Mind<\/em>, Vol. 4, No. 16 (Oct., 1879), pp. 582-587.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Guyau\u2019s work is an enlarged edition of the first part of an essay on \u201cLa Morale Utilitaire,\u201d to which a prize was awarded in 1874 by the Acad\u00e9mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. His view of Epicureanism is not, in the main, quite so novel as the reporter of the Acad\u00e9mie seems to have supposed; but his book may be cordially recommended to students of ancient philosophy as containing not only the most ample and appreciative, but also\u2014in spite of some errors and exaggerations\u2014the most careful and penetrating, account of the ethical system of Epicurus.<\/p>\n Such a book is all the more welcome, because the treatment of Epicureanism in the most widely accepted history of Greek philosophy \u2014 Zeller\u2019s \u2014 constitutes one of the least satisfactory parts of that valuable work. Here, as elsewhere, Zeller is uniformly impartial in intention and trustworthy in details; but his want of sympathy with the general view of Epicurus has prevented him from apprehending the real significance and inner coherence of some of the Epicurean doctrines, and in other cases has led him involuntarily to depreciate their originality and importance. Thus, he fails to make his reader understand the ardour of enthusiasm which Epicureanism excited in minds like Lucretius, and its prolonged and inflexible vitality \u2014 all the more remarkable as contrasting with the brief and unstable existence of the earlier and more naive hedonism of the Cyrenaics. The fact is that Zeller with other historians has missed the right point of view for tracing the process of Greek philosophic thought after the turn given to it by Socrates. Their attention is always primarily directed to the development of speculative philosophy; ethics is always dragged in the wake of metaphysics; whereas the post-Socratic philosophy itself was throughout in its first intention practical, a pursuit of wisdom for the sake of life. It is very natural for students of Plato and Aristotle to forget this; indeed, my assertion may easily seem paradoxical, when we contemplate the absorbing profundities of Plato\u2019s metaphysical research, and the small place that the theory of practice occupies in the vast range of Aristotle\u2019s thought. Still the paradox is merely apparent. Plato never ceased to hold that the only true and reasoned answer to the fundamental question of practice had to be supplied by ontology; and though in Aristotle\u2019s view speculative philosophy did not, in one sense, give the answer to this question, being concerned with higher things, yet in another sense it did: it was not the theory of the true end of human existence, but it was the end itself. Hence, we ought not to regard the preponderance of the practical interest in the post-Aristotelian school as a mere indication of the decay of genuine philosophy \u2014 which seems to be Zeller\u2019s view \u2014 but rather as a return, after a splendid digression, and reconcentration of philosophic thought on what, since Socrates, had always been regarded as its main problem.<\/p>\n From this point of view the peculiar historical importance of Epicureanism is easily seen. Greek ethics, as more than one writer has noticed, was throughout egoistic in form, at least so far as the statement of its fundamental question is concerned; but Epicureanism alone among the great rival systems supplied a content obviously and completely adapted to this form. When Socrates started the search for The Good, he meant primarily \u201cgood for himself\u201d or for any other individual philosophic soul inquiring after the true way of life; but, from his original and epoch-making conception of the nature of knowledge, he inevitably failed to distinguish this inquiry from the investigation of abstract or absolute good: hence his search led naturally to that blending of ethics, physics, logic and theology in one dream of a supreme universal science, which we call Platonic Idealism. Again, though Aristotle\u2019s analysis definitely distinguished the end of ethical investigation as the individual\u2019s wellbeing, his conception of this end was powerfully influenced by the organic or teleological view of the physical universe which he inherited and developed; while in determining the particulars of practical good his ultimate appeal is not really to the individual\u2019s experience, but to the common moral consciousness of the society of which he isa member. In Epicureanism we have for the first-time ethical egoism purged of all alien elements, and supported by a physical doctrine purged of all teleology.