Epicure
The name of Epicurus is a standing proof of the irony and bitterness of life. A philosopher who magnified the pleasures of the mind, his name is appropriated to those who cultivate the pleasures of the body. Happi- Epigram ness for him lay in calm, in content, in contemplation; happiness for all those who take his name lies in the restless titillation of appetite and the ceaseless ministering to insatiable desire. No doubt the philosopher went too far in the exaltation of spirit; but that is no reason why those who usurp his name should go still further in the exaltation of the senses. We are not all mind, neither are we all body; but the master was much nearer the truth than his so-called disciples who reverse his doctrines. Appetite is a mean thing by itself alone, and though we cannot get rid of it, the less we say of it the better. Call it hunger or thirst or lust, there is in it by itself something mean and unlovely; it is not until it rises out of itself, inspired with wit and imagination, with romance and remembrance, with kindness of heart and all the tenderness, it may sometimes be folly, which link us to each other and make up the delight of life and the courtesies of society, that love turns to poetry, and hunger and thirst, as at a banquet of the gods, compel the feast of reason and the flow of soul.