Selections from the classic compilation of Hermann Usener (1834-1905)
Originally compiled and published in 1887. This arrangement produced by Erik Anderson, 2005, 2006, in consultation with translations from a wide variety of sources.
Fragments from Uncertain Sources
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists,
(Against the Dogmatists, V) 169: For they {the Dogmatists}
promise to present us with an "art of life," and because of this
Epicurus declared that "philosophy is an activity secures the happy
life by arguments and discussions."
Sacred and Profane Parallels, A 14, 156 [p. 761
Gaisf.]: From Epicurus:
"It is not the pretended but the real pursuit of philosophy that is
needed; for we do not need the appearance of good health but to enjoy it
in truth." {= Vatican Sayings
54}
Porphyry, Letter to Marcella, 31, [p. 209, 23
Nauck]: Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any
suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does
not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy
either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 19, p. 1117F: It is
one of Epicurus’ tenets that none but the Sage is unalterably convinced of
anything.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.117:
Moreover {Epicurus says}, he who has become wise never resumes the
opposite habit, nor even pretends to, if he can help it.
Cicero, Academica, II.14.45 (Lucullus): What
we have termed "perspicuity" {clarity of reasoning} is cogent enough to
identify things as they are. But nevertheless, so that we may abide
by things that are perspicuous more firmly and consistently, we require
some further exercise of method or of attention to save ourselves from
being thrown off – by trickery and ill-conceived arguments – from
positions that are clear in themselves. For Epicurus who desired to
come to the relief of the errors that appear to upset our power of knowing
the truth, and who said that the separation of opinion from perspicuous
truth was the function of the wise man, carried matters no further, for he
entirely failed to do away with the error connected with mere
opinion.
Monastic Florilegium, 195: Epicurus also deemed
opinion the "hallowed epidemic."
Aetius, Doxography,
IV.9.19 [p. 398.11 Diels] (Parallel A.27.39 p.767 [Gaisf.]):
Epicurus says that a Sage can only
be recognized by another Sage.
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellenies, I.15 [p. 130.37
Sylb]: Epicurus, however, supposes that only the Greeks are qualified
to practice philosophy.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors, I.1:
The case against the Mathematici – professors of Arts and Sciences
– has been set forth in a general way, it would seem, both by Epicurus and
by the School of Pyrrho … Epicurus took the ground that the subjects
taught are of no help in perfecting wisdom; and he did this, as some
speculate, because he saw in it a way of covering up his own lack of
culture (for in many matters Epicurus stands convicted of ignorance, and
even in ordinary conversation, his speech was not correct). Another
reason may have been his hostility towards Plato and Aristotle and their
like who were men of wide learning.
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, II.4.12:
Your school {Epicureanism} argues decisively that there is no need for
the aspirant to philosophy to study literature at all.
Cf., Ibid., I.21, 71-72 (Torquatus to Cicero):
You are disposed to think him uneducated. The reason is that he
refused to consider any education worth the name that did not help to
school us in happiness. Was he to spend his time, as you encourage
Triarius and me to do, in perusing poets, who give us nothing solid and
useful, but merely childish amusement? Was he to occupy himself like
Plato with music and geometry, arithmetic and astrology, which starting
from false premises cannot be true, and which moreover if they were true
would contribute nothing to make our lives pleasanter and therefore
better? Was he, I say, to study arts like these, and neglect the
master art, so difficult and correspond so fruitful, the art of
living? No! Epicurus was not uneducated: the real philistines are
those who ask us to go on studying till old age the subjects that we are
supposed to be ashamed of not learning in childhood.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, III.25.4: For
what else is it to deny wisdom to men than to take away from their minds
the true and divine light? But if the nature of man is capable of
wisdom, it is necessary that workmen and rustics and women and all who
have human form be taught, that they might be wise, and that a people of
sages be raised up from every tongue and condition and sex and age.
25.7: So the Stoics realized this, for they said that slaves and
women ought to engage in philosophy; Epicurus, also, who summoned even the
illiterate to philosophy. … 25.8: Indeed, they tried to
do what truth exacted, but it was not possible to get beyond the words,
first, because there is need of many arts to be able to arrive at
philosophy. … 25.12: For this reason, Tullius {i.e., Cicero} says
that philosophy "shrinks from the crowd." {Tusculan
Disputations, II.2.4} Still, Epicurus will accept the
untutored. How, therefore, will they understand those things which
are said about the beginnings of things, perplexing and involved things
which even educated men scarcely grasp? In matters involved with
obscurity, then, and spread over by the variety of abilities and colored
with the exquisite oratory of eloquent men, what place is there for the
inexperienced and unlearned? Finally, they never taught any women to
be philosophers except one, from all memory: Themista.
Scholiast on Dionysius Thrax {"Dionysius the
Thracian"}, p 649, 26: This is how the Epicureans define craft:
a craft is a method which effects what is advantageous for human
life. "Effects" is used in the sense of "produces."
Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life
impossible, 2, p. 1086F-: Heraclides then, a student of
literature, is repaying his debt to Epicurus for such favors of theirs "as
rabble of poets" and
"Homer’s idiocies" and the
verity of abuse that Metrodorus has in so many writings heaped upon the
poet.
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellenies, V.14, p.
257.52: Homer, while
representing the gods as subject to human passions, appears to know the
Divine Being, whom Epicurus does not so revere.
Heraclitus Ponticus, Allegories of
Homer, 4:
Ibid. 75:
Proclus Lycaeus, Commentary on
Plato’s "Republic," [p. 382 Bas.]:
Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life
impossible, 11, p. 1093C: They even banish the pleasures that come
from mathematics!
Saint Augustine, On the Utility of
Faith, c. 6, 13, t. VIII [p. 53F Venice edition, 1719]:
Cicero Academica II.33.106 (Lucullus):
Polyaenus is said to have been a great mathematician; after he had
accepted the view of Epicurus and come to believe that all geometry is
false, {surely he did not forget even the knowledge that he
possessed?}
Proclus Lycaeus, Commentary on Euclid, [p. 55
Bas.; 199.9 Friedl.]: There are those, however, who are only
predisposed to knock down the principles of geometry, like the
Epicureans.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Musicians
(Against the Professors, VI) 27: Moreover, if Plato
welcomed music, we should not therefore assert that music contributes to
happiness, since others who are not inferior to him in trustworthiness –
such as Epicurus – have denied this contention, and declared on the
contrary that music is unbeneficial – "Wine-loving, idle, having no regard
for wealth." {Euripides, fr. 184 Nauck}.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On the Composition of
Words, 24, p. 188: The dictum that
"writing presents no difficulties to those who do not aim at a constantly
changing standard," which Epicurus himself propounded, was intended as a
talisman to ward off the charge of extreme sloth and stupidity.
{c.f. above}
Cicero, Brutus, 85.292 (Atticus speaking): I
grant that that irony, which they say was found in Socrates … is a fine
and clever way of speaking… Thus Socrates in the pages of Plato praises to
the skies Protagoras, Hippias, Prodicus, Gorgias, and the rest, while
representing himself as without knowledge of anything and a mere
ignoramus. This somehow fits his character, and I cannot agree with
Epicurus who censures it.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.13:
Both Epicurus and Hermarchus deny the very existence of Leucippus the
philosopher, though some say, including Apollodorus the Epicurean, that he
was the teacher of Democritus.
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.26.72 (Cotta
speaking): The fact is that you people merely repeat by rote the idle
fancies that Epicurus uttered when half asleep; for, as we read in his
writings, he boasted that he had never had a master. ... He could
have studied under Xenocrates … and there are some who think
he did. But he himself denied it, and he should know! He does
say that he heard the lectures of a certain Pamphilus, a student of Plato,
when he was living in Sámos. He lived there as a young man with his
father and brothers, his father Neocles having settled there as an
immigrant farmer. But when he could not make a decent living from
his small-holding, I believe he kept a school. Epicurus however had
a supreme contempt for Pamphilus as a follower of Plato, and in this he
showed his usual anxiety never to learn anything from anyone. Look
how he behaved towards Nausiphanes, a disciple of Democritus. He
does not deny that he heard him lecture, but heaps all manner of abuse
upon him. What, after all, is there in his own philosophy which does
not come form Democritus? Even if he introduced some variations –
such as the swerve in the motion of the atoms which I mentioned just now –
still for the most part his theory is identical – atoms, void, images, the
infinity of space, the numberless universes, their birth and death, and so
on through practically the whole field of natural philosophy.
Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life
impossible, 18, p. 1100A: Was not Epicurus himself in such a fury
of tense and palpitating passion for renown that he ... disowned his
teachers?
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.6.17:
Here {regarding physics}, in the first place, he is entirely
second-hand. His doctrines are those of Democritus, with a very few
modifications. And as for the latter, where he attempts to improve upon
his original, in my opinion he only succeeds in making things worse. ...
21: Thus where Epicurus alters the doctrines of Democritus,
he alters them for the worse; while for those ideas which he adopts, the
credit belongs entirely to Democritus. ... For my own part I reject these
doctrines altogether; but still I could wish that Democritus, whom every
one else applauds, had not been vilified by Epicurus who took him as his
sole guide.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 3, p. 1108E: He
begins with Democritus, who thus receives for his teaching a handsome and
appropriate fee. And this although Epicurus long proclaimed himself
a Democritean, as is attested among others by Leonteus, one of Epicurus’
most devoted pupils, who writes to Lycophron that Democritus was honored
by Epicurus for having reached the correct approach to knowledge before
him, and that indeed his whole system was called Democritean because
Democritus had first his upon the first principles of natural philosophy.
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.33.93 (Cotta
speaking): Was it on the basis of dreams that Epicurus and Metrodorus
and Hermarchus attacked Pythagoras, Plato, and Empedocles, and that little
harlot Leontium dared to write criticisms of Theophrastus? … You
Epicureans are touchy yourselves. … But Epicurus himself made the
most libelous attacks on Aristotle and violently abused Phaedo, the
disciple of Socrates. He heaped whole volumes of invective on
Timocrates, the brother of his own colleague Metrodorus, because of some
petty disagreement on a philosophical point. He even showed no
gratitude to Democritus, his own forerunner, and had no use for his own
teacher Nausiphanes, from whom he had learnt nothing in any case.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.8:
Epicurus
used to call Nausiphanes a pleumonon {="jellyfish," imputing
obtuseness and
insensibility}, an illiterate, a fraud, and a whore.
Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life
impossible, 2, p. 1086E: Zeuxippus said: "Heraclides has gone off
charging us with undue vehemence in our attack on the unoffending Epicurus
and Metrodorus." Here, Theon declared: "And you didn’t reply that by
their standard Colotes looks like a paragon of measured speech? For
they made a collection of the most disgraceful terms to be found anywhere:
‘charlatanism’ {bomolochiás},
‘buffoonery’ {lekythismoús},
‘bragging’ {alazoneías}
‘prostitution’ {hetaireséis}
‘assassin’ {androphonías},
‘loudmouth’ {barystonoús} ,
‘hero of many of a misadventure’ {polyphthórous}, ‘nincompoop’ {baryegkephálous} – and showered it on Aristotle
{U71},
Socrates {U231},
Pythagoras, Protagoras {U172 - U173},
Theophrastus, Heraclides {U16},
Hipparchia – indeed, what eminent name have they spared?
Cf. Plutarch, Against Colotes, 29, p. 1124C:
The sophists and braggarts then, are those those who in their disputes
with eminent men write with such shameless arrogance.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.8:
Plato’s school he
called the "flatterers
of Dionysius." Plato
himself he called "golden." ... Heraclitus a
"muddler," Democritus he called "Lerocritus" {the gossip-monger},
Antidorus "Sannidorus" {a fawning gift-bearer}, the Cynics "enemies of Greece,"
the Dialecticians "despoilers," and he called Pyrrho "ignorant" and a
"bore."
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 26, p. 1121E: The
fame of Arcesilaus, the best loved among the philosophers of the time,
would appear to have annoyed Epicurus mightily. Thus he {Colotes} says
although this philosopher said nothing new, he gave the illiterate the
impression and belief that he did. Our critic of course is widely read
himself and writes with a beguiling charm.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers,
X.12: Among the early philosophers, says Diocles, his favorite was
Anaxagoras, although he occasionally disagreed with him, and Archelaus,
the teacher of Socrates.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.23:
The goodness of Metrodorus was proved in all ways, as Epicurus testifies
in his prefaces {of some of his books}.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 89.11: The
Epicureans held that there are two pats of philosophy: physics and ethics
– they got rid of logic. Then, since they were forced by the very
facts to distinguish what was ambiguous and to refute falsities lying
hidden under the appearance of truth, they themselves also introduced that
topic which they call "on judgment and the criterion" {i.e.,
canonics}; it is logic by another name, but they think that it is
an accessory part of physics.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.30:
The usual arrangement, however, is to join canonics with physics; the
former they call the science which deals with the standard and
first principles, or the elementary part of philosophy...
Saint Augustine, Against
Cresconius, I.13.16 t. IX [p. 397E Venice edition, 1719]:
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.19.63
(Torquatus to Cicero): Logic, on which your {Platonic} school lays
such stress, he held to be of no effect either as a guide to conduct or as
an aid to thought. Natural Philosophy he deemed all-important. This
science explains to us the meaning of terms, the nature of predication,
and the law of consistency and contradiction; secondly, a thorough
knowledge of the facts of nature relieves us of the burden of
superstition, frees us from fear of death, and shields us against the
disturbing effects of ignorance, which is often in itself a cause of
terrifying apprehensions; lastly, to learn what nature’s real requirements
are improves the moral character also. Besides, it is only by firmly
grasping a well-established scientific system, observing the Rule or Canon
that has fallen as it were from heaven so that all men may know it—only by
making that Canon the test of all our judgments, that we can hope always
to stand fast in our belief unshaken by the eloquence of any man. On the
other hand, without a full understanding of the world of nature it is
impossible to maintain the truth of our sense-perceptions. Further, every
mental presentations has its origin in sensation: so that no certain
knowledge will be possible, unless all sensations are true, as the theory
of Epicurus teaches that they are. Those who deny the validity of
sensation and say that nothing can be perceived, having excluded the
evidence of the senses, are unable even to expound their own argument.
Besides, by abolishing knowledge and science they abolish all possibility
of rational life and action. Thus Natural Philosophy supplies courage to
face the fear of death; resolution to resist the terrors of religion;
peace of mind, for it removes all ignorance of the mysteries of nature;
self-control, for it explains the nature of the desires and distinguishes
their different kinds; and, as I showed just now, the Canon or Criterion
of Knowledge, which Epicurus also established, gives a method of
discerning truth from falsehood.
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad,
I.7.22: Turn next to the second division of philosophy, the
department of Method and of Dialectic, which its termed Logikē. Of
the whole armor of Logic your founder, as it seems to me, is absolutely
destitute. He does away with Definition; he has no doctrine of Division or
Partition; he gives no rules for Deduction or Syllogistic Inference, and
imparts no method for resolving Dilemmas or for detecting Fallacies of
Equivocation. The Criteria of reality he places in sensation; once let the
senses accept as true something that is false, and every possible
criterion of truth and falsehood seems to him to be immediately destroyed.
{lacuna} He lays the very greatest stress upon that which, as he declares,
Nature herself decrees and sanctions, that is: the feelings of pleasure
and pain. These he maintains lie at the root of every act of choice and of
avoidance.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians II
(Against the Dogmatists, II).9: Epicurus said that all
sensibles were true and real. For there is no difference between
saying that something is true
and that it is real. And that is why, in giving a
formalization of the true and the false, he says, "that which
is such as it is said to be, is true" and "that which
is not such as it is said to be, is false."
Cicero Academica II.46.142 (Lucullus):
Epicurus places the standard of judgment entirely in the senses and in
notions of objects and in pleasure.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, IX.106
(Pyrrho): An apparent fact serves as the Skeptic’s criterion,
as indeed Aenesidemus says, and so does Epicurus.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, I
(Against the Dogmatists, I) 203: Epicurus says that there are
two things which are linked to each other, presentation and opinion, and
that of these presentation (which he also calls ‘clear fact’) is
always true. For just as the primary feelings, i.e., pleasure and
pain, come to be from certain productive factors and in accordance with
productive factors themselves (for example, pleasure comes to be from
pleasant things and pain from painful things, and what causes pleasure can
never fail to be pleasant, nor can what produces pain not be painful; but
rather, it is necessary that what gives pleasure should be pleasant and
that what gives pain should, in its nature, be painful), likewise, in the
case of presentations, which are feelings within us, what causes each of
them is presented in every respect and unqualifiedly, and since it is
presented it cannot help but exist in truth just as it is presented
[…lacuna…] that it is productive of presentation. And
one must reason similarly for the individual senses. For what is
visible not only is presented as visible but also is such as
it is presented; and what is audible is not only presented as audible, but
also is like that in truth; and similarly for the rest. Therefore,
it turns out that all presentations are true. And reasonably
so. For if, the Epicureans say, a presentation is true if it comes
from an existing object and in accordance with the existing object, and if
every presentation arises from the object presented and in accordance with
the presented object itself, then necessarily every presentation is
true.
Some people are
deceived by the difference among impressions seeming to reach us from the
same sense-object, for example a visible object, such that the object
appears to be of a different color or shape, or altered in some other
way. For they have supposed that, when impressions differ and
conflict in this way, one of them must be true and the opposing one
false. This is simple-minded, and characteristic of those who are
blind to the real nature of things. Let us make our case for visible
things. For it is not the whole solid body that is seen – to take
the example of visible things – but the
color of the solid body. And of color, some is right on the solid
body, as in the case of things seen from close up or from a moderate
distance, but some is outside the solid body and is objectively located in
the space adjacent to it, as in the case of things seen from a great
distance. This color is altered in the intervening space, and takes
on a peculiar shape. But the impression which it imparts corresponds
to what is its own true objective state. Thus just as what we
actually hear is not the sound inside the beaten gong, or inside the mouth
of the man shouting, but the sound which is reaching our senses, and just
as no one says that the man who hears a faint sound from a distance hears
is falsely just because on approaching he registers it as louder, so too I
would not say that the vision is deceived just because from a great
distance it sees the tower as small and round but from near-to as larger
and square. Rather I would say that it is telling the truth.
Because when the sense-object appears to it small and of that shape it
really is small and of that shape, the edges of the images getting eroded
as a result of their travel through the air. And when it appears big
and of another shape instead, it likewise is big and of another shape
instead. But the two are already different from each other: for it
is left for distorted opinion to suppose that the object of impression
seen from near and the one seen from far off are one and the same.
The peculiar function for sensation is to apprehend only that which is
present to it and moves it, such as color, not to make the distinction
that the object here is a different one from the object there. Hence
for this reason all impressions are true. Opinions, on the other
hand, are not all true but admit of some difference. Some of them
are true, some false, since they are judgments which we make on the basis
of our impressions, and we judge some things correctly, but some
incorrectly, either by adding and appending something to our impressions
or by subtracting something from them, and in general falsifying
irrational sensation.
According to
Epicurus, some opinions are true, some false. True opinions are those
which are attested by and not contested by clear facts, while false
opinions are those which are contested and not attested by clear facts.
Attestation is perception through a self-evident impression, that the
object of opinion is such as it once was thought to be—for example, if
Plato is approaching from far off, I form the conjectural opinion, owing
to the distance, that it is Plato. But then he has come close, there is
further testimony that he is Plato, now that the distance is reduced, and
it is attested by the self-evidence itself. Non-contestation is the
conformity between a non-evident thing which is the object of speculation,
and the opinion about what is apparent—for example, Epicurus, in saying
that void exists, which is non-evident, confirms this through the
self-evident fact of motion. For if void does not exist, there ought not
be motion either, since the moving body would lack a place to pass into as
a consequence of everything being full and solid. Therefore, the
non-evident thing believed is not contradicted by that which is evident,
since there is motion. Contestation, on the other hand, is opposed to
non-contestation, for it is the elimination of that which is apparent by
the positing of the non-evident thing—for example, the Stoic says that
void does not exist, something non-evident; but once this denial is put
forward, then that which is evident, namely motion, ought to be
co-eliminated with it. For if void does not exist, then motion does not
occur either, according to the method already demonstrated.
