[Sidenote: Imperfections of the Canonic of Epicurus,]

Under the title of Canonic Epicurus delivers his philosophical views;
they are, however, of a very superficial kind. He insists that our
sensuous impressions are the criterion of truth, and that even the
sensations of a lunatic and a dreamer are true. But, besides the
impressions of the moment, memory is also to be looked upon as a
criterion--memory, which is the basis of experience.

[Sidenote: and contradictions of his Physics.]

[Sidenote: His irreligion.]

In his Physics he adopts the Atomic theory of Democritus, though in many
respects it ill accords with his Ethics or Canonic; but so low is his
esteem of its value that he cares nothing for that. Though atoms and a
void are in their nature imperceptible to the senses, he acknowledges
their existence, asserting the occurrence of an infinite number of atoms
of different kinds in the infinite void, which, because of their weight,
precipitate themselves perpendicularly downward with an equable motion;
but some of them, through an unaccountable internal force, have deviated
from their perpendicular path, and, sticking together after their
collision, have given rise to the world. Not much better than these
vague puerilities are his notions about the size of the sun, the nature
of eclipses, and other astronomical phenomena; but he justifies his
contradictions and superficiality by asserting that it is altogether
useless for a man to know such things, and that the sage ought to give
himself no trouble about them. As to the soul, he says that it must be
of a material or corporeal nature, for this simple reason, that there is
nothing incorporeal but a vacuum; he inclines to the belief that it is
a rarefied body, easily movable, and somewhat of the nature of a vapour;
he divides it into four activities, corresponding to the four elements
entering into its constitution; and that, so far from being immortal, it
is decomposed into its integral atoms, dying when the body dies. With
the atomic doctrines of Democritus, Epicurus adopts the notions of that
philosopher respecting sensation, to the effect that eidola or images
are sloughed off from all external objects, and find access to the brain
through the eye. In his theology he admits, under the circumstances we
have mentioned, anthropomorphic gods, pretending to account for their
origin in the chance concourse of atoms, and suggesting that they
display their quietism and