and declaimed much against it, because the youths were
thereby turned away from the strictness of ideas and virtues which
prevailed in Rome. As the evil gained ground, Caius Acilius made a
proposition in the Senate to banish all philosophers from the city,
amongst whom, naturally, without their names being mentioned, those
three ambassadors were included. The elder Cato, however, moved the
Senate to conclude the business with the ambassadors as quickly as
possible, so that they might again set forth, and return to their
schools, and might henceforth instruct only the sons of the Greeks.
The Roman youths might then as formerly give ear to their laws and
magistrates, and learn wisdom from intercourse with the senators.[174]
But this taint can no more be avoided than could in Paradise the
desire for knowledge. The knowledge which is a necessary moment in
the culture of a people, thus makes its appearance as the Fall from
innocence, and as corruption. An epoch such as this, in which thought
appears to veer about, is then regarded as an evil as far as the
security of the ancient constitution is concerned. But this evil of
thought cannot be prevented by laws, &c.; it can and must be the healer
of itself through itself alone, if thought through thought itself is
truly brought to pass.

a. The philosophy of Carneades has been given to us in most detail
by Sextus Empiricus; and all else of Carneades that we possess is
likewise directed against the dogmatism of the Stoic and Epicurean
philosophy. The fact that the nature of consciousness is what is most
particularly considered makes his propositions interesting. While in
Arcesilaus we still found a good reason or argument maintained, the
principle which Carneades supported is expressed as that “in the first
place there is absolutely no criterion of the truth, neither feeling,
conception, nor thought, nor any other such thing; for all this put
together deceives us.” This general empirical proposition is still in
vogue. In developing the matter further, Carneades proves what he says
from reasons, and we have the nature of consciousness more definitely
expressed in the following: “In the second place he shows that even if
such a criterion existed, it could not be without an affection (πάθος)
of consciousness, which proceeds from perception.”[175] For this,
speaking generally, is his principal reflection, that every criterion
must be constituted so that it has two elements, one being the
objective, existent, immediately determined, while the other element is
an affection, an activity, an attribute of consciousness, and belongs
to the sensitive, conceiving or thinking subject—but as such it could
not be the criterion. For this activity of consciousness consists in
the fact that it changes the objective, and thus does not allow the
objective as it is to come to us immediately. Hence the same attitude
of separation is pre-supposed as formerly, viz. that the understanding
is to be regarded as an ultimate and clearly absolute relationship.

α. As against the Epicureans, Carneades maintains this: “Because
the living is distinguished from the dead through the activity of
sensation, by this means it will comprehend itself and what is
external. But this sensation which,” as Epicurus puts it (_supra_, p.
281), “remains unmoved and is impassive and unchangeable, is neither
sensation nor does it comprehend anything. For not until they have been
changed and determined by the invasion of the actual does sensation
show forth things.”[176] The sensation of Epicurus is an existent,
but there is in it no principle of judgment, because each sensation
is independent. But sensation must be analyzed in accordance with
the two points of view there present, for as the soul is therein,
determined, so likewise is that which determines determined by the
energy of the conscious subject. Because I, as a living being, have
sensation, a change in my consciousness takes place, which means that I
am determined from without and from within. Consequently the criterion
cannot be a simple determinateness, for it is really an implicit
relationship in which two moments, sensation and thought, must be
distinguished.

β. Since to Carneades sensation is merely what comes first, he then
says: “The criterion is thus to be sought for in the affection of the
soul by actuality.” For it is only in the mean between the energy
of the soul and that of outward things that the criterion can fall.
A determinate content of sensation such as this, which is at the
same time again determined through consciousness, this passivity and
activity of consciousness, this third something, Carneades called the
conception which constituted to the Stoics the content of thought.
Respecting this criterion, he says: “This being determined must,
however, be an indication both of itself and of the apparent, or of
the thing through which it is affected; this affection is none other
than the conception. Hence in life the conception is something which
presents both itself and the other. If we see something, the sight has
an affection, and it no longer is just as it was before seeing. Through
an alteration such as this there arise in us two things: first change
itself, _i.e._ the ordinary conception” (the subjective side) “and
then that which change produced, what is seen” (the objective). “Now
just as the light shows itself and everything in it, the conception