Epicurus to Herodotus. Continued 

[72] “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.... We must not adopt any new terms as preferable, but should 
employ the already existing ones; nor must we predicate anything else of time, as if this 
something had the same essence as the proper meaning of the word; ... but we must chiefly 
reflect upon how we associate and measure what is peculiar to it.” [73] “For this also 
requires no proof, but only reflection that we associate it with days and nights and their parts 
and likewise also with feelings and absence of feeling, with movement and rest, conceiving 
a peculiar attribute of these to be precisely that which we call time.” pp. 52-53 
“[...] and all things are again dissolved [...].” p. 53. 

“It is clear, then, that he [Epicurus] also makes the words perishable, since their 
parts are subject to change. He says this also elsewhere.” p. 53. 

[74] “And further, we must not suppose that the worlds have necessarily one and the same 
Shape, but that they differ from one another.” p. 53. 

“For neither are living things necessarily separated from the infinite, nor have they fallen 
from heaven. [75] ... we must grasp that nature too in many and very different respects follows 
the instruction and pressure of things, and thinking gives greater precision to that which it 
receives from nature and adds new discoveries, in some cases more quickly and in others 
more slowly, requiring for this sometimes more and sometimes less time”. 
[plp. [53-]54. 

See end of page 54 and beginning of page 55, where the 
apyat toy dvoatwy? is discussed. 

[76] “As for the meteors, we must believe that their motion, position, eclipse, [rising and] 

setting and the like do not take place because someone governs and orders or has ordered them, 
who at the same time enjoys perfect bliss” 

(we must compare with this what Simplicius attributes to 
Anaxagoras about the votc > which orders the world) 

? Origin of designations.— Fd. 
> Mind.— Ed. 

15* 

“... along with immortality (77] (for actions and anxieties, anger and favour do not 
accord with bliss, but result from weakness, fear and need, with which they are most 
related). Nor must we believe that the being which has acquired bliss willingly submits to 
these movements, for this is an annoyance and contradictory [to bliss], but we must rather 
maintain all its sublimity by using expressions which lead to such notions as do not give rise to 
any opinions contradictory to sublimity. If we do not agree with this, this contradiction will 
itself produce the greatest mental confusion. Hence we must assume that, with the appearance of 
the world, both the original interception of these conglomerations and the obligatory character 
and periodicity of these movements appeared.” pp. 55 and 56. 

Here we must observe the principle of the thinkable in order, on 
the one hand, to maintain the freedom of self-consciousness, and, on 
the other hand, to attribute to God freedom from any determina- 
tion. 

[78] “[...] that what makes one blissful in the knowledge of the meteors ... [lies] in 
particular in accurate study of what those natural phenomena are which are observed in our 
meteors and what is in some way kindred to them in principle: [Here we have that 
which can be ‘in a plurality of ways’] that which can possibly be and that which is in some 
other way*: but it is rather an absolute rule that nothing which threatens danger, which can 
disturb ataraxy, can ever happen to an indestructible and blissful nature. Consciousness must 
apprehend that this is an absolute law.” p. 56. 

Further, on pages 56 and 57, Epicurus denounces the senseless 
mere wondering contemplation of the celestial bodies as stultifying 
and fear-inspiring; he asserts the absolute freedom of mind. 

[80] “... We must beware of the prejudice that the study of those objects is not thorough or 
subtle enough because it is aimed only at our ataraxy and bliss. Hence we must investigate the 
meteors and all that is unknown, observing how often the same thing occurs within our 
experience.” p. 57. 

[81] Besides all this we must understand that the greatest confusion in men’s minds arises 
through the belief that there are beings which are blissful and indestructible and that at the 
same time have desires, actions and feelings which conflict with these attributes and that 
men somehow foresee eternal suffering and entertain suspicions of the kind fostered by the 
myths (and because in death there is no sensation they also fear to be at some time 
deprived of sensation) and that they are not guided by the correct notions ... so that, 
unless they set limits to their fears, they experience equal or still greater anxiety than 

they would were their imaginings true.” [82] “But ataraxy means to have freed oneself 
from all that....” [p)p. [57-]58. 

“Therefore we must pay attention to all things that are present to us and to the sensations, ta 
general ones in relation to what is general, to particular ones in relation to what is 
particular, and to all the evidence available for every single criterion.” p. 58. 

Epicurus to Pythocles 

Epicurus repeats at the beginning of his discussion on the 
meteors that the aim of this is yywoewg ... atapagia and miottc 

* In the manuscript here, after the semicolon, follows Gassendi’s Latin translation 
of the preceding Greek phrase: (esse [...] id, quod pluribus modis fieri dicitur, et non uno 
modo necesse contingere; et posse alio quoque modo se habere).— Ed. 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 419 

Bepaia, xadanep xai ni tov Aowav" [X, 85]. But the study of these 
celestial bodies also differs substantially from the rest of science: 

[86] “...nor must.we apply to everything the same theory as in Ethics or in clarifying the 
other problems of Physics, for example that the universe consists of bodies and the 

incorporeal” (quod 6 weyoy>) “or that there are indivisible elements and the like, 
where only a single explanation corresponds to the phenomena.‘ For this is not the case 
with the meteors. These have no simple cause of their coming into being and have more than one 
essential category corresponding to the sensations.” pp. 60 and 61. 

It is important in the whole of Epicurus’ view of things that the 
celestial bodies, as something beyond the senses, cannot command 
the same degree of evidence as the rest of the moral and sensuous 
world. To them Epicurus’ theory of disjunctio¢ applies in practice, 
viz.: that there is no aut aut,< and hence that internal determinate- 
ness is denied and that the principle of the thinkable, the 
imaginable, of accident, of abstract identity and freedom manifests 
itself as what it is, as the indeterminate, which precisely for that 
reason is determined by a reflection external to it. It is seen here 
that the method of consciousness which imagines and represents, 
fights only its own shadow; what the shadow is depends on how it 
is seen, how that which reflects is reflected out of it back into 
itself. As in the case of the organic in itself, when it is substantial- 
ised, the contradiction of the atomistic outlook is revealed, so now, 
when the object itself assumes the form of sensuous certainty and 
of imagining reason, philosophising consciousness admits what it is 
doing. As there the imagined principle and its application are found 
objectified as one, and the contradictions are thereby called to arms 
as the antithesis of the concretised presentations themselves, so 
here, where the object hangs, as it were, over the heads of men, 
where through the self-sufficiency, through the sensuous independ- 
ence and the mysterious remoteness of its existence, the object 
challenges consciousness, so here consciousness comes to acknowl- 
edge its own activity, it contemplates what it does, so as to make 
the presentations which pre-exist in it intelligible and to vindicate 
them as its own: just as the whole activity of consciousness is only 
struggle with remoteness, which, like a curse, shackles the whole of 

