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.Where the Cynics left off the Stoics began. Recognising simple self-preservation as the earliest interest and duty of man, they held that his ultimate and highest good was complete self-realisation, the development of that rational, social, and beneficent nature which distinguishes him from the lower21 animals.49 Here their teleological religion came in as a valuable sanction for their ethics. Epicttus, probably following older authorities, argues that self-love has purposely been made identical with sociability. The nature of an animal is to do all things for its own sake. Accordingly God has so ordered the nature of the rational animal that it cannot obtain any particular good without at the same time contributing to the common good. Because it is self-seeking it is not therefore unsocial.50 But if our happiness depends on external goods, then we shall begin to fight with one another for their possession:51 friends, father, country, the gods themselves, everything will, with good reason, be sacrificed to their attainment. And, regarding this as a self-evident absurdity, Epicttus concludes that our happiness must consist solely in a righteous will, which we know to have been the doctrine of his whole school.
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THREE:Fortunately, the dialectic method proved stronger than its own creators, and, once set going, introduced feelings and ex160periences of which they had never dreamed, within the horizon of philosophic consciousness. It was found that if women had much to learn, much also might be learned from them. Their wishes could not be taken into account without giving a greatly increased prominence in the guidance of conduct to such sentiments as fidelity, purity, and pity; and to that extent the religion which they helped to establish has, at least in principle, left no room for any further progress. On the other hand, it is only by reason that the more exclusively feminine impulses can be freed from their primitive narrowness and elevated into truly human emotions. Love, when left to itself, causes more pain than pleasure, for the words of the old idyl still remain true which associate it with jealousy as cruel as the grave; pity, without prevision, creates more suffering than it relieves; and blind fidelity is instinctively opposed even to the most beneficent changes. We are still suffering from the excessive preponderance which Catholicism gave to the ideas of women; but we need not listen to those who tell us that the varied experiences of humanity cannot be organised into a rational, consistent, self-supporting whole.Hetty checked the smile, for that might have grown hysterical. She had to brace herself to the effort, an easier task seeing that Gordon Bruce was uppermost in her mind. For him she would have dared and done anything. The woman who was at the bottom of this thing was his deadly enemy. To gain her secrets must help in Gordon's final victory.
THREE:Mamie had dropped into what looked like a sound sleep. Hetty lay on the bed with the light out. She had the switch to her hand, she could lie there with the chance that the fiend who had done this thing would come back. More than one person in the house had known that that medicine was an experiment. If Mamie died it would do Bruce incalculable harm. And she herself might suffer. A thousand horrors rose out of the darkness and mocked at Hetty.
THREE:The whole meaning and value of such excessively abstract propositions must lie in their application to the problems which they are employed to solve. Aristotle made at once too much and too little of his. Too muchfor he employed them to refute doctrines not really involving any logical inconsistencythe theory of Heracleitus, that everything is in motion; the theory of Anaxagoras, that everything was originally confused together; the theory of Protagoras, that man is the measure of all things. Too littlefor he admitted a sphere of possibilities where logical definition did not apply, and where subjects simultaneously possessed the capacity of taking on one or other of two contradictory attributes.CHAPTER XVIII. LAWRENCE IS MYSTERIOUS.
