The Difference Between
the Democritean and Epicurean
Philosophy of Nature.
In Two Parts - Part Two
with an Appendix

Chapter Two: The Qualities of the Atom

It contradicts the concept of the atom that the atom should have properties, because, as Epicurus says, every property is variable but the atoms do not change.(1) Nevertheless it is a necessary consequence to attribute properties to atoms. Indeed, the many atoms of repulsion separated by sensuous space must necessarily be immediately different from one another and from their pure essence, i. e., they must possess qualities.

In the following analysis I therefore take no account of the assertion made by Schneider and Nürnberger that “Epicurus attributed no qualities to the atoms, paragraphs 44 and 54 of the letter to Herodotus in Diogenes Laertius have been interpolated”. If this were truly so, how is one to invalidate the evidence of Lucretius, Plutarch, and indeed of all other authors who speak of Epicurus? Moreover, Diogenes Laertius mentions the qualities of the atom not in two, but in ten paragraphs: Nos. 42, 43, 44, 54, 55, 56, 57,

58, 59 and 61. The grounds these critics give for their contention — that “they did not know how to reconcile the qualities of the atom with its concept"-are very shallow.” [25] Spinoza says that ignorance is no argument. [Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Prop. 36, Appendix] If one was to delete the passages in the ancients which he does not understand, how quickly would we have a tabula rasa!

Through the qualities the atom acquires an existence which contradicts its concept; it is assumed as an externalised being different from its essence. It is this contradiction which mainly interests Epicurus. Hence, as soon as he posits a property and thus draws the consequence of the material nature of the atom, he counterposits at the same time determinations which again destroy this property in its own sphere and validate instead the concept of the atom. He therefore determines all properties in such a way that they contradict themselves. Democritus, on the other hand, nowhere considers the properties in relation to the atom itself, nor does he objectify the contradiction between concept and existence which is inherent in them. His whole interest lies rather in representing the qualities in relation to concrete nature, which is to be formed out of them. To him they are merely hypotheses to explain the plurality . which makes its appearance. It follows that the concept of the atom has nothing to do with them.

In order to prove our assertion it is first of all necessary to elucidate the sources which here seem to contradict one another.

In the treatise De placitis philosophorum we read:

“Epicurus asserts that the atoms have three qualities: size, shape, weight. Democritus only assumed two: size and shape. Epicurus added weight as the third."(2)

The same passage is repeated word for word in the Praeparatio evangelica of Eusebius.(3)

It is confirmed by the testimony of Simplicius(4) and Philoponus,(5) according to whom Democritus attributed to the atoms only difference in size and shape. Directly contrary stands Aristotle who, in the book De generations et corruptions, attributes to the atoms of Democritus difference in weight.(6) In another passage (in the first book of De caelo) Aristotle leaves undecided the question of whether or not Democritus ascribed weight to the atoms, for he says:

"Thus none of the bodies will be absolutely light if they all have weight; but if all have lightness, none will be heavy."(7)

In his Geschichte der alten Philosophie, Ritter, basing himself on the authority of Aristotle, rejects the assertions of Plutarch, Eusebius and Stobaeus.(8) He does not consider the testimony of Simplicius and Philoponus.

Let us see whether these passages are really so contradictory. In the passage cited, Aristotle does not speak of the qualities of the atom ex professo.[as someone who knows their profession] On the other hand, we read in the eighth book of the Metaphysics:

"Democritus assumes three differences between atoms. For the underlying body is one and the same with respect to matter, but it differs in rhysmos, meaning shape, in trope, meaning position, or in diathige, meaning arrangement."(9)

This much can be immediately concluded from this passage . Weight is not mentioned as a property of the Democritean atoms. The fragmented pieces of matter, kept apart by the void, must have special forms, and these are quite externally perceived from the observation of space. This emerges even more clearly from the following passage of Aristotle:

"Leucippus and his companion Democritus hold that the elements are the full and the void.... These are the basis of being as matter. just as those who assume only one fundamental substance generate all other things by its affections, assuming rarity and density as the principles of qualities-in the same way Leucippus and Democritus also teach that the differences between the atoms are the causes of the other things, for the underlying being differs only by rhysmos, diathige and trope .... That is, A differs from N in shape, AN from NA in arrangement, Z from N in position.”(10)

It is evident from this quotation that Democritus considers the properties of the atom only in relation to the formation of the differences in the world of appearances, and not in relation to the atom itself. it follows further that Democritus does not single out weight as an essential property of the atoms. For him weight is taken for granted, since everything corporeal has weight. In the same way, according to him, even size is not a basic quality. It is an accidental determination which is already given to the atoms together with figure. Only the diversity of the figures is of interest to Democritus, since nothing more is contained in shape, position and arrangement. Size, shape and weight, by being combined as they are by Epicurus, are differences which the atom in itself possesses. Shape, position and arrangement are differences which the atom possesses in relation to something else. Whereas we find in Democritus mere hypothetical determinations to explain the world of appearances, in Epicurus the consequence of the principle itself will be presented to us. We shall therefore discuss in detail his determinations of the properties of the atom.

First of all, the atoms have size.(11) And then again, size is also negated. That is to say, they do not have every size;(12) but only some differences in size among them must be admitted.(13) Indeed, only the negation of the large can be ascribed to them, the small,(14) — also not the minimum, for this would be merely a spatial determination, but the infinitely small, which expresses the contradiction.(15) Rosinius, in his notes on the fragments of Epicurus; therefore translates one passage incorrectly and completely ignores the other, when he says:

“In this way Epicurus tried to make plausible the tenuity of the atoms of incredible smallness, by saying, according to Laertius, X, 44, that they have no size.”(16)

Now I shall not concern myself with the fact that, according to Eusebius, Epicurus was the first to ascribe infinite smallness to the atoms,(17) whereas Democritus also assumed atoms of the largest size — Stobaeus says even as large as the world.(18)

This, on the one hand, contradicts the testimony of Aristotle.(19) On the other hand, Eusebius, or rather the Alexandrian bishop Dionysius, from whom he takes excerpts, contradicts himself; for in the same book we read that Democritus assumed as the principles of nature indivisible bodies perceptible through reason.(20) This much at least is clear: Democritus was not aware of the contradiction; he did not pay attention to it, whereas it was the chief interest of Epicurus.

The second property of the Epicurean atoms is shape.(21) But this determination also contradicts the concept of the atom, and its opposite must be assumed. Abstract individuality is abstract identity-to-itself and therefore without shape. The differences in the shape of the atoms cannot, therefore, be determined(22) although they are not absolutely infinite.(23) It is rather by a definite and finite number of shapes that the atoms are differentiated from one another.(24) From this it is obvious that there are not as many different figures as there are atoms,(25) while Democritus assumes an infinite number of figures.(26) If every atom had a particular shape, then there would have to be atoms of infinite — size(27); for they would have an infinite difference, the difference from all the others, in themselves [an sich], like the monads of Leibniz. This leads to the inversion of Leibniz's assertion that no two things are identical, and there are infinitely many atoms of the same shape. This obviously negates again the determination of the shape, because a shape which no longer differs from another is not shape. (28)

Finally, it is highly important that Epicurus makes weight the third quality,(29) for in the centre of gravity matter possesses the ideal individuality which forms a principal determination of the atom. Hence, once the atoms are brought into the realm of presentation, they must also have weight.