* Knowledge ... ataraxy and firm conviction as is also the case with everything 
else.— Ed. 
> That is, void (note by Marx).— Ed. 
© In the manuscript here follows in brackets the last phrase in Gassendi’s Latin 
Disjunction .— Ed. 
© Either — or.— Ed. 

antiquity, just as it has only possibility, chance, as its principle, and 
seeks in some way to establish identity between itself and its object, 
so does it admit this, as soon as this remoteness confronts it in 
objective independence as heavenly bodies. Consciousness is indif- 
ferent as to just what explanation is offered: it affirms that there 
is not one explanation, but many, that is, that any explanation will 
suffice; thus it acknowledges that its activity is active fiction. For 
this reason, in antiquity in general, in whose philosophy premises 
are not lacking, the meteors and the doctrine concerning them are 
the image in which, even in the person of Aristotle, it contem- 
plates its own defects. Epicurus expressed this, and this is the 
service he rendered, the iron logic of his views and conclusions. 
The meteors challenge sensuous understanding, but it overcomes 
their resistance and will listen to nothing but its own ideas of 
them. 

[86] “For nature must be studied not according to empty axioms and laws, but 
as required by the phenomena.... [87] (life [requires]) us to live without confusion.” 
p. 61. 

Here, where the premise itself confronts actual consciousness, 
arousing fear in it, there is no longer any need for any principles 
or premises. The imagination is extinguished in fear. 

Epicurus therefore again formulates the following proposition, 
as though finding himself in it: 

[87] “Everything therefore happens, once it is explained consistently in various 
ways, in conformity with the phenomena, if that which has been credibly established 
in respect of them is maintained. But if we maintain one thing as valid and reject 
another, although it equally conforms to the phenomena, then we are openly 
overstepping the bounds of the study of nature and launching into the realm of 
myth.” p. 61. 

The question now is how the explanation is to be arranged: 

[87] “Certain signs of the processes of the meteors can be taken from the 
processes going on in our experience which can be observed or are present in the 
same way as the phenomena of the meteors. For these can occur in a plurality of 
ways. [88] But one must observe the appearance of every single thing and also 
explain whatever is connected with it. This will not be inconsistent with the fact 
that it can take place in various ways, as happens in our experience.” p. 61. 

For Epicurus the sound of his own voice drowns the thunder 
and blots out the lightning of the heavens of his conception. We 
can gather from the monotonous repetition how important 
Epicurus considers his new method of explanation, how intent he 
is to eliminate the miraculous, how he always insists on applying 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 42] 

not one, but several explanations, giving us very frivolous exam- 
ples of this in respect of everything, how he says almost outright 
that while he leaves nature free, he is concerned only with 
freedom of consciousness. The only proof required of an explana- 
tion is that it should not be ayttyaptupeta Gat? by the evidence of 
the senses and experience, by the phenomena, the appearance, for 
what matters is only how nature appears. These propositions are 
reiterated. 

On the origin of the sun and the moon: 

[90] “For this also is suggested in this way by sensation.” p. 63. 

On the size of the sun and the constellations: 

[91] “{[...] the phenomena here [on the earth] we see ... as we perceive them by the 
senses.” p. 63. 

On the rising and setting of the constellations: 

[92] “For no phenomenon testifies against this.” p. 64. 

On the turnings of the sun and the moon: 

[93] “For all that and what is connected with it does not contradict any of the 
evident phenomena if in separate explanations we always hold fast to what is 
possible and can bring each of them into conformity with the phenomena, without 
fear of the slavish artifices of the astrologers.” [p]p. [64-]65. 

On the waning and waxing of the moon: 

[94] “[...] and in any of the ways by which also the phenomena within our 
experience suggest an explanation of this problem, unless, being in love with some one 
means of explanation, we lightly reject the others or are unable to see what it is possible for a 
man to know and therefore seek to know what is impossible.” p. 65. 

On the species vultus in the moon: 

[95] “[...] in general in any way considered as being in conformity with the 
phenomena.” [96] “For, it must be added, this way must be used in respect of all the 
meteors. For if you fight against what is evident, you will never be able to enjoy genuine 

ataraxy.” p. 66. 

? Disproved.— Ed. 
> Face.— Ed. 

Note particularly the exclusion of all divine, teleological influ- 
ence in the passage on the ordo periodicus,* where it is clearly seen 
that the explanation is only a matter of consciousness listening to 
itself and the objective is a delusion simulated: 

[97] “‘... must be seen as something ordinary which also occurs within our own 
experience, the divinity must not on any account be adduced for this, but must be kept free 
from all tasks and in perfect bliss. For unless this be done, the whole theory of origins 
of the meteors will be rendered senseless, as has already been the case with some 
theoreticians who did not apply a possible explanation, but indulged in idle attempts 
at explanations, believing that it happens only in one way and excluding all other possible 
explanations, and thus arrived at things which are impossible, and were unable to 
understand the phenomena as signs, which one must do, and were not disposed to 
rejoice with God.” p. 67. 

The same arguments are often repeated almost word for word: 
[98] On the varying lengths of nights and days: on the pyxy 
yoxt@y xal NEpdy mapadhatcovta,” p. 67. 

[98] On the éntonpactat,* p. 67. 

[99] On the origin of the yégn,* p. 68. 

[100-101] of the Bpoveat,* of the dotpanat,‘ p. 69; [103] thus he 
says of the xepavyec: 

[104] “And there are several other ways in which thunderbolts may occur. 
Exclusion of myth is the sole condition necessary; and it will be excluded if one properly 
attends to the phenomena and hence draws inferences concerning what is invisible.” 
p. 70. 

(After adducing many explanations of etoytol, terrae motus, he 
adds as usual: [106] “But there are also several other ways”, etc., p. 

71.) 

On the comets: 

[112] “... there are many other ways by which this might be brought about if 
one is capable of finding out what accords with the phenomena.” p. 75. 

