priestcraft and an unmitigated evil.  The poem of Lucretius, “De Rerum Natura,” declares faith in the gods to have been the curse of the human race, and immortality to be a silly delusion.  He denies the gods, providence, the human soul, and any moral purpose in the universe.  But as religion is an instinct, which will break out in some form, and when expelled from the soul returns in disguise, Lucretius, denying all the gods, pours out a lovely hymn to Venus, goddess of beauty and love.

The last philosophic protest, in behalf of a pure and authoritative faith, came from the Stoics.  The names of Seneca, Epictetus, and Aurelius Antoninus gave dignity, if they could not bring safety, to the declining religion of Rome.

Seneca, indeed, was inferior to the other two in personal character, and was more of a rhetorician than a philosopher.  But noble thoughts occur in his writings.  “A sacred spirit sits in every heart,” he says, “and treats us as we treat it.”  He opposed idolatry, he condemned animal sacrifices.  The moral element is very marked in his brilliant pages.  Philosophy, he says, is an effort to be wise and good.[298] Physical studies he condemns as useless.[299] Goodness is that which harmonizes with the natural movements of the soul.[300] God and matter are the two principles of all being; God is the active principle, matter the passive.  God is spirit, and all souls are part of this spirit.[301] Reason is the bond which unites God and other souls, and so God dwells in all souls.[302]

One of the best sayings of Epictetus is that “the wise man does not merely know by tradition and hearsay that Jupiter is the father of gods and men; but is inwardly convinced of it in his soul, and therefore cannot help acting and feeling according to this conviction."[303]

Epictetus declared that the philosopher could have no will but that of the deity; he never blames fate or fortune, for he knows that no real evil can befall the just man.  The life of Epictetus was as true as his thoughts were noble, but he had fallen on an evil age, which needed for its reform, not a new philosophy, but a new inspiration of divine life.  This steady current downward darkened the pure soul of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, of whom Niebuhr says,[304] “If there is any sublime human virtue, it is his.”  He adds:  “He was certainly the noblest character of his time; and I know no other man who combined such unaffected kindness, mildness, and humility with such conscientiousness and severity towards himself.”  “If there is anywhere an expression of virtue, it is in the heavenly features of M. Aurelius.  His ‘Meditations’ are a golden book, though there are things in it which cannot be read without deep grief, for there we find this purest of men without happiness.”  Though absolute monarch of the Empire, and rich in the universal love of his people, he was not powerful enough to resist the steady tendency to decay in society.  Nor did he know that the