M. Bernier, the great partisan of Epicurus, avows to-day, that "After
philosophizing for fifty years, I doubt things of which I was once
most assured."

All objects have different phases, and the mind which is in perpetual
motion, views them from different aspects as they revolve before it.
Hence, it may be said, that we see the same thing under different
aspects, thinking at the same time that we have discovered something
new. Moreover, age brings great changes in our inclinations, and with
a change of inclination often comes a change of opinion. Add, that the
pleasures of the senses sometimes give rise to contempt for mental
gratifications as too dry and unproductive and that the delicate and
refined pleasures of the mind, in their turn, scorn the voluptuousness
of the senses as gross. So, no one should be surprised that in so
great a diversity of aspects and movements, Epicurus, who wrote more
than any other philosopher, should have treated the same subjects in a
different manner according as he had perceived them from different
points of view.

What avails this general reasoning to show that he might have been
sensible to all kinds of pleasure? Let him be considered according to
his relations with the other sex, and nobody will believe that he
spent so much time with Leontium and with Themista for the sole
purpose of philosophizing. But if he loved the enjoyment of
voluptuousness, he conducted himself like a wise man. Indulgent to the
movements of nature, opposed to its struggles, never mistaking
chastity for a virtue, always considering luxury as a vice, he
insisted upon sobriety as an economy of the appetite, and that the
repasts in which one indulged should never injure him who partook. His