De stellis fixis et errantibus': 

[113] “To assign a single cause for these effects when the phenomena suggest 
several causes is madness and an enormity of those who are obsessed by senseless 

; , Periodical order.— Ed. 
> This is the Greek original: of the previous phrase.— Ed. 
© Weather signs.— Ed. 

* Clouds.— Ed. 

© Thunder.— Ed. 

f Lightning — Ed. 

8 Thunderbolts.— Ed. 

» Earthquake.— Ed. 

* On fixed and wandering stars.— Ed. 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 423 

astrology and assign at random causes for certain phenomena when they by no means 
free the divinity from burdensome tasks.” p. 76. 

He even accuses those who simpliciter, adm\@cg? discuss such 
things, 

[114] portentosum quidpiam coram multitudine ostentare affectare= “that applies to 
those who wish to do something to impress the crowd”. p. 76. 

He says in connection with emtonpaciat,> the anticipation of 
tempestas© in animals, which some connected with God: 

[116] “For such folly as this would not possess the most ordinary being if ever so 
little enlightened, much less one who enjoys perfect felicity.” p. 77. 

From this we can see among other things how Pierre Gassendi, 
who wants to rescue divine intervention, assert the immortality of 
the soul, etc., and still be an Epicurean (see, for example, esse 
animos immortales, contra Epicurum, Pet. Gassendi animadvers. in 1. 
dec. Diog. Laert., pp. 549-602, or, esse deum authorem mundi, contra 
Epicurum, pp. 706-725, gerere dewm hominum curam, contra 
Epicurum, pp. 738-751, etc. Compare: Feuerbach, geschichte der 
neuern Philosophie, “Pierre Gassendi”, pp. 127-150), does not 
understand Epicurus at all and still less can teach us anything 
about him. Gassendi tries rather to teach us from Epicurus than to 
teach us about him. Where he violates Epicurus’ iron logic, it is in 
order not to quarrel with his own religious premises. This struggle 
is significant in Gassendi, as is in general the fact that modern 
philosophy arises where the old finds its downfall: on the one 
hand from Descartes’ universal doubt, whereas the Sceptics sound- 
ed the knell of Greek philosophy; on the other hand from the 
rational consideration of nature, whereas ancient philosophy is 
overcome in Epicurus even more thoroughly than in the Sceptics. 
Antiquity was rooted in nature, in materiality. Its degradation and 
profanation means in the main the defeat of materiality, of solid 
life; the modern world is rooted in the spirit and it can be free, 
can release the other, nature, out of itself. But equally, by contrast, 
what with the ancients was profanation of nature is with the 
moderns salvation from the shackles of servile faith, and the 
modern rational outlook on nature must first raise itself to the 
point from which the ancient Ionian philosophy, in principle at 

* Simply, absolutely — Ed. 
> Weather signs.— Ed. 
“ Tempest.— Ed. 

least, begins—the point of seeing the divine, the Idea, embodied 
in nature. 

Who will not recall here the enthusiastic passage in Aristotle, 
the acme of ancient philosophy, in his treatise mept 7g 
guaewg Cwixys,? which sounds quite a different note from the 
dispassionate monotony of Epicurus. 

Characteristic of the method of the Epicurean outlook is the way 
it deals with the creation of the world, a topic in the treatment of 
which the standpoint of a philosophy will always be ascertainable, 
since it reveals how, according to this philosophy, the spirit creates 
the world, the attitude of a philosophy to the world, the creative 
power, the spirit of a philosophy. 

Epicurus says (pp. 61 and 62) "*!: 

{88] “The world is a celestial complex (mEproyy Tig ovpavov), which comprises 
stars and earth and all phenomena containing a cut-out segment (¢NOTOP YY) of 
the infinite, and terminating in a boundary which may be either ethereal or solid (a 
boundary whose dissolution will bring about the wreck of all within it), which may 
be at rest, and may be round, triangular or of any other shape. All these alternatives 
are possible since none of them is contradicted by the phenomena. Where the world 
ends cannot be discerned. That there is an infinite number of such worlds is 
evident....”° 

Anybody will at once be struck by the poverty of this world 
construction. That the world is a complex of the earth, stars, etc., 
means nothing, since the origin of the moon, etc., occurs and is 
explained only later. 

In general every concrete body is a complex, or more precisely, 
according to Epicurus, a complex of atoms. The definition of a 
complex, its specific distinction, lies in its boundary, and for that 
reason, once the world is defined as having been cut out from the 
infinite, it is superfluous to add the boundary as a closer 
definition, for something which is cut out is separated from the 
remainder and is a concrete, distinct thing, and therefore bounded 
in regard to the remainder. But the boundary is what must be 
defined, since a bounded complex in general is not yet a world. 
Further on it is said that the boundary can be defined in any 
way one likes, maytay¢, and finally it is admitted that it is 
impossible to define its specific difference, but that it is conceiva- 
ble that one exists. 

* On the Nature of Animals.— Ed. 
In the manuscript this quotation and the next one on p. 426 are written in 
German .— Ed. 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 425 

Hence all that is said is that the notion of the return of a totality 
of differences to an indefinite unity, i.e., the notion of a “world”, 
exists im consciousness, is present in everyday thinking. The 
boundary, the specific difference, and hence the immanence and 
necessity of this notion is declared to be not conceivable; that the 
notion exists can be conceived, tautologically, because it is there; so 
that what is to be explained, the creation, the origin and internal 
production of a world by thought, is declared inconceivable, and 
the existence of this notion in consciousness is passed off as the 
explanation. 

It is the same as if one were to say that it can be proved that 
there is a God, but his differentia specifica, quid sit,* the what of this 
determination, cannot be investigated. 

When Epicurus further says that the boundary can be conceived 
as of any kind, i.e., every determination which in general we 
distinguish in a spatial boundary can be applied to it, then the 
notion of the world is nothing but the return to sensuously. 
perceptible unity, which is indefinite and therefore may be 
defined in any way one likes, or more generally, since the world is 
an indefinite notion of half sensuous, half reflecting consciousness, 
the world is present in this consciousness together with all other 
sensuous notions and bounded by them; its definition and bound- 
ary is therefore as multiple as these sensuous notions surrounding 
it, each of them can be regarded as its boundary and hence as its 
closer definition and explanation. That is the essence of all 
Epicurean explanations, and it is all the more important because it 
is the essence of all the explanations of reflecting consciousness 
which is the prisoner of preconceptions. 

