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o the point. There is no cutting edge. The side of the ?p?e which is usually held uppermost is slightly concave, the other is strengthened with a midrib, nearly equal in thickness and similar in shape to either half of the true blade. The material is tempered steel. There is a haft or tang about 8 in. long, which is pushed through a circular guard or shell of convex form, the diameter of which is normally 5 in. and the convexity 1 3/4 in. The shell is of steel or aluminium, and if of the latter metal, sometimes fortified at the centre with a disk of steel the size of a crown piece. The insertion of the haft or tang through the shell may be either central or excentric to the extent of about 1 in., for the better protection of the outside of the forearm.

An ?p?e is well balanced and light in hand when, on poising the blade across the forefinger, about 1 in. in advance of the shell, it is in equilibrium.

A mask of wire netting is used to protect the face, and a stout glove on the sword hand. It is necessary to wear strong clothes and to pad the jacket and trousers at the most exposed parts, in case the blade should break unnoticed. A vulnerable spot, which ought to be specially padded, is just under the sword-arm.

EPERJES, a town of Hungary, capital of the county of S?ros, 190 m. N.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. 13,098. It is situated on the left bank of the river Tarcza, an affluent of the Theiss, and has been almost completely rebuilt since a great fire in 1887. Eperjes is one of the oldest towns of Hungary, and is still partly surrounded by its old walls. It is the seat of a Greek-Catholic bishop, and possesses a beautiful cathedral built in the 18th century in late Gothic style. It possesses manufactures of cloth, table-linen and earthenware, and has an active trade in wine, linen, cattle and grain. About 2 m. to the south is S?v?r with important salt-works.

About 6 m. N.W. of Eperjes is situated the village of V?r?sv?g?s, which contains the only opal mine in Europe. The opal was mined here 800 years ago, and the largest piece hitherto found, weighing 2940 carats and estimated to have a value of ?175,000, is preserved in the Court Museum at Vienna.

EPHEBEUM , in architecture, a large hall in the ancient Palaestra furnished with seats , the length of which should be a third larger than the width. It served for the exercises of youths of from sixteen to eighteen years of age.

After the end of the 4th century B.C. the institution underwent a radical change. Enrolment ceased to be obligatory, lasted only for a year, and the limit of age was dispensed with. Inscriptions attest a continually decreasing number of ephebi, and with the admission of foreigners the college lost its representative national character. This was mainly due to the weakening of the military spirit and the progress of intellectual culture. The military element was no longer all-important, and the ephebia became a sort of university for well-to-do young men of good family, whose social position has been compared with that of the Athenian "knights" of earlier times. The institution lasted till the end of the 3rd century A.D.

To the nature of the epistle correspond well the facts of its title and address. The title "To the Ephesians" is found in the Muratorian canon, in Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, as well as in all the earliest MSS. and versions. Marcion, however , used and recommended copies with the title "To the Laodiceans." This would be inexplicable if Eph. i. 1 had read in Marcion's copies, as it does in most ancient authorities, "To the saints which are at Ephesus"; but in fact the words of verse 1 were probably absent. They were not contained in the text used by Origen ; Basil says that "ancient copies" omitted the words; and they are actually omitted by Codices B and , together with Codex 67 . The words "in Ephesus" were thus probably originally lacking in the address, and were inserted from the suggestion of the title. Either the address was general or else a blank was left. In the latter case the name may have been intended to be supplied orally, in communicating the letter, or a different name may have been written in each of the individual copies. Under any of these hypotheses the address would indicate that we have a circular letter, written to a group of churches, doubtless in Asia Minor. This would account for the general character of the epistle, as well as for the entire and striking absence of personal greetings and of concrete allusions to existing circumstances among the readers. It appears to have drawn its title, "To the Ephesians," from one of the churches for which it was intended, perhaps the one from which a copy was secured when Paul's epistles were collected, shortly before or after the year 100. That our epistle is the one referred to in Col. iv. 16, which was to be had by the Colossians from Laodicea, is not unlikely. Such an identification doubtless led Marcion to alter the title in his copies.

The union of Gentiles and Jews in one body is already accomplished. The Christology is more advanced, uses Alexandrian terms, and suggests the ideas of the Gospel of John. The conception of the Church as the body of Christ is new. There is said to be a general softening of Pauline thought in the direction of the Christianity of the 2nd century, while very many characteristic ideas of the earlier epistles are absent.

