29 Oct The Philosophy of Epicurus
In days of legend, the renowned city of Athens first showed suffering men the use of corn-producing crop, and showed them a new model of life based on laws. Athens was also the first to bestow on man the sweetest solaces of existence, by giving birth to a man who showed himself gifted with great genius, who poured forth all knowledge from his truth-telling mouth, and whose glory, on account of his godlike discoveries, is spread abroad among men and reaches high as heaven even now that he is dead.
For this man saw that the things which men’s needs demand for life had all been provided, and that life, so far as was possible, was placed on a sure footing. He saw that men were great in riches and honors and glory, and that they swelled with pride in the high reputation of their children. Yet he saw also that all these riches did not quiet men’s hearts, and that their troubles plagued their lives with no respite, and that they were constrained to complain of their great distress. Seeing these things, he perceived that the vessel itself caused the corruption, and that by its corruption all the things that were gathered into it, however salutary, were spoiled. He saw that this was partly because the vessel was leaky and full of holes, so that it could never by any means be filled full, and partly because the vessel was befouled, so to speak, with a nauseous flavor that contaminated everything which it took in.
He therefore cleansed men’s heart with true precepts, and showed the limit to lust and fear, and he explained the chief good toward which we all strive and the direct course by which we might arrive at it. He showed too what evils Nature allows to exist by chance or force in mortal affairs, and from which gates you must sally out to battle each one. Then he also proved that the melancholy tumbling billows of care that plague the hearts of man for the most part need not arise. For even as children are flurried and dread all things in the thick darkness, so we in the daylight fear at times things not a bit more to be dreaded than what children imagine and shudder at in the dark, and fancy to be real.
This terror and darkness of mind must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the study of the law of Nature.
Lucretius: On The Nature of Things
Epicurus