So it is also with the moderns in regard to God, when goodness, 
wisdom, etc., are ascribed to Him. Any one of these notions, which 
are definite, can be considered as the boundary of the indefinite 
notion of God which lies between them. 

The substance of this kind of explanation is therefore that a 
notion which is to be explained is found in consciousness. The 
explanation or closer definition is then that notions in the same 
sphere and accepted as known stand in relation to it; hence that in 
general it lies in consciousness, in a definite sphere. Here Epicurus 
admits the weakness of his own and of all ancient philosophy, 
namely, that it knows that notions are in consciousness, but that it 
does not know their boundary, their principle, their necessity. 

* Specific distinction, what he is.— Ed. 

However, Epicurus is not satisfied with having worked out his 
conception of the creation; he performs the drama himself, 
objectifies for himself what he has just done, and only then does 
his creation proper begin. For he says further: 

[89] “Such a world may arise ... in one of the intermundia (by which term we 
mean the spaces between worlds), in a vast empty space ... in a great transparent 
void ... when certain suitable seeds rush in from a world or an intermundium or 
from several worlds, and gradually form compounds or divisions, or, as may 
happen, undergo changes of place, and receive into themselves waterings from 
without as far as the foundations laid can hold the compound. [90] For if a world 
arises in the void, it is not enough that there should be an aggregation or vortex or 
a multitude and that it should meet with another, as one of the physicists says. For 
this is in conflict with the phenomena.” [p. 62.] 

Here, first, worlds are presupposed for the creation of the 
world, and the place where this occurs is the void. Hence what was 
foreshadowed to begin with in the concept of creation, viz. that 
what was to be created is presupposed, is substantiated here. The 
notion without its closer definition and relation to the others, that is 
to say, as it is provisionally presupposed, is empty or disem- 
bodied,* an intermundium, an empty space. How this notion gets 
its determination is presented as follows: seeds appropriate for the 
creation of a world combine in the way necessary for the creation 
of a world, that is, no determination, no difference is given. In 
other words, we have nothing but the atom and the xeyoy,° 
despite Epicurus himself striving against this, etc. Aristotle has 
already in a profound manner criticised the superficiality of the 
method which proceeds from an abstract principle without allow- 
ing this principle to negate itself in higher forms. After praising 
the Pythagoreans because they were the first to free the categories 
from their substrate, and did not consider them as attributes of 
the things of which they are predicated, but as the very substance 
itself: 

“They [the Pythagoreans] thought that the finitude and infinity [...] were not 
attributes of certain other things, e.g. of fire or earth, etc., but were the substance of the 
things of which they are predicated’, 

he reproaches them because 

“they thought that the first subject of which a given definition was predicable was the 
substance of the thing [...]”. [Aristotle,] Metaphysics, Book I, Chap. V. 

* There must have been a slip of the pen here, for the manuscript has verkörper 
(embodied)instead of entkörpert (disembodied).— Ed. 
> Void.— Ed. 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 427 

II. SEXTUS EMPIRICUS 

We now go on to the attitude of the Epicurean philosophy to 
Scepticism, insofar as it can be gathered from Sextus Empiricus. 

But first a basic definition given by Epicurus himself must be 
cited from Book Ten of Diogenes Laertius contained in the 
description of the wise man: 

[121] “[the wise man] will be a dogmatist but not a mere sceptic.” p. 81. 

What Epicurus says about his principle of thinkability, and about 
language and the origin of concepts, makes up an important part 
of his exposition of his system as a whole, defining its essential 
attitude towards ancient philosophy and containing implicite* his 
position in relation to the Sceptics. It is interesting to see what 
Sextus Empiricus says about why Epicurus took to philosophy. 

[IX, 18] “If anybody asks ... out of what chaos originated, he will have nothing to 
answer. And according to some, this was precisely the reason why Epicurus plunged into 
philosophising. [19] For when he was a boy he asked his teacher, who was reading to 
him: [...] out of what chaos arose if it arose first. When the teacher said it was not 
his business to teach that, but the business of those who were called philosophers, 
Epicurus said: ‘I must go to them if they know the truth of things,’” Sext. 
Empiricus, Against the Professors, Geneva, 1621, p. 383. 

(II, 23] “For Democritus says that ‘Man is that which we all know’, etc. [24] For 
this thinker proceeds to say that only the atoms and the void truly exist, and these, he 
says, form the substrate not only of living beings, but of all compound bodies, so that, as far 
as these are concerned, we shall not form a concept of the particular essence of Man, seeing 
that they are common to all things. But besides these there is no existing substrate; so 
that we shall possess no means whereby we shall be able to distinguish Man from the 
other living beings and form a clear conception of him. [25] Again, Epicurus says that 
Man is such and such a shape combined with a soul. According to him, then, since Man 
is shown by pointing out, he that is not pointed out is not a man, and, if anyone points 
out a female, the male will not be Man, while if the female points out a male, she 
will not be Man.” Outlines of Pyrrhonism, p. 56. 

(VIII, 64] “For besides Pythagoras also Empedocles and the Ionians, besides 
Socrates also Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, and perhaps also the Garden 
philosophers, 182 concede that God exists, as the speeches made by Epicurus testify.” 
Against the Professors, p. 320. 

{VIII, 71] “For it cannot be assumed that the souls are carried down below.... 
[72] They are not dissolved, when separated from the bodies, as Epicurus used to say, like 
smoke. For before also it was not the body which held them fast, but they 
themselves were for the body the reason why it held together, but still more for 
themselves.” Against the Professors, p. 321. 

[VIII, 58] “And Epicurus, according to some, concedes the essence of God as far 
as the multitude is concerned, but by no means as concerns the nature of things.” 
Against the Professors, p. 319. 

* Implicitly — Ed. 

[VIl, 267] “The Epicureans [...] did not know that if that which is pointed out is 
Man, that which is not pointed out is not Man. And further such pointing out takes 
place either in respect of a man ... flat-nosed or aquiline-nosed, long-haired or 
curly-haired, or in respect of other distinctive features.” Against the Professors, p. 187. 

{I, 49] “... amongst them we must place Epicurus, although he seems to be 
hostile to the professors of science.” Against the Professors, p. 11. 

[I, 57] “Since, according to the sage Epicurus, it is not possible either to inquire or to 
doubt without a preconception, it will be well first of all to consider what ‘grammar ... 
is....” Against the Professors, p. 12. 

