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Epicurus took up again the doctrine of Democritus, and
taught that the soul, which was composed of atoms, was disinte
grated at the moment of death, when it was no longer held
together by its fleshly wrapping, and that its transitory
unity was
then destroyed for ever. The vital breath, after being expelled,
was, he said, buffeted by the winds and
dissolved in the air like
mist or smoke, even before the body was decomposed. This was
so ancient a conception that
Homer had made use of a like com
parison, and the idea that the violence of the wind can act on
souls as a destructive
force was familiar to Athenian children
in Plato s time.
But if the soul thus resolves itself, after death,
into its elementary principles, how can phantoms come to
frighten
us in the watches of the night or beloved beings visit
us in our dreams? These simulacra (eiSwXa) are for Epicurus no
more than emanations of particles of an extreme tenuity, con
stantly issuing from bodies and keeping for some time
their form
and appearance. They act on our senses as do colour and scent
and awake in us the image of a vanished being.
Thus we are vowed to annihilation, but this lot is not one to
be dreaded. Death, which is held to be the most
horrible of ills,
is in reality nothing of the sort, since the destruction of our
organism abolishes all its sensibility.
The time when we no
longer exist is no more painful for us than that when we had
not yet our being. As Plato deduced
the persistence of the soul
after death from its supposed previous existence, so Epicurus
drew an opposite conclusion
from our ignorance of our earlier
life ; and, according to him, the conviction that we perish wholly
can alone ensure
our tranquillity of spirit by delivering us
from the fear of eternal torment.
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