But weight also directly contradicts the concept of the atom, because it is the individuality of matter as an ideal point which lies outside matter. But the atom is itself this individuality, as it were the centre of gravity presented as an individual existence. Weight therefore exists for Epicurus only as different weight, and the atoms are themselves substantial centres of gravity like the heavenly bodies. If this is applied to the concrete, then the obvious result is the fact which old Brucker finds so amazing(30) and of which Lucretius assures us, (31) namely, that the earth has no centre towards which everything strives, and that there are no antipodes. Furthermore since weight belongs only to that atom which is different from the other, hence externalised and endowed with properties, then it is clear that where the atoms are not thought of as many in their differentiation from one another, but only in relation to the void, the determination of weight ceases to exist. The atoms, as different as they may be in mass and shape, move therefore with equal speed in empty space.(32) Epicurus thus applies weight only in regard to repulsion and the resulting compositions. This has led to the assertions that only the conglomerations of the atoms are endowed with weight, but not the atoms themselves.(33)

Gassendi already praises Epicurus because, led purely by reason, he anticipated the experimentally demonstrated fact that all bodies, although very different in weight and mass, have the same velocity when they fall from above to below.(34)

The consideration of the properties of the atoms leads us therefore to the same result as the consideration of the declination, namely, that Epicurus objectifies the contradiction in the concept of the atom between essence and existence. He thus gave us the science of atomistics. In Democritus, on the other hand, there is no realisation of the principle itself. He only maintains the material side and offers hypotheses for the benefit of empirical observation.

Chapter Three:
Atomoi archai [indivisible principles] and atoma stoicheia [indivisible elements]


Schaubach, in his treatise on the astronomical concepts of Epicurus, to which we have already referred, makes the following assertion:

"Epicurus, as well as Aristotle, has made a distinction between principles [Anfänge] (atomoi archai, Diogenes Laertius, X, 41) and elements (atoma stoicheia, Diogenes Laertius, X, 86). The former are the atoms recognisable only through reason and do not occupy space.(1) These are called atoms not because they are the smallest bodies, but because they are indivisible in space. According to these conceptions one might think that Epicurus did not attribute any spatial properties to the atom.(2) But in the letter to Herodotus (Diogenes Laertius, X, 44, 54) he gives the atoms not only weight but also size and shape.... I therefore consider these atoms as belonging to the second species, those that have developed out of the former but can still be regarded again as elementary particles of the bodies.(3)

Let us look more closely at the passage which Schaubach cites from Diogenes Laertius. It reads: For instance such propositions that the All consists of bodies and non-corporeal nature, or that there are indivisible elements and other such statements.

Epicurus here teaches Pythocles, to whom he is writing, that the teaching about meteors differs from all other doctrines in physics, for example, that everything is either body or void, that there are indivisible basic elements. It is obvious that there is here no reason to assume that it is a question of a second species of atoms. (4) It may perhaps seem that the disjunction between ‘The All consisting of bodies and non-corporeal bodies’ and ‘that there are indivisible elements establishes a difference between soma and aroma stoicheia, so that we might say that soma stands for atoms of the first kind in contrast to the atoma stoicheia. But this is quite out of the question. Soma means the corporeal in contrast to the void, which for this reason is called asomaton’. (5) The term soma therefore includes the atoms as well as compound bodies. For example, in the letter to Herodotus we read: ‘The All is body ... if there were not that which we call void, space and non-corporeal nature.... Among bodies some are compound, others the things out of which the compounds are made, and these latter are indivisible and unchangeable.... Consequently these first principles are necessarily of indivisible corporeal nature’ (6)

Epicurus is thus speaking in the passage cited first of the corporeal in general, in contrast to the void, and then of the corporeal in particular, the atoms.

Schaubach’s reference to Aristotle proves just as little. True the difference between arche and stoicheion, which the Stoics particularly insist upon,(7) can indeed also be found in Aristotle,(8) but he nonetheless assumes the identity of the two expressions.(9) He even teaches explicitly that stoicheion denotes primarily the atom.(10) Leucippus and Democritus likewise call the Fullness and void. (11)

In Lucretius, in Epicurus’ letters as quoted by Diogenes Laertius, in the Colotes of Plutarch,(12) in Sextus Empiricus,(13) the properties are ascribed to the atoms themselves, and for this reason they were determined as transcending themselves [sich selbst aufhebend].

However, if it is thought an antinomy that bodies perceptible only to reason should be endowed with spatial qualities, then it is an even greater antinomy that the spatial qualities themselves can be perceived only through the intellect.(14)

Finally, Schaubach, in further support of his view, cites the following passage from Stobaeus: ‘Epicurus [states] that the primary (bodies) should be simple, those bodies compounded from them however should have weight’

To this passage from Stobaeus could be added the following, in which atoma stoicheia are mentioned as a particular kind of atom: (Plutarch.) De placit. philosoph., I, 246 and 249, and Stob., Physical Selections, I, p. 5.(15) For the rest it is by no means claimed in these passages that the original atoms are without size, shape and weight. On the contrary, weight alone is mentioned as a distinctive characteristic of the atomoi archai and aroma stoicheia . But we observed already in the preceding chapter that weight is applied only in regard to repulsion and the conglomerations arising therefrom.

With the invention of the atoma stoicheia we also gain nothing. It is just as difficult to pass from the atomoi archai to the aroma stoicheia as it is to ascribe properties directly to them. Nevertheless I do not deny such a differentiation entirely. I only deny that there are two different and fixed kinds of atoms. They are rather different determinations of one and the same kind.

Before discussing this difference I would like to call attention to a procedure typical of Epicurus. He likes to assume the different determinations of a concept as different independent existences. just as his principle is the atom, so is the manner of his cognition itself atomistic. Every moment of the development is at once.. transformed in his hands into a fixed reality which, so to say, is separated from its relations to other things by empty space; every determination assumes the form of isolated individuality.

This procedure may be made clear by the following example.

The infinite, to apeiron, or the infinitio, as Cicero translates it, is occasionally used by Epicurus as a particular nature; and precisely in the same passages in which we find the stoicheia described as a fixed fundamental substance, we also find the apeiron turned into something independent.(16)

However, according to Epicurus’ own definitions, the infinite is neither a particular substance nor something outside of the atoms and the void, but rather an accidental determination of the void. We find in fact three meanings of apeiron.

First, apeiron expresses for Epicurus a quality common to the atoms and the void. It means in this sense the infinitude of the All, which is infinite by virtue of the infinite multiplicity of the atoms, by virtue of the infinite size of the void.(17)

Secondly, apeiria is the multiplicity of the atoms, so that not the atom, but the infinitely many atoms are placed in opposition to the void.(18)

Finally, if we may draw from Democritus a conclusion about Epicurus, apeiron also means exactly the opposite, the unlimited void, which is placed in opposition to the atom determined in itself and limited by itself.(19)

In all these meanings -and they are the only ones, even the only possible ones for atomistics-the infinite is a mere determination of the atoms and of the void. Nevertheless, it is singled out as a particular existence, even set up as a specific nature alongside the principles whose determination it expresses.

Therefore, even if Epicurus himself thus fixed the determination by which the atom becomes stoicheion as an independent original kind of atom-which, by the way, is not the case judging by the historical superiority of one source over the other, even if Metrodorus [26] the disciple of Epicurus-as it seems more probable to us — was the first to change the differentiated determination into a differentiated existence(20); we must ascribe to the subjective mode of atomistic consciousness the changing of separate moments into something independently existing. The granting of the form of existence to different determinations has not resulted in understanding of their difference.

For Democritus the atom means only stoicheion a material substrate. The distinction between the atom as arche and stoicheion as principle and foundation belongs to Epicurus. Its importance will be clear from what follows.

The contradiction between existence and essence, between matter and form, which is inherent in the concept of the atom, emerges in the individual atom itself once it is endowed with qualities. Through the quality the atom is alienated from its concept, but at the same time is perfected in its construction. It is from repulsion and the ensuing conglomerations of the qualified .atoms that the world of appearance now emerges.

In this transition from the world of essence to the world of appearance, the contradiction in the concept of the atom clearly reaches its harshest realisation. For the atom is conceptually the absolute, essential form of nature. This absolute form has now been degraded to absolute matter, to the formless substrate of the world of appearance.