[I, 272] “‘... but we shall find even the accusers of grammar, Pyrrho and Epicurus, 
acknowledging its necessity. [...] [273] Epicurus has been detected as guilty of 
having filched the best of his dogmas from the poets. For he has been shown to 
have taken his proposition that the intensity of pleasure is ‘the removal of 
everything painful’— from this one verse: 

“When they had now put aside all longing for drinking and eating.’ 

“And as to death, that ‘it is nothing to us’, Epicharmus had pointed this out to 
him when he said: 

““To die or to be dead concerns me not.’ 

“So too, he stole the notion that dead bodies have no feeling from Homer, 
where he writes: 

“°Tis dumb clay that he beats with abuse in his violent fury.’”” Against the Professors, 

. 54. 
i (VII, 14] “Side by side with him,” 

(Archelaus of Athens, who divides philosophy into ~% PUoLxoV 
wat Hbtixoy 4) 

“they place Epicurus as one who also rejects logical consideration. [15] But 
there were others who said that he did not reject logic in general, but only that of the 
Stoics.” Against the Professors, p. 140. 

[22] “But the Epicureans proceed from logic: for they investigate first the 
Canonics and create for themselves the doctrine of the visible and the concealed 
and the appearances which accompany them.” Against the Professors, p. 142. 

[I, 1] “Opposition to the representatives of science seems to be common to the Epicureans 
and the followers of Pyrrho, though not from the same standpoint; the Epicureans 
hold that the sciences contribute nothing to the perfecting of wisdom,” 

(this means that the Epicureans consider the knowledge of 
things, as another form of existence of the spirit, to be powerless 
in raising the reality of the spirit; the Pyrrhonists consider the 
powerlessness of the spirit to comprehend things as its essential 
aspect, its real activity. There is a similar relation between the 
dogmatists and the Kantians in their attitude to philosophy, 
although both sides appear degenerate and deprived of the 
freshness of ancient philosophy. The former renounce knowledge 
out of godliness, that is, they believe with the Epicureans that the 
divine in man is ignorance, that this divine, which is laziness, is 
disturbed by understanding. The Kantians, on the contrary, are as 

* Physics and ethics.— Ed. 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 429 

it were the appointed priests of ignorance, their daily business is to 
tell their beads over their own powerlessness and the power of 
things. The Epicureans are more consistent: if ignorance is 
inherent in the spirit, then knowledge is no enhancement of the 
spiritual nature, but something indifferent to the spirit, and for an 
ignorant man the divine is not the motion of knowledge, but 
laziness); 

{1-2] “Or, as some conjecture, because they see in this a way of covering up 

their ignorance. For in many matters Epicurus stands convicted of ignorance, and 
even in ordinary converse his speech was not always correct.” Against the Professors, 

p. 1. 

After quoting some more gossip which clearly proves his 
confusion, Sextus Empiricus defines the difference between the 
Sceptics’ attitude to science and that of the Epicureans as follows: 

[5] “The followers of Pyrrho [opposed the sciences] neither because they did not 
contribute anything to wisdom, for that assertion would be dogmatic, nor because they 
were uneducated.... [6] They had the same attitude to the sciences as to the whole of 

philosophy.” 

(From this it is evident that one must distinguish between 
padnaca* and gthogoyia> and that Epicurus’ contempt for 
pathuata extends to what we call knowledge, and how exactly this 
assertion suo systemati omni consentit.°) 

“For just as they approached philosophy with the desire of attaining truth, 
but, when faced with an anomaly of things resembling contradiction, suspended judgment, 
so also, when they set about mastering the sciences and tried also to attain the truth 
contained in them, they found equal difficulties, which they did not conceal.” p. 6 
[Against the Professors, Book Ij. 

In the Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I, Chap. XVII, the aetiology 
which Epicurus in particular applied is aptly refuted, in such a 
way, however, that the Sceptics’ own impotence is revealed. 

(I, 185] “Possibly, too, the Five Modes of suspension of judgment may suffice as 
against the aetiologies. For either a person will suggest a cause which accords with 
all the trends of philosophy and of scepticism and with the phenomena, or he will 
not. And perhaps it is impossible to assign a cause which accords with all these.” 

(Of course, to assign such a cause which is nothing else at all but 
a phenomenon, is impossible because the cause is the ideality of 
the phenomenon, the transcended phenomenon. Just as little can 
[the assignment of] a cause accord with Scepticism, because Scepti- 
cism is professional opposition to all thought, the negation of 

* Science.— Ed. 
> Philosophy.— Ed. 
© Corresponds to his whole system.— Ed. 

determination itself. It is naive to confine scepticism to gatvopeva *, 
for the phenomenon is the being-lost, the not-being of thought: 
scepticism is the same not-being of thought as reflected in itself, but 
the phenomenon has in itself disappeared, it is only a semblance; 
scepticism is the speaking phenomenon and disappears as the 
phenomenon disappears, it is also only a phenomenon.) 

_ [185-186] “For all things, whether apparent or non-evident, are matters of 
controversy. But if there is controversy, the cause of this cause will also be asked for” 

(that is, the Sceptic wants a cause which itself is only a semblance 
and therefore no cause). 

“And if he assumes an apparent cause for an apparent, and a non-evident for a 
non-evident, he will be lost in the regress ad infinitum” [Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I], 

(that is, because the Sceptic refuses to get away from the 
semblance and wants to hold on to it as such, he cannot get away 
from the semblance and this manoeuvre can be carried on 
into infinity; it is true that Epicurus wishes to go on from the atom 
to further determinations, but as he will not allow the atom as 
such to be dissolved, he cannot go beyond atomistics, determina- 
tions external to themselves and arbitrary; the Sceptic, on 
the other hand, accepts all determinations, but in the determinate- 
ness of semblance; his activity is therefore just as arbitrary and 
displays everywhere the same inadequacy. He swims, to be sure, in 
the whole wealth of the world, but remains in the same poverty 
and is himself an embodiment of the powerlessness which he sees 
in things; Epicurus makes the world empty from the start and so 
he ends up with the completely indeterminate, the void resting in 
itself, the otiose god). 

[186] “And if at any point he makes a stand, either he will state that the cause is 

valid in respect of the previous admission, introducing the relating-to-something 
while he negates the relating-to-nature,” 

(it is precisely in the semblance, in the appearance, that the 
mp6¢ tt P isthe mpog tHY dary’); 

“or if he accepts something out of a presupposition, he will be stopped.” p. 36 
[Outlines of Pyrrhonism). 

