Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/67

 investigation of natural phenomena is to serve only as a means of freeing the life of humanity from those cares and vices which are hostile to its peace:—

"Denique avarities et honorum cæca cupido Quæ miseros homines cogunt transcendere fines Juris et interdum socios scelerum atque ministros Noctes atque dies niti præstante labore Ad summas emergere opes, hæc vulnera vitæ Non minimam partem mortis formidine aluntur."

The investigation of nature with a view to eliminating the fear of death as a factor in human conduct, clearly enounced as it is in the poem of the Roman Epicurean, is still more emphatically expressed in a "fundamental maxim" of Epicurus himself: "If we did not allow ourselves to be disturbed by suspicious fears of celestial phenomena; if the terrors of death were never in our minds; and if we would but courageously discuss the limits of our nature as regards pain and desire: we should then have no need to study Natural Philosophy."

The exclusion of Dialectics, and the subordination of Physics to Ethics, restricted—if, indeed, it were a restriction—the scope of character and intelligence to the sphere of conduct, and it is in the light of this limitation that the full significance of the Epicurean definition of Philosophy lies—"Philosophy is an active principle which aims at securing Happiness by Reason