The atoms are, it is true, the substance of nature,(21) out of which everything emerges, into which everything dissolves(22); but the continuous annihilation of the world of appearance comes to no result. New appearances are formed; but the atom itself always remains at the bottom as the foundations(23) Thus insofar as the atom is considered as pure concept, its existence is empty space, annihilated nature. Insofar as it proceeds to reality, it sinks down to the material basis which, as the bearer of a world of manifold relations, never exists but in forms which are indifferent and external to it. This is a necessary consequence, since the atom, presupposed as abstractly individual and complete, cannot actualise itself as the idealising and pervading power of this manifold.

Abstract individuality is freedom from being, not freedom in being. It cannot shine in the light of being. This is an element in which this individuality loses its character and becomes material. For this reason the atom does not enter into the daylight of appearances(24) or it sinks down to the material basis when it does enter it. The atom as such only exists in the void. The death of nature has thus become its immortal substance; and Lucretius correctly exclaims:

When death immortal claims his mortal life (De verum nature III, 869).

But the fact that Epicurus grasps the contradiction at this its highest peak and objectives it, and therefore distinguishes the atom where it becomes the basis of appearance as stoicheion from the atom as it exists in the void as arche — this constitutes his philosophical difference from Democritus, who only objectives the one moment. This is the same distinction which in the world of essence, in the realm of the atoms and of the void, separates Epicurus from Democritus. However, since only the atom with qualities is the complete one, since the world of appearance can only emerge from the atom which is complete and alienated from its concept, Epicurus expresses this by stating that only the qualified atom becomes stoicheion or only the atomon stoicheion is endowed with qualities.

Part II: Chapter 4 Time

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(1) Ametocha kenou [Stobaeus, Physical Selections, I, p. 306] does not at all mean “do not fill space”, but “have no part of the void”, it is the same as what at another place Diogenes Laertius says: “though they are without distinction of parts”. In the same way we must explain this expression in (Plutarch,) On the Sentiments of the Philosophers, I, p. 236, and Simplicius, p. 405.

(2) This also is a wrong consequence. That which cannot be divided in space is not therefore outside of space or without spatial relation.

(3) Schaubach, 1. c., [p]p. [549-550.

(4) Diogenes Laertius, X, 44.

(5) ibid., X, 67. But it is impossible to conceive anything that is incorporeal as self-existent, except empty space.

(6) Ibid, X, 39, 40 and 41.

(7) Ibid., VII, [Ch.] 1 [134]. There is a difference, according to them (i. e., the Stoics), between principles and elements; the former being without generation or destruction, whereas the elements are destroyed when all things are resolved into fire.

(8) Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, 1 and 3.

(9) Comp. 1. C.

(10) Ibid., V, 3[1014 31-34; 1014, 5-6]. Similarly those who speak of the elements of bodies mean the things into which bodies are ultimately divided, while they are no longer divided into other things differing in kind; ... for which reason what is small and simple and indivisible is called an element.

(11) Ibid., I, 4.

(12) Diogenes Laertius, X, 54.

Plutarch, Reply to Colotes, 1110. ... that this view is as inseparable from Epicurus’ theories as shape and weight are by their (i. e., the Epicureans) own assertion inseparable from the atom.

(13) Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors, p. 420.

(14) Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV, p. 773. ... Epicurus ... [assumed that] they [i. e., the atoms] cannot be perceived.... P. 749. ... but they [i. e., the atoms] have their own shape perceivable by reason.

(15) (Plutarch,) On the Sentiments of the Philosophers, I, p. 246 [71. The same (Epicurus) asserts that there are four other natural beings which are immortal-of this sort are atoms, the vacuum, the infinite and the similar parts; and these last are- [called] homoeomerias and likewise elements. 12. Epicurus [thinks that] bodies are not to be limited, but the first bodies are simple bodies, and all those composed of them possess weight....

Stobacus, Physical Selections, 1, p. 52. Metrodorus, the teacher of Epicurus, [says] ... that the causes, however, are the atoms and elements. P. 5. Epicurus [assumes] ... four substances essentially indestructible: the atoms, the void, the infinite and the similar parts, and these are called homoeomerias and elements.

(16) Comp. .1C.,

(17) Cicero, On the Highest Goods and Evils, I, vi. ... that which he follows the atoms, the void ... infinity itself, that they [i. e., the Epicureans] call apeiria

Diogenes Laertius, X, 41. Again, the sum of things is infinite.... Moreover, the sum of things is unlimited both by reason of the multitude of the atoms and the -tent of the void.

(18) Plutarch, Reply to Colotes, 1 1 14. Now look at the sort of first principles [you

People adopt] to account for generation: infinity and the void -the void incapable of action, incapable of being acted upon, bodiless; the infinite disordered, irrational,
-incapable of formulation, disrupting and confounding itself because of a multiplicity that defies control or limitation.

(19) Simplicius, 1. c., P. 488.

(20) (Plutarch,) On the Sentiments of the Philosophers, p. 239 [I, 5]. But Metrodorus says ... that the number of worlds is infinite, and this can be seen from the fact that the number of causes is infinite.... But the causes are the atoms or the elements. Stobacus, physical Selections, I, p. 52. Metrodorus, the teacher of Epicurus, [says] ... that the causes, however, are the atoms and elements.

(21) Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 1, 820-821. For the same elements

compose sky, sea and lands, rivers and sun, crops, trees and animals....

Diogenes Laertius, X, 39. Moreover, the sum total of things was always such as it is now, and such it will ever remain. For there is nothing into which it can change. For outside the sum of things there is nothing which could enter into it and bring about the change.... The whole of being consists of bodies.... 41. These elements are indivisible and unchangeable, and necessarily so, if things are not all to be destroyed and pass into non-existence, but are to be strong enough to endure when the composite bodies are broken up, because they possess a solid nature and are incapable of being anywhere or anyhow dissolved.

(22) Diogenes Laertius, X, 73. ... and all things are again dissolved, some faster, some slower, some through the action of one set of causes, others through the action of others. 74. It is clear, then, that he [Epicurus] also makes the worlds perishable, as their parts are subject to change.

Lucretius, V, 109-1 10. May reason rather than the event itself convince you that the whole world can collapse with one ear-splitting crack!

Ibid., V, 373-375. it follows, then, that the doorway of death is not barred to sky and sun and earth and the sea’s unfathomed floods. It lies tremendously open and confronts them with a yawning chasm.

(23) Simplicius, 1. c., p. 425.

(24) Lucretius, II, 796. ... and the atoms do not emerge into the light....

Chapter Four Time

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Since in the atom matter, as pure relationship to itself, is exempted from all relativity and changeability, it follows immediately that time has to be excluded from the concept of the atom, the world of essence. For matter is eternal and independent only insofar as in it abstraction is made of the time moment. On this Democritus and Epicurus agree. But they differ in regard to the manner in which time, removed from the world of atoms, is now determined, whither it is transferred.

For Democritus time has neither significance nor necessity for the system. He explains time in order to negate it [aufzuheben]. It is determined as eternal, in order that — as Aristotle(1) and Simplicius(2) state — the emergence and passing away, hence the temporal, is removed from the atoms. Time itself offers proof that not everything need have an origin, a moment of beginning.

There is something more profound to be recognised in this notion. The imagining intellect that does not grasp the independence of substance inquires into its becoming in time. It fails to grasp that by making substance temporal it also makes time substantial and thus negates its concept, because time made absolute is no longer temporal.

But this solution is unsatisfactory from another point of view. Time excluded from the world of essence is transferred into the self-consciousness of the philosophising subject but does not make any contact with the world itself.

