tianity, now? Where is the word "Protestant?" Where are the followers of the various seceders from recognised belief, even in the Christian era?

And last, but not least, who cares to acknowledge himself actually ranked under the banner of Denial, however proudly he might confess to any amount of belief in excess of his fellows?

The subject is well worth earnest thought.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE EPICUREANS.

WITH the Sceptics, the ancient philosophy virtually came to an end.

The Pyrrhonists were the representatives of entire, utter denial. Negation was their deity. But there were minor philosophical schools in the third century before Christ who were making a feeble struggle against the destruction of positive thought. There were the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the "New Academicians."

The word "epicure" has acquired the meaning of extreme daintiness. The word has gone astray, like many another word in the dictionary.

The Epicureans took their name from their head and founder, Epicurus, who is the representative of mankind in one of its many humours or tempers.

Epicurus was a man who clung to whatever he could. grasp of the comforting, ameliorating circumstances of this life. Not exactly "pleasure," as we interpret the word, but "satisfaction," was his aim. His leading doctrine was, that the better policy of human beings is, in common phrase, to make the best of the bad bargain-human existence.

His elaborately planned scheme for a smooth life is not the result of sensual yearning, as it was with his foreshadower, Aristippus the Cyrenaic-perhaps the most easy-going latitudinarian of the ancient philosophers. His wild demand of the day, the present moment, to yield all

its fruits, all its capacities for self-gratification, veils a terrible truth.

It is most probably the outcome of an awful experience, such as occurs to some human beings once in their lifetime.

Perhaps Epicurus, who was a clever boy, the son of Neocles and Cherestrata, natives of Gargettus, a village of Attica, lived the ordinary life of other Grecian lads, except for his occasional triumphs over his schoolfellows, until the moment came.

That moment when, suddenly, without warning or preparation, the human being feels a shock, and realises the terrible facts, "This is I-I am;-but what am I? Why am I myself? As I know I am myself, how can it be possible that others are selves? I am not in them. Therefore they are not, for me."

The universe suddenly becomes chaos, lit by one spark, Self. A conviction of personal identity is the one spark in a chaos of unreality.

The consciousness of self is so vivid, that while it lasts the being credits nothing. There seem to be other human beings who are similar selves inhabiting a world which seems the same to them as to this experiencer. He may compare his sensations with theirs.

But-and this is the awful conclusion inevitably following this dread "realisation of self"-"what if my imagination has unconsciously created everything that I feel, see, hear, touch, and taste? What if this is merely the natural result of consciousness-nothing possessing the actual being that I feel myself to possess? There is no criterion, no proof I can apply. I cannot feel others existing as I feel myself existing. I cannot feel the identity of anything but myself. Therefore I can never be certain of anything, except that I am."

This is an inadequate description of a moment which is only too well known by many. But words fail to convey the experiences of the mind, or soul,

Some who have had the experience, who have felt Self the one spark in unfathomable darkness, have had the self-control to turn resolutely away from the horrors of the self centre to the smooth tranquillity of external life, the appearances, or phenomena,

Others, who have found actual daily life after this but a mere collection of ghastly shadows,—everything changed by the sudden flickering of identity,—as surroundings are altered and paled by a flame upon which salt has been sprinkled, have boldly taken the bull by the horns, and have entered into the maze of examination and inquiry, out of which, led as they may severally have been by the warm grasp of faith or the tight clutch of science, it is to be hoped they have emerged, satisfied.

Others have done as Epicurus did, thrown themselves violently into the crowd of appearances to snatch what they could of seeming reality, let it be what it may.

Some have felt even more than the unreality of everything except Self. They have realised their temporary existence. They have digested the fact that a great past took place without them, and that a great future will doubtless exist after they have passed away. They were insensible to the great past, why should they have anything to do with the great future?

From cruel, unfathomable Thought to turn to the outside life of the senses, the relief must be as great as when a darkness hiding ominous signs and sounds is suddenly illuminated.

Epicurus, who most probably passed through experiences to which these are as child's play,-must have felt the affection for the external world and its equable, cheerful, flow of sensations, that one awaking from a night of hideous dreams feels for ordinary and familiar externals illuminated by bright morning sunshine.

The proof that the idea of belief or doctrine was horrible to him is to be found in the ardour with which he embraced opinions that did not require huge efforts of abstrac

tion, which is a condition of mind that he evidently found distasteful.

From first to last his life is a record of the successive stages of a calm, and a sweetness, gentleness, and consideration for his fellow-creatures,-which could only have sprung from a profound pity, the commiseration or fellow-feeling which breeds "wondrous kindness."

We have seen that Epicurus was the son of natives of Attica. He was born in the year 341 B.C., and would therefore have been still quite a young man when Aristotle died.

His father, Neocles, was a schoolmaster, and his mother is said to have known something of "magic." She may possibly have been a clever herbalist, or have had the mesmeric power, which in those days was considered witchcraft. The boy was naturally sharp, and was fond of study. He had the knack of asking those who taught him awkward questions; for the historian, Diogenes Laertius, among other anecdotes, repeats a saying of his when he was only twelve years of age. He was learning the verse from Hesiod, "In the beginning all things arose from chaos," when he stopped, considered, and requested to be informed from whence came chaos?

Soon discontented with ordinary teaching, he plunged into philosophy. He began with the writings of Democritus, whose atomic theory he adopted, and never afterwards renounced; and studied with Pamphilus, a pupil of Plato, living in the island of Samos, where Epicurus seems to have passed the greater part of his youth.

When he was eighteen he went to Athens, then full of philosophers of the various schools-Peripatetics, Platonists, Cynics, and Stoics. There he remained a year, then travelled to Colophon, Mitylene, and Lampsacus. During the year he seems to have heard-some even say studied under-Xenocrates at the Academy, Theophrastus at the Lyceum, and others. He came, saw, and heard; but went his way and thought his own thoughts. In his own words, "he taught himself."