Non-attestation, likewise, is opposed to attestation, for it is
confirmation through self-evidence of the fact that the object of opinion
is not such as it was believed to be—for example, if someone is
approaching from far off, we conjecture, owing to the distance, that he is
Plato. But when the distance is reduced, we recognize through
self-evidence that it is not Plato. This sort of thing turns out to be
non-attestation.
So attestation
and non-contestation are the criterion of something’s being true, while
non-attestation and contestation are the criterion of its being false. And
self-evidence is the foundation and basis of all [four] of these.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians II
(Against the Dogmatists, II) 9: Epicurus said that all
sensibles were true and real. For there is no difference between
saying that something is true
and that it is real. And that is why, in giving a
formalization of the true and the false, he says, "that which
is such as it is said to be, is true" and "that which
is not such as it is said to be, is false." {= U244} ... And he
says that sensation, being perceptive of the objects presented to it and
neither subtracting nor adding nor transposing (being devoid of reason),
constantly reports truly and grasps the existent object as it really is by
nature. And whereas all the sensibles are true, the opinables
differ: some of them are true, others false – as we showed
before.
Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, I
(Against the Dogmatists, I).369: Some of the natural
philosophers, like Democritus, have abolished all phenomena, and others,
like Epicurus and Protagoras, have established all, {while still others,
like the Stoics and Peripatetics, have abolished some and established
others.}
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II
(Against the Dogmatists, II).185: Epicurus declared that all
sensibles really exist such as they appear and present themselves in
sensation, as sense never lies, {though we think that it lies}.
Ibid., 355: Epicurus declared that every sensible
thing has stable existence.
Alexander of Aphrodisia,
Commentary on Aristotle’s "Metaphysics," [p. 428.20 Bon.]: Some
tend to call sense perceptions essences, and maintain that nothing
else exists but sense-perceptions themselves, as for example … and even
the Epicureans.
Olympiodorus the Younger, Commentary on Plato’s
"Phaedo," [p. 80.1 Finckh.]: Those who maintain that the
sensations precisely relate the truth ... Protagoras, Epicurus.
Cicero Academica II.26.82 (Lucullus): Enough
of this simpleton, who thinks that the senses never lie.
Tertullian, On the Soul, 17: The Epicureans,
again, show still greater consistency by maintaining that all the senses
are equally true in their testimony, and always so – only in a different
way. It is not our organs of sensation that are at fault, but our
opinion. The senses only experience sensation, they do not exercise
opinion; it is the soul that opines. They separated opinion from the
senses, and sensation from the soul. Well, but whence comes opinion, if
not from the senses? Indeed, unless the eye had descried a round shape in
that tower, it could have had no idea that it possessed roundness. Again,
from where does sensation arise if not from the soul?
Saint Augustine, City of God, VIII.7: {Regarding the
Platonists teachings on Logic} ... far be it from me to think of comparing
with them those who have placed the criterion of truth in the bodily
senses and decreed that all learning should be measured by such unreliable
and deceptive standards. I mean the Epicureans and others like
them...
Saint Augustine, Letter to Dioscorus, 118.29 t. II
[p. 336E Venice Edition 1719]: Therefore, when the Epicureans said
that the bodily senses were never deceived, while the Stoics granted that
they were sometimes deceived, although, both placed the test of acquiring
truth in the senses, would anyone listen to the Platonists over the
opposition of these two?
Ioannes Siculus, Commentary on Hermogenes’ "Rhetoric,"
VI [p. 88.24 Walz.]: The teachings of many that consider sensation
an infallible criterion of knowledge or of some knowledge, impose
the same errors: for example, even Epicurus...
Aetius, Doxography,
IV.9.5 [p. 396 Diels] (Parallel A.27.27): Epicurus
says that every sense-perception and every presentation is true, but of
opinions, some are true and some are false.
Aetius, Doxography,
IV.8.2 [p. 394 Diels] (Plutarch IV.8, Parallel A.27.9)
(Epicurus): Perception is to some degree integrating, being a faculty,
while to perceive is an act. So that, on your part,
perception is spoken of in two senses: perception as a faculty on the one
hand, and to perceive as an act on the other hand.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 4-, p. 1109A: But
whatever we think of that {how Colotes interprets Democritus}, whoever
held that nothing is any more of one description than of another {no more
this than that} is following an Epicurean doctrine, that all
the impressions reaching us through the senses are true. For if one
of two persons says that the wine is dry and the other that it is sweet,
and neither errs in his sensation, how is the wine any more dry than
sweet? Again, you may observe that in one and the same bath some
consider the water as too hot, others as too cold, the first asking for
the addition of cold water, the others of hot. There is a story that
a Spartan lady came to visit Beronice, wife of Deiotarus. No sooner
did they come near each other than each turned away, the one (we are told)
sickened by the perfume, the other by the butter. So if one
sense-perception is no more true than another, we must suppose that the
water is no more cold than hot, and that perfume or butter is no more
sweet-smelling than ill-smelling; for he who asserts that the object
itself is what appears one thing to one person and another to another has
unwittingly said that it is both things at once.
As for the old
story of the "right size" and
"perfect fit" of the
passages in the sense organs, and on the other hand the multiple mixture
of the "seeds" that they
say are found dispersed in all tastes, odors, and colors, so as to give
rise in different persons to different perceptions of quality, do not
these theories actually compel objects in their view to be "no more this
than that?" For
when people take sensation to be deceptive because they see that the same
objects have opposite effects on those resorting to it, these thinkers
offer the reassuring explanation that since just about everything is mixed
and compounded with everything else, and since different substances are
naturally adapted to fit different passages, the consequence is that
everyone does not come into contact with and apprehend the same quality,
and again the object perceived does not affect everyone in the same way
with every part. What happens instead is that different sets of
persons encounter only those components to which their sense organs are
perfectly adjusted, and they are therefore wrong when they fall to
disputing whether the object is good or bad or white or not white,
imagining that they are confirming their own perceptions by denying one
another’s. The truth of the matter is that no sense-perception
should be challenged, as all involve a contact with something real, each
of them taking from the multiple mixture as from a fountain what agrees
with and suits itself; and we should make no assertions about the whole
when our contact is with parts, nor fancy that all persons should be
affected in the same way, when different persons are affected by different
qualities and properties in the object.
It is time to
consider the question: who are more chargeable with imposing on objects
the doctrine that "nothing is more this than that," than those
who assert that every perceivable object is a blend of qualities of every
description, "mixed like the must entangled in the filter" {fragment of a
lost tragedy}, and who confess that their standards would go glimmering
and the criterion of truth quite disappear if they permitted any
sense-object whatsoever to be purely one thing and did not leave every one
of them a plurality?
Cicero Academica II.25.79 (Lucullus): His own
senses, he says {in contrast with the Stoics}, are truthful! If so,
you always have an authority, and one to risk his all in defense of the
cause! For Epicurus brings the issue to this point, that if one
sense has told a lie once in a man’s life, no sense must ever be
believed.
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.25.70 (Cotta
speaking): Epicurus was afraid that if any of our sense-perceptions
were false, then none of them could be true: and so he asserted that all
our senses were always "the messengers of truth."
Cicero Academica II.32.101 (Lucullus): A
single first principle of Epicurus combined with another belonging to your
school results in the abolition of perception and comprehension, without
our uttering a word. What is the principle of Epicurus? "If
any sense-presentation is false, nothing can be perceived." What is
yours? "There are false sense-presentations." What follows?
Without any word of mine, logical inference itself declares that "nothing
can be perceived."
Cicero Academica II.26.83 (Lucullus): There
are four points of argument intended to prove that there is nothing that
can be known, perceived or comprehended. … The first of these
arguments is that there is such a thing as a false presentation; … the
first is not granted by Epicurus.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 428, p. 1124B: If
it is possible to withhold judgment about these sensations, it is not
impossible to withhold it about others as well, as least on the principles
of your school, who set one act or image of sensation on exactly the same
footing as another.
Ibid., 1123D: By putting all in the the same
boat, their theory does more to estrange us from established beliefs than
to convince us that the grotesques {fanciful or fantastic human and animal
forms} are real.
Cicero Academica II.7.19 (Lucullus): Nor is it
necessary to delay at this point while I answer about the case of the bent
oar {c.f. Lucretius, IV.436-}or the pigeon’s neck {c.f. Lucretius,
II.801-}, for I am not one to assert that every object seen is really such
as it appears to be. Let Epicurus see to that, and a number of other
matters.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 25, p. 1121A: So it
is with Colotes: the reasoning that he accepts with satisfaction when he
finds it in the writings of Epicurus he neither understands nor recognizes
when it is used by others. For the school that asserts that when a
round image impinges on us, or in another case a bent one, the important
is truly received by the sense, but refuses to allow us to go further and
affirm that the tower is round or that the oar is bent, maintains the
truth of its experiences and sense impressions, but will not admit that
external objects correspond; and as surely as that other school must speak
of "being horsed" and "walled," but not of a horse or wall, so this school
of theirs is under the necessity of saying that the eye is rounded or
be-angled, and not that the oar is bent or the tower round, for it is the
image producing the effect in the eye that is bent, whereas the oar is not
bent from which the image proceeded. Thus, since the effect produced
on the senses differs from the external object, belief must stick to the
effect or be exposed as false if it proceeds to add "it is" to "it
appears." That vociferous and indignant protest of theirs in defense
of sensation, that it does not assert the external object to be warm, the
truth being merely that the effect produced in sensation has been of this
kind – is it not the same as the statement about taste? Why does it
not assert, if the external object is sweet, that there has merely
occurred in the taste an effect and movement of this kind? A man
says "I receive an impression of humanity, but I do not perceive whether a
man is there." Who put him in the way of such a notion? Was it
not the school who asserts that they receive an impression of curvature,
but that their sight does not go beyond to pronounce that the thing is
curved or yet that it is round’ there has merely occurred in it an
appearance and impression of rotundity?
"Exactly,"
someone will say, "but for my part I shall go up to the tower and I shall
feel the oar, and thereupon I shall pronounce the oar straight and the
tower angular; but this other fellow even at close quarters will only
grant he has this ‘view’ and that there is this ‘appearance,’ but will
grant nothing more." Exactly, my good friend, since he is a better
hand than you at noticing and holding to the consequences of his doctrine
– that every sensation is equally trustworthy when it testifies on its own
behalf, but none when it testifies on behalf of anything else, but all are
on the same footing. And here is an end to your tenet that all
sensations are true and none untrustworthy or false – if you think it
proper for one set of them to proceed to make assertions about external
objects, whereas you refused to truth the others in anything beyond the
experience itself. For if they are on the same footing of
trustworthiness whether they come close or are at a distance, it is only
fair to confer on all the power of adding the judgment "it is" or else to
deny it to the former as well. Whereas if there is a difference in
the effect produced on the observer when he stands at a distance and when
he is close at hand, it is false to say that no impression and no
sensation has in its stamp of reality a better warrant of truth than
another. So too the "testimony in confirmation" and "testimony in
rebuttal" of which they speak has no bearing on the sensation but only on
our opinion of it; so if they tell us to be guided by this testimony when
we make statements about external objects, they appoint opinion to pass
the verdict "it is" and sense to undergo the experience "it seems," and
thus transfer the decision from what is unfailingly true to what is often
wrong.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II
(Against the Dogmatists, II) 63-: Epicurus said that all
sensibles are true, and that every impression is the product of something
existing and like the thing which moves the sense. He also said that
those who contend that some impressions are true but others false are
wrong, because they cannot distinguish opinion from self-evidence.
At least in the case of Orestes, when he seemed to see the Furies, his
sensation, being moved by the images, was true, in that the images
objectively existed; but his mind, in thinking that the Furies were solid
bodies, held a false opinion. "And besides," he says, "the persons
mentioned above when introducing a difference in the presentations, are
not capable of confirming the view that some of them are true, others
false. For neither by means of an apparent thing will
they prove such a statement, since it is apparent things that are in
question, nor yet by something non-evident, since something non-evident
must be proven by means of something apparent."
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 28, p. 1123B: These
{images from the furies} and many of another artificial variety,
resembling the Empedoclean monsters that they deride, "with lurching
ox-feet, random arms" and "Ox-creatures, fronted like a man" – what
phantom or prodigy do they omit? All of these they assemble from
dreams and delirium and say that none is an optical illusion or false or
unsubstantial, but all are true impressions, bodies and shapes that reach
us from the surrounding air. That being the case, is there anything
in the world about which it is impossible to suspend judgment, when such
things as these can be accepted as real? Things that no artful
joiner, puppet-maker, or painter ever ventured to combine of our
entertainment into a likeness to deceive the eye, these they seriously
suppose to exist, or rather they assert that, if these did not exist,
there would be an end of all assurance and certainty and judgment about
truth.
2. On Representations and
Words
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellenies, II.4 [p.
157.44 Sylb.; p. 121 Stählin]:
Indeed, Epicurus, who more than anyone prefers pleasure to truth, supposes
that a preconception {prolepsis} is the basis of the intellect’s
conviction; he defines a preconception as an application of the intellect
to something clear and to the clear conception of the thing, and holds
that no one can either investigate or puzzle over, nor even hold an
opinion or even refute someone, without a preconception.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.33:
By preconception they mean a sort of "apprehension" or a "right
opinion" or "notion," or universal idea stored in the mind – that is, a
recollection of an external object often presented. For example:
"this thing is human" – and no sooner than the word "human" is
uttered that we imagine a human shape by an act of preconception, in which
the senses take the lead. Thus the object primarily denoted by the
very term is then plain and clear. And we should never have started
an investigation, unless we had known what it was that we were in search
of. For example: "The object standing way over there is a horse or a
cow." Before making this judgment we must at some time or another
have known by preconception the shape of a horse or a cow. We should
not have given anything a name, if we had not first learnt its form by way
of preconception.
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.16.43
(Velleius speaking): What race of men or nation is there which does
not have some untaught apprehension of the gods? Such an innate idea
Epicurus calls prolepsis, that is to say, a certain form of
knowledge which is inborn in the mind and without which there can be no
other knowledge, not rational thought or argument. The force and
value of this doctrine we can see from his own inspired work on The
Canon. {= Cicero @ U34}
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.17.44
(Velleius speaking): We must admit it as also being an accepted truth
that we possess a "preconception," as I called it, or "prior notion," of
the gods. For we are bound to employ novel terms to denote novel ideas,
just as Epicurus himself employed the word prolepsis in a sense
which no one had ever used before.
Plutarch, by way of Olympiodorus the Younger,
Commentary on Plato’s "Phaedo," [p. 125.10 Finckh.]: The
Epicureans, then, accuse us of seeking and rediscovering the
prolepses. If these, as they say, correspond to real objects,
then to seek them is useless; if, on the other hand, they don’t
correspond, how can we seek an explanation regarding preconceptions that
we haven’t we been able to think of already?
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors, I.57:
According to the wise Epicurus, it is not possible to investigate or
even to be puzzled without preconceptions.
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.9.30
(Torquatus to Cicero): Hence Epicurus refuses to admit any necessity
for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain to
be avoided. These facts, he thinks, are perceived by the senses, as that
fire is hot, snow white, honey sweet, none of which things need be proved
by elaborate argument: it is enough merely to draw attention to them. (For
there is a difference, he holds, between formal syllogistic proof of a
thing and a mere notice or reminder: the former is the method for
discovering abstruse and recondite truths, the latter for indicating facts
that are obvious and evident.) Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing
remains; it follows that Nature herself is the judge of that which is in
accordance with or contrary to nature.
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, II.2.6:
{Epicurus} is always harping on the necessity of carefully sifting out the
meaning underlying the terms we employ...
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.31:
They reject dialectic as superfluous; holding that in their inquiries,
physicists should be content to employ ordinary terms for things.
Erotianus, Glossary of Hippocrates, Preface, [p.
34, 10 Klein]: For if we are going to explain the words known to
everybody, we would have to expound either all or some. But to expound all
is impossible, whereas to expound some is pointless. For we will explain
them either through familiar locutions or through unfamiliar. But
unfamiliar words seem unsuited to the task, the accepted principle being
to explain less known things by means of better known things; and familiar
words, by being on a par with them, will be unfamiliar for illuminating
language, as Epicurus says. For the informativeness of language is
characteristically ruined when it is bewitched by an account, as if by a
homeopathic drug.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II
(Against the Dogmatists, II).258: We see that there are some
who have denied the real existence of "expressions," and these not only
men of other schools, such as the Epicureans, {but even Stoics like
Basilides…}
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 22, p. 1119F: What
school is more at fault in its views about language than yours
{Epicureanism}, which makes a clean sweep of the whole category of
meanings, which impart to discourse its substantial reality, and leave us
with nothing but vocables and facts, when you say that the intermediate
objects of discourse, the things signified, which are the means of
learning, teaching, preconceptions, conceptions, desires, and assent, do
not exist all?
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II
(Against the Dogmatists, II).13: The disciples of Epicurus and
Strato the physicist, who admit only two things – the thing signifying and
the thing existing – appear … to ascribe truth or falsity to the mere
word.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.34:
They assert that there are two kinds of feelings, pleasure and pain,
which arise in every living thing. The one is appealing and the
other vexing to one’s nature; in consideration of these, choices and
avoidances are made.
Aristocles, by way of Eusebius of Caesarea,
Preparation for the Gospel, XIV 21 p. 768D: Some say that as
the principle and criterion of choosing and avoiding we have pleasure and
pain: at least the Epicureans now still say something of this kind ... For
my part then I am so far from saying that feeling is the principle and
canon of things good and evil, that I think a criterion is needed for
feeling itself.
Aetius, Doxography,
IV.9.11, [p. 397 Diels] (Parallel A.27.52): For Epicurus, pleasure and pain are a part of
sensations.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II
(Against the Dogmatists, II).177: Epicurus and the leaders of
his school have stated that the sign is sensible, while the Stoics state
that it is intelligible.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 29, p. 1124B:
...these people are deluded who regard what is seen as evidence of
things unseen although they observe that appearances are so untrustworthy
and ambiguous.
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, II.1.3: In
philosophical investigation, a methodical and systematic discourse must
always begin by formulating a preamble ... so that the parties to the
debate may be agreed as to what the subject is about which they are
debating. This rule is laid down by Plato in Phaedrus, and it
was approved by Epicurus, who realized that it ought to be followed in
every discussion.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers,
X.34: They assert that there are two kinds of inquiry: one
concerned with things, the other with nothing but words.
Pseudo-Plutarch, Miscellanies, Fragment 8
from Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, I.8.24B, Greek
Doxography, [p. 581, 19 Diels.]: Epicurus asserts that nothing new
happens in the universe when compared to the infinite time already
passed.
Aetius, Doxography,
I.3.18, pp. 285-86D (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, 10, 14; Plutarch I.3.25): Epicurus, the son of Neocles and an
Athenian, philosophized in the manner of Democritus and said that the
principles {i.e., elementary constituents} of existing things are bodies
inferable by reason, which do not participate in the void and are
uncreated and indestructible – since they can neither be broken nor be
compounded out of parts, nor be altered in their qualities. They can
be inferred by reason ... {lacuna here} … They move in the
void and through the void. And the void itself is infinite, and so
are the bodies. Bodies have these three properties: shape, size,
weight. Democritus said that there were two – size and shape – but
Epicurus added weight to these as a third. For, he says, it is
necessary that the bodies move by the blow of [an object with] weight,
otherwise they will not move. The shapes of the atoms are
innumerable, but not infinite. For there are none which are hooked
or trident-shaped or ring-shaped; for these shapes are easily broken and
the atoms are impervious. They have their own shapes which can be
contemplated by reason. The atom {a-tomos} is so-called not
because it is smallest, but because it cannot be divided, since it is
impervious and does not participate in void.