As the meteors, the visible heaven, are for the ancient 
philosophers the symbol and the visible confirmation of their pre- 

* Phenomena.— Ed. 
" Relating-to-something — Ed. 
© Relating-to-nature.— Ed. 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 431 

judice for the substantial, so that even Aristotle takes the stars for 
gods, or at least brings them into direct connection with the 
highest energy, so the written heaven, the sealed word of the god 
who has been revealed to himself in the course of world history, is 
the battle-cry of Christian philosophy. The premise of the ancients 
is the act of nature, that of the moderns the act of the spirit. The 
struggle of the ancients could only end by the visible heaven, the 
substantial nexus of life, the force of gravity of political and 
religious life being shattered, for nature must be split in two for 
the spirit to be one in itself. The Greeks broke it up with the 
Hephaestan hammer of art, broke it up in their statues; the 
Roman plunged his sword into its heart and the peoples died, but 
modern philosophy unseals the word, lets it pass away in smoke in 
the holy fire of the spirit, and as fighter of the spirit fighting the 
spirit, not as a solitary apostate fallen from the gravity of Nature, 
it is universally active and melts the forms which prevent the 
universal from breaking forth. 

Ill. PLUTARCH, PUBLISHED BY C. XYLANDER, 
THAT EPICURUS ACTUALLY MAKES 
A PLEASANT LIFE IMPOSSIBLE 

It goes without saying that very little of this treatise by Plutarch 
is of any use. One need only read the introduction with its clumsy 
boastfulness and its crude interpretation of the Epicurean 
philosophy in order no longer to entertain any doubt about 
Plutarch’s utter incompetence in philosophical criticism. 

Although he may agree with the view of Metrodorus: 

{III, 2] “They [the Epicureans] believe that the supreme good is found in the 
belly and all other passages of the flesh through which pleasure and non-pain 
make their entrance, and that all the notable and brilliant inventions of civilisation 
were devised for this belly-centred pleasure and for the good expectation of this 
pleasure [....]” p. 1087, 
this is minime* Epicurus’ teaching. Even Sextus Empiricus sees the 
difference between Epicurus and the Cyrenaic school in that he 
asserts that voluptas> is voluptas animi.¢ 

[III, 9-10] “Epicurus asserts that in illness the sage often actually laughs at the 

paroxysms of the disease. Then how can men for whom the pains of the body are 
so slight and easy to bear find anything appreciable in its pleasures?” p. 1088. 

4 Least of all.— Ed. 
5 Pleasure.— Ed. 
© Pleasure of the soul.— Ed. 

It is clear that Plutarch does not understand Epicurus’ consisten- 
cy. For Epicurus the highest pleasure is freedom from pain, from 
diversity, the absence of any dependence; the body which depends 
on no other for its sensation, which does not feel this diversity, is 
healthy, positive. This position, which achieves its highest form in 
Epicurus’ otiose god, is of itself like a chronic sickness in which the 
disease, because of its duration, ceases to be a condition, becomes, 
as it were, familiar and normal. We have seen in Epicurus’ 
philosophy of nature that he strives after this absence of depend- 
ence, this removal of diversity in theory as well as in practice. 
The greatest good for Epicurus is atapagia ,* since the spirit, 
which is the thing in question, is empirically unique. Plutarch 
revels in commonplaces, he argues like an apprentice. 

Incidentally we can speak of the conception of the s090¢,” who 
is a preoccupation equally of the Epicurean, Stoic and Sceptic 
philosophies. If we study him we shall find that he belongs most 
logically to the atomistic philosophy of Epicurus and that, viewed 
from this standpoint too, the downfall of ancient philosophy is 
presented in complete objectiveness in Epicurus. 

Ancient philosophy seeks to comprehend the wise man, 
6 9opoc¢, in two ways, but both of them have the same root. 

What appears theoretically in the account given of matter, 
appears practically in the definition of the sogec. Greek 
philosophy begins with seven wise men, among whom is the 
Ionian philosopher of nature Thales, and it ends with the attempt 
to portray the wise man conceptually. The beginning and the end, 
but no less the centre, the middle, is one sogé¢ , namely Socrates. 
It is no more an accident that philosophy gravitates round these 
substantial individuals, than that the political downfall of Greece 
takes place at the time when Alexander loses his wisdom in 
Babylon. 

Since the soul of Greek life and the Greek mind is substance, 
which first appears in them as free substance, the knowledge of 
this substance occurs in independent beings, individuals, who, 
being notable, on the one hand, each has his being in external 
contrast to the others, and whose knowledge, on the other hand, is 
the inward life of substance and thus something internal to the 
conditions of the reality surrounding them. The Greek 
philosopher is a demiurge, his world is a different one from that 
which flowers in the natural sun of the substantial. 

2 Ataraxy.— Ed. 
Wise man.— Ed. 

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Page from Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 

(Second Notebook) 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 435 

The first wise men are only the vessels, the Pythia, from which 
the substance resounds in general, simple precepts; their language 
is as yet only that of the substance become vocal, the simple forces 
of moral life which are revealed. Hence they are in part also active 
leaders in political life, lawgivers. 

The Ionian philosophers of nature are just as much isolated 
phenomena as the forms of the natural element appear under 
which they seek to apprehend the universe. The Pythagoreans 
organise an inner life for themselves within the state; the form in 
which they realise their knowledge of substance is halfway between 
a completely conscious isolation not observed among the Ionians, 
whose isolation is rather the undeliberate, naive isolation of 
elementary existences, and the trustful carrying on of life within a 
moral order. The form of their life is itself substantial, political, 
but maintained abstract, reduced to a minimum in extent and 
natural fundamentals, just as their principle, number, stands 
midway between colourful sensuousness and the ideal. The Eleat- 
ics, as the first discoverers of the ideal forms of substance, who 
themselves still apprehend the inwardness of substance in a purely 
internal and abstract, intensive manner, are the passionately 
enthusiastic prophetic heralds of the breaking dawn. Bathed in 
simple light, they turn away indignantly from the people and from 
the gods of antiquity. But in the case of Anaxagoras the people - 
themselves turn to the gods of antiquity in opposition to the 
isolated wise man and declare him to be such, expelling him from 
their midst. In modern times (cf., for example, Ritter, Geschichte 
der alten Philosophie, Bd. I [1829, pp. 300 ff.]) Anaxagoras has been 
accused of dualism. Aristotle says in the first book of the 
Metaphysics that he uses the votg? like a machine and only resorts 
to it when he runs out of natural explanations. But this apparent 
dualism is on the one hand that very same dualistic element which 
begins to split the heart of the state in the time of Anaxagoras, 
and on the other hand it must be understood more profoundly. 
The wits is active and is resorted to where there is no natural 
determination. It is itself the non ens” of the natural, the ideality. 
And then the activity of this ideality intervenes only when physical 
sight fails the philosopher, that is, the yotg is the philosopher's 
own vous, and is resorted to when he is no longer able to objectify 
his activity. Thus the subjective vot¢ appeared as the essence of 

2 Reason.— Ed. 
> Not-being — Ed. 

the wandering scholar,* and, in its power as ideality of real 
determination, it appears on the one hand in the Sophists and on 
the other in Socrates. 