<\/p>\n I have referred briefly to these historical generalities because, while agreeing with M. Guyau as to the degree of importance to be attached to Epicureanism, I am by no means able to accept his view of its historical relations. Indeed, I am bound to say that many of his references to other philosophic systems seem to me characterised by a superficiality very strange in a writer so careful and penetrating. For instance, his first chapter opens with the following historical sketch: \u2014<\/p>\n \u201cOn le sait, les peuples qui commencent \u00e0 philosopher font presque toujours de la sp\u00e9culation pure ; ils pensent, ils cherchent pour penser et pour chercher ; plus seulement, quand les philosophes s\u2019aper\u00e7oivent qu\u2019ils ont cherch\u00e9 pendant fort longtemps pour trouver fort peu et qu\u2019ils sont en d\u00e9saccord les uns avec les autres, ils finissent par s’inqui\u00e9ter, ils craignent d\u2019avoir perdu leur peine : les sceptiques, les Pyrrhon, en voyant leur impuissance et leurs contradictions rient et raillent, mais les utilitaires, plus s\u00e9rieux, au lieu de condamner l\u2019esprit humain, condamnent la sp\u00e9culation, ram\u00e8nent la pens\u00e9e vers le moi<\/em>, pr\u00e9tendent qu\u2019 avant de poursuivre la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 absolue, il faut chercher la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 relative et utilit\u00e9, et qui plus est la trouver. Ainsi fit Epicure en Gr\u00e8ce ; on peut consid\u00e9rer son syst\u00e8me comme une tentative pour arracher l\u2019esprit humain aux \u00e9carts des H\u00e9raclite, des Platon et des Aristote, en un mot pour r\u00e9gler la pens\u00e9e humaine sur l\u2019utilit\u00e9.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n An account of the transition from pure speculation to the study of \u201cle moi\u201d and \u201cl\u2019utilit\u00e9,\u201d in which the very name of Socrates is left out, is certainly more original than satisfactory! Nor is it easy to understand how anyone who has read Aristotle\u2019s Ethics can go on to inform his readers that \u201cPlaton et Aristote cherchaient le vrai pour en d\u00e9duire le bien\u201d. On Stoicism M. Guyau \u2014 who has published a translation of Epictetus and an Etude sur la philosophie d\u2019Epict\u00e9te <\/em>\u2014 is naturally better informed. Still, he hardly ought to assert, on the strength of a single passage of Epictetus and against a consensus of other authorities, that \u201cles Stoiciens conseillaient \u00e0 leur sage d\u2019\u00e9viter le mariage\u201d. Again, it is misleading to say that the Epicurean doctrine of political abstention was shared by a majority of Stoics, without also explaining that the Stoics always maintained as a theoretical principle that the sage should take part in public affairs unless there were good reasons to the contrary. Withdrawal from political activity was a part of the Epicurean ideal of life, while it was forced on the Stoic by the discrepancy between the ideal and the actual conditions of political existence: the difference in theory is of fundamental importance.<\/p>\n On the other hand, so far as M. Guyau treats of matter that he has especially studied, he is almost uniformly instructive as well as trustworthy. For instance, his comparison between the hedonism of Aristippus that pursued the pleasure of the moment, and the \u201cutilitarianism\u201d of Epicurus, whose end was the happiness of a life, is thoroughly careful and well-informed. I think, however, that in this comparison he, to some extent, confounds two distinct issues; one really practical, while the other is merely metaphysical, or, if I may coin a word\u2014metapractical<\/em>. When the Cyrenaics, as Diogenes Laertius tells us, maintained that the \u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 was not \u03b5\u03cd\u03b4\u03b1\u03b9\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03af\u03b1 but \u03ae \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac \u03bc\u03ad\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 \u03ae\u03b4\u03bf\u03bd\u03ae, they did not necessarily adopt the paradoxical position of denying that future pleasure, so far as it is capable of being foreseen, is to be regarded as much as present pleasure: indeed, as Diogenes goes on to say, they allowed that \u03b5\u03cd\u03b4\u03b1\u03b9\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03af\u03b1 was \u03b1\u03af\u03c1\u03b5\u03c4\u03ae, though not per se<\/em> but as a means to the particular pleasures. That is, they admitted it to be practically reasonable for a man to aim at making the sum of his future pleasures a maximum: they only laid stress on the fact that the hedonistic end is not capable of being actually realised except in successive parts. At the same time the scepticism of the Cryenaics would naturally lead to an exaggeration of the uncertainty of the future, and to a practical adoption of the principle \u201ccarpe diem\u201d: and in fact, Athenaeus and \u00c6lian attribute this principle in its extremest form to Aristippus, and all that we are told of his life is in harmony with their statement.