Quite otherwise with Epicurus. Time, excluded from the world of essence, becomes for him the absolute form of appearance. That is to say, time is determined as accidens of the accidens. The accidens is the change of substance in general. The accidens of the accidens is the change as reflecting in itself, the change as change. This pure form of the world of appearance is time.(3)

Composition is the merely passive form of concrete nature, time its active form. If I consider composition in terms of its being, then the atom exists beyond it, in the void, in the imagination. If I consider the atom in terms of its concept, then composition either does not exist at all or exists only in the subjective imagination. For composition is a relationship in which the atoms, independent, self-enclosed, as it were uninterested in one another, have likewise no relationship to one another. Time, in contrast, the change of the finite to the extent that change is posited as change, is just as much the real form which separates appearance from essence, and posits it as appearance, while leading it back into essence. Composition expresses merely the materiality of the atoms as well as of nature emerging from them. Time, in contrast, is in the world of appearance what the concept of the atom is in the world of essence, namely, the abstraction, destruction and reduction of all determined being into being-for-itself.

The following consequences can be drawn from these observations. First, Epicurus makes the contradiction between matter and form the characteristic of the nature of appearance, which thus becomes the counter-image of the nature of essence, the atom. This is done by time being opposed to space, the active form of appearance to the passive form. Second, Epicurus was the first to grasp appearance as appearance, that is, as alienation of the essence, activating itself in its reality as such an alienation. On the other hand, for Democritus, who considers composition as the only form of the nature of appearance, appearance does not by itself show that it is appearance, something different from essence. Thus when appearance is considered in terms of its existence, essence becomes totally blended [konfundiert] with it; when considered in terms of its concept, essence is totally separated from existence, so that it descends to the level of subjective semblance. The composition behaves indifferently and materially towards its essential foundations. Time, on the other hand, is the fire of essence, eternally consuming appearance, and stamping it with dependence and non-essence. Finally, since according to Epicurus time is change as change, the reflection of appearance in itself, the nature of appearance is justly posited as objective, sensation is justly made the real criterion of concrete nature, although the atom, its foundation, is only perceived through reason.

Indeed, time being the abstract form of sensation, according to the atomism of Epicurean consciousness the necessity arises for it to be fixed as a nature having a separate existence within nature. The changeability of the sensuous world, its change as change, this reflection of appearance in itself which constitutes the concept of time, has its separate existence in conscious sensuousness. Human sensuousness is therefore embodied time, the existing reflection of the sensuous world in itself.

Just as this follows immediately from the definition of the concept of time in Epicurus, so it can also be quite definitely demonstrated in detail. In the letter from Epicurus to Herodotus (4) time is so defined that it emerges when the accidentals of bodies, perceived by the senses, are thought of as accidentals. Sensuous perception reflected in itself is thus here the source of time and time itself. Hence time cannot be defined by analogy nor can anything else be said about it, but it is necessary to keep firmly to the Enargie itself; for sensuous perception reflected in itself is time itself, and there is no going beyond it.

On the other hand, in Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus and Stobaeus, (5) the accidens of the accidens, change reflected in itself, is defined as time. The reflection of the accidentals in sensuous perception and their reflection in themselves are hence posited as one and the same.

Because of this interconnection between time and sensuousness, the eidola [images], equally found in Democritus, also acquire a more consistent status.

The eidola are the forms of natural bodies which, as surfaces, as it were detach themselves like skins and transfer these bodies into appearance. (6) These forms of the things stream constantly forth from them and penetrate into the senses and in precisely this-way allow the objects to appear. Thus in hearing nature hears itself, in smelling it smells itself, in seeing it sees itself. (7) Human sensuousness is therefore the medium in which natural processes are reflected as in a focus and ignited into the light of appearance.

In Democritus this is an inconsistency, since appearance is only subjective; in Epicurus it is a necessary consequence, since sensuousness is the reflection of the world of appearance in itself, its embodied time.

Finally, the interconnection between sensuousness and time is revealed in such a way that the temporal character of things and their appearance to the senses are posited as intrinsically One. For it is precisely because bodies appear to the senses that they pass away. (8) Indeed, the eidola, by constantly separating themselves from the bodies and flowing into the senses, by having their sensuous existence outside themselves as another nature, by not returning into themselves, that is, out of the diremption, dissolve and pass away.

Therefore: just as the atom is nothing hut the natural form of abstract, individual self-consciousness, so sensuous nature is only the objectified, empirical, individual self-consciousness, and this is the sensuous. Hence the senses are the only criteria in concrete nature, just as abstract reason is the only criterion in the world of the atoms.

Part II: Chapter 5 The Meteors

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(1) Aristotle, Physics, VIII, 1 [25l, 15-17]. ... in fact, it is just this that enables Democritus to show that all things cannot have had a becoming; for time, he says, is uncreated.

(2) Simplicius, 1. c., p. 426. Democritus was so strongly convinced that time is eternal, that, in order to show that not all things have an origin, he considered it evident that time has no origin.

(3) Lucretius, I, 459, 462-463. Similarly, time by itself does not exist.... It must not be claimed that anyone can sense time by itself apart from the movement of things or their restful immobility.

Ibid., 1, 479-482. So you may see that events cannot be said to be by themselves like matter or in the same sense as space. Rather, you should describe them as accidents of matter, or of the place in which things happen.

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors, p. 420. Here Epicurus calls time accident of accidents (syrnptoma symptomaton).

Stobaeus, Physical Selections, 1, 8. Epicurus [calls time] an accident, i. e., something that accompanies motions.

(4) Diogenes Laertius,. X, 72. There is another thing which we must consider carefully. We must not investigate time as we do the other accidents which we investigate in a subject, namely, by referring them to the preconceptions envisaged in our minds; but we must take into account the plain fact itself, in virtue of which we speak of time as long or short, linking to it in intimate connection this attribute of duration. We need not adopt any fresh terms as preferable, but should employ the usual expression about it. Nor need we predicate anything else of time, as if this something else contained the same essence as is contained in the proper meaning of the word "time" (for this also is done by some). We must chiefly reflect upon that to which we attach this peculiar character of time, and by which we measure it. 73. No further proof is required: we have only to reflect that we attach the attribute of time to days and nights and their parts, and likewise to feelings of pleasure and pain and to neutral states, to states of movement and states of rest, conceiving a peculiar accident of these to be this very characteristic which we express by the word "time". He [i. e., Epicurus] says this both in the second book On Nature and in the Larger Epitome.

(5) Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 1. c.

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors, p. 420 [X, 238, 240, 241, '2441. ... accident of accidents.... For this reason Epicurus compels us to think that an existing body consists of non-existing bodies, since he says that we have to think of the body as a composition of size and shape, resistance and weight.... Hence there must be accidents for time to exist, but for accidents to be present themselves there must be an underlying circumstance. However, if no underlying circumstance exists, then there can be no time.... When this therefore is time, and Epicurus says that accidents are the nature [of time], then time, according to Epicurus, must be its own accident. Comp. Stobaeus, 1. c.

(6) Diogenes Laertius, X, 46. Again, there are outlines or films, which are of the same shape as solid bodies, but of a thinness far exceeding that of any object that we see.... To these films we give the name of "images" or "idols 48. ... the production of the images is as quick as thought ... though no diminution of the bodies is observed, because other particles take their place. And those given off retain the position and arrangement which their atoms had when they formed part of the solid bodies....

Lucretius, IV, 30-32... images" of things, a sort of outer skin perpetually peeled off the surface of objects and flying about this way and that through the air.

Ibid., IV, 51-52. ... because each particular floating image wears the aspect and form of the object from whose body it has emanated.

