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Leyden, 1887); Saint-Marc GiraTdin, "De l'epopee chretienne depuis les premiers temps jusqu'fl Klopstock," ii. /.'< vue des Deux Mondes, vols, ii., iii.. iv. i Paris, is 19-50) ; Paris / . Roman ili /,'• mi til i Paris, 1895 i . EP'ICTE'TUS (c.50-t). A celebrated Stoic philosopher, born at Hierapolis, in Phrygia. He was a1 flrsj the slave of Epaphroditus, a freed- t rro. at Koine. lie »;h afterwards manumitted, and devoted himself to the stoic philosophy. Domitian hated him on account of his principles, and banished him. along with sev- eral other philosophers, from Rome (A.D. 90) Epietetus settled at N'icopolis, in Epirus. Under the pri ure of the times in which he lived his received ■> character rather denial than of energy. His pupil, Arrian, ims of Epictel "- in t he work en- titled Ha ndb iol and in eighi ntaries, four of which are lost. The peculia i ril ite_>s of Epicte imple and nol Ii eai ni 1 1 heartfelt love of good and hatred oi ■• ii. which a- e often < clusively ( hris- lian feeling, manifest themselves very finely and beautifully in the philosophy of Epietetus, yet there is no evidence that he knew anything of Christianity. There are several good editions of the works of Epietetus, the most complete of which is that of Schweighfiuser (Leipzig, 1800). There are good translations by Mrs. Carter (Lon- don, 1758), revised by Higginson (Boston, 1860), and by Long (London, 1877, reprinted 189] i. EP'ICURE'ANISM. The name applied, often very loosely, to the system of philosophy based more or less on the teachings of Epicurus ( q.v. ) . The philosopher himself, although the majority of his writings referred to natural philosophy, was not, properly speaking, a physicist. He studied nature with a moral rather than with a scientific design. According to him, the great evil that afflicted men — the incubus on human happiness — was fear: fear of the gods and fear of death. To get rid of these two fears was the ultimate aim of all his speculations on nature. He regarded the universe as corporeal, as infi- nite in extent, and as eternal in duration. He recognized two kinds of existence — that of bodies, and that of vacuum, or space, or the intangible nature. Of his bodies, some are compounds, and some are atoms or indivisible elements, out of which the compounds are formed. The world as we now see it is produced by the collision and whirling together of these atoms, which possess only the attributes of shape, size, and weight. Of these atoms there is an infinite number of various sizes and shapes, but of equal specific gravity. These atoms naturally fall downward in the empty space, but the direction they take is not absolutely uniform. Hence come clashes between them and combinations, which result in the universe as we know it. But beyond our known world. Epicurus held that there are in- numerable others. He also held the doctrine of perception by images (Gk. etdwXa, eidola) , which are incessantly streaming off from the surface of all bodies, and which are necessary to bring man into relation with the world without. In like manner, he believed that sounding bodies threw off emanations, by which .human beings were brought into sympathy with them ; and that per- ception by smell took place in the same way. In psychology Epicurus was a decided materialist, holding, for various reasons, that the soul is a bodily substance, composed of subtle particles, disseminated through the whole frame, and having a great resemblance to spirit or breath with a mixture of heat. It is interesting to note that Epicurus, following Empedocles (q.v.), antici- pated the modern doctrine of natural selection in maintaining that natural causes gave rise to va- rious differences in organic forms, but only those able to support themselves and to propagate their species have survived. Epicurus did not deny that there arc gods; but he strenuously maintained that, as 'happy and imperishable beings,' they could have nothing to do with the affairs of the universe or of men. Epicurus next proceeds to deal with the fear of death. Saving proved in his psychology that the dissolution of the body involves that of the soul, i argues thai the most terrible of all evils, death, is nothing to us. sine,' when we are, death is not : and u l" n death is, we are not. It is noth- ing, then, to the dead or the living; for to the one class it is not near, and the other class are