[1]<\/a> While, on the other side, it is in direct contradiction of Epicurus\u2019s express statements to say that his \u201cfin\u201d is \u201cle bonheur, non le plaisir<\/em>\u201d: indeed, the success of Epicureanism may be attributed to the fact that it started with frankly accepting the vulgarest pleasure-seeking as reasonable and right, though it ended by constructing an ideal life as remote from the voluptuary\u2019s practice as Stoicism itself was\u2014a life, as Jerome exclaims with admiring surprise, \u201cfull of herbs and fruits and abstinences \u201d.<\/p>\n Guyau traces clearly and skilfully the process by which the stable and perfect edifice of philosophic happiness is raised by Epicurus on the apparently shifting and unstable basis of sensual gratification; and in so doing corrects more than one widespread error. He lays stress on the positive quality of the \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u1f74 \u1f21\u03b4\u03bf\u03bd\u1f74 Which Epicurus contrasted with that \u1f10\u03bd \u03ba\u03b9\u03bd\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9 and maintained to reach the highest degree of which pleasure admits: this being not mere painlessness, but the stable satisfaction derived from the mere sense of normal life, unruffled by pain or anxiety. In connexion with this he ingeniously and perhaps rightly interprets the well-known utterance that \u201cthe pleasure of the belly is source and root of all good,\u201d not as exalting the pleasures of the table, but as emphasising the importance of satisfying the bodily needs of nutrition. At the same time M. Guyau goes too far in calling this \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u1f74 \u1f21\u03b4\u03bf\u03bd\u1f74 \u201cle seul vrai plaisir\u201d and speaking of the \u201cplaisirs inf\u00e9rieurs du mouvement\u201d as being \u201crejected\u201d by Epicurus. It is not easy to make Epicurus\u2019s utterances on this point perfectly consistent; but I think he must be understood not to \u201creject\u201d the \u1f10\u03bd \u03ba\u03b9\u03bd\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9 \u03ae\u03b4\u03bf\u03bd\u03b1\u03af, nor even to treat them as inferior; rather, he would coordinate and as far as possible combine them under one notion with the stable satisfaction that lies in the feeling of settled and serene existence.<\/p>\n No feature of Epicureanism is more striking than its triumphant announcement of the perfect attainability of its ideal. The Epicurean sage, no less than the Stoic, enjoys a happiness that could not be increased by the prolongation of life and that can be maintained even amid the torments of the rack; and like the Stoic he owes this to philosophy and to the intrinsic superiority of the mind to the body. M. Guyau puts this point effectively : but he modernises it rather misleadingly when he says, \u201cL\u2019esprit qui n\u2019\u00e9tait d\u2019abord qu\u2019un moyen pour le corps reprend son r\u00f4le de fin v\u00e9ritable, et cela gr\u00e2ce a une id\u00e9e qui fait le fond de l\u2019esprit humain, l\u2019id\u00e9e d\u2019infini. Les peines et les plaisirs de l\u2019esprit ont quelque chose d\u2019infini et \u00e9ternel.\u201d[2]<\/a> For the Greek mind, from first to last, found perfection in the finite rather than the infinite : and accordingly the cup of happiness is filled to the brim for the Epicurean sage by a consciousness not of the unlimitedness of mental satisfaction, but of its completeness within the appointed limits of life; he is said to live \u1f10\u03bd \u03ac\u03b8\u03b1\u03bd\u03ac\u03c4\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2 \u03ac\u03b3\u03b1\u03b8\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2, but that is merely a way of saying that \u201cdeath does not concern him\u201d.<\/p>\n In an original and interesting chapter on \u201cContingency and Liberty,\u201d M. Guyau defends vigorously the well-known \u201cclinamen\u201d or spontaneous deviation from the perpendicular, attributed by Epicurus to his atoms; on which most historians of philosophy have poured unmitigated contempt. He argues forcibly that this assumption is necessary to reconcile the Free Will which Epicurus regarded as at once a datum of experience and a necessary postulate of his ethical optimism, with that complete mechanical explanation of nature by which he claimed to annihilate superstition and secure the mental tranquility of his disciples. If man\u2019s actions are not completely determined, there must be spontaneity in the elements out of which he is composed; otherwise, the chain of natural causation is broken and the miraculous let in. M. Guyau shows the mistake of supposing that Epicurus attributed this spontaneity to his atoms only in the origination of worlds, afterwards suspending its exercise: and he plausibly suggests, on the strength chiefly of a passage of Plutarch (De Solert. Anim<\/em>. 7), that the \u03c4\u03cd\u03c7\u03b7 which Epicurus admitted as a third cause, side by side with mechanical necessity and human free will, was merely the form in which this essential spontaneity reveals itself to us.