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Epicurus Today

Episode 250 - Cicero's On The Nature Of The Gods - Part 25 - The Relationship Of "Images" To All Human Thought - Not Just To The Gods.

Date: 10/12/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4081-episode-250-cicero-s-otnotg-25-the-relationship-of-images-to-all-human-thought-n/

Summary

Section titled “Summary”

Section 38 of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods and its connection to the broader Epicurean theory of images. Cassius opens by establishing that the image theory is not unique to the question of the gods — it underpins all thought in the Epicurean system. He cites the Placita of Aetius (Mansfeld and Runia 2023 edition), showing Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus all held that sensation and thought arise from images; Lucretius Book 4, lines 722ff, on the mind’s reception of floating eidola; and Cicero’s joking letter to Cassius Longinus about whether Cicero thinks of Cassius because of “specters” (images) floating through the air. Joshua reads from Aristotle’s De Anima on “the soul never thinks without an image,” and from Epicurus’s Letter to Herodotus (sections 46-50) on the mechanics of eidola. Cassius reads DeWitt’s Chapter 11 (“Mind as a Super-Sense”) on how the automatic mind can err while the volitional rational mind corrects errors. Cotta’s Section 38 challenge — “why must the form of the gods be pronounced happy and eternal?” — is addressed: Epicurus’s statement in the Letter to Menoeceus (“first of all, believe that a God is a living being blessed and incorruptible”) is not mere perception but a definitional conclusion reached by the rational mind from accumulated evidence — and the prolepsis of divinity confirms existence, not the full content of the definition.

Transcript

Section titled “Transcript”

Cassius: Welcome to episode 250 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean text and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we have a thread to discuss this and each of our podcast episodes.

We’re continuing in Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods. Last week we got up to almost the end of Section 37, and today we’re going to be getting into the very interesting and difficult subject of images and the relationship they have to the Epicurean theory of the gods. Now it seems to me very important to realize that this issue of images is not solely related to the question of knowledge of the gods.

The documentation that we have left — as meager as it is — is very clear that to a certain extent all thought arises from images. And just to make sure that we hammer that point at the very beginning, a couple of citations would be useful. Just recently on the forum we’ve been discussing a work called the Placita of Aetius, which is sort of controversial as to who Aetius was — whether he was a real person — but regardless of that aspect of it, there is a series of quotations preserved in ancient sources. The citations I’m about to give come from a collection of this Placita compiled by Jaap Mansfeld and David Runia that was just issued on December 12th, 2023.

In section 4.8, on sensation and sense objects, section 10 says: Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus say that sensation and thought arise from images that approach from outside — for neither of these can occur to anyone without an image falling upon him. Later on, in regard to vision, section one says: Leucippus and Epicurus believe that the visual sensation is the result of the penetration of images. And later on, under dreams, it’s preserved that Democritus says that dreams occur through the manifestation of images — which seems to track what Epicurus said as well.

Now beyond that, maybe the most detailed presentation of this that’s preserved to us comes from book four of Lucretius, at line 722. Lucretius says this:

“Come now, let me tell you what things stir the mind and learn in a few words whence comes the things which come into the understanding. First of all, I say this: that many idols of things wander about in many ways, in all directions, on every side — fine idols, which easily become linked with one another in the air when they come across one another’s path, like cobwebs and gold leaf. For indeed, these idols are far finer in their texture than those which fill the eyes and arouse sight, since these pierce through the pores of the body and awake the fine nature of the mind within and arouse its sensation.”

At line 732 it says:

“And so we see centaurs and the limbs of Scylla and the dog-faces of Cerberus and the idols of those who have met death and whose bones are held in the embrace of earth — since idols of every kind are born everywhere, some of which are created of their own accord, even in the air, some which depart in each case from diverse things, and those again which are made and put together from the shapes of these. For in truth, the image of the centaur comes not from a living thing, since there never was the nature of such a living creature, but when by chance the images of man and horse have met, they clinging together readily at once, as we have said before.”

Now because of their subtle nature and fine fabric, all other things of this kind are fashioned in the same way, and when they move nimbly with exceeding lightness — any one such subtle image stirs the mind, for the mind is fine and of itself wondrously nimble. That things come to pass as I tell you may easily learn from this, inasmuch as the one is like the other: what we see with the mind and what we see with the eyes, they must needs be created in like manner.

Basically there’s plenty of documentation in the Epicurean literature that Epicurus agreed with Democritus and Leucippus that images traveling through the air — effluences or films that stream off of the bodies of things — are the way that we perceive objects at a distance from us: both through the eyes, and also apparently some images being impressionable directly on the mind without going through the eyes or ears or whatever.

