Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

446 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AXDThey were renowned for their friendship witheach other. Epicurus's Garden at Athens meantthe highest refinement of Athenian life, the enjoymentof everything that was pleasant in the societyof likeminded men.29 It was this side of his philosophywhich made it popular.While the schools of Zeno and Epicurus seatedat Athens were powerfully influencing Grecianthought, the former especially drawing to it thestronger and more thinking minds, resistance aroseto them both in the chair of Plato. First Arcesi-laus and then Carneades who had succeeded to thisoffice, set up in the middle Academy the school ofScepticism. While Stoics and Epicureans alikesought peace of mind through knowledge of theworld and its laws, they on the contrary maintainedthat this same peace of mind could only beattained by renouncing all such knowledge.30 Theyheld that no truth and no certainty were given toman by the representations of his senses, by hisfeelings, and by his consciousness of these, whichdo not enable him to know the real being of anything.31Those who held this view would not saydownright that what they contradicted was untrue: they were of opinion that it might be true,only there was no certitude of this, and thereforeit must be left undetermined. The uncertaintywas as great on the one side as on the other.29 Zeller, vol. iii. part 1, i. p. 107. . 30 Ibid. p.31 Dolliuger. p. 336, who quotes tiextus, Ilypot. i. 8.