Achilles, Introduction,
3, [p.125A Pet.]:
Epicurus of Athens maintained that the principles {i.e., elementary
constituents} of all things are comprised in extremely tiny bodies,
knowable by the intellect, and he named them "atoms" or other words,
minimums, because of their smallness, or because they are
indestructible and cannot be divided.
Hippolytus, "Philosophical Questions,"
(Refutation of all Heresies, I)
22, [p. 572.3 Diels.]:
Epicurus says that the atoms are the most minute bodies; it is not
possible to ascribe them a center nor a point nor any subdivision: and
because of this he called them atoms.
Simplicius of Cilicia Commentary on Aristotle’s
"Physics, Zeta-1," preface, fr. 216r [925.12 Konstan]: Others, who
had given up on [the idea of] cutting to infinity on the grounds that we
cannot [in fact] cut to infinity and thereby confirm the endlessness of
cutting, used to say that bodies consist of indivisibles and are divided
into indivisibles. Leucippus and Democritus, however, believed not
only in imperviousness as the reason why primary bodies are not divided,
but also in smallness and partlessness, while Epicurus later did not hold
that they were partless, but said that they were atomic {i.e., uncuttable}
by virtue of imperviousness alone. Aristotle refuted the view of
Leucippus and Democritus in many places, and it is because of these
refutations in objection to partlessness, no doubt, that Epicurus, coming
afterwards but sympathetic to the view of Leucippus and Democritus
concerning primary bodies, kept them impervious but took away their
partlessness, since it was on this account that they were challenged by
Aristotle.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 13, p. 1114A: For
Epicurus, the number of bodies is infinite and every single object is the
world of sense is generated from them. Observe right here the sort of
first principles you people {Epicureans} adopt to account for generation:
infinity and the void – the void incapable of action, incapable of acted
upon, bodiless; the infinite disordered, irrational, incapable of
formulations, disrupting and confounding itself because of a multiplicity
that defies control or limitation.
Pseudo-Plutarch, On the Opinions of the
Philosophers, I.3, 27, [p. 286A 4 Diels] [preceding fragment 275]:
The forms of the atoms are certainly incalculable, but not infinite.
Indeed, none are hook-shaped, trident-shaped, or ring-shaped: these shapes
break easily, but the atoms are in fact impenetrable and have, instead,
their own shapes, intuitable by reason.
Aetius, Doxography,
I.20.2, p. 318, 1D (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, physics,
18, 2): Epicurus says that
void, place, and space differ only in name.
Addendum
Sextus
Empiricus, Against the Physicisists, II (Against the
Dogmatists, IV).2: Therefore we must understand that, according to
Epicurus, one part of that nature which is termed intangible is called the
void, one part place, and another part space – the
names varying according to the different ways of looking at it since the
same substance when empty of all body is called void, when occupied
by a body is named place, and when bodies roam through it becomes
space. But generically it is called "intangible substance" in
Epicurus’ school, since it lacks resistance.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II
(Against the Dogmatists, II).329: Epicurus, for instance,
opines that he has put forward a very strong argument for the existence of
void, namely this: "If motion exists, void exists; but in fact motion
exists; therefore void exists." But if the premises of this proof
had been agreed to by all, it would necessarily have had a conclusion also
following from them and admitted by all. Instead, some have objected
to it (i.e., the deduction of the conclusions from the premises) not
because it does not follow form them, but because they are false and not
admitted.
Ibid., 314: Hence also they {the Dogmatists}
describe it thus: "A proof is an argument which by means of agreed
premises reveals by way of deduction a non-evident conclusion." For
example: "If motion exists, void exists; but in fact motion exists;
therefore void exists." For the existence of void is non-evident,
and also it appears to be revealed by way of deduction by means of the
true premises: "If motion exists, void exists" and "but motion
exists."
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary
on Aristotle’s "Physics, Delta-5 (to the end)," (p. 213A 10) [fr. 140u
Ald.; p. 379B Brand.]:
Cf. [fr. 144u]:
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on
Aristotle’s "Physics, Delta-4," (p. 211B 7) [fr.
133r]:
Themistius, Paraphrases of Aristotle’s "Physics,
Delta-4," (p. 211B 14), [fr. 38u Ald.; p. 268.23 Speng.]: It
remains for us to demonstrate also that place is not extension. An
extension is what is conceived of as between the limits of the container,
e.g., what is within the hollow surface of the pot. Now this belief
is traditional, and associated with those who posit the void, yet later
both Chrysippus’ crowd and Epicurus were nonetheless adherents. Some
imposed the doctrine on Plato too. It relies on a plausible
explanation, yet one that is quite false: namely, since we reach a
conception of place in general from the mutual replacement of bodies
(i.e., from different bodies continually coming to be in the same place at
different times), they took place to be the intervening extension, which
they believed remained the same when it received the bodies that were
replacing one another, while being separated from each of these incoming
bodies. Vessels above all egged them on to this inference. For
since water and air enter the vessel at different times while the hollow
surface within the clay remains the same (i.e. circumscribed by unique
limits), they inferred the existence of the extension within the hollow
surface, which resembled the surface of the vessel in remaining the same
(i.e., separated from the bodies) as it received the bodies in
succession. But this is invalid. If the vessel could at any
time be devoid of body, then perhaps this so-called "extension" would be
detected per se. But, as it is, fluid flows out and air
simultaneously enters to replace it, and that leads them astray. For
since every body is accompanied by an extension, they transfer the
extension belonging to bodies to place, without reasoning that an
extension is always in place just because a body always is too, as
completely covered bronze vessels reveal: for [in their case] there would
be no efflux of fluid unless the air acquired a space for its
influx. What dupes them is that the vessels’ hollow surface also
always remains rigid; but if there were an implosion when the fluid was
extracted, as there is in the case of wine-skins, they would not be
similarly deluded.
Themistius, Paraphrases of Aristotle’s
"Physics, Delta-6," (p. 213A 32), [fr. 40u Ald.; p. 284.2 Speng.]:
The void can be posited in two ways: either as disseminated in
bodies, as Democritus and Leucippus claim, and many others, including
Epicurus later (they all make the ‘interlacing’ of the void the cause of
bodily division, since according to them what is truly continuous is
undivided); or else as separate (i.e., gross), per se,
surrounding the cosmos, as some early thinkers were the first to believe,
and later Zeno of Citium and his followers. We, then, must examine
what those involved with the void claim.
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary
on Aristotle’s "Physics, Delta-6," (p. 213A 32), [fr.
151u-]:
On Bodies and their
Attributes
Aetius, Doxography,
I.12.5, p. 311D (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 14, 1; Plutarch
I.12.3): Epicurus maintains
that the primary and simple bodies are imperceptible, and also that
compounds formed by them all have weight.
Pseudo-Plutarch, On the Opinions of the
Philosophers, I.3.26, p. 285, 11D: Bodies have these three
attributes: shape, size, and weight. Democritus guessed two of them,
size and shape. Epicurus, for his part, added weight to these; it is
necessary, he argues, that bodies be moved by the blow of their weights,
for otherwise they would not move
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, II
(Against the Dogmatists, IV) 240: When Epicurus asserts that we
conceive body by means of a combination of size and shape and
resistance and weight, he is forcing us to form a conception of existent
body out of non-existents.
Ibid., 257: … this too Epicurus acknowledged,
when he said that "body is conceived by means of a combination of form and
magnitude and resistance and weight."
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists
(Against the Dogmatists, V) 226: For whether body is, as
Epicurus asserts, a combination of size and form and solidity…
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 8, p. 1110F: I can
affirm that this view {that denying the reality of emergent properties
contradict the senses} is as inseparable from Epicurus’ as shape
and weight are by their own assertion inseparable from the atom.
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary of Aristotle’s "De
Caelo" (On the Heavens), Gamma-1 (p. 299A 25); [254B 27 Karst.; 510A
30 Brand.]: The followers of Democritus, and, later, Epicurus, say
that all atoms of the same nature have weight. However, because some
are heavier, they sink down and in doing so they push the lighter ones
up. Hence, they say, some are light and others are heavy.
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary of
Aristotle’s "De Caelo" (On the Heavens), Alpha-8 (p. 277B 1); [121A
18E 31 Karst.; 486A 4 Brand.]: Elementary bodies move either as
a result of their own nature, or are moved by something else, or are
squeezed out by one another. And he [Aristotle] shows that they do
not move under the force of mutual extrusion either as follows. This
opinion was held after him by both Strato of Lampsacus, and Epicurus, who
thought that every object possessed weight and moved towards the middle,
and that lighter ones settled out above the heavier ones by being forcibly
squeezed out upwards by them, so that if the earth were removed, water
would move to the center, and if the water [were removed] the air, and if
the air [were removed] the fire.
Cf. [p. 111B 25 Karst.; 486A 12
Brand.]: Those who treat as an indication that everything moves
naturally towards the middle the fact that when earth is removed water
moves downwards, and when water [is removed] the air [does so too], do not
know that the reciprocal motion is the cause of this. For when the
denser things are transferred into the place of the rare, the rarer take
the place of the denser, propelled downwards because there can be no void,
and because body cannot pass through body. But one must realize that
it was not just Strato and Epicurus who held that all bodies were heavy
and moved naturally downwards, unnaturally upwards, but Plato too knows
that this opinion is held, and disputes it, thinking that ‘downwards’ and
‘upwards’ are not properly applied to the world, and refusing to accept
that things are called heavy in virtue of their downward motion.
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotle’s
"Physics, Zeta-2," (p. 232A 23-), fr. 219r,v [938.18 Konstan]:
Unless every magnitude were divisible, it would not always be possible for
a slower object to move a lesser distance in equal time than a quicker
one. For slower and quicker objects cover the atomic and indivisible
distance in the same time, since if one took more time, it would cover in
the equal time a distance less than the indivisible distance. And
that is why the Epicureans too think all bodies move at equal speed
through indivisible distances, so that they can avoid having their atomic
quantities be divided – and thus no longer atomic.
Themistius, Paraphrases of
Aristotle’s "Physics, Zeta-1," (p. 232A 1-17), [fr. 52u Ald.; p. 370.4
Speng.]:
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotle’s
"Physics, Zeta-1," fr. 218,u 3 [934.18 Konstan]: He {Aristotle}
adds yet another absurdity that follows upon this hypothesis, [namely]
that something has moved that was not previously moving, for
example, that something has walked that did not previously walk. For
it is posited that O moves [with] the motion DEF over the magnitude ABC,
but it moves neither over A (for it has moved over it), nor over B,
nor likewise, over C. It will consequently, have moved [with] the
whole motion without previously moving [with] it.
That this obstacle which he {Aristotle} has formulated is
itself not entirely beyond belief is shown by the fact that despite his
having formulated it and produced his solution, the Epicureans, who came
along later, said that this is precisely how motion does occur. For they
say that motion, magnitude and time have part-less constituents, and that
over the whole magnitude composed of part-less constituents the moving
object moves, but at each of the part-less magnitudes contained in it, it
does not move but has moved; for if it were laid down that the object
moving over the whole magnitude moves over these too, they would turn out
to be divisible.
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on
Aristotle’s "Physics, Delta-8," (p. 216A 17) fr. 159u:
Aetius, Doxography,
I.12.5, [p. 311A 10 Diels] (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 14, 1; Plutarch
I.12.3): Atoms sometimes move
straight down, sometimes swerve, and those which move upwards do so by
collision and rebound.
Aetius, Doxography,
I.23.4, [p. 319 Diels] (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 19, 1; Plutarch I.23.1):
Epicurus said there are two types of the motion: the straight
and the swerve.
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.6.18:
Epicurus for his part, where he follows Democritus, does not
generally blunder. ... I now come to the lapses peculiar to Epicurus. He
believes that these same indivisible solid bodies are borne by their own
weight perpendicularly downward, which he holds is the natural motion of
all bodies; but thereupon this clever fellow, being met with the
difficulty that if they all traveled downwards in a straight line, and, as
I said, perpendicularly, no one atom would ever be able to overtake any
other atom, accordingly introduced an idea of his own invention: he said
that the atom makes a very tiny swerve—the smallest divergence possible;
and thus produces entanglements and combinations and cohesion of atoms
with atoms, which result in the creation of the world, and all its parts,
and of all that in them is. Now not only is this whole affair a piece of
childish fancy, but it does not even achieve the result that its author
desires. The swerving is itself an arbitrary fiction; for Epicurus says
the atoms swerve without cause—yet this is the capital offense in a
natural philosopher, to speak of something taking place uncaused. Then
also he gratuitously deprives the atoms of what he himself declared to be
the natural motion of all heavy bodies, namely, movement in a straight
line downwards, and yet he does not attain the object for the sake of
which this fiction was devised. For, if all the atoms swerve, none will
ever come to cohere together; or if some swerve while others travel in a
straight line, but their own natural tendency, in the first place this
will be tantamount to assigning to the atoms their different spheres of
action, some to travel straight and some sideways; while secondly (and
this is a weak point with Democritus also) this riotous hurly-burly of
atoms could not possibly result in the ordered beauty of the world we
know.
Cicero, On Fate, 10.22: Epicurus, however,
thinks that the necessity of fate is avoided by the swerve of the atom;
and so a certain third movement arises, part from weight and collision,
when the atom swerves by a very small distance – this he calls a
"minimum." That this swerve comes about without a cause he is compelled to
admit, if not by his words, by the facts themselves. For it is not the
case that an atom swerves when struck by another; for how can one be
struck by another if individual bodies are carried downwards by their
weight in straight lines, as Epicurus supposes? For if one is never struck
from its course by another, it follows that none even touches another; and
from this it results that, even if there is an atom and it swerves, it
does so without cause. Epicurus introduce this theory because he was
afraid that, if the atom was always carried along by its weight in a
natural and way, we would have no freedom, since our mind would be moved
in the way in which it was constrained by the movement of the atoms.
Democritus, the inventor of the atoms, preferred to accept this, that all
things come about through fate, rather than to remove the natural
movements of individual bodies from them.
Ibid. 20.46: This is how the case ought to be
argued; one ought not to seek help from atoms that swerve and deviate from
their path. "The atom swerves," he says. First why? For the atoms will
have one force to move them from Democritus, the force of an impulse which
he calls a blow, and from you, Epicurus, the force of weight and
heaviness. So what new cause is there in nature to make the atom serve? Or
do they draw lots among themselves which will swerve and which not? Or why
do they swerve by a minimum interval and not by a larger one, or why do
they swerve by one minimum and not by two or three? This is wishful
thinking, not argument. For you do not say that the atom is moved
from its position and swerves through an impulse from outside, nor that in
that void through which the atom travels there was any cause for its not
traveling in a straight line; nor has there been any change in the atom
itself as a result of which it might no preserve the motion natural to its
weight. So, although [Epicurus] has not brought forward any cause which
might cause that serve of his, nevertheless he thinks he has a point to
make when he says the sort of thing which the minds of all reject and
repudiate.
Ibid. 9.18: There is no reason for Epicurus to
tremble before fate, seek help from the atoms and turn them aside from
their path, and for him to commit himself at one and the same time to two
things that cannot be proved: first that something should happen without a
cause, from which it will follow that something comes from nothing, which
neither he himself nor any natural philosopher accepts; and second that,
when two indivisible bodies travel through the void, one moves in a
straight line and the other swerves aside.
Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, I.25.69 (Cotta
speaking): Epicurus saw that if those atoms of his were always falling
downwards by their own weight, their motion would be fixed and
predetermined, and there would be no room for free will in the
world. So casting about for a way to avoid this determinism, which
Democritus had apparently overlooked, he said that the atoms, as they
fell, just swerved a little!
Plutarch, On The Birth? of the Soul in Plato’s
"Timaeus," 6, p. 1015C: The fact is that
they [the Stoics] do not concede to Epicurus that the atom can swerve the
tiniest bit, on the grounds that he introduces a causeless motion coming
from nonexistence...
Saint Augustine, Against the Academicians,
III.10.23 t. I [p. 284E Venice Edition, 1719]: How shall we decide the
controversy between Democritus and earlier physicists about whether there
is one world or innumerable worlds, when Democritus and his heir Epicurus
were unable to remain in agreement? Once that voluptuary Epicurus
allows atoms, as though they were his little handmaids – that is, the
little bodies he gladly embraces in the dark – not to stay on their
courses but to swerve freely here and there into the paths of others, he
has also dissipated his entire patrimony through such quarrels.
On Aggregation and
Dissolution
Varro, On Latin Language, VI.39, p. 219: Democritus,
Epicurus, and still others who have deemed the original elements to be
unlimited in number, though they do not tell us where the elements came
from but only of what sort they are, still perform a great service: they
show us the things of the world which consist of these
elements.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 16, p. 1116C: But I
should like to ask the very man {Colotes} who brings this indictment
{against Plato} if his school does not see this distinction in their own
system, whereby some objects are enduring and unchanging in their being,
just as atoms too in their doctrine are forever the same because they are
too hard to be affected, while all aggregates of atoms are subject to flux
and change and come into being and pass of of it, as innumerable images
leave them in a constant stream, and innumerable others, it is inferred,
flow in from the surroundings and replenish the mass, which is varied by
this interaction and altered in its composition, since in fact even the
atoms in the interior of the aggregate can never cease moving or vibrating
against one another, as the Epicureans say themselves.
Ibid., 10, p. 1112A: {The Epicureans} assume
that there is neither generation of the non-existent nor destruction of
the existent, but that generation is a name given to the
conjunction of certain existents with one another and death a name
given to their separation.
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary of Aristotle’s "De
Caelo, Alpha-7" (On the Heavens) [p. 275B 29 Karst.; 484A 23
Brand.]: Aristotle then demonstrated that the number of types of
elementary bodies were not infinite, as Leucippus and Democritus and their
followers (who lived before him) supposed and Epicurus (who lived after
him). These men indeed maintained that the principles {i.e.,
elements} were unlimited in number, and they also thought that they were
atomic and indivisible and impervious, because they were dense and did not
enclose any empty space; for they said that division takes place where
there is some void within bodies, and also that these atoms, being
separated from each other in the unlimited void and differing in shape and
size and position and ordering, move in the void and that they catch up
with each other and collide and that some rebound to any chance place
while others get entangled with each other, in accordance with the
symmetry of their shapes and sizes and positions and orderings; and in
this way it comes about that the origin of compounds is produced.
Galen, On the
Preparation of Simple Medicines, I.14 t. XI [p. 405 K.]: … always
remembering how space is said to be empty by those who maintain that its
essence is unique. But space is not empty in the sense in which it
seems to Epicurus and to Asclepiades, but rather it is full of air,
sparsely populated with bodies everywhere.
Galen, Comment on the 6th book of "Epidemics" by
Hippocrates, IV 10 t. XVII 2 [p 162 K.]: The statement that there
might empty spaces, in water or in the air, corresponds to the opinion of
Epicurus and of Asclepiades in regards to the elements.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 10, p. 1112B: {The
Epicureans}, who herd together unyielding and unresponsive atoms, produce
nothing out of them – only an uninterrupted series of collisions among the
atoms themselves. For the entanglement that prevents dissolution produces
rather an intensification of the collisions, so that generation is by
their account neither mixture nor cohesion, but confusion and conflict. On
the other hand, if the atoms after an instant of collision rebound for
while from the impact, and for a while draw near when the blow is spent,
the time that they are separated from one another, without contact or
proximity, is more than twice as long, so that nothing, not even an
inanimate body, is produced out of them; while perception, mind,
intelligence and thought cannot so much as be conceived, even with the
best of will, as arising among void and atoms, things which taken
separately have no quality and which on meeting are not thereby affected
or changed.
