henomena, are to be
explained mechanically. Teleology is rigorously excluded. In any
particular case, however, Epicurus is not interested to know what
particular causes determine a phenomenon. It is enough for him to be
sure that it is wholly determined by mechanical causes, and that
supernatural agencies are excluded.

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The soul being composed of atoms which are scattered at death, a
future life is not to be thought of. But this is to be regarded as the
greatest blessing. It frees us from the fear of death, and the fear of
a hereafter. Death is not an evil. For if death is, we are not; if we
are, death is not. When death comes we shall not feel it, for is it
not the end of all feeling and consciousness? And there is no reason
to fear now what we know that we shall not feel when it comes.

Having thus disposed of the fear of retribution in a future life,
Epicurus proceeds to dispose of the fear of the interference of the
gods in this life. One might have expected that Epicurus would for
this purpose have embraced atheism. But he does not deny the existence
of the gods. On the contrary, he believed that there are innumerable
gods. They have the form of men, because that is the most beautiful of
all forms. They have distinctions in sex. They eat, drink, and talk
Greek. Their bodies are composed of a substance like light. But though
Epicurus allows them to exist, he is careful to disarm them, and to
rob them of their fears. They live in the interstellar spaces, an
immortal, calm, and blessed existence. They do not intervene in the
affairs of the world, because they are perfectly happy. Why should
they burden themselves with the control of that which nowise concerns
them? Theirs is the beatitude of a wholly untroubled joy.

"Immortal are they, clothed with powers,
Not to be comforted at all,
Lords over all the fruitless hours,
Too great to appease, too high to appal,
Too far to call." [Footnote 17]

[Footnote 17: A. C. Swinburne's _Felise_.]

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Man, therefore, freed from the fear of death and the fear of the gods,
has no duty save to live as happily as he can during his brief space
upon earth. We can quit the realm of physics with a light heart, and
turn to what alone truly matters, ethics, the consideration of how man
ought to conduct his life.

Ethics.

If the Stoics were the intellectual successors of the Cynics, the
Epicureans bear the same relation to the Cyrenaics. Like