Note 15 — Chapter XVII · THE EPICUREAN VIEWS ON NATURE.

For all that, Epicurus was unwilling to renounce belief in the Gods,15 nor is it credible that this unwillingness was simply a yielding to popular opinion.16 The language used by the Epicureans certainly gives the impression of sincerity; and the time was past when avowed atheism was attended with danger. Atheism would have been as readily condoned in the time of Epicurus as the deism which denied most unreservedly the popular faith. It is, however, possible to trace the causes which led Epicurus to believe that there are Gods. There was first the general diffusion of a belief in Gods which appeared to him to establish the truth of this belief, and hence he declared the existence of Gods to be something directly certain, and grounded on a primary notion (πρόληψις).17 Moreover, with his materialistic theory of knowledge he no doubt supposed that the primary notion which convinces us of the existence of Gods arises from the actual contemplation of divine beings, and from the perception of those atom-pictures from which Democritus had already deduced the belief in Gods.18 And in addition to these theoretical reasons, Epicurus had also another, half æsthetical, half religious—the wish to see his ideal of happiness realised in the person of the Gods,19 and it is this ideal which determines the character of all his notions respecting them. His Gods are therefore, throughout, human beings. Religious belief only knows beings such as these, or, as Epicurus expresses it, only such beings come before us in those pictures of the Gods which present themselves to our minds, sometimes in sleep, sometimes when we are awake. Reflection, too, convinces us that the human form is the most beautiful, that to it alone reason belongs, and that it is the most appropriate form for perfectly happy beings.20 Epicurus even went so far as to attribute to the Gods difference of sex.21 At the same time everything must be eliminated which is not appropriate to a divine being.