EPHESUS, an ancient Ionian city on the west coast of Asia Minor. In historic times it was situate on the lower slopes of the hills, Coressus and Prion, which rise out of a fertile plain near the mouth of the river Ca?ster, while the temple and precinct of Artemis or Diana, to the fame of which the town owed much of its celebrity, were in the plain itself, E.N.E. at a distance of about a mile. But there is reason to think both town and shrine had different sites in pre-Ionian times, and that both lay farther south among the foot-hills of Mt. Solmissus. The situation of the city was such as at all times to command a great commerce. Of the three great river basins of Ionia and Lydia, those of the Hermus, Ca?ster and Maeander, it commanded the second, and had already access by easy passes to the other two.

The earliest inhabitants assigned to Ephesus by Greek writers are the "Amazons," with whom we hear of Leleges, Carians and Pelasgi. In the 11th century B.C., according to tradition , Androclus, son of the Athenian king Codrus, landed on the spot with his Ionians and a mixed body of colonists; and from his conquest dates the history of the Greek Ephesus. The deity of the city was Artemis; but we must guard against misconception when we use that name, remembering that she bore close relation to the primitive Asiatic goddess of nature, whose cult existed before the Ionian migration at the neighbouring Ortygia, and that she always remained the virgin-mother of all life and especially wild life, and an embodiment of the fertility and productive power of the earth. The well-known monstrous representation of her, as a figure with many breasts, swathed below the waist in grave-clothes, was probably of late and alien origin. In early Ionian times she seems to have been represented as a natural matronly figure, sometimes accompanied by a child, and to have been a more typically Hellenic goddess than she became in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Twice in the period 700-500 B.C. the city owed its preservation to the interference of the goddess; once when the swarms of the Cimmerians overran Asia Minor in the 7th century and burnt the Artemision itself; and once when Croesus besieged the town in the century succeeding, and only retired after it had solemnly dedicated itself to Artemis, the sign of such dedication being the stretching of a rope from city to sanctuary. Croesus was eager in every way to propitiate the goddess, and since about this time her temple was being restored on an enlarged scale, he presented most of the columns required for the building as well as some cows of gold. That is to say, these gifts were probably paid for out of the proceeds of the sequestration of the property of a rich Lydian merchant, Sadyattes, which Croesus presented to Ephesus . To counteract, perhaps, the growing Lydian influence, Athens, the mother-city of Ephesus, despatched one of her noblest citizens, Aristarchus, to restore law on the basis of the Solonian constitution. The labours of Aristarchus seem to have borne fruit. It was an Ephesian follower of his, Hermodorus, who aided the Decemviri at Rome in their compilation of a system of law. And in the same generation Heraclitus, probably a descendant of Codrus, quitted his hereditary magistracy in order to devote himself to philosophy, in which his name became almost as great as that of any Greek. Poetry had long flourished at Ephesus. From very early times the Homeric poems found a home and admirers there; and to Ephesus belong the earliest elegiac poems of Greece, the war songs of Callinus, who flourished in the 7th century B.C. and was the model of Tyrtaeus. The city seems to have been more than once under tyrannical rule in the early Ionian period; and it fell thereafter first to Croesus of Lydia, and then to Cyrus, the Persian, and when the Ionian revolt against Persia broke out in the year 500 B.C. under the lead of Miletus, the city remained submissive to Persian rule. When Xerxes returned from the march against Greece, he honoured the temple of Artemis, although he sacked other Ionian shrines, and even left his children behind at Ephesus for safety's sake. We hear again of Persian respect for the temple in the time of Tissaphernes . After the final Persian defeat at the Eurymedon , Ephesus for a time paid tribute to Athens, with the other cities of the coast, and Lysander first and Agesilaus afterwards made it their headquarters. To the latter fact we owe a contemporary description of it by Xenophon. In the early part of the 4th century it fell again under Persian influence, and was administered by an oligarchy.

The work done by the Austrians enables a good idea to be obtained of the appearance presented by a great Graeco-Roman city of Asia in the last days of its prosperity. It may be realized better there than anywhere how much architectural splendour was concentrated in the public quarters. But the restriction of the clearance to the upper stratum of deposit has prevented the acquisition of much further knowledge. Both the Hellenistic and, still more, the original Ionian cities remain for the most part unexplored. It should, however, be added that very valuable topographical exploration has been carried out in the environs of Ephesus by members of the Austrian expedition, and that the Ephesian district is now mapped more satisfactorily than any other district of ancient interest in Asia Minor.