(7) Diogenes Laertius, X, 49. We must also consider that it is by the entrance of something coming from external objects that we see their shapes and think of them. For external things would not stamp on us their own nature ... so well as by the entrance into our eyes or minds, to whichever their size is suitable, of certain films coming from the things themselves, these films or outlines being of the same colour and shape as the external things themselves.... 50. and this again explains why they present the appearance of a single continuous object and retain the mutual interconnection which they had with the object.... 52. Again, hearing takes place when a current passes from the object, whether person or thing, which emits voice or sound or noise, or produces the sensation of hearing in any way whatever. This current is broken up into homogeneous particles, which at the same time preserve a certain mutual connection.... 53. ... Again, we must believe that smelling, like hearing, would produce no sensation, were there not particles conveyed from the object which are of the proper sort for exciting the organ of smelling.

(8) Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, II, 1145-1146. It is natural, therefore, that everything should perish when it is thinned out...

Chapter Five The Meteors

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Ingenious as Democritus' astronomical opinions may be for his time, they present no philosophical interest. They neither go beyond the domain of empirical reflection, nor have they any more definite intrinsic connection with the atomic doctrine.

By contrast, Epicurus' theory of the celestial bodies and the processes connected with them, or his theory of meteors (in this one term he includes it all), stands in opposition not only to Democritus, but to the opinion of Greek philosophy as a whole. Worship of the celestial bodies is a cult practised by all Greek philosophers. The system of the celestial bodies is the first naive and nature-determined existence of true reason [Vernunft]. The same position is taken by Greek self-consciousness in the domain of the mind [Geist]. It is the solar system of the mind. The Greek philosophers therefore worshipped their own mind in the celestial bodies.

Anaxagoras himself, who first gave a physical explanation of heaven and in this way brought it down to earth in a sense different from that of Socrates, answered, when asked for what purpose he was born: For the observation of the sun, the moon and the heaven.(1) Xenophanes, however, looked up at heaven and said: The One is God.(2) The religious attitude of the Pythagoreans, Plato and Aristotle to the heavenly-bodies is well known.

Indeed, Epicurus opposes the outlook of the whole Greek people.

Aristotle says it often seems that the concept provides evidence for the phenomena and the phenomena for the concept. Thus all men have an idea of the gods and assign the highest region to the divine, barbarians as well as Hellenes, and in general all who believe in the existence of the gods, evidently connecting the immortal with the immortal, for otherwise it is impossible. Thus if the divine exists-as it actually does-then what we say about the substance of the celestial bodies is also correct. But this corresponds also to sensuous perception, insofar as human conviction is concerned. For throughout the time that has passed, according to the memories handed down from people to people, nothing seems to have changed, either in heaven as a whole, or in any part of it. Even the name seems to have been handed down from the ancients to the present time, and they assumed that which we also say. For not once, not twice, but an infinite number of times have the same views come down to us. For since the primary body is something different, apart from the earth and the fire and the air and the water, they called the highest region "ether", from thein aei [to run always]. giving it the by-name: eternal time.(3) But the ancients assigned heaven and the highest region to the gods, because it alone is immortal. But the present teaching testifies that it is indestructible, ungenerated and not subject to any mortal ills. In this way our concepts correspond at the same time to intimations about God.(4) But that there is one heaven is evident. It is a tradition handed down from our ancestors and the ancients and surviving in the form of the myths of later generations, that the heavenly bodies are gods and that the divine encompasses all nature. The rest was added in mythical form for the belief of the masses, as useful for the laws and for life. Thus the myths make the gods resemble man and some of the other living creatures, and invent similar things connected with and related to this. If we discard the additions and hold fast only to the first, namely, the belief that the primary substances are gods, then we must consider this as having been divinely revealed, and we must hold that after all sorts of art and philosophy had, in one way or another, been invented and lost again, these opinions came down to us like relics.(5)

Epicurus, on the contrary, says:

To all this we must add that the greatest confusion of the human soul arises from the fact that men hold that the heavenly bodies are blessed and indestructible and have conflicting desires and actions, and conceive suspicion according to the myths.(6) As to the meteors, we must believe that motion and position and eclipse and rising and setting and related phenomena do not originate in them owing to One ruling and ordering or having ordered, One who at the same time is supposed to possess all bliss and indestructibility. For actions do not accord with bliss, but they occur due to causes most closely related to weakness, fear and need. Nor is it to be supposed that some fire-like bodies endowed with bliss arbitrarily submit to these motions. If one does not agree with this, then this contradiction itself produces the greatest confusion in men's souls.(7)

Aristotle reproached the ancients for their belief that heaven required the support of Atlas(8) who: 'In the places of the West stands, supporting with his shoulders the pillar of heaven and earth (Aeschylus, Prometh., 348 ff.). Epicurus, on the other hand, blames those who believe that man needs heaven. He finds the Atlas by whom heaven is supported in human stupidity and superstition. Stupidity and superstition also are Titans.

The letter of Epicurus to Pythocles deals entirely with the theory of the heavenly bodies, with the exception of the last section, which closes the letter with ethical precepts. And appropriately,' ethical precepts are appended to the teaching on the meteors. For Epicurus this theory is a matter of conscience. Our study will therefore be based mainly on this letter to Pythocles. We shall supplement it from the letter to Herodotus, to which Epicurus himself refers in writing to Pythocles.(9)

First, it must not be supposed that any other goal but ataraxy and firm assurance can be attained from knowledge of the meteors, either taken as a whole or in part, just as from the other natural sciences.(10) Our life does not need speculation and empty hypotheses, but that we should live without confusion. just as it is the business of the study of nature in general to investigate the foundations of what is most important: so happiness lies also in knowledge of the meteors. In and for itself the theory of setting and rising, of position and eclipse, contains no particular grounds for happiness; only terror possesses those who see these things without understanding their nature and their principal causes.(11) So far, only the precedence which the theory of the meteors is supposed to have over other sciences has been denied; and this theory has been placed on the same level as others.

But the theory of the meteors is also specifically different in comparison both with the method of ethics and with other physical problems, for example, the existence of indivisible elements and the like, where only one explanation corresponds to the phenomena. For this is not the case with the meteors.(12) Their origin has no simple cause, and they have more than one category of essence corresponding to the phenomena. For the study of nature cannot be pursued in accordance with empty axioms and laws. (13) It is constantly repeated that the meteors are not to be explained haplos (simply, absolutely), but poilachos (in many ways).

This also holds for the rising and setting of the sun and the moon,(14) the waxing and waning of the moon,(15) the semblance of a face on the moon,(16) the changes of duration of day and night,(17) and other celestial phenomena.

How then is it to be explained?

Every explanation is sufficient. Only the myth must be removed. it will be removed when we observe the phenomena and draw conclusions from them concerning the invisible.(18) We must hold fast to the appearance, the sensation. Hence analogy must be applied. In this way we can explain fear away and free ourselves from it, by showing the causes of meteors and other things that are always happening and causing the utmost alarm to other people.(19)

The great number of explanations, the multitude of possibilities, should not only tranquillise our minds and remove causes for fear, but also at the same time negate in the heavenly bodies their very unity, the absolute law that is always equal to itself. These heavenly bodies may behave sometimes in one way, sometimes in another; this possibility conforming to no law is the characteristic of their reality; everything in them is declared to be impermanent and unstable.(20) The multitude of the explanations should at the same time remove [aufheben] the unity of the object.

