The _Aetna_ shows
perhaps the worst effects of Epicurean doctrine in its scholastic
insistence that myths must now give way to facts. Its author was still
too absorbed in the microscopic analysis of a petty piece of research
to catch the spirit of Lucretius who had found in the visions of the
scientific workshop a majesty and beauty that partook of the essence of
poetry.
In the end Vergil's poetry, like that of Lucretius, owed more to
Epicureanism than modern critics--too often obsessed by a misapplied
_odium philosophicum_--have been inclined to admit. It is all too easy
to compare this philosophy with other systems, past and present, and
to prove its science inadequate, its implications unethical, and its
attitude towards art banal. But that is not a sound historical method of
approach. The student of Vergil should rather remember how great was the
need of that age for some practical philosophy capable of lifting the
mind out of the stupor in which a hybrid mythology had left it, and how,
when Platonic idealism had been wrecked by the skeptics, and Stoicism
with its hypothetical premises had repelled many students, Epicurean
positivism came as a saving gospel of enlightenment.
Pages:
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113