EPHESUS, COUNCIL OF. This Church council was convened in 431 for the purpose of taking authoritative action concerning the doctrine of the person of Christ. The councils of Nicaea and Constantinople had asserted the full divinity and real humanity of Christ, without, however, defining the manner of their union. The attempt to solve the apparent incongruity of a perfect union of two complete and distinct natures in one person produced first Apollinarianism, which substituted the divine Logos for the human or of Jesus, thereby detracting from the completeness of his humanity; and then Nestorianism, which destroyed the unity of Christ's person by affirming that the divine Logos dwelt in the man Jesus as in a temple, and that the union of the two was in respect of dignity, and furthermore that, inasmuch as the Logos could not have been born, to call Mary , "Godbearer," was absurd and blasphemous. The Alexandrians, led by Cyril, stood for the doctrine of the perfect union of two complete natures in one person, and made the shibboleth of orthodoxy. The theological controversy was intensified by the rivalry of the two patriarchates, Alexandria and Constantinople, for the primacy of the East. As bishop of Constantinople Nestorius naturally looked to the emperor for support, while Cyril turned to Rome. A Roman synod in 430 found Nestorius heretical and decreed his excommunication unless he should recant. Shortly afterwards an Alexandrian synod condemned his doctrines in twelve anathemas, which only provoked counter-anathemas. The emperor now intervened and summoned a council, which met at Ephesus on the 22nd of June 431. Nestorius was present with an armed escort, but refused to attend the council on the ground that the patriarch of Antioch had not arrived. The council, nevertheless, proceeded to declare him excommunicate and deposed. When the Roman legates appeared they "examined and approved" the acts of the council, whether as if thereby giving them validity, or as if concurring with the council, is a question not easy to answer from the records. Cyril, the president, apparently regarded the subscription of the legates as the acknowledgment of "canonical agreement" with the synod.

The disturbances that followed the arrival of John, the patriarch of Antioch, are sufficiently described in the article NESTORIUS.

The emperor finally interposed to terminate that scandalous strife, banished Nestorius and dissolved the council. Ultimately he gave decision in favour of the orthodox. The council was generally received as ecumenical, even by the Antiochenes, and the differences between Cyril and John were adjusted by a "Union Creed," which, however, did not prevent a recrudescence of theological controversy.

EPHOD, a Hebrew word of uncertain meaning, retained by the translators of the Old Testament. In the post-exilic priestly writings the ephod forms part of the gorgeous ceremonial dress of the high-priest . It was a very richly decorated object of coloured threads interwoven with gold, worn outside the luxurious mantle or robe; it was kept in place by a girdle, and by shoulder-pieces , to which were attached brooches of onyx and golden rings from which hung the "breastplate" containing the sacred lots, Urim and Thummim. The somewhat involved description in Ex. xxviii. 6 sqq., xxxix. 2 sqq. leaves it uncertain whether it covered the back, encircling the body like a kind of waistcoat, or only the front; at all events it was not a garment in the ordinary sense, and its association with the sacred lots indicates that the ephod was used for divination , and had become the distinguishing feature of the leading priestly line . But from other passages it seems that the ephod had been a familiar object whose use was by no means so restricted. Like the teraphim it was part of the common stock of Hebrew cult; it is borne by persons acting in a priestly character , it is part of the worship of individuals , and is found in a private shrine with a lay attendant . Nevertheless, while the prophetical teaching came to regard the ephod as contrary to the true worship of Yahweh, the priestly doctrine of the post-exilic age has retained it along with other remains of earlier usage, legalizing it, as it were, by confining it exclusively to the Aaronites.

An intricate historical problem is involved at the outset in the famous ephod, which the priest Abiathar brought in his hand when he fled to David after the massacre of the priests of Nob. It is evidently regarded as the one which had been in Nob , and the presence of the priests at Nob is no less clearly regarded as the sequel of the fall of Shiloh. The ostensible intention is to narrate the transference of the sacred objects to David , and henceforth he regularly inquires of Yahweh in his movements . It is possible that the writer desired to trace the earlier history of the ephod through the line of Eli and Abiathar to the time when the Zadokite priests gained the supremacy ; but elsewhere Abiathar is said to have borne the ark , and this fluctuation is noteworthy by reason of the present confusion in the text of 1 Sam. xiv. 3, 18 .