If the first Greek wise men are the real spirit, the embodied 
knowledge of substance, if their utterances preserve just as much 
genuine intensity as substance itself, if, as substance is increasingly 
idealised, the bearers of its progress assert an ideal life in their 
particular reality in opposition to the reality of manifested sub- 
stance, of the real life of the people, then the ideality itself is only 
in the form of substance. There is no undermining of the living 
powers; the most ideal men of this period, the Pythagoreans and 
the Eleatics, extol state life as real reason; their principles are 
objective, a power which is superior to themselves, which they 
herald in a semi-mystical fashion, in poetic enthusiasm; that is, in a 
form which raises natural energy to ideality and does not consume 
it, but processes it and leaves it intact in the determination of the 
natural. This embodiment of the ideal substance occurs in the 
philosophers themselves who herald it; not only is its expression 
plastically poetic, its reality is this person, whose reality is its own 
appearance; they themselves are living images, living works of art 
which the people sees rising out of itself in plastic greatness; while 
their activity, as in the case of the first wise men, shapes the 
universal, their utterances are the really assertive substance, the 
laws. 

Hence these wise men are just as little like ordinary people as 
the statues of the Olympic gods; ther motion is rest in self, their 
relation to the people is the same objectivity as their relation to 
substance. The oracles of the Delphic Apollo were divine truth for 
the people, veiled in the chiaroscuro of an unknown power, only 
as long as the genuine evident power of the Greek spirit sounded 
from the Pythian tripod; the people had a theoretical attitude 
towards them only as long as they were the resounding theory of 
the people itself, they were of the people only as long as they were 
unlike them. The same with these wise men. But with the Sophists 
and Socrates, and by virtue of éuvayic> in Anaxagoras, the 
situation was reversed. Now it is ideality itself which, in its 
immediate form, the subjective spirit, becomes the principle of 
philosophy. In the earlier Greek wise men there was revealed the 
ideal form of the substance, its identity, in distinction to the 

4 Cf. Goethe, Faust, 1, 3.— Ed. 
> Potentialities.— Ed. 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 437 

many-coloured raiment woven from the individualities of various 
peoples that displayed its manifest reality. Consequently, these 
wise men on the one hand apprehend the absolute only in the 
most one-sided, most general ontological definitions, and on the 
other hand, themselves represent in reality the appearance of the 
substance enclosed in itself. While they hold themselves aloof from 
the moddoi,*? and express the mystery of the spirit, on the other 
hand, like the plastic gods in the market places, in their blissful 
self-contemplation, they are the genuine embellishment of the 
people, to which as individuals they return. It is now, on the 
contrary, ideality itself, pure abstraction which has come to be for 
itself, that faces the substance; subjectivity, which establishes itself 
as the principle of philosophy. Not of the people, this subjectivity, 
confronting the substantial powers of the people, is yet of the 
people, that is, it confronts reality externally, is in practice 
entangled in it, and its existence is motion. These mobile vessels of 
development are the Sophists. Their innermost form, cleansed 
from the immediate dross of appearance, is Socrates, whom the 
Delphic oracle called the sopwtatoy.” 

Being confronted by its own ideality, substance is split up into a 
mass of accidental limited existences and institutions whose 
right— unity, and identity with it—has escaped into the subjective 
spirit. The subjective spirit itself is as such the vessel of substance, 
but because this ideality is opposed to reality, it is present in minds 
objectively as a “must”, and subjectively as a striving. The 
expression of this subjective spirit, which knows that it has the 
ideality in itself, is the judgment of the concept, for which the 
criterion of the individual is that which is determined in itself, the 
purpose, the good, but which is still here a “must” of reality. This 
“must” of reality is likewise a “must” of the subject which has 
become conscious of this ideality, for it itself stands rooted in 
reality and the reality outside it is its own. Thus the position of 
this subject is just as much determined as its fate. 

First, the fact that this ideality of substance has entered the 
subjective spirit, has fallen away from itself, is a leap, a falling 
away from the substantial life determined in the substantial life 
itself. Hence this determination of the subject is for it an 
accomplished fact, an alien force, the bearer of which it finds itself 
to be, the daemon of Socrates. The daemon is the immediate 
appearance of the fact that for Greek life philosophy is just as 

2 Multitude.— Ed. 
b Wisest — Ed. 

much only internal as only external. The characteristics of the 
daemon determine the empirical singularity of the subject, because 
the subject naturally detaches itself from the substantial, and 
hence naturally determined, life in this [Greek] life, since the 
daemon appears as a natural determinant. The Sophists them- 
selves are these daemons, not yet differentiated from their actions. 
Socrates is conscious that he carries the daemon in himself. 
Socrates is the substantial exemplar of substance losing itself in the 
subject. He is therefore just as much a substantial individual as the 
earlier philosophers, but after the manner of subjectivity, not 
enclosed in himself, not an image of the gods, but a human one, 
not mysterious, but clear and luminous, not a seer, but a sociable 
man. 

The second determination is therefore that this subject pro- 
nounces a judgment on the “must”, the purpose. Substance has 
lost its ideality in the subjective spirit, which thus has become in 
itself the determination of substance, its predicate, while substance 
itself has become in relation to the subjective spirit only the 
immediate, unjustified, merely existing composite of independent 
existences. The determination of the predicate, since it refers to 
something existing, is hence itself immediate, and since this 
something is the living spirit of the people, it is in practice the 
determination of the individual spirits, education and teaching. 
The “must” of substantiality is the subjective spirit’s own determi- 
nation expressed by it; the purpose of the world is therefore its 
[the spirit’s] own purpose, to teach about it is its calling. It 
therefore embodies in itself the purpose and hence the good both 
in its life and in its teaching. It is the wise man as he has entered 
into practical motion. 

