Note (return) — Chapter XIII

It is said of Epicurus that he loved to hearken to the stories of the indifference and apathy of Pyrrhon, and that, in these qualities, he aspired to imitate him. But Epicurus was not, like Pyrrhon, a skeptic; on the contrary, he was the most imperious dogmatist. No man ever showed so little respect for the opinions of his predecessors, or so much confidence in his own. He was fond of boasting that he had made his own philosophy--he was a "self-taught" man! Now "Epicurus might be perfectly honest in saying he had read very little, and had worked out the conclusions in his own mind, but he was a copyist, nevertheless; few men more entirely so." 766 His psychology was certainly borrowed from the Ionian school. From thence he had derived his fundamental maxim, that "sensation is the source of all knowledge, and the standard of all truth." His physics were copied from Democritus. With both, "atoms are the first principle of all things." And in Ethics he had learned from Aristotle, that if an absolute good is not the end of a practical life, happiness must be its end. 767 All that is fundamental in the system of Epicurus was borrowed from his predecessors, and there is little that can be called new in his teaching.