Thus while Aristotle, in agreement with other Greek philosophers, considers the heavenly bodies to be eternal and immortal, because they always behave in the same way; while he even ascribes to them an element of their own, higher and not subjected to the force of gravity; Epicurus in contrast claims the direct opposite. He reasons that the theory of the meteors is specifically distinguished from all other physical doctrine in this respect, that in the meteors everything occurs in a multiple and unregulated way, that everything in them is to be explained by a manifold of indefinitely many causes. Yes, in wrath and passionate violence he rejects the opposite opinion, and declares that those who adhere to only one method of explanation to the exclusion of all others, those who accept something Unique, hence Eternal and Divine in the meteors, fall victim to idle explanation-making and to the slavish artifices of the astrologers; they overstep the bounds of the study of nature and throw themselves into the arms of myth; they try to achieve the impossible, and exert themselves over absurdities; they do not even realise where ataraxy itself becomes endangered. Their chatter is to be despised.(21) We must avoid the prejudice that investigation into these subjects cannot be sufficiently thorough and subtle if it aims only at our own ataraxy and bliss.(22) On the contrary, it is an absolute law that nothing that can disturb ataraxy, that can cause danger, can belong to an indestructible and eternal nature. Consciousness must understand that this is an absolute law.(23)

Hence Epicurus concludes: Since eternity of the heavenly bodies would disturb the ataraxy of self-consciousness, it is a necessary, a stringent consequence that they are not eternal.

But how can we understand this peculiar view of Epicurus?

All authors who have written on Epicurean philosophy have presented this teaching as incompatible with all the rest of physics, with the atomic doctrine. The fight against the Stoics, against superstition, against astrology is taken as sufficient grounds.

And we have seen that Epicurus himself distinguishes the method applied in the theory of the meteors from the method of the rest of physics. But in which definition of his principle can the necessity of this distinction be found? How does the idea occur to him?

And he fights not only against astrology, but also against astronomy itself, against eternal law and rationality in the heavenly system. Finally, opposition to the Stoics explains nothing. Their superstition and their whole point of view had already been refuted when the heavenly bodies were declared to be accidental complexes of atoms and their processes accidental motions of the atoms. Thereby their eternal nature was destroyed, a consequence which Democritus was content to draw from these premises.(24) In fact, their very being was disposed of [aufgehoben].(25) The atomist therefore was in no need of a new method.

But this is not yet the full difficulty. An even more perplexing antinomy appears.

The atom is matter in the form of independence, of individuality, as it were the representative of weight. But the heavenly bodies are the supreme realisation of weight. In them all antinomics between form and matter, between concept and existence, which constituted the development of the atom, are resolved; in them all required determinations are realised. The heavenly bodies are eternal and unchangeable; they have their centre of gravity in, not outside, themselves. Their only action is motion, and, separated by empty space, they swerve from the straight line, and form a system of repulsion and attraction while at the same time preserving their own independence and also, finally, generating time out of themselves as the form of their appearance. The heavenly bodies are therefore the atoms become real. In them matter has received in itself individuality. Here Epicurus must therefore have glimpsed the highest existence of his principle, the peak and culminating point of his system. He asserted that he assumed the atom so that nature would be provided with immortal foundations. He alleged that he was concerned with the substantial individuality of matter. But when he comes upon the reality of his nature (and he knows no other 'nature but the mechanical), when he comes upon independent, indestructible matter in the heavenly bodies whose eternity and unchangeability were proved by the belief of the people, the judgment of philosophy, the evidence of the senses: then his one and only desire is to pull it down into earthly transience. He turns vehemently against those who worship an independent nature containing in itself the quality of individuality. This is his most glaring contradiction.

Hence Epicurus feels that here his previous categories break down, that the method of his theory becomes different. And the profoundest knowledge achieved by his system, its most thorough consistency, is that he is aware of this and expresses it consciously.

Indeed, we have seen how the whole Epicurean philosophy of nature is pervaded with the contradiction between essence and existence, between form and matter. But this contradiction is resolved in the heavenly bodies, the conflicting moments are reconciled. In the celestial system matter has received form into itself, has taken up the individuality into itself and has thus achieved its independence. But at this point it ceases to be affirmation of abstract self-consciousness. In the world of the atoms, as in the world of appearance, form struggled against matter; the one determination transcended the other and precisely in this contradiction abstract-individual self-consciousness felt its nature objectified. The abstract form, which, in the shape of matter, fought against abstract matter, was this self-consciousness itself. But now, when matter has reconciled itself with the form and has been rendered self-sufficient, individual self-consciousness emerges from its pupation, proclaims itself the true principle and opposes nature, which has become independent.

All this can also be expressed from another point of view in the following way: Matter, having received into itself individuality, form, as is the case with the heavenly bodies, has ceased to be abstract individuality; it has become concrete individuality, universality. In the meteors, therefore, abstract-individual self-consciousness is met by its contradiction, shining in its materialised form, the universal which has become existence and nature. Hence it recognises in the meteors its deadly enemy, and it ascribes to them, as Epicurus does, all the anxiety and confusion of men. Indeed, the anxiety and dissolution of the abstract-individual is precisely the universal. Here therefore Epicurus' true principle, abstract-individual selfconsciousness, can no longer be concealed. It steps out from its hiding place and, freed from material mummery, it seeks to destroy the reality of nature which has become independent by an explanation according to abstract possibility: what is possible may also be otherwise, the opposite of what is possible is also possible. Hence the polemic against those who explain the heavenly bodies haplos [simply, absolutely] that is, in one particular way, for the One is the Necessary and that which is Independent-in-itself.

Thus as long as nature as atom and appearance expresses individual self-consciousness and its contradiction, the subjectivity of self-consciousness appears only in the form of matter itself. Where, on the other hand, it becomes independent, it reflects itself in itself, confronts matter in its own shape as independent form.

It could have been said from the beginning that where Epicurus' principle becomes reality it will cease to have reality for him. For if individual self-consciousness were posited in reality under the determination of nature, or nature under the determination of individual consciousness, then 'its determination, that is, its existence, would have ceased, because only the universal in free distinction from itself can know at the same time its own affirmation.

In the theory of meteors therefore appears the soul of the Epicurean philosophy of nature. Nothing is eternal which destroys the ataraxy of individual self-consciousness. The heavenly bodies disturb its ataraxy, its equanimity with itself, because they are the existing universality, because in them nature has become independent.

Thus the principle of Epicurean philosophy is not the gastrology of Archestratus as Chrysippus believes(26) but the absoluteness and freedom of self-consciousness - even if self-consciousness is only conceived in the form of individuality.

If abstract-individual self-consciousness is posited as an absolute principle, then, indeed, all true and real science is done away with [aufgehoben] inasmuch as individuality does not rule within the nature of things themselves. But then, too, everything collapses that is transcendentally related to human consciousness and therefore belongs to the imagining mind. On the other hand, if that self-consciousness which knows itself only in the form of abstract universality is raised to an absolute principle, then the door is opened wide to superstitious and unfree mysticism. Stoic philosophy provides the historic proof of this. Abstract-universal self-consciousness has, indeed, the intrinsic urge to affirm itself in the things themselves in which it can only affirm itself by negating them.

Epicurus is therefore the greatest representative of Greek Enlightenment, and he deserves the praise of Lucretius(27):

When human life lay grovelling in all men's sight, crushed to the earth under the dead weight of religion whose grim features loured menacingly upon mortals from the four quarters of the sky, a man of Greece was first to raise mortal eyes in defiance, first to stand erect and brave the challenge. Fables of the gods did not crush him, nor the lightning flash and growling menace of the sky.... Therefore religion in its turn lies crushed beneath his feet, and we by his triumph are lifted level with the skies.

The difference between Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of nature which we established at the end of the general section has been elaborated and confirmed in all domains of nature. In Epicurus, therefore, atomistics with all its contradictions has been carried through and completed as the natural science of selfconsciousness. This self-consciousness under the form of abstract individuality is an absolute principle. Epicurus has thus carried atomistics to its final conclusion, which is its dissolution and conscious opposition to the universal. For Democritus, on the other hand, the atom is only the general objective expression of the empirical investigation of nature as a whole. Hence the atom remains for him a pure and abstract category, a hypothesis, the result of experience, not its active [energisches] principle. This hypothesis remains therefore without realisation, just as it plays no further part in determining the real investigation of nature.