Ibid., 9, p. 1111E: Whereas an atom, taken
alone, is destitute and bare of any generative power, and when it collides
with another it is so hard and resistant that a shock ensues, but it
neither suffers nor causes any further effect. Rather the atoms
receive and inflict blows for all time, and so far are they from
being that they cannot even produce out of themselves a collective
plurality or the unity of a heap in their constant shaking and
scattering.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, III.17.22:
{Regarding atoms:} Why then, do we not feel nor perceive them?
Because, he says, they have neither color, nor heat, nor odor. They
are free of taste also, and moisture, and they are so minute that they
cannot be cut and divided. Thus, the necessity of consequent things
led him to wild ravings because he had undertaken falsehood in the
beginning. For where or whence are those little bodies?
Why did nobody save that one Leucippus dream them up, by whom
Democritus was instructed, he who left the inheritance of foolishness to
Epicurus? If these little bodies are indeed solid, as they say,
certainly they can come under the eyes. If the nature of all of them
is the same, how do they effect various things? They come together,
he tells us, in varied order and position just as letters do: although
they are few, yet variously arranged, they bring about innumerable
words. But letters have various forms. So do these have
commencements themselves, he says, for there are rough ones, there are
hooked ones, there are smooth ones. Therefore, they can be cut and
divided if there is in them something which projects. But if they
are smooth and in need of hooks or projections, they cannot cohere.
They must be hooked bodies, then, for a concatenation of them to take
place. But since they are said to be so minute, that they are able
to be severed by no sharp blade, how do they have hooks or corners?
It is necessary for them, since they exist, to be torn apart. Then,
by what pact, by what agreement do they come together among themselves,
that something may be formed of them? If they lack sense, they are
not able to come together with such order, for it is not possible for
anything but reason to bring about anything rational. With how many
proofs is this vanity able to be refuted!
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 10, p. 1111A:
Democritus is not to be censured not for admitting the consequences
that flow from his principles, but for setting up principles that lead to
these consequences. For he should not have posited immutable first
elements; having posited them, he should have looked further and see that
the generation of any quality becomes impossible. But to see the
absurdity and deny it is the purest effrontery. Epicurus {as
reported by Colotes} acts with the purest effrontery when he claims to lay
down the same first principles, but nevertheless does not say that "color
is by convention" and thus the qualities sweet, bitter,
etc. If "does not say" means "does not admit" it is so, he is
following his familiar practice… 1111C: There was no necessity to
assume, or rather filch from Democritus, the premise that the primary
elements of all things are atoms. But once you have laid down the
doctrine and made a fine showing with its initial plausibility, you must
drain the disagreeable conclusions along with it, or else show how bodies
without quality have given rise to qualities of every kind by the mere
fact of coming together. Take for the example the quality called
hot. How do you account for it? From where has it come
and how has it been imposed on the atoms, which neither brought heat with
them nor became hot by their conjunction? For the former implies the
possession of quality, the latter the natural capacity to be affected,
neither of which, say you, can rightly belong to atoms by reason of their
indestructibility.
Galen, On the Art of Medicine,
[7, t. I p. 246 K.]: {Galen, Selected Works, P.N. Singer ca. page
325}
Cf. Galen, On the Elements According to
Hippocrates, [I.2, t. I p. 416 K.; 2.6 De Lacy]: It could be said
that all things are one in form and power, as Epicurus and Democritus and
their followers say about atoms.
Ibid., [p. 418 K.; 2.16 De Lacy]: All the
atoms, then, being small bodies, are without qualities, and the void is a
kind of place in which these bodies, being carried downward, all of them
for all time, somehow become entwined with each other or strike each other
and rebound; and in such assemblages they cause separations and
recombinations with each other; and from this (interaction) they produce,
besides all other compounds, our bodies, their affections, and their
sensations. But (these philosophers) postulate that the first bodies
are unaffected, some of them, like Epicurus, holding that they are
unbreakable because of hardness, some, like Diodorus and Leucippus, that
they are indivisible because of their small size; and [they hold that]
these bodies cannot undergo any of those alterations in whose existence
all men, taught by their senses confidently believe; for example, they say
that none of the primary bodies grows warm or cold, and similarly none
becomes dry or wet, and much less would they become black or white or
admit to any other change whatsoever in any quality.
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary of
Aristotle’s "Categories" 8, p. 8B 25, quat. Kappa, [fr. 8u Venice
Edition; fr. 56u 10 Bas.; 216.31 Fleet]: In objection to
Democritus and Epicurus, the question can be put: why on earth do they
grant certain differentiae to atoms such as shape, weight, solidity,
corporeality, edges, size, and motion, while asserting that they possess
neither color nor sweetness nor life, and that the logoi of other
such things do not pre-exist? For it is absurd, since there is
a common account {logos} of the havables, not to classy like with
like; it is even more absurd to make the most primary powers secondary, such as life, intellect, nature,
reason {logos} and the like. It is equally impossible for
these to be produced out of the conjunction [of atoms]; for according to
Democritus, color and suchlike are by convention, and only atoms and void
exist in truth. But once a person has done away with realities, he
will have nothing to put in their place, and he who admits the causeless
will have no ground to stand on. For why should the person starting
from no definite cause prefer these to the contraries? So it is
better to have recourse to the hypothesis which produces the havables from
being had, in the way that the Academics defined ‘havable’ by representing
it as ‘that which can be had’ {hektón}, not accepting the
definition on the basis of its etymology.
Ibid. 14, p. 15A 30, quat. Phi, [fr. 8u Venice
Edition; fr. 56u 10 Bas.]: The followers of Democritus, and
subsequently those of Epicurus, in hypothesizing atoms to be unaffected
and unqualified by other qualities apart from the shapes [of the atoms]
and the way they are composed {tên poian autôn sunthesin}, say that
other qualities – whether simple, such as temperatures
{thermotêtes} and textures {leioêtes}, or those in respect
of colors and tastes – supervene. And if these latter things
[consist] in the way atoms are composed, alteration too will consist in
change in respect of them {i.e., the atoms}. But the way they {i.e.,
the atoms} are composed, and their transposition and order, derive from
nowhere else than from their motion and spatial movement, so that
alteration is the same thing as their motion, or at least is a concomitant
of this and is something belonging to this.
Alexander of Aphrodisia, Questions, I.13 [p. 52
Spengl.]: {R.W. Sharples}
Alexander of Aphrodisia, On Mixture, fr. 140u
(214.28-215.8): Epicurus wanted to avoid what Democritus supposed
happened for those who say that blending occurs by means of a
juxtaposition of the components of the blend. He himself said that
blending occurs by means of the juxtaposition of certain bodies – not of
bodies which were themselves preserved as compounds, but rather of bodies
that were broken down into elementary atoms which formed particular
compounds, e.g., wine, water, honey, etc. He then says that the
mixture is created by a certain kind of reciprocal compounding by
component elements. It is these which produce the new mixture – not
water and the wine, but the atoms which made up the water, as one might
designate them, are combined together with those which made up the wine by
a destruction and generation of the compound bodies. For the
breakdown of each into its elements is a form of destruction, and the
compounding produced from the elements themselves is <a sort of
genesis>.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, II
(Against the Dogmatists, IV) 42: Some of the natural
philosophers, amongst them Epicurus, have declared that the motion of
change is a particular form of transitional motion; for the composite
object which changes in quality changes owing to the local and
transitional motion of the rationally perceived bodies which compose
it. Thus, in order that a thing may become bitter from sweet, or
black from white, the particles which must be arranged in a new order and
take up different positions; that this could not be brought about in any
other way than by the transitional motion of the molecules. And
again, in order that a thing may become soft from hard or hard from soft,
the parts whereof it is composed must move in place; for it is made soft
by their expansion, but made hard by their coalescence and
condensation. And owing to this the motion of change is,
generically, nothing else than transitional motion.
Galen, On the Elements According to Hippocrates,
[I.9, t. I p. 483 K.]: … the {qualitative} change of bodies, as it
happens, isn’t aggregation and dispersal, as the disciples of Epicurus and
Democritus think.
Galen, On Natural Faculties, I.14, t. II [p. 45
K.]: Now Epicurus,
despite the fact that he employs in his Physics elements similar to those
of Ascelpiades, still allows that iron is attracted by the lodestone, and
chaff by amber. He even tries to give the cause of the
phenomenon. His view is that the atoms which flow from the stone are
related in shape to those flowing from the iron, and so they become easily
interlocked with one another; thus it is that, after colliding with each
of the two compact masses (the stone and the iron) they then rebound into
the middle and so become entangled with each other, and draw the iron
after them. So far, then, as his hypotheses regarding causation go,
he is perfectly unconvincing; nevertheless, he does grant that there is an
attraction. Further, he says that it is on similar principles that
there occur in the bodies of animals the dispersal of nutrient and the
discharge of waste matter, as also the actions of cathartic
drugs.
Asclepiades,
however, who viewed with suspicion the incredible character of the cause
mentioned, and who saw no other credible cause on the basis of his
supposed elements, shamelessly found his way out by stating that nothing
is in any way attracted by anything else. Now, if he was
dissatisfied with what Epicurus said, and had nothing better to say
himself, he ought to have refrained from making hypotheses, and should
have said that Nature is a constructive artist and that the substance of
things is always tending towards unity and also towards alteration because
its own parts act upon and are acted upon by one another. For, if he
had assumed this, it would not have been difficult to allow that this
constructive nature has powers which attract appropriate and expel alien
matter. For in no other way could she be constructive, preservative
of the animal, and eliminative of its diseases, unless it be allowed that
she conserves what his appropriate and discharges what is foreign.
But in this
matter, too, Ascelpiades realized the logical sequence of the principles
he had assumed; he showed no scruples, however, in opposing plain fact; he
joins issue in this matter also, not merely with all physicians, by with
everyone else, and maintains that there is no such thing as a crisis, or a
critical day, and that nature does absolutely nothing for the preservation
of the animal. For his constant aim is to follow out logical
consequences and to upset obvious fact, in this respect being opposed to
Epicurus; for the latter always affirmed the observed fact, although he
gives an ineffective explanation of it, saying that these small corpuscles
belonging to the lodestone rebound, and become entangled with other
similar particles of the iron, and that then, by means of this
entanglement (which cannot be seen anywhere) such a heavy substance as
iron is attracted. I fail to understand how anybody could believe
this. Even if we admit this, the same principle will not explain the
fact that, when the iron has another piece brought in contact with it,
this becomes attached to it.
For what are we
to say? That, indeed, some of the particles that flow from the
lodestone collide with the iron and then rebound back, and that it is by
these that the iron becomes suspended? That others penetrate into
it, and rapidly pass through it by way of its empty channels? That
these then collide with the second piece of iron and are not able to
penetrate it although they penetrated the first piece? And that they
then course back to the first piece and produce entanglements like the
former ones?
The hypothesis
here becomes clearly refuted by its absurdity. As a matter of fact,
I have seen five writing-stylets of iron attached to one another in a
line, only the first one being in contact with the lodestone, and the
power being transmitted through it to the others. Moreover, it
cannot be said that if you bring a second stylet into contact with the
lower end of the first, it becomes held, attached, and suspended, whereas,
if you apply it to any other part of the side it does not become
attached. For the power of the lodestone is distributed in all
directions; it merely needs to be in contact with the first stylet at any
point; from this stylet again the power flows, as quick as thought, all
through the second, and from that again to the third. Now, if you
imagine a small lodestone hanging in a house, and in contact with it all
round a large number of pieces of iron, form them again others, from these
others, and so on, all these pieces of iron must surely become filled with
the corpuscles which emanate from the stone; therefore, this first little
stone is likely to become dissipated by disintegrating into these
emanations. Further, even if there be no iron in contact with it, it
still disperses into the air, particularly if this be also warm.
"Yes," says
Epicurus, "but these corpuscles must be looked on as exceedingly small, so
that some of them are a ten-thousandth part of the size of the very small
particles carried in the air." Then do you venture to say that so
great a weight of iron can be suspended by such small bodies? If
each of them is a ten-thousandth part as large as the dust particles which
are borne in the atmosphere, how big must we suppose the hook-like
extremities by which they interlock with each other to be? For of
course this is quite the smallest portion of the whole particle.
Then, again,
when a small body becomes entangled with another small body, or when a
body in motion becomes entangled with another also in motion, they do not
rebound at once. For, further, there will of course be others which
break in upon them from above, from below, from front and rear, from right
to left, and which shake and agitate them and never let them rest.
Moreover, we would be forced to suppose that each of these small bodies
has a large number of these hook-like extremities. For by one it
attaches itself to its neighbors, by another – the topmost one – to the
lodestone, and by the bottom one to the iron. For if it were
attached to the stone above and not interlocked with the iron below, this
would be of no use. Thus, the upper part of the superior extremity
must hang from the lodestone and the iron must be attached to the lower
end of the inferior extremity; and, since they interlock with each other
by their sides as well, they must, of course, have hooks there too.
Keep in mind also, above everything, what small bodies these are which
possess all these different kids of outgrowths. Moreover, remember
how, in order that the second piece of iron may become attached to the
first, the third to the second, and to that the fourth, these absurd
little particle must both penetrate the passages in the first piece of
iron and at the same time rebound from the piece coming next in the
series, although this second peeve is naturally in every way similar to
the first.
Such a
hypothesis, once again, is certainly not lacking in audacity; in fact, to
tell the truth, it is far more shameless than the previous ones; according
to it, when five similar pieces of iron are arranged in a line, the
particles of the lodestone which easily traverse the first piece of iron
rebound from the second, and do not pass readily through it in the same
way. Indeed, it is nonsense, whichever alternative is adopted.
For, if they do rebound, how then do they pass through into the third
piece? And if they do not rebound, how does the second piece become
suspended to the first? For Epicurus himself regarded the rebound as
the active agent in the attraction.
But, as I have
said, one is driven to talk nonsense whenever one gests into discussion
with such men. Having, therefore, given a concise and summary
statement of the matter, I wish to be done with it. For if one
diligently familiarizes oneself with the writings of Ascelpiades, one will
see clearly their logical dependence on his first principles, but also
their disagreement with observed facts. Thus, Epicurus, in his
desire to adhere to the facts, cuts an awkward figure by aspiring to show
that these agree with his principles.
…
15.59: How, then, do they {kidneys} exert this attraction {pulling
waste from the blood}. If, as Epicurus thinks, all attraction takes
place by virtue of the rebounds and entanglements of the
atoms, it would be certainly better to maintain that the kidneys have no
attractive action at all; for his theory, when examined, would be found as
it stands to be much more ridiculous even than the theory of the
lodestone, mentioned a little while ago.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, II
(Against the Dogmatists, IV).219: According to the account of
Demetrius of Laconia, Epicurus says that time is a concurrence of
concurrences, one which accompanies days, nights, hours, the presence and
absence of feelings, motions and rests. For all of these are
incidental properties of certain things, and since time accompanies
them all it would be reasonable to call it a concurrence of
concurrences.
[Ibid., 238-247, = Outlines
of Pyrrhonism , III.137, Cf. U79]
Aetius, Doxography,
I.22.5, p. 318, 19 [Diels] (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 8, 45): In regards to the essence of time, Epicurus
defines it a concurrence <of concurrences>, that being what
accompanies motion.
On the Universe and its
World-Systems
Aetius, Doxography,
I.18.3, p. 316 4 [Diels] (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 18, 1; Plutarch
I.18.1): Lucretius,
Democritus, Demetrius, Metrodorus, Epicurus – they consider the atoms to
be infinite in number, while the void is infinite in size.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 13, p. 1114A:
Epicurus, who says that "the universe" is infinite, uncreated and
imperishable, and subject neither to increase nor diminution, speaks of
the universe as if it were a unity.
Cicero, On Divination, II.50.103: You see how
Epicurus proceeds from admitted premises to the proposition to be
established. But this you Stoic logicians do not do; for you not
only do not assume premises which everybody concedes, but you even assume
premises which, if granted, do not tend in the least to establish what you
wish to prove. For you start with this assumption: "If there are
gods, they are kindly disposed towards men." Now, who will grant you
that? Not Epicurus! He says that the gods are concerned at all – for
themselves or for anybody else.
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotle’s
"Physics, Gamma-4," (p. 203B 20), fr. 197u: There is fourth point
which is hard to deal with: the fact that everything which is limited
seems to be limited by something. For if everything which is
limited is limited by something which is external to itself, then that
external thing by which it is limited is itself either unlimited or
limited. And if it is unlimited, then we immediately have the result
that the unlimited exists. And if it is limited, like the earth for
example, then this too is limited by something else, and so on without
limit. And if it goes on without limit, the unlimited exists.
For one will never get one’s hands on the final limit, if indeed this too
is limited by something else. The Epicureans, according to
Alexander, relied on this argument above all else when they said that the
universe was infinite, because everything which is limited by something
has outside it something which is limited {and so on and so on}.
Aristotle mentions that this argument is quite old.
Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisia, Questions, III.12,
[p. 200.20 Spengl.; 10.104,20-23 Sharples]: If the being limited of
what is limited consisted in being considered [as] up against something
else, then our opponents would have a point when they claim that outside
every limited thing there has to be something up against which it is seen
to be limited – if it is in this
that being {einai}, for what is limited, consists.
Themistius, Paraphrases of
Aristotle’s "Physics, Gamma-8," (p. 208A 11), [fr. 36r Ald.], [p.
251.1 Speng.]:
Plutarch, On
the Obsolescence of Oracles, 28, p. 425D: For, if we take
the expressions below and above as referring, not to the
world, but outside of it, we shall become involved in the same
difficulties as Epicurus, who would have all his atoms move to places
under our feet, as if either the void had feet, or infinity granted us to
conceive of below and above within itself.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 8, p. 1111B:
{Epicurus} says that while he posits an infinite universe, he does not
eliminate "up" and "down."
Plutarch,
Stoic Self-Contradictions, 44, p. 1054B: It is frequently
asserted by Chrysippus that outside the world there is infinite void and
that what is infinite has no beginning, middle, or end; and this the
Stoics use especially to annihilate the downward motion which Epicurus
says the atom has of itself, their contention being that in an infinite
void, there is no difference by which to distinguish one part as being up
and the other as down.
Scholion on Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles, by
way of Laertius, Lives, X.88: "A world-system is a
circumscribed portion of the universe, which contains stars and earth and
all other visible things, cut off from the infinite, and
terminating..." and terminating in a boundary which may be either
thick or thin, the dissolution of which will bring about the ruin of
everything within...
Galen, On the Diagnosis and Cure of
Soul’s Errors, 7, t. V [p. 102 K., Singer]: The Stoic says that
there is no void in the world, but that there is empty space outside
it. The Epicurean grants both these types of void, but differs from
the [Stoics] in another respect. He does not admit that there is
only one world, as does the Stoic, who in this respect agrees perfectly
with the Peripatetics. But just as he maintains that the void is
infinite in size, so also does he way that there are in it an infinite
number of world-systems.
Aetius, Doxography,
II.1.3, [p. 327 Diels] (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 22, 3; Plutarch
II.1.1): Democritus and
Epicurus maintain that there are infinite worlds in the infinite
<universe>, in every direction.
Achilles, Introduction,
8, [p.131 E Pet.]: Some assert
that there exists something externally, as indeed Epicurus, who supposes
that there are infinite world-systems in the infinite void. 5 p.
