Kitap 10
1.30
Canonic forms the introduction to the system and is contained in a single work entitled The Canon. The physical part includes the entire theory of Nature: it is contained in the thirty-seven books Of Nature and, in a summary form, in the letters. The ethical part deals with the facts of choice and aversion: this may be found in the books On Human Life, in the letters, and in his treatise Of the End. The usual arrangement, however, is to conjoin canonic with physics, and the former they call the science which deals with the standard and the first principle, or the elementary part of philosophy, while physics proper, they say, deals with becoming and perishing and with nature; ethics, on the other hand, deals with things to be sought and avoided, with human life and with the end-in-chief.
1.31
They reject dialectic as superfluous; holding that in their inquiries the physicists should be content to employ the ordinary terms for things.An opinion often emphasized: e.g.§§ 37, 73, 82, 152. Cf. Lucr. iii. 931 sqq.Now in The Canon Epicurus affirms that our sensations and preconceptions and our feelings are the standards of truth; the Epicureans generally make perceptions of mental presentationsSuch mental pictures are caused by atoms too fine to affect sense: cf.§ 64infra; Lucr. ii. 740 sqq., iv. 722 sqq.; Cic. N.D. i. 54. On the whole subject consult Usener’s Epicurea, Fr. 242-265, and, more especially, Sext. Emp. Adv. math. vii. 203-216. to be also standards. His own statements are also to be found in the Summary addressed to Herodotus and in the Sovran Maxims. Every sensation, he says, is devoid of reason and incapable of memory; for neither is it self-caused nor, regarded as having an external cause, can it add anything thereto or take anything therefrom. Nor is there anything which can refute sensations or convict them of error:
