senses were the only avenues to knowledge; man was the measure of all
things; and "happiness our being's end and aim." Theodorus was surnamed
the Atheist; and, it seems, not without good reason; for he taught that
there was no absolute or eternal difference between good and evil;
nothing really disgraceful in crimes; no divine ground for laws, which
according to him had been invented by men to prevent fools from making
themselves disagreeable; on which theory, laws must be confessed to have
been in all ages somewhat of a failure. He seems to have been, like his
master, an impudent light-hearted fellow, who took life easily enough,
laughed at patriotism, and all other high-flown notions, boasted that
the world was his country, and was no doubt excellent after-dinner
company for the great king. Hegesias, his fellow Cyrenaic, was a man of
a darker and more melancholic temperament; and while Theodorus contented
himself with preaching a comfortable selfishness, and obtaining
pleasure, made it rather his study to avoid pain. Doubtless both their
theories were popular enough at Alexandria, as they were in France
during the analogous period, the Siecle Louis Quinze. The "Contrat
Social," and the rest of their doctrines, moral and metaphysical, will
always have their admirers on earth, as long as that variety of the
human species exists for whose especial behoof Theodorus held that laws
were made; and the whole form of thought met with great approbation in
after years at Rome, where Epicurus carried it to its highest
perfection. After that, under the pressure of a train of rather severe
lessons, which Gibbon has detailed in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire," little or nothing was heard of it, save sotto voce, perhaps, at
the Papal courts of the sixteenth century. To revive it publicly, or at
least as much of it as could be borne by a world now for seventeen
centuries Christian, was the glory of the eighteenth century. The moral
scheme of Theodorus has now nearly vanished among us, at least as a
confessed creed; and, in spite of the authority of Mr. Locke's great and