BOOK I CH. XIx § 49. 147

ad nos: the mss read ad deos which makes np sense! ; possibly it is due to a comparison of § 114; nor is Manutius’ a deo, though supported by the quotation in Augustine Ep. 118, suitable after ex individuis ; we want the terminus ad quem, that a quo being already supplied.
mentem intentam infixamque. The independent action of the mind is needed (1) to distinguish particular images; so Lucretius Iv 802, ex- plaining how it is that the mind only perceives a small part of the images which throng to it from all sides, guia tenuia sunt, nist quae contendit, acute | cernere non potis est animus; proinde omnia quae sunt | praeterea pereunt, nist si quae ad se ipse paravit; (2) to interpret them by meditation (émtBodn Epic. in Diog. L. x 62, lit. ‘throwing oneself upon them’, as in § 54 se cnjiciens animus et intentus, Lucr. 11 740 animi injectus and 1047 with Munro’s notes). Hence the expressions already discussed cogitatione percipr, oyw Oewpnrors.
intellegentiam capere—aeterna: ‘comes to understand what that being is which possesses the divine attributes of blessedness and eternity’, cf. § 96 praestantissima natura, eaque beata et aeterna, quae sola divina natura est, § 105 beatam illam naturam et sempiternam putet.
To treat now of the whole passage together, it may be thus translated, ‘Epicurus teaches that the essential nature of the Gods is such as, in the first place, to be perceptible by the mind alone, not by the external senses ; and in the next place, to be without the solidity, so to call it, and the individuality belonging to those bodies to which he gives the name of orepéywa on account of their hardness: but (his account is) that through the perception of a long train of similar images, when an endless succession of such images forms itself out of countless atoms and streams towards us, then our mind intent and fastened upon these images apprehends with rapture the idea of a blessed and eternal being’. Comparing this with the parallel passage from Diog. L. we shall see that, supposing the latter to be correct?, C. here confines his attention to the second class of Gods there mentioned, i.e. Gods who exist for us in
1 A writer in the Rev. de Philologie for 1877, p. 264 keeps the reading ad deos and explains as follows. The atoms flow together ‘vers le point ov ils constituent eux-mémes par leur passage continue l’existence des dieux...Les images quise détachent sans cesse des dieux, aprés avoir formé un instant les dieux eux-mémes, sont bien celles qui se rendent ensuite vers nous, et qui nous font connaitre.’
2 Sch. altogether objects to the supposition of there being two classes of Epicurean gods, and would accordingly change ots wév, ots dé, reading ov pev (Gassendi’s unsatisfactory suggestion) kar apiOuov vpecr&ras, yyworods dé Kal’ opocdiav éx THs cuvexods émippicews x.7.A. I see no reason for doubting the genuineness of the passage. It simply asserts in definite terms the conclusion which an attentive consideration of C.’s language forces on the reader, viz. that there were two distinct systems of theology recognized in the Epicurean school, one of a more esoteric nature, taken mainly from their great authority Demo- critus, the other more suited to the popular belief; which two systems have been not unnaturally confounded together by C.
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148 BOOK I CH. XIx § 49,
virtue of a continuous stream of images combining to produce in us the impression of a human form. Such a description suits fairly with the account given of Democritus’ theology (V. D. 1 120) according to which the Gods are nothing more than combinations of ethereal atoms floating about as imagines; but it is difficult to see how it could be reconciled with the ordinary account of Epicurus’ innumerable Gods of the intermundia, far removed from the sphere of those atomic storms which are ever making and unmaking the surrounding worlds. If the dmagznes which appear to men are composed of atoms thrown off from the Gods of the cdntermundia, why may not atoms find their way back again from our world to them, as in fact is asserted by Cotta § 114? How can beings which have no soliditas be continually throwing off those myriads of atoms of which the images are formed, especially when we consider the vast distance of the inter- mundia from the earth, and reflect that, radiation being equal in all directions, there must be the same crowding of divine images at every point of this immense circumference? Again, if the Gods have no separate individuality, how are they capable of conversing together and exhibiting an ideal of the philosophic life, as Philodemus asserted? And how are such Gods in any degree truer to the popular conception than the aépas kai mvevpata Which Philodemus charges the Stoics with worshipping (p. 84 foll.) ?. See Munro on Lucr. v 152. Assuming then, as we apparently may, that either Epicurus himself or some of his followers acknowledged a divinity of a more spiritual type, distinct from those of the cntermundia, there is much in the description which is curiously suggestive of a theclogy with which we are familiar in the present day. When people understand by the name God ‘a stream of tendency which makes for righteousness’, or in other words, a predominating character in the events of life and the phenomena of the universe which answers to and calls out in us an ideal of goodness (and why not also which answers to and calls out our ideals of beauty and of wisdom ?) they do not at first ascribe to God personality or numerical identity, but as they meditate on the impressions which they receive, they become gradually conscious of a unity, shaping itself, for some at least, dvOpwroedes, into a human form, in which they recognize the features of the judge, the ruler, the father. Some such idealistic interpre- tation of the physical formularies of his school was certainly not more difficult to a religious Epicurean than the spiritualization of the myths was to a Stoic, and however far removed from ordinary Epicurean belief, it is not altogether inconsistent with some of the citations from Philodemus given under guod beatum § 45.
§ 50. summa vis infinitatis: suggested by the use of cnfinita just before. On the way in which Ep. connected the idea of infinity with the dis- tribution of life, see Lucr. 11 522 foll., where he argues that the deficiency of animals, e.g. elephants, in one country is made up for by their excess in another, and that for the generation of any particular kind of animal it was necessary that there should have been an infinity of the atoms which