Epicurus rejects the fate Chesterton places behind the gods
the open garden of Epicurus
Epicurus complicates this contrast. In the Letter to Menoeceus, preserved in Diogenes Laertius, book X, §§122–135, he argues that understanding death removes terror from life (§§124–126); he explicitly rejects the contention that it would be better never to have been born (§126). Most pointedly, his wise person rejects destiny as universal sovereign, distinguishing necessity, chance and human agency (§§133–134). That directly qualifies the picture of pagan divinities ruled by an impersonal, inexorable fate.
Chesterton could still distinguish Epicurean tranquillity from Christian confidence in a meaningful creation. But the lack of that Christian confidence does not, in Epicurus's own argument, amount to incurable despair: philosophy is intended to make finite life satisfying. The garden thus names a rival account of happiness whose adequacy Chesterton disputes, rather than an uncontested example of pagan cosmic misery.
The letter is ancient; its precise composition and first circulation dates are unknown. The inspected English text is the Internet Classics Archive's Robert Drew Hicks translation, corresponding to the 1925 Loeb edition of Diogenes Laertius; this later translation is a comparison witness, not evidence of Chesterton's reading before Orthodoxy (1908).
Sources
Revision 1 of 1 · 2026-11-07 · Suggest an edit