And before we get into the text from today, as an illustration of this there is another document from Cicero preserved not in On the Nature of the Gods but apparently in the letters of Cicero back and forth. There is a letter from Cicero to Cassius Longinus from apparently around 45 BC, and Cicero brings up the subject almost jokingly to Cassius. One more thing about the context: this is part of an ongoing correspondence between Cicero and Cassius regarding the controversies around Julius Caesar, both before and after Caesar was assassinated. Here it is, from 45 BC:

“I expect you must be just a little ashamed of yourself that this is the third letter that has caught you before you have sent me a single leaf or even a line. But I’m not pressing you, for I shall look forward to — or rather insist upon — a longer letter. As for myself, if I always had somebody to trust with them, I should send you as many as three an hour. For it somehow happens that whenever I write anything to you, you seem to be at my very elbow — and that not by way of visions of images as your new friends term them, who believe that even mental visions are conjured up by what Gaius calls ‘specters.’ For let me remind you that Catius, the Insubrian Epicurean who died lately, gives the name of specter to what the famous Epicurus — and long before that, Democritus — called ‘images.’ But even supposing that the eye can be struck by these specters because they run up against it quite of their own accord, how the mind can be so struck is more than I can see. It will be your duty to explain to me when you arrive here safe and sound — whether the specter of you is at my command to come up as soon as the whim has taken me to think about you, and not only about you, who always occupy my inmost heart; but suppose I begin thinking about the isle of Britain — will the image of that wing its way to my consciousness? But of this more later on; I’m only sounding you now to see in what spirit you take it. For if you’re angry and annoyed, I shall have more to say, and shall insist upon your being reinstated in that school of philosophy out of which you have been ousted by violence and armed force.”

I’ll cut off the reading there. But this is Cicero complaining — it sounds like in a joking manner — to Cassius that he has converted over to become an Epicurean. And of course Cicero knows enough about Epicurean philosophy to realize that the Epicureans believe that images cause us to think about the things that we think about. So Cicero is asking Cassius whether there are just images of Cassius floating through the air at all times that Cicero can summon up at a moment’s thought — or whether perhaps there is a memory of it, something like that. We don’t have much in response to Cicero from Cassius, but we do have this response.

This is Cassius to Cicero:

“I hope you are well. I assure you that on this tour of mine, there is nothing that gives me more pleasure to do than to write to you, for I seem to be talking and joking with you face-to-face — and yet that does not come to pass because of those specters. And by way of retaliation, in my next letter I shall let loose upon you such a rabble of Stoic boars that you will proclaim Gaius a true-born Athenian. I’m glad that our friend Pansa has sped on his way by universal goodwill when he left the city in military uniform — and not only on my own account, but most assuredly on that of all of our friends. For I hope that men will generally come to understand how much all the world hates cruelty and how much it loves integrity and clemency, and that the blessings most eagerly sought and coveted by the bad ultimately find their way to the good. For it is hard to convince men that the good is to be chosen for its own sake, but that pleasure and tranquility of mind is acquired by virtue, justice, and the good — is both true and demonstrable. Why, Epicurus himself — from whom all the Catiuses and Amafiniuses in the world, incompetent translators of terms as they are, derive their origin — lays it down that to live a life of pleasure is impossible without living a life of virtue and justice. Consequently, Pansa who follows pleasure keeps his hold on virtue, and those also whom you call pleasure-lovers are lovers of what is good and lovers of justice, and cultivate and keep all the virtues.”

Okay, that’s the end of what I’m going to quote from Cassius. But clearly, in the middle of this discussion of what seems to be very sound Epicurean philosophy, Cicero and Cassius are taking seriously that this issue of images prompting thoughts is a significant part of Epicurean philosophy. Cassius actually in this case is rejecting the idea that he thinks of Cicero because of specters — so that might be an indication that the issue is not that every moment your thoughts are at that moment being influenced by a particular image that you’re receiving. It sounds like the way this is written that Cassius may be saying that he’s recalling, or on his own initiative without a particular image involved, deciding to write to Cicero.

Be that as it may. Let’s go back now to today’s text. Cotta says: “For there’s never a proper end to reasoning which proceeds on a false foundation.” Then, as we continue — here’s where we get into the images, referring to Velleius: “For you asserted likewise that the form of the deity is perceptible by the mind but not by the sense; that it is neither solid nor invariable in number; that it is to be discerned by similitude and transition; and that a constant supply of images is perpetually flowing on from innumerable atoms on which our minds are intent — so that from that we conclude the divine nature to be happy and everlasting. What, in the name of those deities concerning whom we are now disputing, is the meaning of all this? For if they exist only in thought and have no solidity nor substance, what difference can there be between thinking of a centaur and thinking of a deity?”

“Other philosophers call every such confirmation of the mind a vain motion, but you term it the approach and entrance of images into the mind. Thus, when I imagine that I behold Tiberius Gracchus haranguing the people in the Capitol and collecting their suffrage concerning Marcus Octavius, I call that a vain motion of the mind — but you affirm that the images of Tiberius Gracchus and Marcus Octavius are present, which are only conveyed to my mind when they have arrived at the Capitol. The case is the same, you say, in regard to the deity, with the frequent representation of which the mind is so affected that from hence it may be clearly understood that the gods are happy and eternal.”

Okay. Before we start talking about where Cotta goes from there — because as he usually does, he’s next going to say, “Well, I’ll grant you for a moment that there are images by which the mind is affected,” and then ask some questions about the application of it — the material that we’ve read already contains a lot of information that we probably ought to emphasize. Because it seems amazingly similar: the way that Cicero here is having Cotta talk about beholding Tiberius Gracchus and Marcus Octavius at the Capitol, and the way Cicero is talking to Cassius about receiving images of Cassius, or Cassius receiving images of Cicero, in order to think of them and write letters about them.

So before we even start applying this to the gods, what, if anything, can we make of this construction — that Epicurus apparently picked up at least in part from Democritus and Leucippus — that this constant flow of images is involved in our thought processes?