On one view, the ark in Kirjath-jearim was in non-Israelite hands ; on the other, Saul's position as king necessitates the presumption that his sway extended over Judah and Israel, including those cities which otherwise appear to have been in the hands of aliens . There are some fundamental divergencies in the representations of the traditions of both David and Saul , and there is indirect and independent evidence which makes 1 Kings ii. 26 not entirely isolated. Here it must suffice to remark that the ark, too, was also an object for ascertaining the divine will , and it is far from certain that the later records of the ark , like those of the ephod, are valid for earlier times.

For the form of the earlier ephod the classic passage is 2 Sam. vi. 14, where David girt in a linen ephod dances before the ark at its entry into Jerusalem and incurs the unqualified contempt of his wife Michal, the daughter of Saul. Relying upon the known custom of performing certain observances in a practically, or even entirely, nude condition, it seems plausible to infer that the ephod was a scanty wrapping, perhaps a loin-cloth, and this view has found weighty support. On the other hand, the idea of contempt at the exposure of the person, to whatever extent, may not have been so prominent, especially if the custom were not unfamiliar, and it is possible that the sequel refers more particularly to grosser practices attending outbursts of religious enthusiasm.

Archaeological evidence for objects of divination , and parallels from the Oriental area, can be readily cited in support of any of the explanations of the ephod which have been offered, but naturally cannot prove the form which it actually took in Palestine. Since images were clothed, it could be supposed that the diviner put on the god's apparel ; but they were also plated, and in either case the transference from a covering to the object covered is intelligible. If the ephod was a loin-cloth, its use as a receptacle and the known evolution of the article find useful analogies . Finally, if there is no decisive evidence for the view that it was an image , or that as a wrapping it formed the sole covering of the officiating agent , all that can safely be said is that it was certainly used in divination and presumably did not differ radically from the ephod of the post-exilic age.

FOOTNOTES:

In historical times the ephors were five in number, the first of them giving his name to the year, like the eponymous archon at Athens. Where opinions were divided the majority prevailed. The ephors were elected annually, originally no doubt by the kings, later by the people; their term of office began with the new moon after the autumnal equinox, and they had an official residence in the Agora. Every full citizen was eligible and no property qualification was required.

FOOTNOTE:

It is now generally recognized, thanks to Volquardsen and others, that Ephorus is the principal authority followed by Diodorus, except in the chapters relating to Sicilian history.

EPHRAEM SYRUS , a saint who lived in Mesopotamia during the first three quarters of the 4th century A.D. He is perhaps the most influential of all Syriac authors; and his fame as a poet, commentator, preacher and defender of orthodoxy has spread throughout all branches of the Christian Church. This reputation he owes partly to the vast fertility of his pen--according to the historian Sozomen he was credited with having written altogether 3,000,000 lines--partly to the elegance of his style and a certain measure of poetic inspiration, more perhaps to the strength and consistency of his personal character, and his ardour in defence of the creed formulated at Nicaea.

The statement in his Life that Ephraim miraculously learned Coptic falls to the ground with the narrative of his Egyptian visit: and the story of his suddenly learning to speak Greek through the prayer of St Basil is equally unworthy of credence. He probably wrote only in Syriac, though he may have possessed some knowledge of Greek and possibly of Hebrew. But many of his works must have been early translated into other languages; and we possess in MSS. versions into Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Arabic and Ethiopic. The Greek versions occupy three entire volumes of the Roman folio edition, and the extant Armenian versions were published at Venice in four volumes in 1836.

As a theologian, Ephraim shows himself a stout defender of Nicaean orthodoxy, with no leanings in the direction of either the Nestorian or the Monophysite heresies which arose after his time. He regarded it as his special task to combat the views of Marcion, of Bardaisan and of Mani.

FOOTNOTES:

There were originally 77, but 5 have perished.

EPHRAIM, a tribe of Israel, called after the younger son of Joseph, who in his benediction exalted Ephraim over the elder brother Manasseh . These two divisions were often known as the "house of Joseph" . The relations between them are obscure; conflicts are referred to in Is. ix. 21, and Ephraim's proud and ambitious character is indicated in its demands as narrated in Josh. xvii. 14; Judg. viii. 1-3, xii. 1-6. throughout, Ephraim played a distinctive and prominent part; it probably excelled Manasseh in numerical strength, and the name became a synonym for the northern kingdom of Israel. Originally the name may have been a geographical term for the central portion of Palestine. Regarded as a tribe, it lay to the north of Benjamin, which traditionally belongs to it; but whether the young "brother" sprang from it, or grew up separately, is uncertain. Northwards, Ephraim lost itself in Manasseh, even if it did not actually include it ; the boundaries between them can hardly be recovered. Ephraim's strength lay in the possession of famous sites: Shechem, with the tomb of the tribal ancestor, also one of the capitals; Shiloh, at one period the home of the ark; Timnath-Serah , the burial-place of Joshua; and Samaria, whose name was afterwards extended to the whole district .