Appendix Plutarch vs. Epicurus

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(1) Diogenes Laertius, 11, 3, 10. b

(2) Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, 5 [986 , 25]. The One is God.

(3) Aristotle, On the Heavens, 1, 3 [270b, 4-24]. Our theory seems to confirm experience and to be confirmed by it. For all men have some conception of the nature of gods, and all who believe in the existence of gods at all, whether barbarian or Greek, agree in allotting the highest place to the deity, surely because they suppose that immortal is linked with immortal and regard any other supposition as inconceivable. If then there is, as there certainly is, anything divine, what we have just said about the primary bodily substance was well said. The mere least with human evidence of the senses is enough to convince us of. this at certainty. For. in the whole range of time past, so far as our inherited records reach, no change appears to have taken place either in the whole scheme of the outermost heaven or in any of its proper parts. The common name, too, which has been handed down from our distant ancestors even to our own day, seems to show that they conceived of it in the fashion which we have been expressing. 'Me same ideas, one must believe, recur to men's minds not once or twice but again and again. And so, implying that the Primary body is something else beyond earth, fire, air and water, they gave to the highest place a name of its own, aither, derived from the fact that it "runs always" for an eternity of time.

(4) Ibid., II, 1 [284a, 11-15, 284, 2-5]. The ancients gave the Gods the heaven or upper place., 'as being alone immortal; and our present argument testifies that it is indestructible and ungenerated. Further, it is unaffected by any mortal discomfort ... it is not only more appropriate so to conceive of its eternity, but also on this hypothesis alone are we able to advance a theory consistent with popular divinations of the divine nature.

(5) Aristotle, Metaphysics, XI (XII), 8 [1074 31, 38-1074, 3]. Evidently there is but one heaven.... Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to their posterity a tradition, in the form of a myth, that these bodies are gods and that the divine encloses the whole of nature. The rest of the tradition has been added later in a mythical form with a view to the persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian expediency; they say these gods are in the form of men or like some of the other animals, and they say other things consequent on and similar to those which we have mentioned. But if one were to separate the first point from these additions and take it alone that they thought the first substances to he gods, one must regard this as an inspired utterance; and reflect that, while probably each art and each science has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished, these opinions, with others, have been preserved until the present like relics of the ancient treasure.

(6) Diogenes Laertius, X, 81. There is yet one more point to seize, namely, that the greatest anxiety of the human mind arises through the belief that the heavenly bodies are blessed and indestructible, and that at the same time they have volitions and actions ... inconsistent with this belief ... apprehending some evil because of the myths....

(7) Ibid., X, 76.. Nay more, we are bound to believe that in the sky revolution, solstices, eclipses, risings and settings, and the like, take place without the ministration or command, either now or in the future, of any being who at the same time enjoys perfect bliss along with immortality. 77. For troubles and anxieties ... do not accord with bliss, but always imply weakness and fear and dependence upon one's neighbours. Nor, again, must we hold that things which are no more than globular masses of fire, being at the same time endowed with bliss, assume these motions at will.... Otherwise such inconsistency will of itself suffice to produce the worst disturbance in our minds.

(8) Aristotle, On the Heavens, II, 1 [284 ' 18-201. Hence we must not believe the old tale which. says that the world needs some Atlas to keep it safe.

(9) Diogenes Laertius, X, 85. So you (i. e., Pythocles) will do well to take and learn them and get them up quickly along with the short epitome in my letter to Herodotus.

(10) Ibid., X, 85. In the first place, remember that, like everything else, knowledge of celestial phenomena, whether taken along with other things or in isolation, as well as of the other sciences, has no other end in view than peace of mind and firm conviction.

Ibid., X, 82. But mental tranquillity means being released from all these troubles and cherishing a continual remembrance of the highest and most important truths.

(11) Ibid., X, 87. For our life has no need now of ideologies and false opinions; our one need is untroubled existence.

Ibid., X, 78. Further, we must hold that to arrive at accurate knowledge of the cause of things of most moment is the business of natural science, and that happiness depends on this (viz. on . the knowledge of celestial phenomena).

Ibid., X, 79. There is nothing in the knowledge of risings and settings and solstices and eclipses and all kindred subjects that contributes to our happiness; but those who are well informed about such matters and yet are ignorant what the heavenly bodies really are, and what are the most important causes of phenomena, feel quite as much fear as those who have no such special information-nay, perhaps even greater fear.

(12) Ibid., X, 86. We do not seek to wrest by force what is impossible, nor to understand all matters equally well, nor make our treatment always as clear as when we discuss human life or explain the principles of ethics in general ... for instance, that the whole of being consists of bodies and intangible nature, or that the ultimate elements of things are indivisible, or any other proposition which ad-its only one explanation of the phenomena to be possible. But this is not the case with celestial phenomena.

(13) Ibid., X, 86. These at any rate admit of manifold causes for their occurrence and manifold accounts, none of them contradictory of sensation, of their nature.

For in the study of nature [physiology] we must not conform to empty assumptions and arbitrary laws, but follow the promptings of the facts.

(14) Ibid., X, 92.

(15) Ibid., X, 94.

(16) Ibid., X, 95 and 96.

(17) Ibid., X, 98.

(18) Ibid., X, 104. And [says Epicurus] there are several other ways in which thunderbolts may possibly he produced. Exclusion of myth is the sole condition necessary; and it will he excluded, if one properly attends to the facts and hence draws inferences to interpret what is obscure.

(19) Ibid., X, 80. When, therefore, we investigate the causes of celestial phenomena, as of all that is unknown, we must take into account the variety of ways in which analogous occurrences happen within our experience.

Ibid., X, 82. But mental tranquillity means being released from all these troubles.... Hence we must attend to present feelings and sense perceptions, whether those of mankind in general or those peculiar to the individual, and also attend to all the clear evidence available, as given by each of the standards of truth. For by studying them we shall rightly trace to its cause and banish the source of disturbance and dread, accounting for celestial phenomena and for all other things which from time to time befall us and cause the utmost alarm to the rest of mankind.

Ibid., X, 87. Some phenomena within our experience afford evidence by which we may interpret what goes on in the heavens. We see how the former really take place, but not how the celestial phenomena take place, for their occurrence may possibly be due to a variety of causes. [88.1 However, we must observe each fact as presented, and further separate from it all the facts presented along with it, the occurrence of which from various causes is not contradicted by facts within our experience.

(20) Ibid., X, 78. Further, we must recognise on such points as this plurality of causes or contingency....

Ibid., X, 86. These [celestial phenomena] at any rate admit of manifold causes for their occurrence....

Ibid., X, 87. All things go on uninterruptedly, if all be explained by the method of plurality of causes ... so soon as we duly understand what may he plausibly alleged respecting them....

(21) Ibid., X, 98. Whereas those who adopt only one explanation are in conflict with the facts and are utterly mistaken as to the way in which man can attain knowledge.

Ibid., X, 113. To assign a single cause for these effects when the facts suggest several causes is madness and a strange inconsistency; yet it is done by adherents of rash astrology, who assign meaningless causes for the stars whenever they persist in saddling the divinity with burdensome tasks.

Ibid., X, 97. And further, let the regularity of their orbits he explained in the same way as certain ordinary incidents within our own experience; the divine nature must not on any account be adduced to explain this, but must he kept free from the task and in perfect bliss. Unless this be done, the whole study of celestial phenomena will be in vain, as indeed it has proved to he with some who did not lay hold of a possible method, but fell into the folly of supposing that these events happen in one single way only and of rejecting all the others which are possible, suffering themselves to be carried into the realm of the unintelligible, and being unable to take a comprehensive view of the facts which must be taken as clues to the rest.

Ibid., X, 93. ... unmoved by the servile artifices of the astrologers.