Joshua: It’s kind of interesting to see how many texts we have in support of this question of images impinging either on the senses themselves or on the mind as a super-sensory organism. I think the Letter to Herodotus is Epicurus’s main foray into that. But before Epicurus, Aristotle took up the question of images and how they relate to the mind. I probably don’t have a grasp of the depth of Aristotle that would be necessary to understand fully what he’s saying, but let me read a little bit from book three of one of his works — this is called On the Soul (De Anima). He writes this way:

“To the thinking soul, images serve as if they were contents of perception. That is why the soul never thinks without an image.”

And then in typical Aristotelian fashion he goes off in some completely other direction — from my point of view — but he goes on to say this:

“The process is like that in which the air modifies the pupil in this or that way, and the pupil transmits the modification to some third thing, and similarly in the case of hearing — while the ultimate point of arrival is one, a single mean with different manners of being.”

I’m going to skip the next paragraph. But in the second paragraph down, Aristotle starts this way:

“The faculty of thinking then thinks the forms in the images, and as in the former case, what is to be pursued or avoided is marked out — for so where there is no sensation and it is engaged upon the images, it is moved to pursuit or avoidance. For example, perceiving by sense that the beacon is fire, it recognizes in virtue of the general faculty of sense that it signifies an enemy because it sees it moving. But sometimes, by means of images or thoughts which are within the soul — just as if it were seeing — it calculates and deliberates what is to come by reference to what is present, and when it makes a pronouncement, as in the case of sensation, it pronounces the object to be pleasant or painful. In this case it avoids or pursues, and so generally in cases of action.”

Aristotle then goes on to say:

“The so-called abstract objects the mind thinks just as if one had thought of the snub-nosed not as snub-nosed but as hollow — one would have thought of an actuality without the flesh in which it is embodied. It is thus that the mind, when it is thinking the objects of mathematics, thinks as separate elements which do not exist separately. In every case the mind which is actively thinking is the objects which it thinks.”

I think it’s connected somehow, just because of that line: “the soul never thinks without an image.” But clearly it seems to be on point. I don’t have the expertise when it comes to Aristotle to make any definitive claims — especially when he seems to speak in riddles — but it feels to me that if we have Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, and Aristotle all tapping into this same territory, we’re tapping into a conversation in the ancient world that maybe I haven’t fully grasped. That’s the feeling I get when Aristotle says “the soul never thinks without an image.”

Cassius: While you’re thinking further, let me complete your thought for just a second. When Aristotle says that we don’t think without an image, we no longer are just in a situation where Epicurus is talking about the gods — and let’s just dismiss that because it doesn’t make any difference. We’re having the primary philosopher of the ancient world saying something directly on point about this whole process of thinking that we really need to deal with. I’m not any further along in understanding this than you are, I’m sure, Joshua. But clearly this is the foundation for discussing gods, or anything else. The whole question of how you think and what processes are involved — and whether it can be material or not — is going to be foundational to the whole discussion.

It’s almost like they’re talking about the mind as some kind of a substance — almost like a cookie-cutter situation, where you’re taking a cookie cutter that has impressions — making a star or some other design — and you’re impressing it down like a stamp or inscribing something on a material substance, as a method of explaining how things can occur at all. Especially with something that’s some distance away from you — there must be some kind of particles flowing from the things at a distance, being received by the substance of your mind and somehow incorporated into the substance of your mind.

This sounds like what we would probably think of as a primitive way of looking at it. But on the other hand, there’s something going on here. This is an effort to begin an explanation in physical, natural terms that is not supernatural. It seems to have been something that they took off from and then developed in the Epicurean context and applied it to everything — as you would expect — including the issue of the gods.

Joshua: In book one of Aristotle’s text On the Soul, he’s examining previous thinkers and what they thought, and he says this about Democritus:

“Democritus has expressed himself more ingeniously than the rest on the grounds for ascribing each of these two characteristics to soul. Soul and mind are, he says, one and the same thing, and this thing must be one of the primary and indivisible bodies, and its power of originating movement must be due to its fineness of grain and the shape of its atoms. He says that of all shapes, the spherical is the most mobile, and that this is the shape of the particles of fire and of the mind.”

I don’t know how much more I’m going to get out of this text, but it’s clear that Aristotle had read Democritus — even though we don’t have those texts — and the citation in book three that “the mind never thinks without an image” seems to be tapping into some of that conversation.

Okay, we’ll go next into the Letter to Herodotus. This is Epicurus’s main surviving text on sensation, nature, and — in this case — images. He deals with the images in sections 46 through 50. I’m going to read some of that. This will establish the ground rules — this is how the images work, this is how they don’t work. So let me jump into that:

“Moreover, there are images like in shape to the solid bodies, far surpassing perceptible things in their subtlety of texture. For it is not impossible that such emanations should be formed in that which surrounds the object, nor that there should be opportunities for the formation of such hollow and thin frames, nor that there should be effluences which preserve the respective position and order which they had before in the solid bodies. These images we call idols.

Next, nothing among perceptible things contradicts the belief that the images have unsurpassable fineness of texture. For this reason, they have also unsurpassable speed of motion, since the motion of all their atoms is uniform and besides nothing — or very few things — hinder their emission by collisions, whereas a body composed of many or infinite atoms is at once hindered by collisions. Besides this, nothing contradicts the belief that the creation of the idols takes place as quick as thought — for the flow of atoms from the surface of bodies is continuous, yet it cannot be detected by any lessening in the size of the object because of the constant filling up of what is lost. The flow of images preserves for a long time the position and order of the atoms in the solid body, though it is occasionally confused. Moreover, compound idols are quickly formed in the air around, because it is not necessary for their substance to be filled in deep inside — and besides there are certain other methods in which existences of this sort are produced. For not one of these beliefs is contradicted by our sensations, if one looks to see in what way sensation will bring us the clear vision from external objects, and in what way, again, the corresponding sequences of qualities and movements.

And here in section 49, we’re getting into a really interesting part that relates directly to what we’re talking about:

“Now we must suppose too that it is when something enters us from external objects that we not only see but think of their shapes. For external objects could not make on us an impression of the nature of their own color and shape by means of the air which lies between us and them, nor again by means of the rays or effluences of any sort which pass from us to them — nearly so well as if models similar in color and shape leave the objects and enter according to their respective size either into our sight or into our mind, moving along swiftly, and so by this means reproducing the image of a single continuous thing and preserving the corresponding sequence of qualities and movements from the original object, as the result of their uniform contact with us kept up by the vibration of the atoms deep in the interior of the concrete body. And every image which we obtain by an act of apprehension on the part of the mind or of the sense organs — whether of shape or of properties — this image is the shape or the properties of the concrete object, and is produced by the constant repetition of the image or the impression that it has left.

Now, falsehood and error always lie in the addition of opinion with regard to what is waiting to be confirmed or not contradicted, and then is not confirmed or is contradicted. For the similarity between things which exist — which we call real — and the images received as a likeness of things and produced either in sleep or through some other act of apprehension on the part of the mind or the other instruments of judgment could never be, unless there were some effluences of this nature actually brought into contact with our senses. And error would not exist unless another kind of movement too were produced inside ourselves, closely linked to the apprehension of images but differing from it — and it is owing to this, supposing it is not confirmed or is contradicted, that falsehood arises. But if it is confirmed or not contradicted, it is true. Therefore, we must do our best to keep this doctrine in mind, in order that on the one hand the standards of judgment dependent on the clear visions may not be undermined, and on the other error may not be as firmly established as truth, and so throw all into confusion.”

Cassius: Joshua, especially when you get to that last sentence that you read, it is hard to imagine anything more important in Epicurean philosophy than this kind of understanding of the way that things are put together and that truth is determined. To repeat: when Epicurus says “therefore we must do our best to keep this doctrine in mind in order that on the one hand the standards of judgment dependent on clear visions may not be undermined, and on the other error may not be as firmly established as truth so as to throw all into confusion” — this is the description that Epicurus is giving to the thought processes by which we are processing all of these observations about the nature of the universe, or about pleasure and pain and anticipations, and everything else that we come into contact with in our existence.

It’s through this process of receiving what he’s calling images and then understanding that they pass to us in ways which allow them to be confused together — as Lucretius talks about the centaur — that these images when they come to us don’t always stay in exactly the same fidelity of position as when they left the object. We have to take these things into account in order to understand properly and properly process the things that we observe as we receive these images.

If we don’t understand how this works — if we think that the information that we’re receiving is being divinely implanted into us by a god — or if we think, “Oh my gosh, there’s just no way that the images we receive, that the sensations, can ever be put together into any kind of a rational operating machinery that we can trust” — if we think that it’s all too confusing and nothing can ever be put together — then you won’t have Epicurean philosophy or any other kind of philosophy. If you follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, you’re going to end up saying, “Woe is me, everything is so complicated, there’s no way I can ever understand anything” — and that is the road to Academic Skepticism, which is where Cotta is. In saying that nothing is knowable, that harks back to Fragment 5 from Diogenes of Oinoanda. Because you recall that Diogenes of Oinoanda said: “Others do not explicitly stigmatize natural science as unnecessary, being ashamed to acknowledge this, but they use another means of discarding it — for when they assert that things are incomprehensible, that there are certain things that are not knowable, what are they saying then? That there is no need for us to pursue natural science after all. Who will choose to seek what he can never find?”

Diogenes of Oinoanda continues: “Now Aristotle and those who hold the same Peripatetic views as Aristotle say that nothing is scientifically knowable because things are continually in flux and on account of the rapidity of the flux evade our apprehension. We, on the other hand” — and he’s talking about we Epicureans — “on the other hand acknowledge their flux but not its being so rapid that the nature of each thing is at no time apprehensible by sense perception.”

This gets us back into the whole issue of skepticism and whether anything is ever knowable or not, and that shows how fundamental this question is. Epicurus is telling us that the movement of particles through the void is the way the world works, and the understanding of the movement of particles in the form of images from objects to us — where they are received by our minds and our sensations — is the way we understand the way the world works. We have to take these things into account because this is where error is produced. It’s the addition of opinion with regard to what is waiting to be confirmed or contradicted that leads to falsehood and error.

Again, I know that we don’t frequently talk about images in this kind of context, but still this is essential to the reasoning process — apparently not only to Epicurus. This is not just Epicurus talking about gods; this is Epicurus, this is Herodotus in his letter, this is the Placita. It sounds pretty close even with Aristotle himself. So there’s a lot of really important implication to these things that we’re talking about.

