great points I suffer from no serious doubts, and it 18 from this belief that I now derive the serenity and peace which you witness. All the arguments which you have often heard from me in support of them, now seem to me to be possessed of a greater strength than ever I will not repeat them, for they are too familiar to you, but only re-affirm them, and pronounce them as, in my judgment, affording a ground for our assurance in the department of moral demonstration, as solid and sufficient as the reasonings of Euclid afford in the science of geometry. I believe in a supreme God and sovereign Ruler of the world, by whose wisdom and power all things and beings have been created, and are sustained, and in whose presence I live and believe the fifth proposition of enjoy, as implicitly as Euclid's first book. I believe in a future life with the like strength. It is behind these truths, Cleoras, that I entrench myself at this hour; these make the shield which defends me from the assaults of fear and despair, that would otherwise, I am sure, overwhelm me."

But how do they defend you, Longinus,' asked Cleoras- by simply rendering you inaccessible to the shafts which are directed against you, or by any other and higher operation upon the soul?'

"Were it only,' replied the philosopher, that truth made me insensible and indifferent, I should pray rather to be left to the tutelage of nature. I both despise and abhor doctrines that can do no more than

this.

I desire to bless the gods that the philosophy I have received and taught has performed for me a far more essential service. This elevates and expands: it renders nature as it were superior to itself and its condition: it causes the soul to assert its entire supremacy over its companion, the body, and its dwelling

1

the earth, and in the perfect possession of itself abit a better world of its own creation it iny increases all its sensibilities, and adds to the tution received from nature, what may be termed enses, so vividly does it come to apprehend things, to those who are unenlightened by this excellent are as if they had no existence, their minds invested with no faculty or power whereby to n and esteem them. So far from carrying those embrace it farther toward insensibility and indifce, which may truly be called a kind of death, it rs them intensely alive, and it is through the transng energies of this new life that the soul is made, nsensible to pain, but superior to it, and to all the er ills of existence. It soars above them. The vledge and the belief that fill it furnish it with s by which it is borne far aloft, even at the very that the body is in the deepest affliction. Gracmeets death with equanimity, and that is some5. It is better than to be convulsed with vulgar excessive fear. But it is a state of the soul very ior to what exists in those who truly receive the rines which have taught. I, Cleoras, look upon h as a release, not from a life which has been lly evil, for I have, through the favour of the gods, yed much, but from the dominion of the body and appetites which clog the soul and greatly hinder it ts efforts after a perfect virtue and a true felicity. vill open a way for me into those elysian realms in ose reality all men have believed, a very few exted, though few or none could prove it. Even as great Roman could call that "O glorious day," t should admit him to the council of the gods, and society of the great and good who had preceded

the

him, so can I in like manner designate the day and hour which are now present. I shall leave you whom I have known so long; I shall be separated from scenes familiar and beloved through a series of years; the arts and the sciences, which have ministered so largely to my happiness, in these forms of them I shall lose; very earth itself, venerable to my mind for the events which have passed upon it, and the genius it has nurtured and matured, and beautiful too in its array of forms and colours, I shall be conversant with no more. Death will divide me from them all but it will bear me to worlds and scenes of a far exceeding beauty: it will introduce me to mansions inconceivably more magnificent than anything which the soul has experience of here; above all, it will bring me into the company of the good of all ages, with whom I shall enjoy the pleasures of an uninterrupted intercourse. It will place me where I shall be furnished with ample means for the prosecution of all those inquiries which have engaged me on earth, exposed to none or fewer of the hindrances which have here thronged the way. All knowledge and all happiness will then be attainable. Is death to be called an evil, or is it to be feared or approached with tears and regrets, when such are to be its issues ?'

By no means,' said Cleoras; 'it is rather to be desired. If my philosophy were as deep and secure

as yours, O Longinus,

places with you.

should beg to exchange I should willingly suffer a brief pain to be rewarded so largely. But I find within me no such strong assurance.'

'That,' replied Longinus, 'is for want of reflection. It is only by conversing with itself that the soul rises to any height of faith. Argument from abroad is of

It

le service in the comparison. I have often sed with you concerning these things, and id open before you the grounds upon which victions rest. But I have ever taught that usness was the true source of belief, and that you could possess yourselves only through of profound attention. What I believe, I feel. ot communicate the strength of my belief to , because it is mysteriously generated within, aving itself with all my faculties and affections, undantly imparting itself to them, but at the me inseparable from them in such a sense that ffer it as I can a portion of my reason or my dge, to any whom I may desire to benefit. uth in its origin the gift of God, strengthened alted infinitely by reflection. It is an instinct. Et otherwise, why could I not give to you all I myself, and possess because I have by labour ed it? Whereas, though I believe so confimyself, I find no way in which to bestow the good upon you. But each one will possess it, ›ersuaded, in the proportion in which he prehimself by a pure life and habitual meditation. then reveal itself with new strength every day. l it also be of service to contemplate the cha3 and lives of those who have lived illustriously, or their virtue and their philosophy. To study aracter of Plato will be more beneficial in this 1 than to ponder the arguments of the Phaedo. arguments are trivial, fanciful, and ingenious, than convincing. And the great advantage to rived from the perusal of that treatise is, as it be regarded as a sublime expression of the conce with which its author entertained the hope of

immortality. It is as a part of Plato's biography-of the history of his mind-that it is valuable. Throughmeditation, through inward purity, through the contemplation of bright examples, will the soul be best prepared for the birth of that feeling or conviction that shall set before you with the distinctness and certainty of actual vision the prospect of immortality.

But are there, Longinus, after all, no waverings of the mind, no impertinent doubts, no overcasting shadows, which at all disturb your peace, or impair the vividness of your faith? Are you wholly superior to fear-the fear of suffering and death?'

That is not, Cleoras, so much to ask whether I still consider my philosophy as sufficient, and whether it be so, as whether or not I am still a man, and therefore a mixed and imperfect being. But if you desire the assurance, I can answer you, and say that I am but a man, and therefore, notwithstanding my philosophy, subject to infirmity and to assaults from the body, which undoubtedly occasion me some distress. But these seasons are momentary. I can truly affirm, that although there have been and still are conflicts, the soul is ever conqueror, and that too by very great odds. My doubts and fears are mere flitting shadows; my hope, a strong and unchanging The body sometimes slips from beyond my control and trembles, but the soul is at the very same time secure in herself and undaunted. I present the same apparent contradiction that the soldier often does upon the field of battle: he trembles and turns pale as he first springs forward to encounter the foe, but his arm is strong and his soul determined at the very same moment, and no death nor suffering in prospect avails to alarm or turn him back. Do

beam of light.