130B: Epicurus and his master [sic] Metrodorus believe
in the existence of many world-systems.
Servius, Commentary on
Virgil’s "Aenids,"
I.330 at "Under which skies:" ... according to the Epicureans,
who would have it that there exist more skies, as Cicero does in his
Hortensius.
Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, I.24.67
(Cotta to Velleius): Where is this "truth" of yours to be found?
Among the innumerable world-systems, born and dying through every instant
of time?
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.6.21:
The very conception of infinite space, apeiria as they
term it, is entirely derived from Democritus; and again the countless
numbers of world-systems that come into existence and pass out of
existence every day.
Dionysius the Episcopalian, by way of Eusebius of
Caesarea, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV 23, 2 p. 773A: The
atoms comprise an infinity of world-systems. [Cf. 26.14 p.
781A]
Hermias, Derision of the Pagan Philosophers,
18, [p. 656, 7 Diels]: Epicurus jumps up and tells me "You
actually have counted only one world-system, my friend. But there
are many world-systems – in fact,
they are infinite." [Cf.
Commentary on Lucan, Civil War, VI.696]
Alexander of Aphrodisia, Questions, III.12, [p.
199, 20 Spengl.; 10.104,4-8 Sharples]: That there is a plurality of
unlimited things according to those who say that the principles {i.e.,
elements} are unlimited is clear also from what follows. They say
that the world-systems, too, are unlimited [in number]. If each of
these too is composed out of unlimited principles, it is necessary for the
unlimited things to be unlimited an unlimited number of times over.
Aetius, Doxography,
II.1.8, [p. 329B 3 Diels] (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 22, 3): Epicurus
asserts that he spaces between world-systems are unequal.
Aetius, Doxography,
II.2.3, [p. 329A 5 Diels] (Plutarch II.2): Epicurus affirms that, on the one hand, it
is possible that world-systems might be spherically shaped, and on the
other hand, that it is also possible they may be characterized by other
configurations.
Aetius, Doxography,
II.7.3, [p. 336 Diels] (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 22, 2; Plutarch
II.7.2): Epicurus maintains that
the edges of some world-systems may be thin, others thick, and that of
these, some move and others remain stationary.
Philo, On the
Indestructibility of the Cosmos, 3, [p. 2222, 2
Bern.]: Democritus,
Epicurus, and a numerous company of Stoic philosophers believe in a birth
and destruction of the world, though not in the same way. The ones
who believe in the existence of an infinity of world-systems attribute
their births in terms of reciprocal impacts and entanglement of atoms, and
their deaths to crashing atoms and to collisions from that which it was
formed out of.
Commentary on Lucan, Pharsalia (The Civil
War), VII.1, p. 220.5: They don’t agree with the Stoics and
Epicureans, who assert that the world was born and will perish.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, VII.1.10:
Epicurus then, on the authority of Democritus, was truly versed on this
point. He said that [the world] had begun at one time and would come
to extinction at some time. However, he was not able to render any
account either for what causes or at what time this such great work would
be dissolved.
Ibid.,
II.10.24: But if the world can perish entirely, since it perishes in
parts, it is clear that at some time it began. Fragility thus
exposes the end of the world just as it shows its beginning. And if
these things are true, Aristotle will not be able to defend the point he
held, namely, that the world itself had no beginning. If Plato and
Aristotle, who thought that the world will always be, although they are
eloquent, the same Epicurus will force the same point from them, however
unwilling, since it follows that it also has an end.
Aetius, Doxography,
II.4.10, [p. 331.24 Diels] (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 20, 1; Plutarch
II.4.2): Epicurus says that
the world {continuously} destroys itself in very many ways: for it can be
destroyed in the manner of an animal, in the manner of plant, and in lots
of other ways.
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotle’s
"Physics, Theta-1," (p. 250b 18), fr. 257u:
St. Jerome,
Commentary on "Ecclesiastes," c. 1, t. III [p. 391D Vall.]: We
do not believe that signs and portents and many unusual facts, which
happen in the world by divine will, have already happened in past
generations, such as Epicurus would have it, asserting that through
innumerable temporal cycles, the same things happen, in the same places,
by means of the same agents.
Aetius (Plutarch),
On the Opinions of the Philosophers, I.4, [p. 289 Diels]: So the world was compounded and endowed
with its bent {i.e., rounded} shape in the following manner:
Because atomic bodies, which move without guidance and in a haphazard
manner, were constantly moving at the greatest of speeds, many bodies
happened to be assembled together in the same place, and thereby had
variety of shapes and seizes <and weights>. As they assembled
in the same place, the larger and heavier bodies tended to move toward the
bottom and settled; but the small, round, smooth, and slippery ones were
pushed out in the concourse of atoms and so moved into the celestial
regions. So when the force of the blows [of atomic collisions]
stopped raising them up, and the blows no longer carried them into the
celestial regions, they were still prevented from falling down because
they were squeezed into places that could accommodate them. Now
these were situated all around, and most of the bodies were bent around to
these places. By becoming entangled with each other during the
bending, they generated the sky. Retaining the same nature and being
varied, as was said, the atoms which were pushed out to the celestial
regions produced the nature of the heavenly bodies. The majority of the
bodies which were evaporated upwards struck the air and compressed
it. And the air, being made wind-like during its movement and
gathering together the heavenly bodies, drove them around with itself and
by this twisting produced their present circular movement in the celestial
regions. And then the earth was produced from the bodies which
settled at the bottom, while those which were raised upwards produced the
sky, fire, and air. Since a great deal of matter was still contained
in the earth and this was packed densely by the blows of the atomic bodies
and by those from the rays of the heavenly bodies, the earth’s entire
configuration, which was made up of small particles, was squeezed together
and so produced the nature of fluids. And since this nature was
disposed to flow, it moved down into the hollow places and those able to
receive it and contain it; either that, or the water all by itself
hollowed out the existing places by settling there. So the most
important parts of the world were produced in this way.
Aetius (Plutarch),
Doxography, V.26, [p. 438 Diels]: The Stoics and the Epicureans do not consider the
planets to be living beings (some are actually characterized as being
irascible and lustful – others as rational), but instead the planets move,
in a certain sense, automatically, without mental guidance.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, I
(Against the Dogmatists, I).267: Epicurus and his followers
supposed that the conception of Man could be conveyed by indication,
saying that "Man is this sort of a shape combined with vitality."
But they did not notice that if the thing indicated is Man, the thing not
so indicated is not Man.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism,
II.25: Epicurus says that Man is "This sort of shape combined with
vitality." According to him, then, since a man is revealed by direct
perception, he that is not perceived as such is not a man.
Scholion on Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, by
way of Laertius, Lives, X.66: He says elsewhere that the
soul is composed of the smoothest and roundest of atoms – far more so than
those of fire; part of it is irrational and scattered throughout the body,
while the rational part resides in the chest, where we feel it in our
fears and our joy.
Aetius, Doxography,
IV.4.6, [p. 390 Diels] (Plutarch IV.4.3) (Democritus): Democritus and Epicurus say that the soul has two
parts, one which is rational and situated in the chest, and the other
which is non-rational and spread throughout the entire body.
Ibid., IV 5.5, p. 391
[Diels] (Plutarch IV.5.2):
Parmenides and Epicurus maintain that the seat of consciousness –
the rational part of the soul – occupies the entire chest.
Tertulllian, On the
Soul, 15: You must not suppose
that the sovereign faculty ... is found enclosed in the breast, as
Epicurus thinks.
Uncertain Epicurean Author, Vol. Herc. 2, VII.17 col.
XXII- :
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 20, p. 1118D:
Colotes, however finds the question absurd {Socrates’ inquiries into
"what is a man?"}. Why then does he not deride has master too, who
did this very thing as often as he wrote or spoke about the constitution
of the soul and the "initiation of the aggregate." For if (as they
themselves hold) the combination of the two parts, a body of a certain
description and a soul, is man, then one who seeks to discover the nature
of the soul is seeking to discover the nature of man, starting from the
more important source. And that the soul is hard to apprehend by
reason and cannot be discerned by sense let us not learn from Socrates,
"the sophist and charlatan," but from these sages, who get as far as those
powers of the soul that affect the flesh, by which it imparts warmth and
softness and firmness to the body, when they manufacture its substance by
the combining their own varieties of heat, gas and air, but quite before
they reach the seat of power. For its ability to judge, remember,
love, and hate – in short, its thinking and reasoning faculty – is added
to these, they say from a quality "that has no name." This talk of
the thing "that has no name" is, we know, a confession of an embarrassed
ignorance – what they cannot make out they assert that they cannot
name. But let this too "be excused," as they say.
Aetius, Doxography,
IV.3.11, p. 388 [Diels] (Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology,
physics, 41 p. 798; Plutarch
IV.3.4): Epicurus said
that the soul is a blend of four things: one of which is fire-like, one
air-like, one wind-like, while the fourth is something which lacks a
name. (This last he made the one which accounts for
sensation.) The wind, he said, produces movement in us, the air
produces rest, the hot one produces the evident heat of the body, and the
unnamed one produces sensation in us. For sensation is found in none
of the named elements
Macrobius,
Commentary on the "Dream of Sciopio," I.14.20: Epicurus
called the soul a being commixed with fire, air, and breath.
Alexander of Aphrodisia, On the Soul, I.8 f.
127u: ... and the Epicureans: indeed, according to them, the soul is a
compound of more varied bodies. [Cf. Lucretius, On the Nature
of Things, III.231]
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, III.294-
:
There is mostly heat in creatures of violent
heart Aetius, Doxography,
IV.8.10, [p. 395 Diels] (Parallel A27, 18; Plutarch
IV.8.5): Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus say
that sense-perception and thought occur when images approach from the
outside. For we apply neither [sense-perception nor thought] to
anything in the absence of an image striking form the outside.
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.6.21:
Those ideas which he {Epicurus} adopts, the credit belongs entirely to
Democritus – {e.g.,} the atoms, the void, the images, or as they call
them, eidola, whose impact is the cause not only of vision but also
of thought.
Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, I.38.108 (Cotta
to Velleius): You are trying to foist these images of yours not only
on our eyes but on our minds as well.
Ibid., I.38.107: Suppose that there are such
images constantly impinging on our minds...
Saint Augustine, Letter to Dioscorus, 118.27 t. II
[p. 340D Venice Edition 1719] (cf., ibid., 31 p. 342A): Let
them say, then, in which class they would include the images which, as
they think, stream from solid substances, without themselves being at all
solid, and by their impact on the eyes cause us to see; on the mind, to
think. They could not possibly be perceived if they are themselves
substances.
Aetius (Plutarch),
Doxography, IV.23.2, [p. 414 Diels]: Epicurus maintained that
both emotions and sensation take place in the parts of the body
susceptible to being affected, while the sovereign faculty is
unaffected.
Aetius, Doxography,
IV.13.1, [p. 403 Diels] (Parallel O14, 1; Plutarch IV.13):
Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus maintain that visual perception
takes place by the entrance of images [into the eyes].
Meletius, in Cramer,
Oxoniensian Anecdote, III p. 71, 7: There is much disagreement
among philosophers regarding [the act of seeing]: the Epicureans profess
that images from apparent objects come to impact the eyes and produce
vision.
Alexander of Aphrodisia, Commentary on Aristotle’s "On
the Sensations," 2 p. 438A 5- [p. 51,3 Thur.]: Democritus himself,
and before him Leucippus, and after him the Epicureans, think that certain
images, which are of the same shape as the objects from which they flow,
flow from them and strike the eyes of those who are seeing and that this
is how seeing occurs. As a proof of this he offers the fact that
there is always in the pupil of those who are seeing a reflection and
image of what is seen, and this is exactly what the act of seeing
is. [Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisia, On the Soul, II.13]
Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato,
VII 7 t. V [p. 643 K.; p. 643,3 Müll.;
VII.7.21 De Lacy]: Therefore Epicurus’ view – although both views are
mistaken – is much better than that of the Stoics. For the latter do
not bring anything of the visual object up to the visual power, but
Epicurus declared that he did so. Aristotle is much superior to
<Epicurus>; he does not posit a corporeal image but a quality from
the visual object to the eyes through an alteration of the surround air.
[ibid. p. 643 K.; p. 643,3 Müll.]
Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, V.16.3: Epicurus believes
that there is a constant flow from all bodies of images from those bodies
themselves, and that these impinge upon the eyes, and hence the sensation
of seeing arises.
Macrobius, Saturnalia, VII 14.3: The nature of vision
has been brilliantly investigated by Epicurus, and his views on the
subject should not, in my opinion, be rejected, especially since the
theories of Democritus agree with them—for in this as in everything else
those two philosophers are of the same mind. Epicurus, then, holds
that from all bodies images flow in a continuous stream and that the
sloughed-off particles, cohering to form an empty shape, are forever
carried abroad, without the slightest intermission, to find lodgment in
our eyes, thus reaching the seat which nature has appointed form them as
the seat of the appropriate sense. Such is the explanation given by
that famous man.
Aetius, Doxography, IV.14.2, [p.
405 Diels] (Parallel O14, 14; Plutarch): Leucippus, Democritus,
and Epicurus assert that what we see in mirrors is formed by opposition of
images moving away from us and upon the mirror will be reflected
backwards.
Appuleius, Apology or On
Magic, 15: What is the reason why, not even for these motives,
that the philosopher, and only him, should not look into the mirror?
Indeed sometimes it is proper … to consider also the criterion of the
resemblance itself, it, as Epicurus affirms, certain images moving away
from us, like husks that emanate from bodies in a continuous flux, once
they have bumped against something smooth and solid, are reflected
backwards upon impact, and reproduced in reverse, corresponding in the
opposite way.
Aetius, Doxography,
IV.19.2, [p. 408 Diels]:
Epicurus maintains that the voice is a flow sent out from those who
make utterances or produce sounds or noises. This flow is broken up
into particles of the same shape. ("Of the same shape" means that
the round are like the round and the angular and the triangular are like
those of those types.) And when these strike the organs of hearing,
the perception of voice is produced.
Scholiast on Dionysius Thrax {"Dionysius the Thracian"},
British Museum codex, in Cramer,
Oxoniensian Anecdote, IV p. 317, 8: Epicurus,
Democritus, and the Stoics say that voice is a body. For everything
which can act or be acted upon is a body. For example, iron: it is
acted upon by fire and it acts on men or wood. So if voice can act
and be acted upon, it is a body. But it acts, since we enjoy hearing
a voice or a lyre; and it is acted upon, as when we are speaking and the
wind blows, which makes it harder to hear our voice.
Grammaticus the Byzantine, Paris codex, 2555 BAG p.
1168: Democritus, Epicurus, and the Stoics said that the voice must be
a body, since everything that has activity and reactivity – that is:
anything able to act and be acted upon – is a body.
Plutarch, Table
Talk, VIII 3.1 p. 720E: The fact which needed explanation,
continued Ammonius, was rather that voices are more sonorous at night and
preserve not only their volume but the precise articulation. ...
2. p. 720F: Boëthus then said that when he was still young and
occupied with academic pursuits, he had been accustomed to using
postulates and adopting unproved assumptions, after the manner of
geometry, but that he would now employ some of the demonstrated doctrines
of Epicurus. "Existing things move about in the non-existent.
There is a great deal of void interspersed and mingled with the atoms of
air. Now when air is dispersed and has scope and motility because of
its loose structure, the empty spaces left between the particles are small
and narrow and the atoms, being scattered, fill a good deal of space, but
when it is compressed and the atoms are crowded into a small space, and
are forced close together, they leave plenty of space outside and make the
intervals large. This is what happens at night, under the influence
of cold. For warmth loosens and separates and dissolves
concentrations, which is why bodies when boiling or softening or melting
take up more room, while on the other hand the particles in freezing and
cooling bodies join together more compactly and leave vacuums – spaces
from which they have withdrawn – in the vessels which hold them. A
sound which approaches and strikes a large number of particles collected
in a mass is either silenced completely or undergoes serious convulsions
and many collisions and delays. But in an empty stretch, devoid of
atoms, it travels a smooth, continuous, and unimpeded path to the organ of
hearing, preserving, by its velocity, not only the sense of the message
but its fine detail. Surely you have noticed that empty vessels when
struck are more responsive and send the sound a long way, and often the
sound goes round and round and there is much communication of it; but a
vessel filled either with solid matter or with some liquid becomes
completely mute and soundless, since the sound has no way or passage by
which to go through. Of physical bodies themselves, gold and stone,
because of their compactness, are weak-voiced and dull-sounding, and
quickly extinguish sounds within them, but bronze is melodious and vocal,
because it has much empty space within its structure and is light and fine
in its spatial mass, not constricted by crowding particles, but containing
an abundance of flimsy, yielding substance. This gives easy passage
to other motions and especially to sound, receiving it hospitably and
speeding it on its journey, until someone, like a highway-robber, seizes
and detains and blindfolds it. There it comes to a halt, ceasing to
move on because of the obstruction. This is in my opinion what makes
the night sonorous and the day less so. Daytime, by its warmth, and
the expansion of the air, makes the intervals between the atoms small, so
long as no one objects to my basic assumptions.
[Cf.
Ibid., c. 3 p. 721F]: There was no need to trouble
the night with contraction and increased tension of its air, so as to
leave passages and vacuums elsewhere, as through the air were a hindrance
to sound or destroyed its substance. Air is itself the substance and
body and power of sound. Apart from these points, turbulent nights,
for example cloudy or stormy ones, ought to be in your theory more
sonorous than nights that are clear and uniform in composition, because
then the atoms are forced together in one place, and leave the place they
are driven from empty of matter. It is also very obvious that a cold
day would be more sonorous than a hot summer night. But neither are
true.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 25, p. 1121B: {That
... protest of theirs in defense of sensation, that it does not assert the
external object to be warm, the truth being merely that the effect produce
in sensation has been of this kind – } is it not the same as the statement
about taste? It does not assert that the external object is sweet –
there has merely occurred in the taste an effect and movement of this
kind.
Tertullian,
On the Soul, 43:
The Epicureans maintain that sound is a
diminution of vital spirit.
Plutarch, Table
Talk, VIII 10.1 p. 734D: [regarding]
the common notion about dreams – that they are especially likely to be
unreliable or false in the autumn months … I don’t know … how it
came to be … §2 p.
734F: Favorinus …
on this occasion advanced an old argument of Democritus.
Taking it down all blackened with smoke, as it were, he set about cleaning
and polishing it. He used for a foundation the familiar argument
found in Democritus that ghostly films penetrate the body through the
pores and that when they emerge they make us see things in our
sleep. These films that come to us emanate from everything – from
utensils, clothing, plants, and especially from animals, because of their
restlessness and their warmth. The films have not only the impressed
physical likeness in contour of an animal – so far Epicurus agrees with
Democritus, though he drops the subject at this stage – but they gather
and convey by attraction ghostly copies of each man’s mental impulses,
designs, moral qualities, and emotions.
Commentary on Lucan, Pharsalia (The Civil
War), II.380, p. 75.13: Epicurus asserts that flowing atoms
penetrate our minds from the images of objects, and that during the sleep
there appears either actions that we have done or those we are about to
do.
Tertullian,
On the Soul, 46: Epicurus, who used to liberate the divinity
from every occupation, and eliminate the order of things, and dispersed
them into passivity ... [more]
Cicero, On Divination, I.30.62: Shall we listen
to Epicurus rather than Plato {regarding dreams}?
Ibid., I.44, 99: Sisenna ... later, influenced
to doubt by some petty Epicurean, goes on inconsistently to maintain that
dreams are not worthy of belief.
Petronius, Satyricon, 104 [Eumolpus speaking]:
Exactly. And this {coincidence of similar dreams by two
different people} shows you why we consider Epicurus almost
superhuman. As you many remember, he very wittily disposes of such
coincidences as mere silly superstitions.
