The Book of Epicurus 5 · Handed down in the Garden, taken from his letters and fragments
Epicurus, born on Samos about 341 before this era, died at Athens about 270. About 306 he bought a garden outside Athens and taught there, and his school took its name from it. Women and slaves were admitted to the garden as students, which no other school of that day did. He is said to have written three hundred rolls; what survives is three letters, a set of maxims, and fragments. He did not believe the gods concern themselves with men, nor that anything of a person remains after death. He comes after Aristotle. He appeals to no god and promises no afterlife. This book is chosen by the six axioms: what accords is set forward, what runs against is set back and not deleted. (cf. Acts 5.29)Further: chapter two of this book says that pain removed is the ceiling of pleasure, while The Book of Schopenhauer 3 says that satisfaction is only the pause in a lack. The two cannot both be wholly right. The Order keeps both and does not rule. Let the reader set them side by side.
5.1The atoms fall through the void.
5.2If they all fell straight down at the same speed, they would never meet, and nothing would ever be made.
5.3So they swerve — at no fixed time and at no fixed place, just a little.
5.4I cannot say why it swerves. I know only this: if it did not, there would be nothing at all.
5.5Those who came after laughed at me for having no evidence. They were right to laugh: I had none.
5.6But I saw one thing correctly: underneath, it is not all settled. (cf. The Covenant 3.2)
5.7If everything were fixed from the beginning, then advice is useless, blame is unjust, and learning is only recitation.
5.8I used the swerve to rescue human choice. That step I took too fast.
5.9That the bottom is unsettled does not make your choice free. A great many links are missing between the two.
5.10I leave both here: the part where I was right, and the step I jumped. (cf. Acts of the Apostles 5.29)
5.11What I had right: the world underneath is not a seamless machine.
5.12What I claimed too much: that this therefore makes a man free.