Shechem itself was visited by Abraham and Jacob, and the latter bought from the sons of Hamor a burial-place . The story of Dinah may imply some early settlement of tribes in its vicinity , and the reference in Gen. xlviii. 22 alludes to its having been forcibly captured. But how this part of Palestine came into the hands of the Israelites is not definitely related in the story of the invasion .

FOOTNOTE:

Inter-tribal feuds during the period of the monarchy may underlie the events mentioned in 1 Kings xvi. 9 sq., 21 sq.; 2 Kings xv. 10, 14.

EPHTHALITES, or WHITE HUNS. This many-named and enigmatical tribe was of considerable importance in the history of India and Persia in the 5th and 6th centuries, and was known to the Byzantine writers, who call them or . The last of these is an independent attempt to render the original name, which was probably something like Aptal or Haptal, but the initial of the third is believed to be a clerical error. They were also called or , White Huns. In Arabic and Persian they are known as Haital and in Armenian as Haithal, Idal or Hepthal. The Chinese name Yetha seems an attempt to represent the same sound. In India they were called Hunas. Ephthalite is the usual orthography, but Hephthalite is perhaps more correct.

The Huns who invaded India appear to have belonged to the same stock as those who molested Persia. The headquarters of the horde were at Bamian and at Balkh, and from these points they raided south-east and south-west. Skandagupta repelled an invasion in 455, but the defeat of the Persians in 484 probably stimulated their activity, and at the end of the 5th century their chief Toromana penetrated to Malwa in central India and succeeded in holding it for some time. His son Mihiragula made Sakala in the Punjab his Indian capital, but the cruelty of his rule provoked the Indian princes to form a confederation and revolt against him about 528. He was not, however, killed, but took refuge in Kashmir, where after a few years he seized the throne and then attacked the neighbouring kingdom of Gandhara, perpetrating terrible massacres. About a year after this he died , and shortly afterwards the Ephthalites collapsed under the attacks of the Turks. They do not appear to have moved on to another sphere, as these nomadic tribes often did when defeated, and were probably gradually absorbed in the surrounding populations. Their political power perhaps continued in the Gurjara empire, which at one time extended to Bengal in the east and the Nerbudda in the south, and continued in a diminished form until A.D. 1040. These Gurjaras appear to have entered India in connexion with the Hunnish invasions.

Our knowledge of the Indian Hunas is chiefly derived from coins, from a few inscriptions distributed from the Punjab to central India, and from the account of the Chinese pilgrim Hs?an Tsang, who visited the country just a century after the death of Mihiragula. The Greek monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who visited India about 530, describes the ruler of the country, whom he calls Gollas, as a White Hun king, who exacted an oppressive tribute with the help of a large army of cavalry and war elephants. Gollas no doubt represents the last part of the name Mihiragula or Mihirakula.

Greek writers give a more flattering account of the Ephthalites, which may perhaps be due to the fact that they were useful to the East Roman empire as enemies of Persia and also not dangerously near. Procopius says that they were far more civilized than the Huns of Attila, and the Turkish ambassador who was received by Justin is said to have described them as , which may merely mean that they lived in the cities which they conquered. The Chinese writers say that their customs were like those of the Turks; that they had no cities, lived in felt tents, were ignorant of writing and practised polyandry. Nothing whatever is known of their language, but some scholars explain the names Toramana and Jauvla as Turkish.

For the possible connexion between the Ephthalites and the European Huns see HUNS. The Chinese statement that the Hoa or Ye-tha were a section of the great Yue-Chi, and that their customs resembled those of the Turks , is probably correct, but does not amount to much, for the relationship did not prevent them from fighting with the Yue-Chi and Turks, and means little more than that they belonged to the warlike and energetic section of central Asian nomads, which is in any case certain. They appear to have been more ferocious and less assimilative than the other conquering tribes. This may, however, be due to the fact that their contact with civilization was so short; the Yue-Chi and Turks had had some commerce with more advanced races before they played any part in political history, but the Ephthalites appear as raw barbarians, and were annihilated as a nation in little more than a hundred years. Like the Yue-Chi they have probably contributed to form some of the physical types of the Indian population, and it is noticeable that polyandry is a recognized institution among many Himalayan tribes, and is also said to be practised secretly by the Jats and other races of the plains.