<\/p>\n The Epicurean view of death is also well and carefully presented: but M. Guyau seems to have trusted too completely the gloomy description given by Epicurus and his school of the \u201cprava relligio\u201d from which they claimed to deliver mankind. The following sentences, for instance, cannot be applied without great qualifications to any period of ancient history later than the seventh century B.C.: \u2014<\/p>\n \u201cDans les religions antiques, au contraire, l\u2019esp\u00e9rance du ciel n\u2019existait pas ; seuls, quelques h\u00e9ros comme Hercule ou Bacchus avaient m\u00e9rit\u00e9 de prendre place l\u00e0-haut parmi les dieux ; tous les autres hommes, p\u00eale-m\u00eale, ensevelis sous la terre, y demeuraient 4 jamais loin du jour, et si parmi eux il y en avait de plus ch\u00e2ti\u00e9s, de plus malheureux les uns que les autres, il n\u2019y en avaient vraiment point de fortun\u00e9s.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This certainly expresses, so far as we know, the idea of a future life generally entertained by the contemporaries of Homer and Hesiod. But so soon as we come to Pindar we find a distinct expectation of a post-humous fate corresponding to earthly merit as well as demerit \u2014 compare, among other passages, the second Olympiad<\/em>, and the fragment commencing \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u03b1\u03af \u03b4 \u03ac\u03c3\u03b5\u03b2\u03ad\u03c9\u03bd. Then, for Plato\u2019s age, we have distinct evidence of a similar hopefulness in the language placed in the mouth of the aged Cephalus at the outset of the Republic<\/em>; and in several of the mortuary inscriptions that have come down to us from later times the survivors assume that the departed are in bliss among the stars or in the air. How widely spread this brighter tone of sentiment was we cannot now determine; but at any rate we are bound to recognise its existence.<\/p>\n In the chapters which deal with the social aspects of Epicureanism M. Guyau is especially concerned to point out the various and striking anticipations of modern thought which the system presents. He notices the difficulty which the Epicureans found in providing a rational basis for the Friendship which they exalted as so essential an element of happy life: a difficulty signalised by the fact that on this point only have we any evidence of a distinct advance made by disciples of Epicurus beyond the position taken up by their master. The result of this advance is exhibited in the earliest form of that \u201cassociationism\u201d by which English utilitarians have met the similar difficulty of explaining disinterested benevolence. In the same way Epicureanism presents the first definite and constructive statement of the modern utilitarian view of Justice, as essentially dependent on a social convention for the promotion of common interest by the prevention of mutual injury; so that, while the general conception of justice is everywhere the same, its particulars naturally vary with the varying circumstances of different communities. Again, we have a germinal form of the modern view of human progress in the pictures of the origin of civilisation given by Lucretius\u2014to the originality and importance of which Zeller does rather imperfect justice by speaking of them as \u201cim ganzen sehr gesunde Ansichten\u201d. M. Guyau, on the other hand, in this part of his work, has not altogether resisted the temptation to modernise unduly his interpretation of ancient texts, and to underrate the characteristic differences of the modern systems with which he compares them. The criticisms, however, with which his exposition is interspersed are nearly always sensible and just.<\/p>\n About one-third of the book consists of shorter studies of modern successors of Epicurus; the writers most fully treated being Hobbes, Rochefoucauld, Spinoza, and Helvetius. These form rather a strange quartette; and in truth the point of view taken is unfavourable to an adequate treatment of Spinoza: nor do I think that sufficient attention is given to the characteristics that distinguish Hobbism \u2014 as an original and powerful essay in constructive politics \u2014 from the older egoism to which it may no doubt be affiliated. On the other hand, the account of Helvetius is very interesting and instructive.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> I may observe that Zeller is not perfectly consistent in his language on this rather subtle point. In his account of the Cyrenaic doctrine he says: \u2014 \u201cAuch das aber scheint ihnen bedenklich, wenn man . . . die Aufgabe des Menschen darein setzt, sich die h\u00f6chste Gesammtsumme<\/em> von Gen\u00fcssen zu verschaffen\u201d: while afterwards in the chapter on Epicurus he observes with more accuracy that they \u201cdie Gl\u00fcckseligkeit nicht in dem Gesammtzustand des Menschen, sondern in der Summe<\/em> der einzelnen Geniisse suchten.\u201d<\/p>\n