[Cassius, by way
of Plutarch, Life of Cassius, 37: {Referring to other
doctrines as if they might be Epicurean...} And they explain the
transpiration of dreams during periods of sleep – transpirations that are
due to the imaginative faculty, which from minor beginnings, gives rise to
varied emotions and images. This faculty, on the other hand, is
always set in motion by nature and its motion is a representation or a
concept.]
Aetius, Doxography,
V.3.5, [p. 417 Diels]:
Epicurus asserts that seminal fluid is a small detachment from the
body and soul.
Aetius (Plutarch),
Doxography, V.5.1, [p. 418 Diels]: Pythagoras, Epicurus, and Democritus all say that
the female also secretes seminal fluid. It comes from testicles,
flipped around in the opposite sense; it must thereby also have an impetus
for union.
Censorinus, On the Natal
Day, 5.4: Even on this
question there is uncertainty among the various scholars: if the child is
born only by the semen of the father…, or also by that of the mother as
well, which … is the opinion of Epicurus.
Ibid., 6.2: The Stoics assert that the fetus forms
itself in its entirety in a single moment. … There are also those
who think that it arrives by the work of Nature
itself, like Aristotle and Epicurus.
Aetius
(Plutarch), Doxography, V.16.1, [p. 426 Diels]: Democritus and Epicurus
say that the embryo in the womb partially nourishes itself through the
mouth, ...etc...
Censorinus, On the Natal
Day, IV.9: Democritus
of Abdera first held that men were created from water and mud. And
Epicurus’ view is not much different, for he believed that when the mud
became warm, first there grew wombs of some kind or another which clung to
the earth by roots, and these begat infants and provided a natural supply
of milky fluid for them, under the guidance of nature. When these
[infants] had been brought up in this manner and reached maturity, they
then propagated the human race.
Origen, Against
Celsus, I.24, [p. 18 Hoesch.]:
As to this, one should also say that a deep and arcane debate about
the nature of names emerged. Are names conventional, as Aristotle
thinks? ... Or are names natural, as Epicurus teaches – in a manner
different from that of the Stoics – such that the first men burst forth
with particular sounds which were then applied to things?
Proclus Lycaeus, Commentary on Plato’s "Cratylus,"
16 [p. 6 Boiss.]: Pythagoras and Epicurus shared the view of
Cratylus… 17 [p. 8]: Epicurus thought that names were natural
in [one] sense, as being a primary function of nature, such as voice and
vision and seeing and hearing, in the same way naming is natural. So
that names too are natural in the sense of functions of nature. But
Cratylus says that names are natural in [another] sense; that is why he
says that each thing has its own proper name, since it was given
specifically by the first name-givers in a craftsman-like fashion based on
an understanding of the thing. Epicurus, however, said that these
men did not give names based on an understanding of things, but because
they were moved in a natural fashion, like those who cough and sneeze and
below and bark and lament.
Aetius (Plutarch),
Doxography, IV.7.4, [p. 393 Diels]: Democritus and Epicurus said that the soul
is mortal and perishes with the body.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, III.17.33: What
of the fact that that argument is completely false, since souls do no
perish? "Reflect again on the truth," [Epicurus] says, "for it
is necessary that that which is born with the body, perish with the body."
Cf. Ibid., VII.12.1: Now let us refute the arguments of
those who set forth contrary opinions. Lucretius worked them into
his third book. "Since the soul is born with the body," he said, "It
must perish with the body." {Cf. Lucretius, III.417, III.634, &
III.746} Ibid., VII.13.7: Thus, the opinion of
Democritus and Epicurus and Dicaearchus about the dissolution of the soul
is false then. [Ibid., VII.8.8: {…those who opposed
[Plato, Pythagoras, & Pherecydes] held no less influence: Dicaearchus,
at first; then Democritus; finally, Epicurus}]
St. Augustine (attributed),
Exegesis of the Psalm, 73.25, t. IV [p. 781 Venice
Edition]:
St. Augustine, Sermon, 348, t. V p. 1344 A:
And, once this life is spent, they do not believe that there might be
another one in the hereafter.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, I
(Against the Dogmatists, III).72: [Souls] persist as they are
in themselves, and are not, as Epicurus said, "dispersed like smoke when
released from their bodies."
Cf. Iamblichus, by way of Stobaeus,
Anthology, Physics, 41.43, [p. 924 H.]:
Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, II.31.100:
He {Epicurus} repeatedly argued at length, and also stated briefly and
plainly in the work I have just mentioned {The Principal Doctrines},
that death does not affect us at all...
Gnomolgion from the Parisinus codex, 1168, f.
115r- (Maxims of Epicurus): It is possible to provide security against
other afflictions, but as far as death is concerned, we men all live in a
city without walls. {= Vatican Saying
31}
[Cf. Maximus the Abbot,
Gnomologion, 36, [p.194 Turic.; t. II p. 827
Combef.]
Hippolytus, "Philosophical Questions,"
(Refutation of all Heresies, I) 22.5 [p. 572.14 Diels.]:
He {Epicurus} concluded that the souls of men are dissolved
along with their bodies, just as also they were produced along with them;
these, in fact, are blood, and when this has gone forth or been altered,
the entire man perishes. In keeping with this tenet, it follows that
there are neither trials in Hades, nor tribunals of justice; so that
whatsoever any one may commit in this life, that, provided he may escape
detection, he is altogether beyond any liability of trial.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 24.18: I am not
so foolish as to go through at this juncture the arguments which Epicurus
harps upon, and say that the errors of the world below are idle – that
Ixion does not whirl round on his wheel, that Sisyphus does not shoulder
his stone uphill, that a man’s entrails cannot be restored and devoured
everyday; no one is so childish as to fear Cerberus, or the shadows, or
the ghostly garb of those who are held together by nothing but their bare
bones.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, III.17.42:
Epicurus says … the punishments of hell do not have to be feared, because
souls die after death; nor is there any hell at all.
Ibid., VII.7.13: Zeno, the Stoic, taught that
there was a hell, and that the abodes of the virtuous were separated from
the wicked, and that the former inhabited quiet and delightful regions,
while the latter paid their penalty in dark places and horrible caverns of
mud. The prophets made the same thing clear to us. Therefore,
Epicurus was in error who thought that this was a figment of the poet’s
imagination, and took those punishments of hell to be those which are
borne in this life.
[Tertulllian, On the
Pagan Nations, II.4:
Epicurus, however, who had said, "What is above us is nothing to
us," wished notwithstanding to have a peep at the sky, and found the sun
to be a foot in diameter.]
Aetius (Plutarch),
Doxography, V.20.2, [p. 432 Diels]: Democritus and Epicurus do not believe that
celestial bodies are living beings.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 27, p. 1123A: Who
is it that upsets accepted beliefs and comes in conflict with the plainest
facts? It is those who reject... {divination, providence, and} that
the sun and moon are living beings, to whom sacrifice and prayer and
reverence is offered up by all mankind.
Galen, On the Use of Parts, XII 6, t. IV [p. 21
K.]: Even our Creator, though knowing perfectly the ingratitude of
such men as these, has yet created them. The sun makes the seasons
of the year and perfects the fruits without paying any heed, I suppose, to
Diagoras, Anaxagoras, Epicurus, or the others blaspheming against
it. No beneficent being bears malice over anything, but naturally
aides and adorns all.
St. Augustine, City of God, XVIII 41: At Athens did there
not flourish both the Epicureans, who asserted that human affairs are of
no concern to the gods, and the Stoics, who, coming to the opposite
conclusion, argued that these are guided and supported by the gods, who
are our helpers and protectors? I wonder therefore why Anaxagoras
was tried for saying that the sun is a blazing stone and denying that it
is a god at all, while in the same city Epicurus lived in glory and in
safety, though he not only believed neither in the divinity of the sun nor
in that of any other luminary, but also maintained that neither Jupiter
nor any other god dwells in the universe at all for men's prayers and
supplications to reach him.
Aetius (Plutarch),
Doxography, II.20, 14, [p. 350 Diels] (Stobaeus,
Anthology, Physics, 25.3; Plutarch, II.20,5):
Epicurus maintains that the sun is a compact amassment of earth,
similar in aspect to pumice-stone, spongy because of its pores, and
ignited by fire.
Cf. Achilles,
Introduction, 19, [p.138D Pet.]: Epicurus asserts that it [the sun] is
similar in a way to pumice-stone, and that from fire and through certain
pores, it emanates its light.
Aetius, Doxography,
II.22.6, [p. 352 Diels] (Plutarch II.22):
Anaximenes believes that the sun might be large and flat as a
petal, Heraclitus that it might be similar to a bowl-shaped container, and
very bent; the Stoics that it might be spherical, like the world and
celestial bodies; Epicurus, that it might be able to assume any given
shape.
Aetius, Doxography,
II.21.5, [p. 352,1 Diels] (Plutarch II.21.2; Stobaeus, Anthology,
Physics, 25.3): Epicurus maintains that the sun is more or less as
large as it appears.
Servius, Commentary on
Virgil’s "Georgics,"
I.247: At the expression
"intempesta silet" … The Epicureans maintain that the sun does not
proceed around the other hemisphere, but according to them sparkles always
gather together in the east, and the disc of the sun is formed.
Servius, Commentary on
Virgil’s "Aenids,"
IV.584: "With new
light" … according to the Epicureans, who foolishly believe that the
sun is composed of atoms, and that it is born together with the day, and
together with the day perishes.
Junius Philargirius,
Commentary on Virgil’s "Georgics," II.478 [p.248 Orsini] ("Various
eclipses"): Epicurus maintains that, regarding the phenomenon in which
the sun seems to diminish, one should not attribute a single cause, but
rather various hypotheses: it may be proposed, in fact, that it
extinguishes itself, or that it ventures further out, or that some other
body hides it.
Themistius, Paraphrases of Aristotle’s "Posterior
Analytics, Alpha-33," (p. 89 A 38), [fr. 9u Ald.]: Therefore it is
not possible that, for the same belief, it can be opinion and knowledge
for the same person simultaneously, for he would then assume that the same
thing can and cannot also be something else at the same time. But it
happens that a man can have a certain belief as his opinion, while for
another man, it is knowledge. For Epicurus, in particular, it was
indeed an opinion that the sun is eclipsed when the moon, in its
course, passes under it; but in fact he believed it possible for things to
be otherwise; for Hipparchus, by contrast, it was knowledge.
Scholion on Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, by
way of Laertius, Lives, X.74 p. 26.9: Elsewhere he says that
the earth is supported on air.
Aetius, Doxography,
III.4.5, [p. 371 Diels] (Parallel N 6.5 p. 691 Gf.;
Plutarch, III.4.2): Epicurus says that all these things {i.e.,
clouds, rain, etc.} can be explained with the atomic theory. Hail
and rain, in particular, are rounded off because they are so-shaped from
their long fall.
Aetius, Doxography,
III.15.11 (Plutarch, III
15.9): As for earthquakes,
Epicurus says that it is possible that the earth is moved by being
violently thrust upwards when struck by the air from below, which is humid
and dense; it’s also possible that it happens because the earth is
cavernous underground, and thus jolted by the wind, which bursts into its
cavities, which are like caverns, and diffused into their
interiors.
Seneca, Natural Questions, VI.20.1: Now we
come to those writers who have stated as a cause of earthquakes either all
the elements I mentioned or several of them. Democritus thinks
several. For he says that an earthquake is produced sometimes by
moving air, sometimes by water, sometimes by both. (5)
Epicurus says that all these things can be causes and he tries several
other causes. Also he criticizes those who insist that some single
on e of them is the cause, since it is difficult to promise anything
certain about theories which are based on conjecture. Therefore, as
he says, water can cause an earthquake if it washes away and erodes some
parts of the earth. When these parts are weakened they cease to be
able to sustain what they supported when they were intact. The
pressure of moving air can cause earthquakes; for perhaps the air inside
the earth is agitated by other air entering, perhaps the earth receives a
shock when some part of it suddenly falls and from this the earth takes on
movement. Perhaps a warm quantity of moving air is changed to fire
and like lightning is carried along with great destruction to things that
stand in its way. Perhaps some blast pushes the swampy and stagnant
waters and consequently either the blow shakes the earth or the agitation
of the air increases by its very motion and, stirring itself up, travels
all the way from the depths to the surface of the earth. At any
rate, Epicurus is satisfied that air is the main cause of
earthquakes.
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, V.52:
The man who gets the better of all this Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.16.43 - 20.56
(Velleius’ monologue): {Translated elsewhere}
Ibid., 34.95 (Cotta speaking): You say that
there are both male and female gods –
well, you can see as well as I can what is going to follow from
that!
Quintilian,
Institutio Oratoria, VII.3.5: A man who
denies that god is a "spirit diffused through all the parts of the world"
{a Stoic definition} would not be saying that it is mistaken to call the
world divine, as Epicurus would, for he gave God human form and a place in
the spaces between worlds.
Saint Augustine, Letter to Dioscorus, 118.27 t. II
[p. 340B Venice Edition 1719]: How much better for me not even to have
heard the name of Democritus than to reflect with sorrow that someone was
considered great in his own times who thought that the gods were images
which were emitted from solid substances, although they themselves were
not solid, and that they, by circling around this way and that, of their
own motion, and by sliding into the minds of men, make them think the
image is a divine force, while the substance from which the image was
given off was deemed excellent in proportion to its solidity!
Therefore, his theory wavered, as they say, and varied, so that sometimes,
he said that a certain substance from which the images streamed was god,
yet, that substance cannot be conceived except through the images which it
emits and gives off, that is, those which come from that substance, which
he somehow thinks is corporeal and eternal and therefore divine, while the
images are carried long by a constant emanation like mist, and they come
and enter into ours so that we can think they are a god or gods.
Those philosophers hold that there is no other cause for any thought of
ours except these images which, when we think, come form those substances
and enter into our minds. … 28: However,
Democritus is said to differ from Epicurus in his natural philosophy, in
that he thinks there is a certain living and breathing force present at
the coming together of atoms, by which force, I believe, he says "the
images are endowed with divinity" – not the images of all things, but
those of gods – and "that the elements from which the mind is compounded"
exist in the universe, and to these he attributes divinity, and that these
are "animate images which are wont to exercise a beneficent or harmful
influence over us." But Epicurus postulated nothing as the beginning
of the world but atoms, that is, certain particles of matter so minute
that they cannot be divided or perceived by either sight or touch, and by
the chance meeting of these particles he says that innumerable worlds, and
living beings, and the principle of life itself were produced, as well as
the gods whom endows with human form, and locates, not in any world, but
beyond and between the worlds. He refuses absolutely to consider
anything but material substances, but, in order to be able to think even
about these, he says that images are given off by the very things which he
supposes to be formed by the atoms, that they enter the mind, and that
they are finer than the other images which appear to the eyes – for he
says that this is the cause of our sight – but that they are "vast images
of such a size as to envelop and enfold the entire world."
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, I
(Against the Dogmatists, III).25: Epicurus thinks that men have
derived the conception of god from presentations [received] while asleep.
For he says, since large manlike images strike them while they sleep, they
supposed that some such manlike gods also existed in reality
On the Nature and Form of
the Gods
Tertullian, Apologetics, 47: Some are sure that
he [God] is incorporeal, others that he has a body – i.e., the Platonists
and the Stoics respectively. Others say he consists of atoms, others
of numbers – as do the Epicurus and the Pythagoreans
respectively.
[Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 10.28: Let us
concede to them, however, that the things which are earthly are made from
atoms. Are the things which are heavenly also? They say that
the gods are incorrupt, eternal, happy, and to them alone they give
immunity, such that they may not be seen to be formed by the assembly of
atoms. For if the gods also had come from these, they would also be
able to be dissipated, any time the seeds break apart and return to their
natural state. Therefore, if there is something which atoms have not
brought about, why do we not understand that this is the case with other
things, too? My question is, before those beginning-bodies had
generated the world, why did not the gods build a dwelling for
themselves? Surely, unless the atoms had come together and made
heaven, the gods would still be hanging in the empty void. ]
Scholion on Epicurus, Principal Doctrines 1,
by way of Laertius, Lives, X.139: Elsewhere he says that
the gods are discernible as mental impressions, some being unique, while
others look similar, owing to the continuous flow of similar images
to the same place, culminating in human form.
Aetius, Doxography,
I.7.34, [p. 306 Diels] (Plutarch,
I.7.15; Stobaeus, Anthology, Physics, 2.29): Epicurus thinks the gods resemble humans,
and can be contemplated by reason as a result of the fineness of the
nature of their images.
Philodemus, On the Life of the Gods,
Vol. Herc. 1, VI c. 13: It must also be said that the gods speak,
and that they entertain themselves with one another. Indeed, we
would no longer believe that the gods are happy and incorruptible, if the
did not speak and did not communicate with one another. On the
contrary, they would be similar to mute men. In effect, just as we
use our voice…
Cf. c. 14: … and since for virtuous
men, conversation with their equals is a source of inexpressible
pleasure. And, by Zeus, it is necessary to uphold that they have a
language like Greek, or not far from it, and we know that those who have
become gods only used the Greek language.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, I
(Against the Dogmatists, III).178: Thus, to define God as
speechless is perfectly absurd and in conflict with our general
conceptions. But if he is gifted with speech, he employs speech and
has organs of speech, such as lungs and windpipe, tongue and mouth.
But this is absurd and borders on the mythology of Epicurus.
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.10.23
(Velleius speaking): As for those who say that the world itself is a
conscious intelligence, they have not grasped the nature of consciousness,
or understood in what shape it can be manifest. … I am astonished by
the stupidity of those who say that the world itself is a conscious and
immortal being, divinely blest, and then say that it is a sphere, because
Plato thought this to be the most beautiful of all shapes – I for one find
more beauty in the shape of a cylinder, a square, a cone, or a
pyramid. What mode of existence is assigned to their spherical
deity? Why, he is in a state of rotation, spinning around with a velocity
that surpasses all powers of conception. But what room can there be in
such an existence for stability of mind and for happiness – I cannot
see. Also, why should a condition that is painful in the human body,
if even the smallest part of it is affected, be supposed to be painless in
the deity? Now clearly the earth, being a part of the world, is also a
part of the god. Yet we see that vast portions of the earth’s
surface are uninhabitable deserts, being either scorched by the sun’s
proximity, or frost-bound and covered with snow owing to its extreme
remoteness. But if the world is god, these, being parts of the
world, must be regarded as limbs of the god, undergoing the extremes of
heat and cold respectively.
Ibid., II.17.46 (Balbus speaking): Epicurus
may make a joke of this if he likes, although humor was never his strong
point – an Athenian without the "Attic salt!" He may say that he can
make no sense of a "spherical and revolving god." But he will never
move me from the one view which even he himself accepts: he agrees that
gods exist, because there must be some supreme being which is superior to
all else.
Cf. Uncertain Epicurean
Author, Vol. Herc. 1, VI c. 21: … that which the other
philosophers ascribe to [a god]. They must surely know that [a god]
does not have a spherical bodily form, nor a tendency towards arguments,
anger, or pettiness, but rather has a bodily form that approaches the
sublime, and a disposition that disregards all that is impure, being
entirely devoted to true blessedness and incorruptibility.
Hippolytus, "Philosophical Questions,"
(Refutation of all Heresies, I) 22.3 [p. 572.5
Diels.]:
Acknowledging the Deity to be eternal and incorruptible, he says
that God has providential care for nothing, and that there is no such
thing at all as providence or fate, but that all things arc made by
chance. For that the Deity reposed in the intermundane spaces, (as they)
are thus styled by him; for outside the world he determined that there is
a certain habitation of God, denominated "the intermundane spaces," and
that the Deity surrendered himself to pleasure, and took his ease in the
midst of supreme happiness; and that neither has he any concerns of
business, nor does he devote his attention to them.