?PI, the French architectural term for a light finial, generally of metal, but sometimes of terra-cotta, forming the termination of a spire or the angle of a roof.

"Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi."

The philosophy of Epictetus is intensely practical, and exhibits a high idealistic type of morality. He is an earnest, sometimes stern and sometimes pathetic, preacher of righteousness, who despises the mere graces of style and the subtleties of an abstruse logic. He has no patience with mere antiquarian study of the Stoical writers. The problem of how life is to be carried out well is the one question which throws all other inquiries into the shade. True education lies in learning to wish things to be as they actually are; it lies in learning to distinguish what is our own from what does not belong to us. But there is only one thing which is fully our own,--that is, our will or purpose. God, acting as a good king and a true father, has given us a will which cannot be restrained, compelled or thwarted. Nothing external, neither death nor exile nor pain nor any such thing, can ever force us to act against our will; if we are conquered, it is because we have willed to be conquered. And thus, although we are not responsible for the ideas that present themselves to our consciousness, we are absolutely and without any modification responsible for the way in which we use them. Nothing is ours besides our will. The divine law which bids us keep fast what is our own forbids us to make any claim to what is not ours; and while enjoining us to make use of whatever is given to us, it bids us not long after what has not been given. "Two maxims," he says, "we must ever bear in mind--that apart from the will there is nothing either good or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate or direct events, but merely accept them with intelligence." We must, in short, resign ourselves to whatever fate and fortune bring to us, believing, as the first article of our creed, that there is a god, whose thought directs the universe, and that not merely in our acts, but even in our thoughts and plans, we cannot escape his eye. In the world the true position of man is that of member of a great system, which comprehends God and men. Each human being is in the first instance a citizen of his own nation or commonwealth; but he is also a member of the great city of gods and men, whereof the city political is only a copy in miniature. All men are the sons of God, and kindred in nature with the divinity. For man, though a member in the system of the world, has also within him a principle which can guide and understand the movement of all the members; he can enter into the method of divine administration, and thus can learn--and it is the acme of his learning--the will of God, which is the will of nature. Man, said the Stoic, is a rational animal; and in virtue of that rationality he is neither less nor worse than the gods, for the magnitude of reason is estimated not by length nor by height but by its judgments. Each man has within him a guardian spirit, a god within him, who never sleeps; so that even in darkness and solitude we are never alone, because God is within, our guardian spirit. The body which accompanies us is not strictly speaking ours; it is a poor dead thing, which belongs to the things outside us. But by reason we are the masters of those ideas and appearances which present themselves from without; we can combine them, and systematize, and can set up in ourselves an order of ideas corresponding with the order of nature.

The natural instinct of animated life, to which man also is originally subject, is self-preservation and self-interest. But men are so ordered and constituted that the individual cannot secure his own interests unless he contribute to the common welfare. We are bound up by the law of nature with the whole fabric of the world. The aim of the philosopher therefore is to reach the position of a mind which embraces the whole world in its view,--to grow into the mind of God and to make the will of nature our own. Such a sage agrees in his thought with God; he no longer blames either God or man; he fails of nothing which he purposes and falls in with no misfortune unprepared; he indulges in neither anger nor envy nor jealousy; he is leaving manhood for godhead, and in his dead body his thoughts are concerned about his fellowship with God.

The historical models to which Epictetus reverts are Diogenes and Socrates. But he frequently describes an ideal character of a missionary sage, the perfect Stoic--or, as he calls him, the Cynic. This missionary has neither country nor home nor land nor slave; his bed is the ground; he is without wife or child; his only mansion is the earth and sky and a shabby cloak. He must suffer stripes, and must love those who beat him as if he were a father or a brother. He must be perfectly unembarrassed in the service of God, not bound by the common ties of life, nor entangled by relationships, which if he transgresses he will lose the character of a man of honour, while if he upholds them he will cease to be the messenger, watchman and herald of the gods. The perfect man thus described will not be angry with the wrong-doer; he will only pity his erring brother; for anger in such a case would only betray that he too thought the wrong-doer gained a substantial blessing by his wrongful act, instead of being, as he is, utterly ruined.

