THREE:A plain man might find it difficult to understand how such extravagances could be deliberately propounded by the greatest intellect that Athens ever produced, except on the principle, dear to mediocrity, that genius is but little removed from madness, and that philosophical genius resembles it more nearly than any other. And his surprise would become much greater on learning that the best and wisest men of all ages have looked up with reverence to Plato; that thinkers of the most opposite schools have resorted to him for instruction and stimulation; that his writings have never been more attentively studied than in our own agean age which has witnessed the destruction of so many illusive reputations; and that the foremost of English educators has used all his influence to promote the better understanding and appreciation of Plato as a prime element in academic culturean influence now extended far beyond the limits of his own university through that translation of the Platonic Dialogues which is too well known to need any commendation on our part, but which we may mention as one of the principal authorities used for the present study, together with the work of a German scholar, his obligations to whom Prof. Jowett has acknowledged with characteristic grace.114
THREE:The Epicurean philosophy of external Nature was used as an instrument for destroying the uncomfortable belief in Divine Providence. The Epicurean philosophy of mind was used to destroy the still more uncomfortable belief in mans immortality. As opinions then stood, the task was a comparatively easy one. In our discussion of Stoicism, we observed that the spiritualism of Plato and Aristotle was far before their age, and was not accepted or even understood by their countrymen for a long time to come. Moreover, Aristotle did not agree with his master in thinking that the personal eternity of the soul followed from its immateriality. The belief of the Stoics in a prolongation of individual existence until the destruction of all created things by fire, was, even in that very limited form, inconsistent with their avowed materialism, and had absolutely no influence on their practical89 convictions. Thus Platos arguments were alone worth considering. For Epicurus, the whole question was virtually settled by the principle, which he held in common with the Stoics, that nothing exists but matter, its attributes, and its relations. He accepted, it is true, the duality of soul and body, agreeing, in this respect also, with the Stoics and the earlier physicists; and the familiar antithesis of flesh and spirit is a survival of his favourite phraseology;173 but this very term flesh was employed to cover the assumption that the body to which he applied it differed not in substance but in composition from its animating principle. The latter, a rather complex aggregate, consists proximately of four distinct elements, imagined, apparently, for the purpose of explaining its various functions, and, in the last analysis, of very fine and mobile atoms.174 When so much had been granted, it naturally followed that the soul was only held together by the body, and was immediately dissolved on being separated from ita conclusion still further strengthened by the manifest dependence of psychic on corporeal activities throughout the period of their joint existence. Thus all terrors arising from the apprehension of future torments were summarily dispelled.
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