On the Blessed Life of
the Gods
Lactantius, On
the Anger of God, 17.1: "God," says
Epicurus, "cares for nothing." Therefore, He has no power – for it
is necessary that he who has power exercise care – or if He has power and
does not use it, what is the reason of negligence so great that, I will
not say our race, but even the world itself, is vile and worthless to
Him? "On this account," he says, "He is incorrupt and blessed,
because He is always quiet." To whom, then, has the administration
of such great affairs yielded, if these things which we see controlled by
the highest plan are neglected by God? Or how is he who lives and
feels able in any way to be quiet? For quiet is a quality of either
sleep or death.
Lactantius,
Divine Institutes, III.12.15: Epicurus
calls a god happy and incorrupt because he is everlasting. Beatitude
ought to be perfect so that there be nothing which can vex or lessen or
change it, nor can anything be considered blessed unless through its being
incorrupt. And nothing is incorrupt save what is immortal.
Atticus, by way of Eusebius of Caesarea,
Preparation for the Gospel, XV 5.9 p. 800A: In
Epicurus’ view,
providence disappears; the gods according to him pay most attention to the
preservation of their own good.
Uncertain Epicurean Author, by way of
Pseudo-Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, I I.7.7 p.
300: "Both [Anaxagoras and Plato] share this error, because they
portrayed a god as being concerned for human affairs and as making the
cosmos for the sake of man. For a blessed and indestructible being,
overflowing with good things and free of any share of what is bad, is
completely preoccupied with the continuance of his won happiness and
indestructibility and so is not concerned with human affairs. For he
would be wretched, like a workman or builder, if he undertook burdens and
felt concern for the creation of the cosmos."
Atticus, by way of Eusebius of Caesarea,
Preparation for the Gospel, XV 5.11 p. 800B: But therein
Epicurus, in my judgment, seems to have acted more modestly {than
Aristotle}: for as if he had not hope of the gods being able to abstain
from the care of mankind if they came in contact with them, he transferred
them, as it were, to a foreign country, and settled them somewhere outside
the world, excusing them from the charge of inhumanity by the removal, and
by their separation from all things.
Plutarch, Life
of Pyrrhus, 20.3: ... they [the Epicureans] removed the Deity as
far as possible from feelings of kindness or anger or concern for us, into
a life that knew no care and was filled with ease and comfort.
Lactantius, On
the Anger of God, 2.7: Certain
individuals say that [God] neither is pleased nor angered by anything, but
that, free from care and in repose, He enjoys the good of His own
immortality.
Cf. Lucretius, On the Nature of
Things, II.1093:
I appeal to the holy hearts
of the gods, Ibid., V.82:
Those who have
been correctly taught Horace, Satire,
I.5.101:
I’ve learned
that the gods exist carefree, Dionysius the Episcopalian, by way of Eusebius of
Caesarea, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV 27, 1 p. 781A: To
work, to administer, to do good and to show forethought, and all such
actions are burdensome perhaps to the idle and foolish, and to the feeble
and wicked, among whom Epicurus enrolled himself by entertaining such
thoughts of the gods.
Tertullian, Apologetics, 47: The Epicureans
picture him [God] as idle and unemployed, a nobody (so to say) in regards
to human affairs.
Salvianus, On the Governence of God, I.5, p.3,
17: Among the Epicureans... who, just as they connect pleasure with
virtue, so too they connect God with disinterest and laziness.
Seneca, On Benefits, IV.4.1: "True; therefore
God does not bestow benefits, but, free from care and unmindful of us, He
turns away from our world and either does something else, or else does
nothing, which Epicurus thought the greatest possible happiness, and
He is not affected either by benefits or by injuries." The man who says
this surely cannot hear the voices of those who pray… IV.4.19: You,
Epicurus, ended by making God unarmed; you stripped him of all weapons, of
all power, and, lest anyone should fear him, you banished him from the
world. There is no reason why you should fear this being, cut off as he
is, and separated from the sight and touch of mortals by a vast and
impassable wall; he has no power either of rewarding or of injuring us; he
dwells alone half-way between our heaven and that of another world,
without the society either of animals, of men, or of matter, avoiding the
crash of worlds as they fall in ruins above and around him, but neither
hearing our prayers nor interested in us. Yet you wish to seem to worship
this being just as a father, with a mind, I suppose, full of gratitude;
or, if you do not wish to seem grateful, why should you worship him, since
you have received no benefit from him, but have been put together entirely
at random and by chance by those atoms and mites of yours? "I
worship him," you answer, "because of his glorious majesty and his unique
nature."
Ibid., VII.31.3: Some blame [the gods] for
neglecting us, some with their injustice towards us; others place them
outside of their own world, in sloth and indifference, without light, and
without any functions;
Dionysius the Episcopalian, On Nature, by way
of Eusebius of Caesarea, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV 27, 8
p. 782C: As for the gods of whom their
poets sing as "Givers
of good things," {Homer, Od.
viii. 325} these philosophers with mocking
reverence say, The gods are neither givers nor partakers of any good
things. In what way then do they show evidence of the existence of gods,
if they neither see them present and doing something, as those who in
admiration of the sun and moon and stars said that they were called gods
(θεούς) because
of their running (θεειν), nor assign to
them any work of creation or arrangement, that they might call them gods
from setting (θεῖναι),
that is making (for in this respect in truth the Creator and
Artificer of the universe alone is God), nor exhibit any administration,
or judgment, or favor of theirs towards mankind, that we should owe them
fear or honor, and therefore worship them? Or
did Epicurus peep out from the world, and pass beyond the compass of the
heavens, or go out through some secret gates known only to himself, and
behold the gods dwelling in the void, and deem them and their abundant
luxury blessed? And did he thence become a devotee of pleasure, and an
admirer of their life in the void, and so exhort all who are to be made
like unto those gods to participate in this blessing, [etc.]
Cicero, Against Lucius Calpurnius Piso, 25.59
(Attributing these words to Piso): "What, Caesar, is the strong
attraction that these thanksgivings of such frequency and such long
duration as have been decreed to you possess? The world is under a
deep delusion concerning them, the gods care naught for them; for they, as
our godlike Epicurus has said, feel neither kindness nor wrath towards
any."
Lactantius, On
the Anger of God, 4.1: What follows
is of the school of Epicurus. He teaches that just as there is no
anger in God, so there is not even kindness. For since Epicurus
thought that to do evil or do harm was foreign to God (an action which is
generally spring from the emotion of anger), he also took from Him
beneficence because he saw it to be a consequence that, if God possessed
anger, He would have kindness also. "From this," he says, "he is
blessed and incorrupt, because he cares for nothing, and he neither has
any concern himself, nor does he show it for another."
Lactantius, On
the Anger of God, 4.11: Accordingly,
then, if there is neither anger nor kindness in [God], surely there is
neither fear nor joy nor grief nor compassion. For there is one plan
for all the affections, one connected movement, which cannot be in
God. But if there is no affection in God, because whatever is
affected is a weakness, therefore, neither is there any care of anything
nor any providence in Him. The argument of [Epicurus] extends only
this far. He was silent about the other things which follow, namely,
that there is no care in Him nor providence, and, therefore, that there is
not any reflection nor any sense in Him, by which it comes about that He
does not exist at all. So when he had descended step by step, he
stopped on the last step because he then saw the precipice. But what
advantage is it to have kept silent and to have concealed the
danger? Necessity forced him to fall even against his will.
Ibid,
15.5: Since,
therefore, there are good and evil things in human affairs … it is of
necessity that God is moved with reference to each. He is moved to
kindness when He sees just things done, and to wrath when He beholds the
unjust. But Epicurus is in opposition to us and he says: "If there
is in God movement of joy unto kindness and of hatred unto wrath, then he
must have both fear, and inclination, and desire, and the other affections
which belong to human feebleness." But it is not necessary that he
who is angry should also fear, or that he who rejoices should grieve.
… The affection of fear is a matter in man – not in God.
Ibid,
16.6: So the
arguments are found to be empty … of those who think that there is
no movement of the mind in God. Because there are some affections
which do not happen to be found in God, like desire, fear, avarice, grief,
and envy, they have said that He is utterly free from all affection.
He is free of these because they are affections of vices; but, those which
are of virtue (that is, anger toward the evil, love toward the good,
compassion for the afflicted) since they are becoming to His divine
power.
On the Care and
Governance of the World
Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, I.8.18 - 9.23
(Velleius’ monologue): {Translated elsewhere}
Lucian, The Double Indictment, 2: Epicurus
certainly spoke the truth when he said that we {gods} do not provide for
things on earth.
Lucian, Icaromenippus, 2: The Epicureans are
really quite insolent, and they attack us without restraint, affirming
that we {gods} don’t concern ourselves with human affairs, nor do we
control events whatsoever.
Alexander of Aphrodisia, On Fate, 31, [p.100
Or.]: The so-called "absence of {divine} providence," by those in
Epicurus’ circle…
Arrian, Diatribes of Epictetus, I.12.1:
Concerning gods, there are some who say that the divine does not even
exist while others, that it does exist but is inactive and indifferent,
and takes forethought for nothing; …
Ibid, II.20.23: "Consider the contrary
assertion: The gods not exist, and even if they do, they pay no attention
to men, nor have we any fellowship with them, and hence this piety and
sanctity which the multitude talk about is a lie told by ‘impostors and
sophists,’ or, I swear, by lawmakers to frighten and restrain
evildoers."
Atticus, by way of Eusebius of Caesarea,
Preparation for the Gospel, XV 5.9 p. 800A: [= U361]
Ibid, 13 p. 800A: He {Epicurus}
deprived the gods of their activity towards us, from which alone a just
confidence in their existence was likely to be derived.
Ibid, XV 5.3 p. 799A: He who puts aside this
divine nature, and cuts off the soul’s hope of
hereafter, and destroys reverence before superior Beings in the present
life, what communion has he with Plato? Or how could he exhort men to what
Plato desires, and confirm his sayings? For on the contrary he surely
would appear as the helper and ally of those who wish to do injustice. For
every one who is human and constrained by human desires, if he despise the
gods and think they are nothing to him, inasmuch as in life he dwells far
away from them, and after death exists no more, will come prepared to
gratify his lusts.
Ibid, 5.6 p. 799A: … guaranteeing the impunity
on the part of the gods.
Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks,
5, [p. 20.8 Sylb.]: Epicurus alone I will banish from memory, and
willingly at that. For he, preeminent in impiety, thinks that God
has no care for the world.
Plotinus, Dissertations, (Aeneids, II.9), 15: Epicurus,
who rejects providence...
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, I.2.1: I do
not think it so necessary to maintain a principle from what question which
seems to be primary by nature, whether it is providence which takes care
of all things, or whether they have been made and are carried on
fortuitously. The author of this opinion is Democritus; its
establisher, Epicurus. Ibid., II.8.48: The world was
made by Divine Providence. … this was held as an acknowledged and
indubitable fact by those first seven wise men up to Socrates and Plato
even, until the mad Epicurus arose many ages after, and dared to deny that
which is most evident, with a zeal and desire of inventing new beliefs, so
that he might set up a system under his own name.
Lactantius, On the Anger of God, 9.4:
Later, however, Epicurus said that there was a god, indeed, because it was
necessary that there be in the world something outstanding, and
distinguished, and blessed, but still he held that there was no
providence; and, as a result of this, the world itself he regarded as
fashioned neither by any plan nor by design nor by art, but that the
nature of things had conglobated by certain minute and inseparable
seeds.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 27, p. 1123A:
Who is it that upsets accepted beliefs and comes in conflict with the
plainest facts? It is those who reject divination and deny that
there exists divine providence.
Ibid.,
30, p 1124E: When, therefore, will our life be that of a beast,
savage and without fellowship? When the laws are swept away, but the
arguments that summon us to a life of pleasure are left standing; when the
providence of heaven is not believed in ...
Ibid., 8, p 1111B: Thus he does away with
providence, but says he has left us with piety.
Plutarch,
Against the Stoics, 32, p. 1075E: The Stoics themselves make no
end of fuss crying woe and shame upon Epicurus for violating the
preconception of the gods because he does away with providence, for they
say that god is preconceived and conceived to be not only immortal and
blessed but also humane and protective and beneficent.
Origen, Against Celsus, I.13, [p. 12
Hoesch.]: … the Epicureans, who charge as superstitious those
who advocate Providence and put God in lordship of everything.
[Ibid., I.8 p. 8 (I.10 p. 10; III 75 p. 161; V.61 p.
279)]
Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life
impossible, 21, p. 1101C: {The Epicureans} malign Providence as if
she were some foul witch to frighten children with or an unrelenting Fury
of punishment hanging over our heads.
Lactantius, Divine Instituions, III.17.8:
Epicurus saw that adversities were always befalling the good: poverty,
labors, exiles, and loss of dear ones; that the evil on the contrary were
happy, were gaining in wealth, and were given honors. He saw that
innocence was not safe, that crimes were committed with impunity; he saw
that death raged without concern for morals, without any order or regard
for years, but that some reached old age, while others were snatched away
in childhood; some still robust reach the end, but others are cut off by
untimely deaths in the first flower of adolescence; and in wars the better
ones are conquered and die. It was especially disturbing, however,
that religious men were among the first to be afflicted with the more
serious evils, but upon those who either neglected the gods entirely or
who did not piously revere them, either lesser disadvantages came or none
at all. Often, also, the very temples were struck with
lighting. {Cf. Lucretius, II.1101} … 17.16: When,
therefore, Epicurus thought on these matters, as if influenced by the
iniquity of those things, for so it seemed to one not knowing the cause
and reason, he believed that there was no providence. When he had
persuaded himself of this theory, he even undertook that it should be
defended. Thus he cast himself into inextricable errors. For
if there is no providence, how was the world made so orderly, by its
arrangement? "There is no arrangement," he says, "for many things
have been done differently from the way they should have been." {Cf.
Lucretius, II.180 & V.195} And a godlike man discovered what he
should reprehend. If there were time to refute each single thing, I
would show easily that this man was neither wise nor sane. Likewise,
if there is no providence, how are bodies of animals so ordered that each
of the members disposed in a marvelous arrangement preserves its own
functions? He says: "The plan of providence has done nothing in the
procreating of animals. Neither were the eyes made for seeing, nor
the ears for hearing, nor the tongue for speaking, nor the feet for
walking, since these were in existence before there was seeing, hearing,
speaking, and walking. So these things were not produced for
use, but the use came from them. {Cf. Lucretius IV.822} If
there is no providence, why do the rains fall, grains rise, trees
flower? He says that "those are not for the sake of living things,
since they are of no profit to providence, but all things must happen of
their own accord." Whence, therefore, are they born, or how do all
things which happen come to be? He says that it is not the work of
providence. "There are seeds flying about through the void, and when
these have massed together at random among themselves, all things are born
and grow."
Lactantius, Divine Instituions, VII.5.3:
Therefore, just as God did not make the world for Himself, because He does
not need its advantages; but because of man who uses it, so He made man on
account of Himself. "What usefulness for god is there, that he
should make man for himself?" asks Epicurus. {Cf. Lucretius,
V.165} Surely, it was so that he might understand His works; that he
might be able to admire with his senses and declare with his voice the
providence of His arrangement, the plan of His accomplishment, and the
virtue of His completion of the work. The summation of all these
acts is that he worships God. 5.7: "What then," he says,
"does the worship on the part of man confer upon a god who is blessed and
in need of nothing? If he had so much regard for man that he made
the world on account of him, that he equipped him with wisdom, that he
made him master of living things, and that he loved him as a son, why did
he make him mortal and frail? Why did he put him whom he loved up
against all evils, when man should have been both happy, as though joined
and near to god, and everlasting, as he is himself, for the worshiping and
contemplation of whom he was made?"
Cf. Ibid., VII.3.13: The Stoics say that the
world was made for the sake of men. I hear this argument. But
Epicurus does not know the men themselves, or why, or who made
them.
Lactantius, The Works of God, 2.10: Wherefore,
I often marvel at the folly of those philosophers in the wake of Epicurus
who condemn the works of nature that they may show that the world is
formed and governed by no providence. They assign the origin of
things to inseparable and solid bodies from the chance combinations of
which all things come to be and have arisen. I pass by the things
pertaining to the world itself with which they find fault; in this they
are mad, even to the point of ridicule. I take up now that which
pertains to the subject which we have at hand. 3.1: They
complain that man is born more weak and frail than other animals.
For as soon as the others come forth from the womb, they are able at once
to stand erect and move about with delight, and they are at once able to
endure the air because they have come forth into the light fortified by
natural protections. Man, on the other hand, they claim, is cast
forth naked and unarmed as from a shipwreck and is hurled upon the
miseries of this life. he is able neither to move himself from the
place where he has been put forth, nor to seek the nourishment of milk,
nor to bear the brunt of weather. So they say that nature is not the
mother of the human race, but a stepmother. She has been very
liberal with the dumb beasts, but she has produced man in such a way –
needy and weak – and in want of all aid he can do nothing else by indicate
his condition by wailing and weeping, that is "as one for whom there
remains in life only the passage of evils." {Lucretius, V.227} …
3.6: "But the training of man," they say, "consists of great
struggle." 4.1: Then too, people complain that man is
subjected to sickness and untimely death. They are incensed, in
fact, that they have not been born gods. "Not at all," they will
say, "but from this we demonstrate that man was not made with any
providence, and it should have been otherwise." ... 4.3: They, mind
you, would have no man die except when he has completed a hundred years of
life. ... 4.12: Our opponents do not see the reason of the
outcomes, because they erred once in the very keypoints of this
discussion. For when divine providence was excluded from human
affairs, it necessarily followed that all things came into being of their
own accord. From this stage, they hit upon those impacts and chance
comings together of minute seeds, because they saw no origin of
things. And when they had cast themselves into these straits, then,
sheer necessity forced them to think that souls were born with their
bodies and were also extinguished with them. They had taken it for
granted that nothing was done by a divine mind. And this very point
they could not prove in any other way than by showing that there were some
things in which the determination of Providence seemed to limp. They
found fault, therefore, with those things in which Providence marvelously,
even exceptionally, expressed in divinity, namely, those things I have
referred to concerning sicknesses and untimely death, although they should
have considered, when they were assuming these things, what would be a
necessary consequence.
Lactantius, The Works of God, 6.7: Epicurus,
therefore, saw in the bodies of animals the skill of a divine plan, but,
in order to accomplish what he had rashly taken upon himself before, he
added another piece of nonsense in accordance with the former. He
said that eyes of the body were not created for seeing or the ears for
hearing or the feet for walking, since these parts were formed before
there was any use of seeing and hearing and walking, but that the
functions of all of these came about from them after they were produced.
{Cf. Lucretius IV.822} … What did you say, Epicurus? That the eyes
were not made to see? Why, then, do they see? "Afterwards," he says,
"their use appeared." For the purpose of seeing, therefore, they
were produced, inasmuch as they cannot do anything else by see.
Galen, On the Use of Parts, I.21, t. III [p. 74
K.]: At this point it is proper for us not to pass over the statements
of certain men who embrace the doctrines of Epicurus, the philosopher, and
Asclepiades, the physician, and who disagree with me on these matters. …
These men do not believe that it is because the tendons are thick that
they are powerful, or because they are slender that their actions are
weak, but think that actions are what they are as the necessary result of
their usefulness in life, and that the size of the tendons depends on how
much they are moved; that is, tendons that are exercised in all likelihood
thrive and grow thick, whereas those that lie idle get no nourishment and
waste away. Hence they say that Nature did not form the tendons as
they are because it was better for the tendons of powerful actions to be
strong and thick, and those of more feeble actions to be thin and weak –
for if so, apes would not have fingers like ours – but as I said, before,
they claim that parts which are exercised necessarily become thick because
they are will nourished, and pats that lie idle are poorly nourished and
become thin.
