Types of American Character (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. DISTINCTION is the mightiest implement of the wise, and the plaything of the idle. Allow me to amuse myself with it for a moment. An Epicurean is one who enjoys life, who lives, so far as possible, by and for enjoyment, and who at the same time analyzes his pleasure and philosophizes about it after his own fashion. Epicurean and materialist are often confounded; but the materialist is simply absorbed in what is external and material. He does not philosophize about it; he does not even always enjoy it. He may be bound down and tyrannized over by it, so that he hates it, but cannot escape from it, like some men of business, or even some philanthropists; for I have known philanthropic materialists, but never a philanthropic Epicurean. Nor are Epicureanism and paganism identical. Here, too, there is the difference of underlying analysis and thought, which makes, as it were, the lining of the Epicurean's pleasure, and gives it a sort of bitter-sweet of its own. He observes and studies himself even in the midst of the keenest delight. The pagan, on the other hand, enjoys without observation or analysis. He has the frank, free gaiety of the fauns of Rubens, who pass unremittingly from sleep to laughter, and from laughter to sleep, if, indeed, they sleep at all. It is a notable, though perhaps not wholly enviable, title to reputation to have given one's name to a sect likethis; and it is to be wished that we knew something more definite of the life and doctrines of Epicurus, which have come to us only through the distorting media of his disciples' writings. We have, however, every reason to believe that he was a gentle and tolerant man, which is an excellent thing in a philosopher, and for my part I am happy to accept the portrait given us in Lander's celebr...