The next and perhaps the most important point in favour of Epicureanism is its theory of pleasure as the end of action. Plato had left his idea of the good undefined; Aristotle had defined his in such a manner as to shut out the vast majority of mankind from its pursuit; the Stoics had revolted every instinct by altogether discarding pleasure as an end, and putting a purely formal and hollow perfection in its place. It must further be admitted that Epicurus, in tracing back justice to the two ideas of interest and contract, had hold of a true and fertile principle. Nevertheless, although ethics is his strongest ground, his usual ill-luck pursues him even here. It is where he is most original that he goes most astray. By reducing pleasure, as an end of action, to the mere removal of pain, he alters earlier systems of hedonism for the worse; and plays the game of pessimism by making it appear that, on the whole, death must be preferable to life, since it is what life can never be—a state of absolute repose. And by making self-interest, in the sense of seeking nothing but one’s own pleasure or the means to it, the only rule of action, he endangers the very foundations of society. At best, the selfish system, as Coleridge has beautifully observed, ‘stands in a similar relation to the law of conscience or universal selfless reason, as the dial to the sun which indicates its path by intercepting its radiance.’[210] Nor is the indication so certain as Coleridge admitted. A time may come when self-sacrifice shall be unnecessary for the public welfare, but we are not within a measurable distance of it as yet. No word of commendation can be pronounced on the Epicurean psychology and logic. They are both bad in themselves, and inconsistent with the rest of the system. Were all knowledge derived from sense-impressions—especially if those impressions were what Epicurus imagined them to be—the atomic theory could never have been discovered or even conceived, nor could an ideal of happiness have been thought out. In its theory of human progress, Epicureanism once more shows to advantage; although in denying all inventiveness to man, and making him the passive recipient of external impressions, it differs widely from the modern school which it is commonly supposed to have anticipated. And we may reasonably suspect that, here as elsewhere, earlier systems embodied sounder views on the same subject.