LIFE AND MORALITY
But Horace's Epicureanism never goes to the length of Omar's. He would
have shrunk from the Persian as extreme:
"YESTERDAY _This Day's Madness did prepare_,
TOMORROW'S _Silence, Triumph, or Despair_,
_Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why_:
D_rink! for you know not why you go, nor where_."
The Epicureanism of Horace is more nearly that of Epicurus himself, the
saintly recluse who taught that "to whom little is not enough, nothing
is enough," and who regarded plain living as at the same time a duty and
a happiness. The lives of too liberal disciples have been a slander on
the name of Epicurus. Horace is not among them. With degenerate
Epicureans, whose philosophy permitted them "To roll with pleasure in a
sensual sty," he had little in common. The extraction from life of the
honey of enjoyment was indeed the highest purpose, but the purpose could
never be realized without the exercise of discrimination, moderation,
and a measure of spiritual culture. Life was an art, symmetrical,
unified, reposeful,--like the poem of perfect art, or the statue, or
the temple.
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