We’re in the process right now of going through On the Nature of the Gods, so we can’t turn and devote all of our attention at this moment to this particular subject. But it is a very deep one that ought to really inform our conclusions — not only about the gods but about everything else. Let me at this point go back to DeWitt again. We’ve been giving some of our own impressions on a very complicated subject. Let’s see what DeWitt has to say about it.

One of the places that he addresses this is in Chapter 11 of his book Epicurus and His Philosophy, in the subsection entitled “Mind as a Super-Sense.” On page 207 it says:

“It is a part of the psychology of Epicurus that the mind, under certain conditions, is capable of functioning as an organ of sense. Thus the procedure of Lucretius — which he’s talking about there in Book Four, where he goes through all the senses — is quite regular in discussing the topic immediately after sensation. The exposition presumes certain subsidiary ideas such as the gradation of atoms, the irrational nature of sensation, the faculty of psychology, and a phenomenon of double reactions. The gradation of atoms is basic to the account of sensation. The confirmations that cause vision, for instance, while finer and more mobile than those of odors, are not sinuous enough to penetrate walls as sounds do. Vision moreover is subject to other limitations: unless the idols be discharged from an object in plain view and so constitute a steady stream, no sufficient pressure on the eye results and no sensation registers itself. Of the random and vagrant idols, only the mind can take cognizance, because of the extreme mobility of its component atoms and the resulting super-sensitivity.

In order to discern the circumstances under which this takes place, the principle must be invoked that sensation is irrational: it merely delivers a stimulus, and this may fail of registering itself. It is possible to hear without listening and to see without observing. Down to this point there is nothing peculiar in the thought of Epicurus. The rest of the teaching is his own. He thinks of the mind as a mechanism for processing sensations. Its activity may be automatic or volitional. The automatic mind, though normally dependable, is capable of erring — it may report the square tower to be round. To guard against such errors and to correct them when once made is the function of the volitional mind, directed by reason. Unlike the automatic mind, it pays attention to all sensations and corrects the faults by calling the true to witness. In dream-full sleep, according to DeWitt, the erring automatic mind alone is active; bodily sensation, memory, and volition are all quiescent. Under these circumstances the stage is cleared for the entrance of all the random floating idols that survive from the swift coherent streams that under waking conditions press upon the organs of sense and register themselves as sensations. Of these errant idols, the passive mind — partly because of its relief from interference and control, and partly because of the super-mobility and sensitivity of its component atoms — alone is capable of taking cognizance. Thus it functions as a super-sense.”

Now the rest of this applies even more directly to the gods:

“To complete this exposition, a subsidiary doctrine of the two reactions must be invoked. Let it be assumed that the image of a centaur presents itself to the dreamer — it may even be a galloping centaur. This acts as a stimulus to the mind and causes a reaction — kinesis. This is not the end, however, because a second reaction follows and the automatic mind registers a recognition: it is a centaur. The dream carries the conviction of reality because the memory and the volitional mind, which is rational, are quiescent. Thus the deceitfulness of dreams is an error of the same kind as that of the automatic mind that judges the square tower to be round. The waking mind in command of the total experience knows that no such things as centaurs exist. The caution must be observed, however, that visions of the mind do not enjoy the status of criteria of truth. They do possess value, but only at the level of circumstantial evidence. They afford reason for believing, by way of example, that the bodies of the gods are anthropomorphic.”

Now, as we got to the end of that, I think that really plays into a discussion of whether the gods are ideal or real or whatever. Because what DeWitt is suggesting is that, as he says, the visions of the mind do not enjoy the status of criteria of truth. Now, you could take that off in another direction and talk about whether there are four criteria of truth or only three, and whether other Epicureans considered visions to be criteria of truth or not. But the point that DeWitt is stressing is that the images possess value but only at the level of circumstantial evidence — and he says therefore they afford reason for believing, by way of example, that the bodies of the gods are like humans.

I would interpret what DeWitt is saying there as: yes, the perception of images clearly is evidence which has to be considered, but it is not certainly divine inspiration or anything that is canonical in the sense of pleasure or pain. It is something that has to be interpreted through reason to determine whether it is true and accurate or not — just as we consider images of centaurs coming to our minds to be impossible.

Now again, that’s going to take us off into the question of whether we should consider images of gods to be representations of things that are impossible, or things that are real — and that’s a different discussion, an extension of this current discussion. But for the time being, for getting our groundwork of where we’re even coming from: the receipt of images is very well established throughout ancient Greek philosophy as a method of gaining evidence that we then have to take and deal with. We don’t just pass it off as hallucination. We don’t just pass it off as vain imagination that we have come up with totally on our own. The image has arisen because of a set of physical circumstances which has led to our having this image received by our minds. Whether we consider the image received to be true and worthy of action, or to be a centaur and worthy of discarding, is a function that the mind has to carry out based on other evidence that it has — and other processing ability that the mind has from the other data that we have.

Let me quickly insert another potential example. We’re all familiar with crime movies where circumstantial evidence all points in the same direction at the beginning of the movie, and yet as we work through all the facts, we come to the conclusion that this circumstantial evidence pointed in the wrong direction. Our initial conclusion that the butler did it, for example, turns out to be wrong. That’s such a common metaphor in movies that we all come to understand that circumstantial evidence can point in one direction and yet not be consistent with the full facts.

