Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.479held with great tenacity to their founder's viewsand mode of life, which may be summed up indenial of God and Providence, and enjoyment tothe utmost of this world's goods; the fair side ofit being a general benevolence, courtesy, friendship,in short, a genial appreciation of what weunderstand by the word civilisation. These antagonistsof Stoic principles and of the highest moralitywhich heathen thought had constructed werethe most numerous of existing sects, and we aretold that hundreds of years after their founder'sdeath they presented the appearance of a well-ordered republic, ruled without uproar or dissensionby one spirit, in which they formed a favourablecontrast to the Stoics. With the exceptionof a sinle fugitive, Metrodorus, never had anEpicurean detached himself from his school.64 Wemust give philosophy the credit of this single instanceof a capacity to create a social life in accordancewith its tenets in a sect whose doctrineswerea reproach among the heathens themselves. " Thefailure of ^Pythagoras, of Plato, of Aristotle, ofZeno, was the success of Epicurus, and at the sametime the announcement that the asre of Augustusand Tiberius was ready to expire in sensualityand unbelief, and even in exhaustion of the philosophicmind, for no period is so barren of scientific64 Dollinger, p. 815, from Numenius, quoted by Eusebius. Ueber-weg, i. 205, says of them, that up to the rise of Neoplcitonism they werethe most numerous of all,