19. About Epicurus

But Epicurus held an opinion almost the opposite of all others. He supposed that the beginnings of the universals were atoms and a void; that the void was as it were the place of the things that will be; but that the atoms were matter, from which all things are. And that from the concourse of the atoms both God and all the elements came into being and that in them were all animals and other things, so that nothing is produced or constructed unless it be from the atoms. And he said that the atoms were the most subtle of things, and that in them there could be no point, nor mark nor any division whatever; wherefore he called them atoms. And although he admits God to be eternal and imperishable, he says that he cares for no one and that in short there is no providence nor destiny, but all things come into being automatically. For God is seated in the metacosmic spaces, as he calls them. For he held that there was a certain dwelling-place of God outside the cosmos called the metacosmia, and that He took His pleasure and rested in supreme delight; and that He neither had anything to do Himself nor provided for others. In consequence of which Epicurus made a theory about wise men, saying that the end of all wisdom is pleasure. But different people take the name of pleasure differently. For some understood by it the desires, but others the pleasure that comes by virtue. But he held that the souls of men were destroyed with their bodies as they are born with them. For that these souls are blood, which having come forth or being changed, the whole man is destroyed. Whence it follows that there are no judgments nor courts of justice in the House of Hades, so that whatever any one may do in this life and escapes notice, he is in no way called to account for it. Thus then Epicurus.