So potentially what DeWitt is suggesting is that Epicurus could be saying that yes, indeed, we do have clear evidence of the gods in the form of circumstantial images that come to our attention — and yet those images, just like the images of centaurs, have been distorted on their way to us, and it’s up to our voluntary minds to separate out what is true and what is false from among those images.

In the case of a centaur: there are men, there are horses, but there are not horse-men. In the case of gods: there are living beings, there are happy beings, there are beings that live a very long time — and there is no theoretical reason why you cannot continue to replace your atoms indefinitely, as living beings do while they are alive. What is not true — what circumstantial evidence cannot support — is the idea of a supernatural god that creates universes, controls the fate of men, sends them to heaven or hell, and so forth. That would be an example where circumstantial evidence does exist in the form of images that have come to us in a distorted manner — but that circumstantial evidence has to be analyzed, and the true separated from the false.

It would not be correct to say that that circumstantial evidence does not exist. It is correct to say there is clear circumstantial evidence that the butler did it — but that does not mean the butler is the person he appears to be or that the butler in fact committed the crime.

So to relate this even further back to where we are in Cotta’s argument: just as we have seen in the past, Cotta is taking a specific aspect of Epicurean physics — a specific aspect of Epicurean doctrine — and ridiculing it. Using this example of “every time I think of you, Cassius, is it because an image of you has come into my mind” — holding it up as ridiculous, even though this particular application stems from something that really is pretty well established, even in Aristotle. Cicero thinks that the idea of images — regardless of what Democritus, Leucippus, and Aristotle have said about it — is worthy of ridicule.

We today are not used to thinking in these terms. But it is certainly not something that was ridiculous to the ancient mind, and I would submit that it’s not ridiculous to us today either if we really think about the direction they’re coming from. Just as we don’t consider the word “atoms” to be adequately descriptive of subatomic particles — and we could probably use the word “particles” more precisely whenever we talk about Epicurean atoms — this description of a process through which, through natural physical means, we receive information from outside and our minds process it: it is not so ridiculous that it can’t be taken on its own terms and extended using information we have today.

It’s not irrational to talk about the mind operating through the movement of particles. Let me read a little further in our text for today — the second paragraph of Section 38. This is again Cotta talking:

“Let it be granted that there are images by which the mind is affected, yet it is only a certain form that occurs — and why must that form be pronounced happy? Why eternal? But what are those images you talk of, or whence do they proceed? This loose manner of arguing is taken from Democritus, but he is reproved by many people for it, nor can you derive any conclusions from it. The whole system is weak and imperfect.”

Again, he’s not talking just about the Epicurean view of the gods — he’s talking about Atomism generally:

“For what can be more improbable than that the images of Homer, Archilochus, Romulus, Numa, Pythagoras, and Plato should come into my mind — and yet not in the form in which they existed? How therefore can they be those persons, and whose images are they? Aristotle tells us that there never was such a person as Orpheus the poet, and it is said that the verse called Orphic verse was the invention of Cercops the Pythagorean — yet Orpheus, that is to say the image of him as you will have it, often runs in my head. What is the reason that I entertain one idea of the figure of the same person and you another? Why do we imagine to ourselves such things as never had any existence and which never can have such — as Scylla and Chimera? Why do we frame ideas of men, countries, and cities which we never saw? How is it that the very first moment that I choose, I can form representations of them in my mind? How is it that they come to me even in my sleep without being called or sought after? The whole affair, Velleius, is ridiculous. You do not impose images on our eyes alone but on our minds — such is the privilege which you have assumed of talking nonsense with impunity.”

But again, I think the main point here is that Cicero is not just criticizing Epicurus’s view of the gods — he’s criticizing the whole formulation of images and of the mind working through the movement of particles from place to place. Well, Velleius could very strongly respond to Cicero by saying: “Cicero, if you don’t think the senses work — if you don’t think the mind works through the reception of particles moving around — if you think there’s some other basis for how the mind performs its function — then why don’t you tell me, Cotta, Balbus, what you think is going on here?”

Because of course Cotta is not going to take a position because he’s a Skeptic, and Cicero might well run to that same refuge as an answer. But what they are asserting is supernatural as an alternative to the movement of particles. What the Atomists — Leucippus and Epicurus — are trying to do is come up with a natural explanation of the sensations, the thoughts, the way our minds operate, based on the movement of material particles that are natural and not divinely guided, not divinely inspired, not divinely created. If there’s anyone speaking nonsense with impunity, it is Cotta and Balbus in arguing against Velleius and Epicurus.

Joshua: I do think Cotta sets up an interesting problem here in the second paragraph of Section 38 — and it’s the same problem I see in Lucretius, and that’s not to say there aren’t ways of dealing with it. I’m sure DeWitt has a response to it. But it’s this question of: how do we pronounce the centaur to be false, but the image of the gods as happy and blessed and incorruptible to be true? That’s an interesting question. As for the rest of what he’s saying here in this paragraph: when Cotta thinks of Homer, or Romulus, or Numa, or Pythagoras, or Plato — how is he thinking of these people when he can’t see them? When the image doesn’t come into his mind?

And one possible answer I think to that could be that he mentions Orpheus here. There was never such a person as Orpheus the poet, and yet Orpheus — or the image of him as you will have it — often runs in my mind. So what am I thinking of if I’m thinking of a guy that didn’t exist? And to me, one possible answer to that could be that we are dealing there with non-canonical sorts of mental imagining — which I think DeWitt, in the passage you read, touched on, Cassius — that the images of the mind are not —

Cassius: Yeah, we’re not just mechanical, totally determined machines. We have our own will — through the swerve of the atoms. So clearly there is going to be additional movement that the mind itself initiates, not just seized from the images.