Ibid., X, 87. ... we clearly fall away from the study of nature altogether and tumble into myth.

Ibid., X, 80. Therefore we must ... investigate the causes of celestial phenomena, as of all that is unknown, [... 1 while as for those who do not recognise the difference between what is or comes about from a single cause and that which may he the effect of any one of several causes, overlooking the fact that the objects are only seen at a distance, and are moreover ignorant of the conditions that render, or do not render, peace of mind impossible-all such persons we must treat with contempt.

(22) Ibid., X, 80. We must not suppose that our treatment of these matters fails of accuracy, so far as it is needful to ensure our tranquillity and happiness.

(23) Ibid., X, 78. ... but we must hold that nothing suggestive of conflict or disquiet is compatible with an immortal and blessed nature. And the mind can grasp the absolute truth of this.

(24) Comp. Aristotle, On the Heavens, 1, 10.

(25) Ibid., 1, 10 [279b, 25-261. Suppose that the world was formed out of elements which were formerly otherwise conditioned than as they are now. Then ... if their condition was always so and could not have been otherwise, the world could never have come into being.

(26) Athenacus, Banquet of the Learned, III, 104. ... One ... must with good reason approve the noble Chrysippus for his shrewd comprehension of Epicurus' "Nature", and his remark that the very centre of the Epicurean philosophy is the Gastrology of Archestratus....

(27) Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 1, 63-70, 79-80.

Critique of Plutarch's Polemic against the Theology of Epicurus I. The Relationship of Man to God
1. Fear and the Being Beyond
(1) Plutarch, That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible (published by Xylander), 1 I, 1100. ... one point, that of pleasure they derive from these views, has, I should say, been dealt with (i. e., from Epicurus): ... their theory ... does remove a certain superstitious fear; but it allows no joy and delight to conic to us from the gods.

(2) [Holbach,] System of Nature (London, 1770), I, P. 9. [32] The idea of such powerful agencies has always been associated with that of terror; their name always reminded man of his own calamities or those of his fathers; we tremble today because our ancestors have trembled for thousands of years. The idea of Divinity always awakens in us distressing ideas ... our present fears and lugubrious thoughts ... rise every time before our mind when we hear his name. Comp. p. 79. When man bases morality on the not too moral character of a God who changes his behaviour, then he can never know what he owes to God nor what he owes to himself or to others. Nothing therefore could be more dangerous than to persuade man that a being superior to nature exists, a being before whom reason must be silent and to whom man must sacrifice all to receive happiness.

(3) Plutarch, 1. c., 1101. For since they fear him [God] as a ruler mild to the good

and hating the wicked, by this one fear, which keeps them from doing wrong, they are freed from the many that attend on crime, and since they keep their viciousness within themselves, where it gradually as it were dies down, they are less tormented than those who make free with it and venture on overt acts, only to be filled at once with terror and regret.

2. Cult and the Individual
(4) Plutarch, 1. c., 1101. No, wherever it [i. e., the soul] believes and conceives most firmly that the god is present, there more than anywhere else it puts away all feelings of pain, of fear and of worry, and gives itself up so far to pleasure that it indulges in a playful and merry inebriation, in amatory matters....

(5) Ibid., 1. c.

(6) Ibid., 1. c., 1102. For it is not the abundance of wine or the roast meats that cheer the heart at festivals, but good hope and the belief in the benign presence of the god and his gracious acceptance of what is done.

3. Providence and the Degraded God
(7) Plutarch, 1. c., 1102. ... how great their pleasures are, since their beliefs about God are purified from error: that he is our guide to all blessings, the father of everything honourable, and that he may no more do than suffer anything base. For he is good, and in none that is good arises envy about aught or fear or anger or hatred; for it is as much the function of heat to chill instead of warm as it is of good to harm. By its nature anger is farthest removed from favour, wrath from goodwill and from love of man and kindliness, hostility and the spreading of terror; for the one set belong to virtue and power, the other to weakness and vice. Consequently it is not true that Heaven is prey to feelings of anger and favour; rather, because it is God's nature to bestow favour and lend aid, it is not his nature to be angry and do harm....

(8) Ibid. Do you think that deniers of providence require any other punishment, and are not adequately punished when they extirpate from themselves so great a pleasure and delight?

(9) "But he is not a weak intellect who does not know an objective God, but he who wants to know one." Schelling, "Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism" [in German] in Philosophische Schriften, Vol. I, Landshut, 1809, p. 127, Letter II.

Herr Schelling should at any rate be advised to give again some thought to his first writings. For example, we read in his essay "on the Ego as principle of philosophy":

For example, let us assume God, insofar as he is determined as object, "as the real foundation of our cognition, then he belongs himself, insofar as he is object, in the sphere of our cognition and therefore cannot be for us the ultimate point on which this entire sphere is suspended"(l. c., p. 5).

Finally, we remind Herr Schelling of the last words of the letter from which we have just quoted:

"The time has come to proclaim to the better part of humanity the freedom of minds, and not to tolerate any longer that they deplore the loss of their fetters". P. 129, 1. c.

When the time already had come in 1795, how about the year 1841? [33]

We might bring up for this occasion a theme that has well-nigh become notorious, namely, the proofs of the existence of God. Hegel has turned all these theological demonstrations upside-down, that is, he has rejected them in order to justify them. What kind of clients are those whom the defending lawyer can only save from conviction by killing them himself? For instance, Hegel interpreted the conclusion from the world to God as meaning: "Since the accidental does not exist, God or Absolute exists." [34] However, the theological demonstration is the opposite: "Since the accidental has true being, God exists." God is the guarantee for the world of the accidental. It is obvious that with this the opposite also has been stated.

The proofs of the existence of God are either mere hollow tautologies. Take for instance the ontological proof. This only means:

"that which I conceive for myself in a real way (realiter), is a real concept for me",

something that works on me. In this sense all gods, the pagan as well as the Christian ones, have possessed a real existence. Did not the ancient Moloch reign? Was not the Delphic Apollo a real power in the life of the Greeks? Kant's critique [35] means nothing in this respect. If somebody imagines that he has a hundred talers, if this concept is not for him an arbitrary, subjective one, if he believes in it, then these hundred imagined talers have for him the same value as a hundred real ones. For instance, he will incur debts on the strength of his imagination, his imagination will work, in the same way as all humanity has incurred debts on its gods. The contrary is true. Kant's example might have enforced the ontological proof. Real talers have the same existence that the imagined gods have. Has a real taler any existence except in the imagination, if only in the general or rather common imagination of man? [36] Bring paper money into a country where this use of paper is unknown, and everyone will laugh at your subjective imagination. Come with your gods into a country where other gods are worshipped, and you will be shown to suffer from fantasies and abstractions. And justly so. He who would have brought a Wendic [37] god to the ancient Greeks would have found the proof of this god's non-existence. Indeed, for the Greeks he did not exist. That which a particular country is for particular alien gods, the country of reason is for God in general, a region in which he ceases to exist.

As to the second alternative, that such proofs are proofs of the existence of essential human self-consciousness, logical explanations of it, take for example the ontological proof. Which being is immediate when made the subject of thought? Self-consciousness.

Taken in this sense all proofs of the existence of God are proofs of his non-existence. They are refutations of all concepts of a God. The true proofs should have the opposite character: "Since nature has been badly constructed, God exists", "Because the world is without reason, therefore God exists", "Because there is no thought, there is God". But what does that say, except that, for whom the world appears without reason, hence who is without reason himself, for him God exists? Or lack of reason is the existence of God.

"... when you presuppose the idea of an objective God, how can you talk of laws that reason produces out of itself, since autonomy can only belong to an absolutely free being." Schelling, 1. c., p. 198 [Letter X].

"It is a crime against humanity to hide principles that can be generally communicated." Ibid., p.199.