I was just looking at an image in Henry Southwell’s book, written in 1795, called “The New Book of Martyrs”. It depicts a French bookseller in Avignon being burned for selling bibles written in French. He is tied to a stake, flames and smoke half obscuring him, and round his neck are strung some of the French-language bibles. It is propaganda, of course, but recorded a fact.

The French Huguenots were the best educated and financially most successful group in France in 16th and 17th Centuries. They undertook most of the commerce and tended towards Enlightenment thinking. What they had to put up with from their Catholic tormentors was horrific (although they retaliated in kind, it must be said). They were tortured and massacred in the name of Jesus and the True Cross. The lucky ones escaped to England, Germany, the Netherlands and even to South Africa.

Now we have extremist Moslems behaving in similar ways. How much more civilised it is to live and let live; to listen, debate and, if necessary, agree to disagree; to be courteous and tolerant; to respect others, not convert them to your way of thinking by force. These precepts are not exclusive to Epicureanism, but they are part and parcel of it.

As the power of religion fades in the West, some people pick different reasons to be intolerant, cliquey, and tribal. It’s depressing, but if you espouse Epicureanism you will at least find it to be rational and free of fear and superstition.