II.

EPICURUS AS A MENTAL HEALER

'Tis to believe what men inspired of old, Faithful, and faithfully
informed, unfold.

_Cowper_.





The suggestions offered in the following pages are not new. Many of them
were voiced by Epicurus three hundred years before Christ, and even then
were ancient history. Unfortunately Epicurus had his detractors. One,
Timocrates, in particular, a renegade from his school, spread malicious and
unfounded reports of his doings and sayings, reports too easily credited
then, and starting, perhaps, the misconception which to-day prevails
regarding the aims of this philosopher.

But when Marcus Aurelius, nearly five centuries later, decided to endow a
philosophical professoriate he established the Epicurean as one of the four
standard schools. The endorsement of such a one should surely predispose
us to believe the authentic commentators of Epicurus, and to discredit the
popular notion which makes his cult synonymous with the gratification of
the appetites, instead of with the mental tranquility to which he regarded
sensual pleasures so detrimental that he practically limited his diet, and