Priding themselves, in contrast to the Stoics, on their agreement by means of this theology with the anthropomorphic views of the popular belief, and even outdoing polytheism in the assumption of innumerable Gods, [1275] the Epicureans were willing to join in the customary services of religion, [1276] without being nearly so anxious as the Stoics to prove themselves in harmony with the popular creed. Whilst the Stoics in their anxiety to do this had plunged head over heels into allegory, no such tendency is observed on the part of the Epicureans. Only the poet of the School gives a few allegorical interpretations of mythical ideas, and he does it with more taste and skill than is usual with the Stoics. [1277] On other points the Epicureans, not excluding Lucretius, observe towards the popular faith a negative attitude, that of opposing it by explanations; and by this attitude, without doubt, they rendered one of the most important services to humanity. CHAPTER XIX. THE MORAL SCIENCE OF THE EPICUREANS. GENERAL PRINCIPLES. [A. Pleasure.] [(1) Pleasure the highest good.] Natural science is intended to overcome the prejudices which stand in the way of happiness; moral science to give positive instruction as to the nature and means of attaining to happiness. The speculative parts of the Epicurean system had already worked out the idea that reality belongs only to individual things, and that all general order must be referred to the accidental harmony of individual forces. The same idea is now met with in the sphere of morals, individual feeling being made the standard, and individual well-being the object of all human activity. Natural science, beginning with external phenomena, went back to the secret principles of these phenomena, accessible only to thought. It led from an apparently accidental movement of atoms to a universe of regular motions. Not otherwise was the course followed by Epicurus in moral science. Not content with human feelings alone, nor with selfishly referring everything to the individual taken by himself alone, that science, in more accurately defining the conception of well-being, ascertained that the same can only be found by rising superior to feelings and purely individual aims, in short by that very process of referring consciousness to itself and its universal being, which the Stoics declared to be the only path to happiness. It is for us now to portray this development of the Epicurean philosophy in its most prominent features.