Finally, inasmuch as this individual pronounces the judgment of 
the concept on the world, he is in himself divided and judged; for 
while he has his roots for one part in the substantial, he owes his 
right to exist only to the laws of the state to which he belongs, to 
its religion, in brief, to all the substantial conditions which appear 
to him as his own nature. On the other hand, he possesses in 
himself the purpose which is the judge of that substantiality. His 
own substantiality is therefore judged in this individual himself 
and thus he perishes precisely because he is born of the substan- 
tial, and not of the free spirit which endures and overcomes all 
contradictions and which need not recognise any natural condi- 
tions as such. 

The reason why Socrates is so important is that the relation of 
Greek philosophy to the Greek spirit, and therefore its inner limit, 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 439 

is expressed in him. It is self-evident how stupid was the 
comparison drawn in recent times between the relation of 
Hegelian philosophy to life and the case of Socrates, from which 
the justification for condemning the Hegelian philosophy was 
deduced. The specific failing of Greek philosophy is precisely that 
it stands related only to the substantial spirit; in our time both 
sides are spirit and both want to be acknowledged as such. 

Subjecivity is manifested in its immediate bearer [Socrates] as his 
life and his practical activity, as a form by which he leads single 
individuals out of the determinations of substantiality to determi- 
nation in themselves; apart from this practical activity, his 
philosophy has no other content than the abstract determination 
of the good. His philosophy is his transference from substantially 
existing notions, differences, etc., to determination-in-self, which, 
however, has no other content than to be the vessel of this 
. dissolving reflection; his philosophy is therefore essentially his own 
wisdom, his own goodness; in relation to the world the only 
fulfilment of his teaching on the good is a quite different 
subjectivity from that of Kant when he establishes his categorical 
imperative. For Kant it is of no account what attitude he, as an 
empirical subject, adopts towards this imperative. 

With Plato motion becomes ideal; as Socrates is the image and 
teacher of the world, so Plato’s ideas, his philosophical abstraction, 
are its prototypes. 

In Plato this abstract determination of the good, of the purpose, 

. develops into a comprehensive, world-embracing philosophy. The 

purpose, as the determination in itself, the real will of the 
philosopher, is thinking, the real determinations of this good are 
the immanent thoughts. The real will of the philosopher, the 
ideality active in him, is the real “must” of the real world. Plato 
sees this his attitude to reality in such a way that an independent 
realm of ideas hovers over reality (and this “beyond” is 
the philosopher’s own subjectivity) and is obscurely reflected in it. 
If Socrates discovered only the name of the ideality which has 
passed out of substance into the subject, and was himself con- 
sciously this motion, the substantial world of reality now enters 
really idealised into Plato’s consciousness, but thereby this ideal 
world itself is just as simply organised in itself as is the really 
substantial world facing it, of which Aristotle most aptly remarked: 

(Metaphysics, I, Chap. IX) “For the Forms are practically equal to—or not fewer 
than —the things, in trying to explain which these thinkers proceeded from them 
to the Form”. 

The determination of this world and its organisation in itself is 
therefore to the philosopher himself a beyond, the motion has 
been removed from this world. 

“Yet when the Forms exist, still the things that share in them do not come into 
being, unless there is something to originate movement [...].” Aristotle, op. cit. 

The philosopher as such, that is, as the wise man, not as the 
motion of the real spirit in general, is therefore the truth-beyond 
of the substantial world facing him. Plato expresses this most 
precisely when he says that either the philosophers must become 
kings or the kings philosophers for the state to achieve its 
purpose. In his attempts to educate a tyrant he also made a 
practical effort on these lines. His state has indeed as its special 
and highest estate that of the learned.’ | 

I wish to mention here two other remarks made by Aristotle, 
because they provide the most important conclusions concerning 
the form of Platonic consciousness and link up with the aspect 
from which we consider it in relation to the sogéc.> 

Aristotle says of Plato: 

“In the Phaedo the case is stated in this way —that the Forms are causes both of 
being and of becoming; yet when the Forms exist, still the things that share in 
them do not come into being, unless there is something to originate movement 
[...].” Aristotle, op. cit. 

It is not only that which is, it is the whole possibility of being 
that Plato wants to bring out into ideality: this ideality is a closed, 
specifically different realm in the philosophising consciousness 
itself: because it is this, it lacks motion. * 

This contradiction in the philosophising consciousness must 
objectify itself to the latter, the philosophising consciousness must 
eject this contradiction. 

“Again the Forms are patterns not only of sensible things, but of Forms 
themselves also: e.g. the genus, as genus of Forms; so that the same thing could be 
both pattern and copy.” (op. cit.] 

Lucretius on the ancient Ionian philosophers: 

“... have certainly made many excellent and divine discoveries and uttered 
oracles from the inner sanctuary of their hearts with more sanctity and far surer 
reason than those the Delphic prophetess pronounces, drugged by the laurel fumes 
from Apollo’s tripod.” Book I, ll. 736-740. 

Important for the definition of the Epicurean philosophy of 
nature is the following: 

* Plato, Res publica, V, 473.— Ed. 
> Wise man.— Ed. 

Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 44} 

1. The eternity of matter, which is connected with the fact that 
time is considered as an accident of accidents, as proper only to 
composites and their eventis, and hence is relegated to outside the 
material principle, outside the atom itself. It is further connected 
with the fact that the substance of the Epicurean philosophy is that 
which reflects only externally, which has no premises, which is 
arbitrariness and accident. Time is rather the fate of nature, of the 
finite. Negative unity with itself, its internal necessity. 

2. The void, the negation, is not the negative of matter itself, but 
[space] where there is no matter. In this respect too, therefore, 
matter is in itself eternal. 

The form which we see emerge at the conclusion from the 
workshop of Greek philosophical consciousness, out of the dark- 
ness of abstraction, and veiled in its dark garb, is the same form in 
which Greek philosophy walked, alive, the stage of the world, the 
same form which saw gods even in the burning hearth, the same 
which drank the poison cup, the same which, as the God of 
Aristotle, enjoys the greatest bliss, theory. 

EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY 

Third Notebook 

IlI. PLUTARCH, 1. THAT EPICURUS ACTUALLY MAKES 
A PLEASANT LIFE IMPOSSIBLE. 
2. COLOTES