EPICURUS , Greek philosopher, was born in Samos in the end of 342 or the beginning of 341 B.C., seven years after the death of Plato. His father Neocles, a native of Gargettos, a small village of Attica, had settled in Samos, not later than 352, as one of the cleruchs sent out after the victory of Timotheus in 366-365. At the age of eighteen he went to Athens, where the Platonic school was flourishing under the lead of Xenocrates. A year later, however, Antipater banished some 12,000 of the poorer citizens, and Epicurus joined his father, who was now living at Colophon. It seems possible that he had listened to the lectures of Nausiphanes, a Democritean philosopher, and Pamphilus the Platonist, but he was probably, like his father, merely an ordinary teacher. Stimulated, however, by the perusal of some writings of Democritus, he began to formulate a doctrine of his own; and at Mitylene, Colophon and Lampsacus, he gradually gathered round him several enthusiastic disciples. In 307 he returned to Athens, which had just been restored to a nominal independence by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and there he lived for the rest of his life. The scene of his teaching was a garden which he bought for about ?300 . There he passed his days as the loved and venerated head of a remarkable, and up to that time unique, society of men and women. Amongst the number were Metrodorus , his brother Timocrates, and his wife Leontion , Polyaenus, Hermarchus, who succeeded Epicurus as chief of the school, Leonteus and his wife Themista, and Idomeneus, whose wife was a sister of Metrodorus. It is possible that the relations between the sexes--in this prototype of Rabelais's Abbey of Th?l?me--were not entirely what is termed Platonic. But there is on the other hand scarcely a doubt that the tales of licentiousness circulated by opponents are groundless. The stories of the Stoics, who sought to refute the views of Epicurus by an appeal to his alleged antecedents and habits, were no doubt in the main, as Diogenes Laertius says, the stories of maniacs. The general charges, which they endeavoured to substantiate by forged letters, need not count for much, and in many cases they only exaggerated what, if true, was not so heinous as they suggested. Against them trustworthy authorities testified to his general and remarkable considerateness, pointing to the statues which the city had raised in his honour, and to the numbers of his friends, who were many enough to fill whole cities.

The mode of life in his community was plain. The general drink was water and the food barley bread; half a pint of wine was held an ample allowance. "Send me," says Epicurus to a correspondent, "send me some Cythnian cheese, so that, should I choose, I may fare sumptuously." There was no community of property, which, as Epicurus said, would imply distrust of their own and others' good resolutions. The company was held in unity by the charms of his personality, and by the free intercourse which he inculcated and exemplified. Though he seems to have had a warm affection for his countrymen, it was as human beings brought into contact with him, and not as members of a political body, that he preferred to regard them. He never entered public life. His kindliness extended even to his slaves, one of whom, named Mouse, was a brother in philosophy.

Epicurus died of stone in 270 B.C. He left his property, consisting of the garden , a house in Melite , and apparently some funds besides, to two trustees on behalf of his society, and for the special interest of some youthful members. The garden was set apart for the use of the school; the house became the house of Hermarchus and his fellow-philosophers during his lifetime. The surplus proceeds of the property were further to be applied to maintain a yearly offering in commemoration of his departed father, mother and brothers, to pay the expenses incurred in celebrating his own birthday every year on the 7th of the month Gamelion, and for a social gathering of the sect on the 20th of every month in honour of himself and Metrodorus. Besides similar tributes in honour of his brothers and Polyaenus, he directed the trustees to be guardians of the son of Polyaenus and the son of Metrodorus; whilst the daughter of the last mentioned was to be married by the guardians to some member of the society who should be approved of by Hermarchus. His four slaves, three men and one woman, were left their freedom. His books passed to Hermarchus.

