Marius the Epicurean, vol 2 | Page 5

the "jaded Epicurean," as
of the strong young man in all the freshness of thought and feeling,
fascinated by the notion of raising his life to the level of a daring theory,
while, in the first genial heat of existence, the beauty of the physical
world strikes potently upon his wide-open, unwearied senses. He
discovers a great new poem every spring, with a hundred delightful
things he too has felt, but [16] which have never been expressed, or at
least never so truly, before. The workshops of the artists, who can
select and set before us what is really most distinguished in visible life,
are open to him. He thinks that the old Platonic, or the new Baconian
philosophy, has been better explained than by the authors themselves,
or with some striking original development, this very month. In the
quiet heat of early summer, on the dusty gold morning, the music
comes, louder at intervals, above the hum of voices from some

neighbouring church, among the flowering trees, valued now, perhaps,
only for the poetically rapt faces among priests or worshippers, or the
mere skill and eloquence, it may be, of its preachers of faith and
righteousness. In his scrupulous idealism, indeed, he too feels himself
to be something of a priest, and that devotion of his days to the
contemplation of what is beautiful, a sort of perpetual religious service.
Afar off, how many fair cities and delicate sea-coasts await him! At
that age, with minds of a certain constitution, no very choice or
exceptional circumstances are needed to provoke an enthusiasm
something like this. Life in modern London even, in the heavy glow of
summer, is stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of a youth to build
its "palace of art" of; and the very sense and enjoyment of an
experience in which all is new, are but enhanced, like that glow of
summer itself, by the [18] thought of its brevity, giving him something
of a gambler's zest, in the apprehension, by dexterous act or diligently
appreciative thought, of the highly coloured moments which are to pass
away so quickly. At bottom, perhaps, in his elaborately developed
self-consciousness, his sensibilities, his almost fierce grasp upon the
things he values at all, he has, beyond all others, an inward need of
something permanent in its character, to hold by: of which
circumstance, also, he may be partly aware, and that, as with the
brilliant Claudio in Measure for Measure, it is, in truth, but darkness he
is, "encountering, like a bride." But the inevitable falling of the curtain
is probably distant; and in the daylight, at least, it is not often that he
really shudders at the thought of the grave--the weight above, the
narrow world and its company, within. When the thought of it does
occur to him, he may say to himself:--Well! and the rude monk, for
instance, who has renounced all this, on the security of some dim world
beyond it, really acquiesces in that "fifth act," amid all the consoling
ministries around him, as little as I should at this moment; though I
may hope, that, as at the real ending of a play, however well acted, I
may already have had quite enough of it, and find a true well-being in
eternal sleep.
And precisely in this circumstance, that, consistently with the function
of youth in general, Cyrenaicism will always be more or [19] less the
special philosophy, or "prophecy," of the young, when the ideal of a

rich experience comes to them in the ripeness of the receptive, if not of
the reflective, powers--precisely in this circumstance, if we rightly
consider it, lies the duly prescribed corrective of that philosophy. For it
is by its exclusiveness, and by negation rather than positively, that such
theories fail to satisfy us permanently; and what they really need for
their correction, is the complementary influence of some greater system,
in which they may find their due place. That Sturm und Drang of the
spirit, as it has been called, that ardent and special apprehension of
half-truths, in the enthusiastic, and as it were "prophetic" advocacy of
which, devotion to truth, in the case of the young-- apprehending but
one point at a time in the great circumference--most usually embodies
itself, is levelled down, safely enough, afterwards, as in history so in
the individual, by the weakness and mere weariness, as well as by the
maturer wisdom, of our nature. And though truth indeed, resides, as has
been said, "in the whole"--in harmonisings and adjustments like
this--yet those special apprehensions may still owe their full value, in
this sense of "the whole," to that earlier, one-sided but ardent
pre-occupation with them.
Cynicism and Cyrenaicism:--they are the earlier Greek forms of Roman
Stoicism and Epicureanism, and in that world