Lactantius, On the Anger of God, 13.19: You
see, then, that we need wisdom much more on account of evils. Unless
these had been set before us, we would not be rational animals. And
if this reasoning is true, then that argument of Epicurus is refuted.
"God," he says, "either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can
but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and
can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak – and this does not
apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful –
which is equally foreign to god’s nature. If he neither wants to nor
can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to
and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad
things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?" I know
that most of the philosophers who defend [divine] providence are commonly
shaken by this argument and against their wills are almost driven to admit
that god does not care, which is exactly what Epicurus is looking
for. But when the reasoning has been examined, we easily bring this
formidable argument to dissolution. … unless we first
recognize evil, we shall not be able to recognize the good. But
Epicurus did not see this, nor anyone else, that if evils are taken away,
wisdom is equally removed; nor do any vestiges of virtue remain in man,
the nature of which consists in sustaining and overcoming the bitterness
of evils.
Aetius, Doxography,
I.29.5 [p. 326.3 Diels]: Epicurus says that all things
happen by necessity, by choice, and/or by chance.
Cicero Academica II.30.97 (Lucullus): They
will not get Epicurus, who despises and laughs at the whole of dialectic,
to admit the validity of a proposition of the form "Hermarchus will either
be alive tomorrow or not alive," while dialecticians demand that every
disjunctive proposition of the form "either x or not-x" is
not only valid but even necessary, See how on his guard the man is
whom your friends think slow; for "If," he says, "I admit either of the
two to be necessary, it will follow that Hermarchus must either be alive
tomorrow or not alive; but as a matter of fact in the nature of things no
such necessity exists." Therefore let the dialecticians, that is,
Antiochus and the Stoics, do battle with this philosopher, for he
overthrows the whole of dialectic.
Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, I.25.70 (Cotta
speaking): Epicurus did the same sort of thing in his argument with
the logicians. It is an axiom of the traditional logic that in every
disjunctive proposition of the form "X either is … or is not
…" one of the alternatives must be true. He was afraid that if he
admitted anything of this sort, then in a proposition such as "Tomorrow
Epicurus will either be alive or he will not be alive," one or the other
of the statements would be a necessary truth: so to avoid this he
denied that there was any logical necessity at all in a disjunction
proposition, which is too stupid for words!
Cicero, On Fate, 10.21: Now here, first
of all, if it were my desire to agree with Epicurus and deny that every
proposition is either true or false, I would rather accept that blow than
agree that all things come about through fate; for the former opinion
gives some scope for discussion, but the latter is intolerable. So
Chrysippus strains every sinew in order to convince us that every
proposition is either true or false. Epicurus is afraid that, if he
concedes this, he will have to concede that whatever comes about does so
through fate; for if either the assertion or the denial is true from
eternity, it will also be certain – and if certain, also necessary.
[cf. Ibid., 9.19]
Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotle’s
"Physics, Beta-8," p. 198b 29: In cases where everything happened
as though it were for the sake of some goal, these creatures were
preserved because, although they were formed by chance, they were formed
as suitable compounds; but in other cases [the creature] perished and
still do perish, as Empedocles refers to "ox-like creatures with human
faces." ; [fr. 84u Ald.; p. 372.9 Diels]: The ancient natural
philosophers who said that material necessity determines the cause of
things which come to be, seem to hold this opinion, and among later
thinkers so do the Epicureans. Their error, as Alexander says, comes
from thinking that everything which comes to be for the sake of a goal
comes to be by intention and calculation, and observing that things which
come about by nature do not come to be in this way.
Plutarch, On the Contradictions of the Stoics, 32,
p 1050C: And Epicurus, for his part, twists about and exercises his
ingenuity in conniving to free and liberate voluntary action from the
necessity of eternal motion, in order not to leave vice immune to
blame.
Cicero, On Fate, 10.22: Epicurus, however,
thinks that the necessity of fate is avoided by the swerve of the
atom;
Ibid., 23: Epicurus introduced this theory
because he was afraid that, if the atom was always carried along by its
weight in a natural and necessary way, we would have no freedom, since our
mind would be moved in the way in which it was constrained by the movement
of the atoms. ... More acutely, Carneades taught that the Epicureans could
have maintained their position without this fictitious swerve. For,
seeing that [Epicurus] taught that there could be some voluntary movement
of the mind, it would have been better to defend that than to introduce
the swerve, especially as they cannot find a cause for it. ... For in
having admitted that there was no movement without a cause, they would not
be admitting that all things that came about die so through
antecedent causes. For (they could have said), there are no
external and antecedent causes of our will.
Aetius, Doxography,
I.29.6 [p. 326 Diels] (Plutarch, I.29.2; Stobaeus Anthology,
Physics 7.9): Epicurus
says that chance is a cause which is uncertain with respect to persons,
times, and places.
Galen, On the Use of Parts, VI.14 [p. 571-
K.]: I would not wish to tell how Nature corrected this fault {the
relative isolation of some muscles from the nervous system} by inventing a
clever device unless I first permitted the disciples of Asclepiades and
Epicurus to search out the way in which they would have conferred nerves
on these muscles if they were placed in the role of the Creator of
animals; for I am in the habit of doing this sometimes and of granting
them as many days or even months as they wish for deliberation. One
cannot do so, however, when writing a book and cannot compare the wisdom
of these gentlemen with Nature’s lack of skill or show how the Nature the
rebuke as being unskillful is so much more ingenious than they are with
all their cleverness that they are unable to conceive of the skill with
which she works. Hence, I find it necessary to tell now about the
devices Nature has employed in order to give the muscles in question their
share of nerves and motion.
Galen, On the
Construction of the Embryo, 6 t. IV [p. 688 K., Singer]: It will
certainly not be admitted that the substance of this ‘Nature’ {of the
cause and formation of the embryo} – whether that is something incorporeal
or corporeal – reaches this peak of intelligence by people who declare
that they cannot believe it in any way possible that this entity functions
in such skilful manner in the construction of the embryo. But we, on
hearing this assertion from Epicurus and from those who maintain that
everything happens without design, do not stand convinced of it.
Aetius, Doxography,
II.3- [p. 329 Diels] (Plutarch, II.3; Stobaeus Anthology, Physics
21.3): All the other
philosophers considered that the world is alive and governed by
providence. Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, by contrast, say
that neither is so; rather, it is made up of atoms, by nature and without
reason.
Galen, On the Use of Parts, XI.8 t. III, [p. 873
K.]: Moreover, would not one also marvel that the teeth are bound to
the phatnia with strong ligaments {the periosteum},
especially at the roots where the nerves are inserted, and marvel the more
if this is the work of chance, not skill? But the thing a person
would marvel at most of all is the ordered disposition of the teeth –
something that, even granting all the aforesaid good fortune of the
Epicurean atoms and the particles of Asclepiades, he would not allow,
balking and saying that it was the work of a just Governor and not of
fortunate motion.
Ibid., p. 874: Nevertheless, let us grant even
this to the most fortunate atoms, which those men say move without reason,
but which are in more danger of doing everything according to reason than
are Epicurus and Asclepiades.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, VII.3.23: Let
them make the case, if they can, either why [the world] was made in the
beginning or should afterwards be destroyed. Since Epicurus, or
Democritus, was not able to show this, he said that it was begun of its
own accord, seeds coming together here and there. And when these
were again loosened, separation and dissolution would follow.
Therefore, he corrupted what he had rightly seen, and completely
overturned the whole plan by his ignorance of the plan; and he reduced the
world and all things which go on in it to the likeness of a certain very
empty dream since no plan subsists in human affairs.
Flavius Claudius Julianus (Julian the Emperor),
Orations, V, "Hymn to the Mother of the Gods," [p. 162A
Pet.; 210.6 Hertlein]: We assert that matter exists and also
form, embodied in matter. But if no cause be assigned prior
to these two, we should be introducing, unconsciously, the Epicurean
doctrine. For if there be nothing of higher order than these two
principles, then spontaneous motion and chance brought them
together.
Dionysius the Episcopalian, by way of Eusebius of
Caesarea, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV 24, 1 p. 773D: How
are we to bear with them {the atomists} when they assert that the wise and
therefore beautiful works of creation are accidental coincidences?
Proclus Lycaeus, Commentary on Plato’s "Timeas,"
p. 80 midway: This axiom {of Aristotle, that each ‘particular’
is generated by a certain cause}, is entirely derided by the
Epicureans, who make the whole world, and the most divine of visible
natures, to be the work of chance.
Ibid., p. 81 below: Some doubt, however,
how Plato assumes as a thing acknowledged that there is a Demiurge
{i.e., a creator} of the world who
pursues a plan: for they say there is not a Demiurge of it who directs his
attention to that which is invariably the same. Any many of the
ancients indeed are the patrons of this assertion; particularly the
Epicureans, who entirely deny that there is Demiurge and, even generally,
a cause of all things.
Ibid., p. 82.5: Every body, as
[Aristotle] says, has limited power. Whence therefore does the
universe derive this infinite power, since it is not from chance, as
Epicurus says it is?
Cf., p. 108.33: It is intelligence, in fact, which is
creator and god – not
chance, as certain others maintain.
Ibid., p. 19.14: The atoms of Epicurus, when
encountering each other, succeed in forming a tidy universe more easily
than a bunch of names and words, all mixed together, would happen to form
coherent speech! {Cf., Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods
II.37.93; Plutarch, The Oracles at Delphi, 11 p.
399E}
Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life
impossible, 8, p. 1092B: Since, however, the aim of their theology
is to have no fear of God, but instead to be rid of our anxieties, I
should think that this condition is more securely in the possession of
creatures that have no faintest notion of God than of those who have been
taught to think of him as injuring no one.
Ibid., 1091F: It does not follow that if pain,
fear of the supernatural and terror about the hereafter are evil, escape
from them is godlike and bliss beyond compare.
Atticus, by way of Eusebius of Caesarea,
Preparation for the Gospel, XV 5 p. 800A: {And as to our
deriving any benefit from them while they remain in heaven,} ... in this
way, even according to Epicurus, men get help from the gods, "They say,
for instance, that the better emanations from them become the causes of
great blessings to those who partake of them..."
Philodemus,
On Piety, Vol. Herc. 2, II.76.1 [p. 106 Gomperz] {Obbink I.27.754}:
… he says that as being both the greatest thing, and that which as it
were excels in sovereignty, it possesses everything: for every wise man
holds pure and holy beliefs about the divine and has understood that this
nature is great and august. And it is particularly at festivals that
he, progressing to an understand of it, through having its name the whole
time on his lips, embraces with conviction more seriously ……
Philodemus, On Music, Vol. Herc.
1, I c.4,6: Now, these very important things may still be said at the
present: that the divine does not need any honor; for us, nevertheless,
it’s natural to honor it, above all, with pious convictions, even through
the rites of national tradition, each according to his proper part.
Philodemus, On the Life of the
Gods, Vol. Herc. 1, VI col. 1: ... to the gods, and he admires
their nature and their condition and tries to approach them and, so to
speak, yearns to touch them and to be together with them; and he calls
Sages "friends of the gods" and the gods "friends of Sages."
Philodemus, On Piety, Vol. Herc.
2, II.108.9 [p. 126 Gomperz] {Obbink I.31.880}: Again, he says, "let
us sacrifice to the gods piously and well, as is appropriate, and let us
do everything well according to the laws. But let us do so not
disturbing them at all with our opinions on the topic of those who are
best and most majestic; again, we say that it is even right to do this on
the basis of the opinion which I was discussing. For in this way, by Zeus,
it is possible for a mortal nature to live like Zeus, as it
appears."
Gnomolgion from the Parisinus codex, 1168, f.
115r- (Maxims of Epicurus): [=Maximus the Abbot,
Gnomologion, 14, p.180 Turic; t. II p. 579 Combef.]:
From Epicurus: "If the gods listened
to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are
always praying for evil against one another."
Dionysius the Episcopalian, On Nature, by way
of Eusebius of Caesarea, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV 26, 2
p. 779A: And moreover he {Epicurus} inserts
in his own books countless oaths and adjurations addressed to those who
are nothing to us, swearing continually "No, by Zeus," and "Yes, by Zeus,"
and adjuring his readers and opponents in argument "in the name of the
gods," having, I suppose, no fear himself of perjury nor trying to
frighten them, but uttering this as an empty, and false, and idle, and
unmeaning appendage to his speeches, just as he might hawk and spit, and
turn his face, and wave his hand. Such an unintelligible and empty piece
of acting on his part was his mentioning the name of the
gods.
Origen, Against
Celsus, VII.66, [p. 386 Hoesch.]: And the charge of folly applies not only to
those who offer prayers to images, but also to such as pretend to do so in
compliance with the example of the multitude: and to this class belong the
Peripatetic philosophers and the followers of Epicurus and Democritus. For
there is no falsehood or pretense in the soul which is possessed with true
piety towards God.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, II.97
(Aristippus): Theodorus was a man who utterly rejected the current
belief in the gods. And I have come across a book of his entitled
Of the Gods which is not contemptible. From that book, it is
said, Epicurus borrowed most of what he wrote on the subject.
Origen, Against
Celsus, VIII.45, [p. 419 Hoesch.]: For why may not our accounts be true, and those of
Celsus fables and fictions? At least, these latter were not believed
by the Greek philosophical schools, such as the followers of Democritus,
Epicurus, and Aristotle...
Cf. Ibid., I.43, p.
33: We shall therefore say,
in the first place, that if he who disbelieves the appearance of the Holy
Spirit in the form of a dove had been described as an Epicurean, or a
follower of Democritus, or a Peripatetic, the statement would have been in
keeping with the character of such an objector.
Plutarch, Against Colotes, 22, p. 1119D: What
is grave, Colotes, is not to refuse to call a man good or some
horsemen innumerable – it is
to refuse to call or believe a god a god. This is what you and your
company do, who will not admit that Zeus is "Author of the Race," Demeter
"Giver of Laws," or Poseidon "Guardian of Growth." It is this
disjoining of one word from another that works harm and fills your lives
with godless negligence and recklessness, when you tear away from the gods
the appellations attached to them and by that single act annihilate all
sacrifices, mysteries, processions and festivals.
Arrian, Diatribes of Epictetus, II.20.32:
Grateful men indeed and reverential. Why, if nothing else, at
least they eat bread every day, and yet have the audacity to say, "We do
not know if there is a Demeter, or a Kore, or a Pluto;" not mention that,
although they enjoy night and day, the changes of the year and the stars
and the sea and the earth and the cooperation of men, they are not moved
in the least by any one of these things, but look merely for a chance to
belch out their trivial "problem," and after thus exercising their stomach
to go off to the bath.
Aetius (Plutarch), Doxography, I.8 [p. 307
Diels]: In regards to demons and to heroes… Epicurus
doesn’t admit anything about any of
this.
Atticus, by way of Eusebius of Caesarea,
Preparation for the Gospel, XV 5.10 p. 800A: We seek a providence that has an interest for us, and
in such that man has no share who has admitted that neither demons, nor
heroes, nor any souls at all can live on hereafter.
Plutarch,
On the Obsolescence of Oracles, 19 p. 420B: As for the scoffing
and sneers of the Epicureans which they dare to employ against Providence
also, calling it nothing but a myth {cf. U369},
we need have no fear. We, on the other hand, say that their
"Infinity" is a myth, which among so many worlds has not one that is
directed by divine reason, but will have them all produced by spontaneous
generation and concretion. If there is need for laughter in
philosophy, we should laugh at those spirits, dumb, blind, and soulless,
which they shepherd for boundless cycles of years, and which make their
returning appearance everywhere, some floating away from the bodies of
persons still living, others from bodies long ago burned or decayed,
whereby these philosophers drag witlessness and obscurity into the study
of natural phenomena; but if anyone asserts that such demigods exists, not
only for physical reasons, but also for logical reasons, and that they
have the power of self-preservation and continued life for a long time,
then these philosophers feel much aggrieved.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers,
X.135: Elsewhere he rejects divination entirely, such as in the
Small Summary.
Aetius (Plutarch),
Doxography, V.1.2 [p. 415 Diels]: Xenophanes and Epicurus dismissed the art of
divination.
Cicero, On the Nature of
the Gods, II.65.162:
Prediction of future events is a favorite target for the wit of
Epicurus.
Cicero, On Divination, I.3.5: All the rest,
except for Epicurus, who spoke nonsense about the nature of the gods,
endorsed divination.
Ibid., II.17.40: Hence, while [Epicurus] takes
a roundabout way to destroy the gods, he does not hesitate to take a short
road to destroy divination. [cf. Ibid., I.39.87; 49.109;
II.17.39; 23.51]
Scholion on Aeschylus,
Prometheus, 624: Epicureanism is the doctrine that abolishes
divination; indeed, they say "Given that destiny rules all, you
<predicting a disgrace> have procured pain ahead of time; predicting
instead something positive, you have wiped out the pleasure of its
realization. On the other hand, they also say "That which must
happen, will still happen."
Origen, Against
Celsus, VII.3, [p. 343 Hoesch.]: In regard to the oracles here enumerated, we reply
that it would be possible for us to gather from the writings of Aristotle
and the Peripatetic school not a few things to overthrow the authority of
the Pythian and the other oracles. From Epicurus also, and his
followers, we could quote passages to show that even among the Greeks
themselves there were some who utterly discredited the oracles which were
recognized and admired throughout the whole of Greece.
Cf. Lucian, Alexander the
Oracle Monger, 17: It
was an occasion for a Democritus, nay, for an Epicurus or a Metrodorus,
perhaps, a man whose intelligence was steeled against such assaults by
skepticism and insight, one who, if he could not detect the precise
imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain that, though this
escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an impossibility.
Ibid.,
25: Well, it was war to
the knife between [Alexander] and Epicurus, and no wonder. What fitter
enemy for a charlatan who patronized miracles and hated truth, than the
thinker who had grasped the nature of things and was in solitary
possession of that truth? ... The unmitigated Epicurus, as he used to call
him, could not but be hateful to him, treating all such pretensions as
absurd and puerile.
Ibid.,
61: My object, dear
[Celsus], ... has been ... to strike a blow for Epicurus, that great man
whose holiness and divinity of nature were not shams, who alone had
and imparted true insight into the good, and who brought deliverance to
all that consorted with him.
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whose mind is easily inflamed to anger:
In that kind that is
first of all the lion
who breaks his chest with roaring, or who
anyhow
cannot contain the waves of anger within him.
There is
more chilly breath in the mind of a deer
and that quickly fans cold
air through its inner parts
which causes a trembling in every
limb.
The ox’s nature is one with the peaceful air;
The torch of
anger is never so lit in him
that he is covered by billowing clouds
of smoke;
Not ever is he shot through with icy fear:
He is
somewhere between the stag and the savage lion.
So it is with
men: however education
may give them similar polish, yet each
retains traces of his first nature in his mind.
It is not to be
thought that faults can be so eradicated
that one does not run too
quickly into anger,
another not take fright readily, while a
third
may take all things more easily than he should.
In many
other things there are great differences
between men in their nature
and behavior:
I cannot now explain the reasons for this,
nor find
names for the shapes of all the elements
from which these many
differences arise.
What, however, I think can be asserted
is that
the traces of original nature
which reason cannot efface, are very
few,
so that nothing can stop us living as the gods
do.
by words and
without weapons, will not such a one {Epicurus}
deserve to be
reckoned among deities?
which in tranquil peace pass untroubled days and a life
serene.
that the gods lead a life without
care...
And, if a miracle does happen in
Nature,
That petulant gods have nothing to do
With dispatching it
down from the heavenly rooftop