To the Epicureans the elaborate logic of the Stoics was a superfluity. In place of logic we find canonic, the theory of the three tests of truth and reality. The only ultimate canon of reality is sensation; whatever we feel, whatever we perceive by any sense, that we know on the most certain evidence we can have to be real, and in proportion as our feeling is clear, distinct and vivid, in that proportion are we sure of the reality of its object. But in what that vividness consists is a question which Epicurus does not raise, and which he would no doubt have deemed superfluous quibbling over a matter sufficiently settled by common sense. Besides our sensations, we learn truth and reality by our preconceptions or ideas . These are the fainter images produced by repeated sensations, the "ideas" resulting from previous "impressions"--sensations at second-hand as it were, which are stored up in memory, and which a general name serves to recall. These bear witness to reality, not because we feel anything now, but because we felt it once; they are sensations registered in language, and again, if need be, translatable into immediate sensations or groups of sensation. Lastly, reality is vouched for by the imaginative apprehensions of the mind , immediate feelings of which the mind is conscious as produced by some action of its own. This last canon, however, was of dubious validity. Epicureanism generally was content to affirm that whatever we effectively feel in consciousness is real; in which sense they allow reality to the fancies of the insane, the dreams of a sleeper, and those feelings by which we imagine the existence of beings of perfect blessedness and endless life. Similarly, just because fear, hope and remembrance add to the intensity of consciousness, the Epicurean can hold that bodily pain and pleasure is a less durable and important thing than pain and pleasure of mind. Whatever we feel to affect us does affect us, and is therefore real. Error can arise only because we mix up our opinions and suppositions with what we actually feel. The Epicurean canon is a rejection of logic; it sticks fast to the one point that "sensation is sensation," and there is no more to be made of it. Sensation, it says, is unreasoning ; it must be accepted, and not criticized. Reasoning can come in only to put sensations together, and to point out how they severally contribute to human welfare; it does not make them, and cannot alter them.

In physics Epicurus founded upon Democritus, and his chief object was to abolish the dualism between mind and matter which is so essential a point in the systems of Plato and Aristotle. All that exists, says Epicurus, is corporeal ; the intangible is non-existent, or empty space. If a thing exists it must be felt, and to be felt it must exert resistance. But not all things are intangible which our senses are not subtle enough to detect. We must indeed accept our feelings; but we must also believe much which is not directly testified by sensation, if only it serves to explain phenomena and does not contravene our sensations. The fundamental postulates of Epicureanism are atoms and the void . Space is infinite, and there is an illimitable multitude of indestructible, indivisible and absolutely compact atoms in perpetual motion in this illimitable space. These atoms, differing only in size, figure and weight, are perpetually moving with equal velocities, but at a rate far surpassing our conceptions; as they move, they are for ever giving rise to new worlds; and these worlds are perpetually tending towards dissolution, and towards a fresh series of creations. This universe of ours is only one section out of the innumerable worlds in infinite space; other worlds may present systems very different from that of our own. The soul of man is only a finer species of body, spread throughout the whole aggregation which we term his bodily frame. Like a warm breath, it pervades the human structure and works with it; nor could it act as it does in perception unless it were corporeal. The various processes of sense, notably vision, are explained on the principles of materialism. From the surfaces of all objects there are continually flowing thin filmy images exactly copying the solid body whence they originate; and these images by direct impact on the organism produce the phenomena of vision. Epicurus in this way explains vision by substituting for the apparent action of a body at a distance a direct contact of image and organ. But without following the explanation into the details in which it revels, it may be enough to say that the whole hypothesis is but an attempt to exclude the occult conception of action at a distance, and substitute a familiar phenomenon.

Thus, if Epicurus objects to the doctrine of mythology, he objects no less to the doctrine of an inevitable fate, a necessary order of things unchangeable and supreme over the human will. The Stoic doctrine of Fatalism seemed to Epicurus no less deadly a foe of man's true welfare than popular superstition. Even in the movement of the atoms he introduces a sudden change of direction, which is supposed to render their aggregation easier, and to break the even law of destiny. So, in the sphere of human action, Epicurus would allow of no absolutely controlling necessity. In fact, it is only when we assume for man this independence of the gods and of fatality that the Epicurean theory of life becomes possible. It assumes that man can, like the gods, withdraw himself out of reach of all external influences, and thus, as a sage, "live like a god among men, seeing that the man is in no wise like a mortal creature who lives in undying blessedness." And this present life is the only one. With one consent Epicureanism preaches that the death of the body is the end of everything for man, and hence the other world has lost all its terrors as well as all its hopes.

The attitude of Epicurus in this whole matter is antagonistic to science. The idea of a systematic enchainment of phenomena, in which each is conditioned by every other, and none can be taken in isolation and explained apart from the rest, was foreign to his mind. So little was the scientific conception of the solar system familiar to Epicurus that he could reproach the astronomers, because their account of an eclipse represented things otherwise than as they appear to the senses, and could declare that the sun and stars were just as large as they seemed to us.

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