Joshua: Exactly, exactly. So I can imagine, for example, in my mind a pumpkin walking with duck legs — but there’s no reason to believe that such a thing exists as a pumpkin that walks with duck legs. I’ve just taken the pumpkin, which is a real thing, and a duck, which is a real thing, and combined them in my head — sort of like how one might do with a centaur. And when it comes to figures like Orpheus — people who never existed, these legendary heroes of Greek antiquity — when I’m thinking of Orpheus, I’m probably thinking of some art-deco bronze bas-relief outside of some theater somewhere. I’m not thinking of a person. Cicero might be thinking of a person because he might be thinking of a marble statue of Orpheus.

Just because you can think of something doesn’t mean that the thing you’re thinking of exists — because the same mind that produces my image of a pumpkin walking with duck legs is also the same mind that offers the opinion that introduces error into the process of interpreting sensation. So I think that’s part of the conversation. As always, I’m a little bit hesitant on this question of comparing centaurs with the images of the gods and how we should know that one of them is true and one of them is not.

Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, those are all very good questions. Let me attempt to deal just briefly when you brought up Cotta’s criticism where he says, “Let it be granted that there are images by which the mind is affected, yet it is only a certain form that occurs — and why must that form be pronounced happy? Why eternal?”

Now, just to try to take a stab at it: I am not so sure that this question from Cotta is really not just another form of his commitment to Academic Skepticism. And this goes back into the question of what prolepsis really is and how you relate prolepsis to images and so forth. But I think Epicurus and Lucretius are clear that images can be interpreted incorrectly, as with centaurs. It is the rational process of the mind — taking data from other observations over time, even other people’s observations, of the different senses, and so forth — that has to rationally take all of this, combine it together, and come to a conclusion about what is being consistently shown by these senses and what is not being consistently shown by the senses.

For example, last week when we were going back over the opening of Lucretius Book One, Lucretius is talking about Mars the god of war and Venus the goddess of love getting together — Venus trying to pacify Mars and so forth. So there are clearly, even within Epicurean context, discussions of the gods doing things that we don’t think they really do. Call upon Neptune if you like, call upon Ceres if you like, call upon different gods — Velleius says, but just don’t understand them to be supernatural.

Let’s deal specifically with what Cotta says here: “Why must that form be pronounced happy? Why eternal?” Now, that’s what Epicurus is saying about the gods. Let me go back to the Letter to Menoeceus. Epicurus says, “First of all, believe that a God is a being immortal and blessed,” and he says: “even as the common idea of a God is engraved upon men’s minds — and do not assign to him anything alien to his immortality or ill-suited to his blessedness.”

Now is Epicurus saying that what is engraved on men’s minds is only that gods are immortal and blessed? Or is he saying that it can also be engraved on the minds of some people that gods are not immortal, the gods are not happy? And your question — which is the ultimate one — is: how do you know whether you’re properly interpreting something that is engraved on your mind as true or not?

Remember what we’ve been discussing: the engraving on the mind, this issue of prolepsis, is tightly related to the issue of images. And images, as we receive them, can be distorted, can be combined in our own minds in incorrect ways — and it’s up to our minds to separate the true and the false. Now, Epicurus says in this very passage: “Don’t assign to him anything alien to his immortality or ill-suited to his blessedness — for gods there are, since the knowledge of them is by clear vision. But they are not as the many believe them to be. For indeed, they do not consistently represent them as they believe them to be — for the statements of the many about the gods are not conceptions derived from sensation but false suppositions, according to which the greatest misfortunes befall the wicked and the greatest blessings the good by the gift of the gods. For men, being accustomed always to their own virtues, welcome those like themselves.”

Now, I don’t think that we have denied that this statement about the imperishable nature of the gods and their happiness and their being living beings derives from a rational process. It’s not implanted in our minds directly as a final conclusion by the gods. I think that it is produced by our rational processes — and not something that is automatically self-evident, but something that has to be concluded as a result of evaluating evidence. The evidence that first presents us this possibility of the gods being blessed, immortal, and happy comes to us through the images — comes to us through this prolepsis mechanism. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t say that there are other images, just like centaurs, which we know do not exist — that there are other images potentially like Mars and Venus doing things that we don’t think gods really do in terms of guiding the lives of men.

Our reason for rejecting that type of god is not that we don’t occasionally receive images of that type of god, but because we don’t consistently — over time, processing it and comparing it with all the other evidence we have — conclude that these particular images of active gods are true and real. It’s only the immortality, blessedness, and living-being part that is so consistently supported by the evidence that gives us a reason to conclude that that part is true — but the rest is not.

This question of how prolepsis operates with images — whether they’re separate, whether they’re combined — I think we do generally have a consensus that prolepsis is not a fact; it is not a conclusion that we receive in any of the faculties. All conclusions have to be processed by the mind. So the statement that gods are immortal, blessed, and living beings — I can’t get past the idea that those too are conclusions. They are not inscribed on my genetics that there is a God who is immortal and blessed — in words, in English or German or Italian or Latin. They are conclusions of the mind based on something else.

So when Cotta says, “Let it be granted that there are images by which the mind is affected — yet only a certain form occurs, and why must that form be pronounced happy, why eternal?” — I think the direction that Epicurus is going is that he pronounces these images happy and eternal. He doesn’t just receive them divinely as happy and eternal. He pronounces them happy and eternal through the operation of his mind based on the evidence that has come to him — evidence that is not itself rational, evidence that itself does not have an opinion, but evidence through the senses, through prolepsis and feelings, that over time, combining it all together, produces confidence in the conclusion that only one interpretation is reasonable.

Joshua: Let me say something, because you reminded me of something I’d totally forgotten. I would offer an explanation that is similar to the one you’ve just given, Cassius. And I don’t know — maybe a month ago we had a conversation as a result of one of the episodes in this series about exactly that passage that you quoted in the Letter to Menoeceus: “First of all, believe that a God is a living being blessed and incorruptible.” And what I was saying at the time was that this reads to me more like a definition of a God. It’s not the result of having seen the gods to be such or whatever — it is the result of Epicurus following a chain of reasoning through to its conclusion: that the gods must be happy, and in order for them to be happy they must also be blessed, they must be incorruptible, and so forth. They can have no worry or no care.

And of course they have to be living beings because they’re made of atoms — everything in nature is made of atoms, and there’s nothing outside of nature. So like I said, I’ll never be able to find that thread again. But we did talk about this quite recently, and the direction I was going at the time was: this reads to me like a bare-bones definition of a God, and then the prolepsis comes in only to reinforce or to satisfy the definition. The prolepsis isn’t telling us that the gods are blessed and incorruptible — that is definitional. The prolepsis is only really telling us that the gods exist.

Cassius: Yes, I remember what you’re talking about, Joshua — and I think that’s exactly on point and exactly the direction that would be most beneficial to take this Cotta question. “Why must that form be pronounced happy? Why eternal?” I think your statement about this being definitional is exactly right. You’ve got to ultimately reach conclusions in life about something in order to take a position. A god is not going to tell you directly through revelation what’s right and what’s wrong. You ultimately have to use your mind and look at the evidence and come to a conclusion — and that’s exactly what Cotta, as an Academic Skeptic, is so committed not to doing. That’s the ultimate problem with skepticism: if you’re not willing to look at the evidence and ever reach a conclusion about anything, then you can never do anything in life. If you’re frozen like a deer looking at the headlights of a car — you refuse to take a position, you refuse to say, “I’m going to act on my judgment because the evidence is so clear” — that is what Cotta’s Academic Skepticism, that is what radical skepticism, is so opposed to.

So to an extent, his question is consistent with his own philosophical background. But it’s obscured by the particular detail of this question. It really is the same question that we always ask. Different people come to different conclusions about different things. Are we going to just simply say, “Well, it’s impossible to know — there are so many opinions out there, everybody’s got a different perspective, why don’t we just say that nobody’s right”? Well, you can’t do that in life about many, many important things. You have to make decisions. You have to reach conclusions. You have to be willing to take the evidence when it stacks up and say that a heap is a heap. You don’t necessarily know how many grains of sand exist within that heap, but you know what a heap is because you’ve seen many heaps.

And so the Skeptics and the logicians who want to say, “Well, your reasoning is false because you can’t falsify every possibility other than the ones that you’re talking about” — that’s not a practical way of living your life. It’s very interesting — back when you were reading from the Letter to Herodotus earlier in this episode — where Epicurus keeps framing things in terms of “nothing among perceptible evidence contradicts the belief” and “it is not impossible that certain things are so” and so forth. And that I think is a very interesting way of looking at his reasoning. What he’s saying is that nothing contradicts this particular conclusion, which has so well been established by other evidence. He’s not just saying “anything’s possible and nothing contradicts it, and I’m going to go home and play pool.”

He’s saying that there’s a tremendous amount of evidence that goes in the direction of the particle theory of how the universe operates — and that evidence supports the idea of particles being the basis of everything, particles moving through void, and that is strongly supported by this evidence. It is not contradicted by anything that we see. And so therefore, for purposes of living my life, I’ve got to make decisions. This is the basis I’m going to make these decisions on. I’m going to believe that the world operates through the natural movement of particles through the void. I’m not going to believe that there are supernatural beings for which there’s no evidence whatsoever. I might like that to be the case, but I am not going to accept that as a possibility. I’m going to go with the evidence that I do have — that is not contradicted by anything that I have — and I’m going to live my life based on the evidence that nature has given to me, the faculties that nature has given to me. I don’t need you, Cotta. I don’t need you, Balbus. I don’t need you, religions, to be an intermediary between me and a god, to try to interpret for me something that I’m not competent to interpret myself.

So you can take this in all sorts of directions — but it’s a fascinating subject that, again, goes far beyond this question of whether the gods speak Greek. Okay, Joshua, any final thoughts for today?

Joshua: Well, I did find the thread. It looks like we discussed that part of the Letter to Menoeceus in Episode 240.

Cassius: Sounds good. Thank you for finding that reference, Joshua. We are running long, so let’s bring the episode to a conclusion. This is fascinating — we’ll probably talk about it a little more next week before we move on past this topic, because we really haven’t got into most of Cotta’s discussion of the images. So we’ll come back to this next week. In the meantime, please feel free to drop by the forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this or any of our other episodes. As always, we thank you for your time and for being with us today. We’ll see you next week. Bye.